84 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 105Electronic Literature
This course examines the ways that technology and literary writing intersect to allow new kinds of artistic expression that center the reader and their experience with the text. Genres covered may include visual novels, hypertext narratives, twine fiction, kinetic poetry, generative poetry, and locative art. Students learn simple tools to create electronic literature. The course reviews fundamental features of literary genres, introduces new theoretical approaches, and emphasizes application of learning through creative expression. Offered periodically during fall semester. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
ENGL 108The Hero and the Trickster in Post-Colonial Literature
Students examine various heroic and trickster figures as manifested in post-colonial literature from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, both oral and written, and seek to understand what basic human needs and realities these figures express and fulfill. Offered periodically.
This course introduces students to poetry from a range of perspectives including, but not limited to the poet's life; the application of categories of analysis such as race, gender, and nationality; poetry as literary craft; and the aesthetic appreciation of poems. To experience the literary medium of poetry in the fullest sense, students are required to write about, memorize, orally interpret/recite, and compose their own poetry. Offered periodically. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
This course introduces students to literary analysis through dramatic texts and performances. Activities may include trips to see local productions, student in-class performances, staged readings, and viewing filmed productions. Plays are drawn from varied genres, two or more historical periods, and both traditional and experimental approaches. Offered periodically.
This course examines a number of foundational texts of the medieval legend of King Arthur. Students study the specific political and socio-cultural contexts that produced these works, in addition to later works that reflect the ongoing appeal of Arthurian myth. Students will both analyze and imitate to deepen their understanding of Arthurian texts as creative acts whose form and style reveal their creator's fears, desires, self-image, and social status. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
This course introduces the craft of creative writing through contemporary readings and writing exercises in poetry and prose. Students learn to read and to write texts with attention to how a literary work is constructed. Emphasis on the elements of craft and strategies for revision prepare students to pursue the creative writing major or the English major with teaching licensure. Offered every semester. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
ENGL 156Writing The World Around You: Creative Writing and Place in Aotearoa
Set in Otepoti/Dunedin - where coastlines, hills, and histories converge - this course introduces creative writing as a practice of attention and connection. Through poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, students explore language, place, and identity while engaging with Aotearoa New Zealand's voices. Workshops, readings, and field visits to sites such as the Otago Peninsula and Botanic Gardens support students in developing their creative voices within a collaborative community of writers. Offered alternate years during January term. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity; OLE Experience in Practice.
Students learn strategies of critical analysis and interpretation as they encounter a variety of literary texts. This course is only recommended for students interested in pursuing the English major, the modified English major with a teaching license, or the creative writing major. Offered each semester.
ENGL 200Topics in Cross-Cultural American Literature
Focusing on multicultural American literatures, this topics course examines literature as a human expression that embraces both commonality and difference within and across cultures. This course also employs critical approaches specifically designed to address cross-cultural literary issues. It may be repeated if topics are different. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Power and Race.
This course introduces students to queer of color theory, literature, and film. Its focus is the intersectionality of sexuality, gender, race, class, and language, and the contributions of Black and Latinx writers to queer knowledge. It explores how their work creates and expands sexuality and gender studies beyond the universalism that plagues "mainstream" queer theory. Offered alternate years during fall semester. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Power and Race.
Since the 19th century, immigrants from Asia and the Pacific Islands have formed communities whose writing has expressed their shifting role as Asian Americans in the culture and economy of the United States. This course provides a multi-genre overview of Asian American literary traditions in socio-historical context and pays attention to current concerns such as diasporic displacement, gender, intergenerational conflicts, sexuality, transnationalism, intercountry adoption, and U.S. militarism. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Power and Race.
