89 courses with the subject EN, 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.
EN 100Foundations in College Writing1098
Introduction to college-level reading and writing practices, including writing for academic audiences, actively reading and responding to challenging texts, and establishing a practice of revision. This course is designed for students who want or need a semester of developmental writing support prior to enrolling in EN 101. EN 100 does not substitute for EN 101.
Practice in writing for various academic aims and audiences, this course includes a supervised process of invention strategies, drafting, final editing, and at least one assignment in library research and proper forms of documentation. It encourages peer reviews, small-group problem-solving activities and in-class discussions of interdisciplinary readings. It is required of all first-year students.
This special course of study is primarily for international students who, prior to enrolling in EN 101, need additional instruction in the practices and conventions of university-level academic writing in English.
This is a five-week course designed to introduce Gateway and ACT101 students to the fundamentals of writing at the university level. This course is designed to help students understand and embody the basic habits of a scholarly life of inquiry and to help students contribute to the academic conversation. Students write two formal papers, maintain a journal, read and discuss assigned readings, peer review each other’s writing, and represent their growth as readers, writers and thinkers in an end-of-session portfolio. Students also are required to meet with the professor twice for one-on-one conferences on their papers and to participate in twice-weekly, one-hour writing sessions in a computer lab facilitated by two graduate-level writing consultants.
This introductory course develops the student’s ability to read and write critically about literature and analyzes the relationship of literary form to thematic and rhetorical function through examination of poetry, drama and prose fiction. Required of English majors.
This workshop focuses on composing, analyzing and revising drafts, especially in the peer-review process. It includes readings in the theory and practice of peer-reviewing, motivation and resistance, role-playing and other group activities, and examination of student papers. It is open to all sophomores, juniors and seniors. (Pass or no credit.)
Taken after EN 101 , this Research Writing course follows the same basic format. Focuses on interdisciplinary reading and writing assignments with greater emphasis on library research. Required of all students who do not take a Research Writing-designated course in another department.
In this course, students begin to learn how to do research in the discipline of English Studies and use that research in different writing tasks designed to foster critical thinking and literary analysis.
This course introduces the genre of creative non-fiction, which borrows elements of fiction and poetry and questions notions of truth in written texts. Students will develop their understanding of voice, metaphor, specific language, clarity, and all aspects of storytelling techniques through the many forms of creative nonfiction, especially memoir, and the personal essay.
Practice in poetry and fiction writing skills, this course includes regular submission of written work for peer and instructor critique, with analysis of published poems and short fiction for style, interpretation and techniques in relation to subject and intention.
This introduction to the basic elements of journalism includes newspaper and magazine writing, investigative reporting, editing, layout and the ethics of journalism. It covers all aspects of print journalism.
This course offers practical experience in writing for business with rhetorical sophistication, grammatical competence and a strong sense of what is and is not good English prose style. It emphasizes typical business and industrial reports and correspondence.
This intensive study of a selected genre or theme occurs in an informal lecture-discussion format. Possible topics: Humankind’s Relation to Nature, Love through the Ages, the Sonnet. It may be taken more than once for credit when topics vary.
This critical reading of texts by one or more major dramatists, fiction writers, or poets focuses on the stylistic, structural and thematic developments in each writer’s work. It may be taken more than once for credit when topics vary.
This course focuses on the interconnections in the writings of these two popular fantasy authors and their social philosophies. Students will develop literary research skills to support critical literary investigations.
This course introduces students to a variety of contemporary (written in the last 25 years or so) short stories, with emphasis on the comic, the bizarre and the outrageous. Authors may include Atwood, Marquez, Alexie, Erdrich, Barth, O’Brien, Sontag, Tan, Amis, Gordimer, Kureishi, Galeano, Rushdie and others.
Introducing students to some of the most significant contemporary short stories, novels and poetry by Native American writers since the mid- 1960s, this course includes works by Momaday, Silko, Ortiz, Dorris, Alexie, Erdrich and others. Students examine the Native American “experience” in contemporary society.
This course is an introduction to gay and lesbian literature from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Authors include Forster, Baldwin and Highsmith among others. Assignments and discussion topics consider the literature and its relationship to and impact upon the history, society and culture of the day.
This is a survey of different forms and sub-genres of suspenseful fiction, including texts that range from short, classic mysteries to hardboiled novels to police procedurals. It includes exploration of, among other concepts, justice and law and the difference between the two. Texts from different nations and different historical periods reflect and/or create shifts in cultural, social and literary values. The course includes online discussion boards, short analytical papers and a longer final project that incorporates background research.
EN 227Philadelphia in Literary and Cultural Context1098
This exploration of the rich array of expressions about Philadelphia focuses on diverse writers from different periods, including William Penn, Elizabeth Drinker, Philip Freneau, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard, and Frank Webb. Students interpret literary, historical, and cultural texts through interdisciplinary methods, read archival materials about the city, and engage in weekend fieldwork by visiting sites such as the National Constitution Center, the Edgar Allan Poe House, and Eastern State Penitentiary. The course culminates at semester’s end with a researched project that examines some of the area’s metropolitan heritage.
Study of diverse voices that comprise the American literary heritage. This course explores the relationship of the texts to the intellectual, historical and social conditions that produced them. Authors include Sherwood Anderson, Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, Edwidge Danticat, Alison Bechdel, Sandra Cisneros and many others.
This course will explore the histories, cultures, and experiences of African and African-descended peoples as represented in literature across genres. We will also examine landmark works of Black critical theory and aesthetic/cultural philosophy to better understand concepts such as the color line, double consciousness, Black nationalism, Africanfuturism, etc. that heavily shaped social and political thought well into the present day. Through the study of these texts, we will gain insight into significant literary/ideological movements including negritude, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, etc. to establish a foundation for additional study in upper-level literature courses on U.S. and global texts. Potential authors for study may include Harriet E. Wilson, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, August Wilson, and others as we trace the literary contributions of both canonized and underrepresented authors from the seventeenth century to the present.
This course will examine short stories that reflect different historical moments in the African and African American experience from the seventeenth century to the present in order to address key topics such as the transatlantic slave trade, the fight for civil rights, anti-Black racism and violence, Black utopia-building, cultural expression, and the return to origins as the world evolved and the concept of Black identity began to take form. We will examine the works of major writers such as Chinua Achebe, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright as well as those of contemporary writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Through this course, we will gain a better understanding of the power of fiction and the ways in which Black authors used the short story form to address oppression but also to envision counter-futures centered on Black liberation and racial uplift.
Critical reading of and writing about major novels, short stories, nonfiction, and poetry of Louise Erdrich. Focuses on the stylistic, structural, and thematic developments of Erdrich’s work.
This course will explore travel literature (fictional and non-fictional) from British, American and Anglophone writers. We often turn to literature for the same reason we travel –to escape the familiar trappings of our own lives and to discover new worlds. In this course, we’ll think about the relationship between travel and literature, and consider why so many writers use their works to recreate or imagine adventures to new places. We’ll read a variety of travel texts, including satirical works, travel narratives and letters, literature from and about the colonial frontier, as well as accounts of travel in the “new world.” Ideally, this course will offer students a chance to think about travel in new ways in preparation for study abroad or as a means to process return from it.
EN