Exciting writing in English is coming from South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. An area once shaped by British colonization, South Asia is changing rapidly due to globalization. Students explore this region's history, culture, and religions through a selection of primarily 20th- and 21st-century literary texts. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
ENGL 205American Racial and Multicultural Literatures
Students explore the histories, cultural patterns, religious practices, key institutions, gender issues, narrative styles, and significant contributions to our nation of an array of racial and multicultural groups. Such diverse writers as Leslie Silko, Chaim Potok, Amy Tan, and Toni Morrison raise questions about voice and identity, both individual and collective. Offered annually. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Power and Race.
Students explore African literature as it has evolved from oral traditions like folktales and epics into fiction, poetry, and drama in written form. Topics studied might include literature of particular geographical areas, such as East Africa, a genre such as poetry, or the influence of western literature on that of Africa. Authors studied may include Chinua Achebe, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Nortje, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Alex La Guma. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Global Histories and Societies.
This course examines the life cycle of Black women in Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States. Romance, marriage, family, interracial relations, mothers and daughters, urban environments, gender politics and sexual violence, relations among females, intergenerational depictions, historical experiences, public expression and private reflections, individual and communal identities, class considerations--all of these and more images and themes arise in the fictional readings required for this course. Students read such writers as Mariama Ba, Gordimer, Hurston, and Naylor. Ticket/transportation fee required. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Global Histories and Societies.
Focusing primarily on contemporary works, this course introduces students to Arab American literature and film by exploring different literary and film genres (the novel, memoir, poetry, documentary film, feature film). Students examine shared thematic concerns related to immigration, exile, displacement, gender, religion, and racism. Students also consider how this literature and film draws upon and responds to past and present sociopolitical conflicts. Offered alternate years in the fall semester. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Power and Race.
This course introduces students to the comparative study of Afro-Caribbean literature. Students explore the literature of the region after the 1950s in a relational framework to understand the commonalities and differences of its peoples, cultures, and literatures. Students read novels, essays, theory, and poetry from different linguistic and cultural areas of the region. Specific attention will be given to the genre of marvelous realism. Offered periodically in spring semester. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
This course examines the ethical commitments of Renaissance literature and asks students to use works by Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and others to reflect on their own ethical decision-making. The course is constructed around two main areas of ethical concern that connect today's world to prior centuries: the good life, and political ethics of leadership. This course asks how these texts' ethical commitments can help us understand enduring ethical dilemmas. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Ethical Reasoning in Context.
In this course, students analyze globalization and its consequences through two related lenses: the ethical and the literary. First, students explore this phenomenon historically and philosophically, and consider different ethical responses to globalization's consequences. Then, students read and analyze works of Anglophone literature (English-language literature from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean) that engage these very issues. This approach both reorients understandings of the ethics of globalization and emphasizes the role of literature in ethical inquiry. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Ethical Reasoning in Context.
These courses trace the process of literary change during a selected period of approximately one hundred years, providing an experience of chronological breadth and textual variety. Students examine the development of styles, conventions, and forms within a particular national literature or across two or more national literatures. Examples of possible topics include Declarations of Independence in American Literature; Literature of the Atlantic Triangle, 1650-1800; 20th-century British and Irish Modernism. May be repeated if topic is different. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
This course introduces students to ecocriticism as a method of literary study by surveying English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Students read ecocritical theory and study poetry, plays, and prose works by authors including William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish. Possible course themes include pastoral, sugar and slavery, consumption and waste, the Scientific Revolution, and animals. Assignments use digital technology to gather data, analyze literature in its historical context, and write for collaborative scholarly research initiatives. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Global Histories and Societies.
ENGL 223Old and Middle English Literature: The Weird and the Wonderful
Two themes persist in early British literature: the role of fate (Old English wyrd) versus free will and the power of wonders--from the miraculous to the magical. These themes are traced in the Old English period in sermons, charms and riddles, biblical epics and Christian texts, and the heroic epic Beowulf. Readings from the Middle English period include lyric and ballad, romance from the Arthurian and non-Arthurian traditions, drama, allegory, mystical treatises, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
This course examines the process of literary development in English during two consecutive and contrasting movements: the Neoclassical (1660-1780) and Romantic (1780-1840). Students read the works of representative and important writers from both periods, including Pope, Swift, Austen, Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, Emerson, Douglass, and others, and examine the development of styles, conventions, and forms in English, Irish, and American literatures. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
ENGL 228Romantic/Victorian/Modern British Literature
This course explores British literature of three eras, from Wordsworth to Woolf. Students begin with the romantic revolution of the late 18th century, traverse the wide 19th-century span of Queen Victoria's reign, and cross into the modernist era following the cataclysm of World War I. Within each era, students examine a literary manifesto, a revolutionary event, an epic poem, a novel, and the aesthetics of the period. The course emphasizes conversations across eras and striking moments of "making it new." Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
ENGL 229Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature
The 20th century was a period of great achievement in British and Irish literature, as demonstrated by the work of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and Samuel Beckett. This course examines the famously innovative work of poets, playwrights, and novelists active during the first half of the century. It then considers postwar writing and the challenges that this literature offered to the ideas and practices associated with modernism. Offered annually. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Global Histories and Societies.
This topics course examines a specific aspect of British literature from one or more of a variety of possible critical approaches. This course develops students' ability to closely read literary texts and to understand literature in a British historical and cultural context. Examples of courses taught under this heading might include Medieval and Renaissance Poetry or Victorian Literature. May be repeated if topics are different. Offered periodically. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
This creative writing course focuses on craft issues of place and historical research, as well as how both travel and other art forms can fuel the writing process. The first half of the course, based at St. Olaf, acquaints students with the tools of fiction through exercises and readings, while also preparing for flash fiction writing projects to be developed during two weeks in Tuscany, Italy, which has long served as home or inspiration for writers. Offered periodically during January term. Applicants without a previous creative writing course will be considered with a brief fiction sample along with their study abroad application. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 and sophomore status or above and any previous creative writing course. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity; OLE Experience in Practice.
In this course, students read a variety of early American literary works (novels, poems, essays, autobiographies, chronicles) from the early period of North American exploration to the founding of the United States. The course focuses on intersections between literature and history, examining how the American nation was "written into existence" in literature, and examines connections between literature and discourses of nationalism, race, gender, and religion. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Global Histories and Societies.
This topics course examines a specific aspect of American literature from one or more of a variety of possible critical approaches. This course develops students' ability to closely read literary texts and to understand literature in an American historical and cultural context. Examples of courses taught under this heading might include American Women Writers, American Romanticism, or Modern American Poetry. May be repeated if topics are different. Offered periodically. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
This course focuses on tarot, a collection of cards used for multiple, unique purposes. The course discusses the origins and history of tarot, as well as examines the controversies surrounding the Rider Waite Smith deck. Using literary and cultural analysis, students will examine current iterations of tarot in literature and pop culture. Students will learn how to conduct tarot readings for themselves and others. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity; Writing Across the Curriculum.
Students read and discuss children's literature from Britain and the United States. Beginning with fairy tales and classics from the "golden age" of children's literature, students explore an array of picture books, poetry, and fiction, that exemplifies the best in fantasy and realism for children and young adults. Offered annually. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
This course examines the relationship between literature as a form of cultural expression and capitalism as a mode of economic production. Understanding literature's response to capitalism requires interdisciplinary study. This course thus seeks to contextualize the transformations of literature and capitalism by reading in the fields of political economy, sociology, political theory, critical race studies, advertising and marketing, visual art, and film. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Ethical Reasoning in Context.
Focusing on literature originally written in English from outside British and American/US contexts, this topics course examines a specific aspect of Anglophone literature from one or more of a variety of possible critical approaches. This course develops students' ability to understand literature in a global historical and cultural context. Examples of courses taught under this heading might include The Novel in African Literature or Modern Australian Poetry. May be repeated if topics are different. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
Chicano/a identity is perhaps one of the most misunderstood racial/ethnic identities in the United States. It encompasses many possible identities--such as Latino, Hispanic, and Mexican American--while remaining politically and culturally distinct in its intended meaning. Students explore the history behind constructions of Chicano/a identity as expressed through Civil Rights Movement (post-1964) literature and politics, with the intention of demystifying the contentious stereotypes surrounding this community. Students read works by 3-4 major Chicano/a authors. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Power and Race.
Using methods from public health and literary studies, students critically analyze the role of storytelling in medical encounters. In reflection papers and close-readings, students ask how memoir, film, and poetry highlight the layers of meaning and power dynamics that doctors and patients navigate. Students also volunteer with community partners to create quilts and bandages for hospitals and package them with other medical supplies, telling their own stories about the experience. Offered periodically in January term. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: OLE Experience in Practice.
Students explore the works of major authors writing in English from around the globe, as well as their historical, social, and geographic contexts. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
This class explores how games tell stories by developing and remixing literary techniques and the way that print authors' use of games in prose opens new literary approaches. Students play and analyze games in various narrative genres (e.g., walking simulators, visual novels, and choices-matter) and augment their knowledge by reading game studies theory. Writing in the course examines how games tell stories using literary techniques. Students also complete a creative design assignment. Offered periodically during fall semester. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
In this workshop, students read literary and scholarly texts about food and then produce their own food writing. Topics may include food's relationship with intergenerationality, social movements, travel, migration, conflict, and climate. During workshops, students apply journalistic principles to draft restaurant reviews and feature stories (such as culinary travelogues or stories profiling their own food traditions), use instructional theory to adapt found/family recipes, and craft graphically rich, digital page spreads showcasing their food writing. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
Students examine Renaissance drama by Shakespeare and others in order to concentrate on how to read the plays well and how to respond fully to both text and performance. Students attend live performances when possible and view productions on video. The course includes some consideration of historical context and background as well as practice in how to write about the plays. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
This course focuses on verbal folklore: narratives, songs, and shorter forms such as proverbs. It explores their intrinsic qualities as literary creations and also the ways in which they operate together in combination or in dialogue. The folktale and the epic, for example, incorporate a variety of these forms, such as the proverb, the song, or the riddle, to form a complex whole. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Global Histories and Societies.
ENGL 260Topics in Cross-Disciplinary Literary Study
In addition to the traditional practices of literary study, cross-disciplinary courses include materials from at least one other academic discipline, requiring students to compare and combine disciplinary perspectives in literary analysis. Examples of courses taught under this heading might include Literature and Politics; Religion and the Novel; Philosophical Approaches to Literature. May be repeated if topic is different. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
Though their career as a recording group lasted only about seven years and ended over half a century ago, the Beatles are still considered one of the most important creative collaborations of the twentieth century. In this course, students practice cultural analysis by examining the Beatles' musical, lyrical, and cultural works, focusing on their creative evolution in the context of social, cultural, and technological developments during the 1960s. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
British Romantic and American Transcendentalist literatures emphasize youth, celebrate the body and energy, and extol intuition, creativity, and individuality. Rock music has been derided by some commentators as extreme Romanticism. Students in the course examine this artistic line of influence and debate its merits. Writers and musicians may include Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Emerson, Whitman, Springsteen, Cloud Cult, and Arcade Fire. Offered periodically.
This course introduces students to the complicated relationship between philosophy and literature from any period between the 16th- century and the present day. Students learn about the intersection of ideas that fall under the general category of "modernity" and explore how selected philosophical views influence American and/or English literary works from the Renaissance to the contemporary period. Students gain an understanding of modern philosophies by learning how to incorporate interdisciplinary theories when engaging in literary analysis. Offered periodically.
ENGL 269Art, Design, and Literature in Britain Since 1950
This cross-disciplinary course traces the flourishing of British creativit in art, design, and literature from the postwar era to the present--a period in which Britain emerged as an influential nation in a number of creative fields, from music to fashion, product design to architecture. Students examine works, movements, creative practices, and critical methodologies from art, design, and literature in order to develop a panoramic understanding of contemporary British creativity. Offered periodically.
Using literature as the primary lens, this course studies soccer as a unique phenomenon with deep roots in British society, paying particular attention to the sport's historical, social, cultural, and aesthetic aspects. While in England, students attend matches, stadium tours, and speak with supporters' organizations from the Premier League to the lower divisions. Students think about how soccer informs other aspects of British culture, and how British society finds its way into England's most popular game. Offered alternate years in January term. Prerequisite: FYS and WRR. OLE Core Requirement: OLE Experience in Practice.
The 17th century movement now known as the Scientific Revolution brought radically altered ideas about human beings, truth, knowledge, and our place in the universe. This course examines its effects on English literature from about 1600 to 1700. Students discuss how changing views, particularly on astronomy and medicine, inspired literary works. Authors may include William Shakespeare; Christopher Marlowe; Ben Jonson; John Donne; Francis Bacon; John Milton; and Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Fee may be required. Offered alternate years in the fall semester.
Shakespeare's statement, "all the world's a stage," has never been more true, as his plays have truly become global texts. This course charts some of their journeys. Students study four or five of Shakespeare's plays and use concepts from adaptation studies to analyze various "Shakespeares" that have emerged across the globe, including translations, new plays, films, manga, and other re-mediations. Students will attend at least one performance; a ticket fee is required. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
This course surveys traditions of writing about disability and the body in genres like fiction, memoir, journalism, manifesto, and diagnostic manual. Focus is given to neurodevelopmental conditions, physical impairments, and age-related debility. Through critical discussion of texts, students examine how somatic, bodily experience arises through encounters with human infrastructure and nonhuman ecology. Students also experiment with accessibility, usability, and emancipatory design to translate their own bodily perceptions into public essays, visualizations, and other digital media. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
In this course, students explore the writer's craft through both reading and writing. Students read and discuss literary works with particular attention to how a literary work is made. They then apply these lessons through creative writing activities and assignments, including the crafting and workshopping of original work. May be repeated if topic is different. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Creativity.
Students explore the complex relationships between literature and film. How do we translate the verbal into the visual? What can novels do that films cannot and vice versa? Subject matter includes both classic and contemporary fiction and film. Also counts toward film and media studies major and concentration. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
Through nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, students explore the complex relations between humans and the "natural" world. Students consider questions such as the following: What does it mean to be connected to a landscape? What is a sense of place? Students also reflect on how they and the writers they read put landscape into language. Also counts toward environmental studies major (all emphases) and concentration. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
In this course, students read a series of memoirs to investigate the way Christianity has shaped individual people. From snake-handling to baptism, from icon-kissing to communion, from creeds to purity promises, Christian beliefs and practices can, by turns, prove to be life-giving, oppressive, disturbing, and salvific. How does emphasizing differing aspects of theology result in differing attitudes toward sexuality, gender, race, and the environment? In addition to approaching the memoirs from a critical perspective, students also identify and practice craft techniques as they write their own personal religious (or areligious) narratives. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Religion, Faith and Values.
These courses emphasize the study of literature united by specific formal elements rather than by theme, topic, historical period, or national origin. The genre studied may be broad, such as narrative fiction, or narrowly defined, such as the elegy. The course focuses on the study of literature through a critical exploration of form. May be repeated if topic is different. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
In this course students read, analyze, and write their own works of speculative fiction (e.g., fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, fabulism, slipstream, etc.). Students read and discuss short stories and novels, paying attention to form, themes, and content and apply their knowledge of these genres by crafting and workshopping their own stories through peer revision. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
This course examines the development of the crime fiction genre in English, from its emergence in the 19th century to the present day, giving particular attention to form, meaning, and historical context. Students read pioneering works by Poe, classic detective stories as formulated by Doyle and Christie in England, American "hard-boiled" crime writers like Hammett and Chandler, police procedurals from both sides of the Atlantic, and examples of the sub-genre spy fiction. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent.
ENGL 285Digital Rhetorics and New Media Literacies
Students examine what it means to be literate in an age of new media, comparing their experience of interpreting and interacting with digital texts to the long and varied history of analog text and tool production across cultures and millennia. Students compose digital texts for a variety of nonacademic genres, and use their final project to consider the use of digital storytelling in public media. Offered annually. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
Rhetoric and composition are academic fields within English studies that take up the questions of how meaning is made and negotiated in a variety of historical, geographical, and media-based contexts. This topics course provides students with an overview of these fields and an in-depth perspective on areas of focus within the fields. Topics could include: presidential rhetoric, classical rhetoric, technical writing, interactive texts and video games, feminist rhetoric, and community literacy. May be repeated if topic is different. Offered annually. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
This course gives students a hands-on opportunity to develop their use of writing strategies and technologies appropriate to workplaces. Course themes include workplace practices, professional ethics, technology resources, promotional resources, and writing on behalf of an organization. Students create individual and collaborative projects including employment documents, proposals, brochures, memos, and other professional genres. Through case studies, readings, and/or client-based projects, students analyze writing practices in a range of professional settings. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
This course introduces students to literary journalism, a tradition of in-depth nonfiction writing that reveals society's untold stories. Together, students discuss genre-defining texts from Joan Didion to The New Yorker. Students follow a slow journalism model used by magazine editorial departments, practicing investigative newsgathering using databases, public records, visual media, and interviews. Through deep work with sentence-craft, they develop a publishable longform article (or several shorter, linked works) in an area of their particular interest. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity; Writing Across the Curriculum.
Students examine local, metro, and national news while learning to write both hard news and features. Subject areas may include covering meetings and business, reviewing arts and food, and/or writing about sports and travel. Students also learn UPI/AP copy-editing and proofreading, important skills for internships and print media jobs. Offered periodically. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent and at least sophomore status. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
This course explores the inner workings of the publishing world from literary magazines to book publishers. Students explore the modern history and trends of publishing in America, as well as engage with hands-on projects that both illuminate readings and offer insight into the daily practices of writers and literary gatekeepers. Projects may include the drafting of a proposal for a hypothetical literary magazine, a marketing campaign, reading submissions for a magazine, layout and cover design projects, and conducting a podcast interview. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: WRIT 120 or equivalent. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; OLE Experience in Practice.
In this course, students read a diversity of creative nonfiction and write intensively, exploring creative nonfiction craft elements. Students workshop longer pieces and participate in the generation of peer feedback and reflection about the revision process. They consider their own creative nonfiction writing within the context of larger literary conversations and communities. Offered annually. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent and at least sophomore status. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Creativity.
In this course, students read a diversity of contemporary poetry and write intensively, exploring a poet's craft. Students engage in creative exercises with attention to invention, style and arrangement, and workshop drafts as a way of engaging in reflection, revision, and community. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent and at least sophomore status. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Creativity.
In this course students explore and analyze a diversity of contemporary fiction and experiment with modes of a fiction writer's craft. Students workshop and critique each other's stories to better understand craft elements, the process of revision, and the dynamics of a literary community. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent and at least sophomore status. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Creativity.
Students learn the techniques of screenwriting, including how to create backstories, break down scenes, and structure narratives. They will read and analyze screenplays through a creative, storytelling lens and generate speculative scripts of their own to be workshopped with peers. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent and at least sophomore status. OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum.
ENGL 340Advanced Studies in Literary Eras: American
Students explore specific periods in American literature and examine the relationship between literary texts and movements and their particular cultural, political, and historical contexts. Each offering of this course examines a different literary era and emphasizes specific literary and historical issues. May be repeated if topic is different. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II, or permission of the instructor.
Students study individuals or groups of authors, looking at themes such as the individual as cultural hybrid, the place of politics in literature, ethnocentrism and imperialism. They examine the formation of literature from the clashes of culture, and the relationship between non-traditional literary forms and traditional European aesthetics. May be repeated if topic is different. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II, or permission of the instructor.
This class focuses on defining, classifying, analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and understanding literature. Students study both practical criticism (discussion of particular works or writers) and theoretical criticism (principles and criteria appropriate to literature generally). The course introduces a broad range of critical theories and provides an historical overview of the subject. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II, or permission of the instructor.
Students deepen their understanding of craft and form by reading contemporary and modern poetry and completing individual, polished writing projects. Class sessions encourage community development as students discuss various options within the poetic form, explore book-length volumes, workshop their writing, and examine the larger poetic landscape's artistic concerns and vocational practices. Prerequisites: ENGL 292 or permission of the instructor.
Students develop and complete individual projects in fiction (including preparations for longform projects such as a novella), deepening and polishing their work. Class sessions are devoted to community development, the discussion of craft and publishing, the examination of book-length literary models, and the workshopping of student writing. Prerequisites: completion of any 200-level fiction writing course such as ENGL 293 or ENGL 282 or permission of the instructor.
Students deepen their understanding of creative nonfiction by reading contemporary essay collections and memoirs and completing individual, polished writing projects. Class sessions are devoted to community development, the discussion of craft and a writer's vocation, the examination of book-length literary models, and the workshopping of student writing. Prerequisites: ENGL 291 or permission of the instructor.
In this course, students engage in more concentrated study of advanced craft elements. Different topics may focus on specific schools/genres of writing or on a single author's body of work. This study will inform a student's production of a sustained, creative text such as a novella, chapbook of poems, or a longform essay within a small community of writers to cultivate appropriate drafting and revision processes. May be repeated if topic is different. Prerequisite: at least one 200-level creative writing workshop or by instructor permission.
Students consider in depth some of Shakespeare's most popular plays and also explore some of the less-frequently studied classics. Students examine a wide range of genres and types of plays, view recorded productions, and attend performances when available. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II, or permission of the instructor.
From medieval moral interludes to postmodern productions, the stage has long been a site for ethical inquiry. In this course, students study a set of ethical theories and apply them to their analyses of ethical problems and moral agency in four to five plays. The plays, which represent a range of genres and periods, are assigned viewing as well as reading; in addition to watching filmed productions, students will attend at least one live performance. Offered periodically. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II. OLE Core Requirement: Ethical Reasoning in Context.
Students analyze from a broadly cultural view the political, religious, and intellectual debates of Chaucer's day as reflected in his greatest work, the Canterbury Tales. Students examine the Canterbury Tales through the lens of ethics, using readings in ethical theory to better understand moral questions, Chaucer's poetry, and ourselves -- as interpreters of literature and moral agents. Also counts toward medieval studies major. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II; or permission of the instructor. OLE Core Requirement: Ethical Reasoning in Context.
This course provides a comprehensive research opportunity, including an introduction to relevant background material, technical instruction, identification of a meaningful project, and data collection. The topic is determined by the faculty member in charge of the course and may relate to their research interests. Offered based on department decision. May be offered as a 1.00 credit course or .50 credit course. Prerequisite: determined by individual instructor.
In this seminar, students learn about a range of methods for literary research by exploring literature in the context of critical, theoretical, cultural, or historical materials. For each student, the centerpiece of the course is the research and writing of a long essay that represents their individual research interests. Students share and respond to each other's work-in-progress and present their completed projects to the seminar. May be repeated if topic is different. Prerequisites: open to juniors and seniors who have completed ENGL 185 and at least two level II English courses or by permission of the instructor.
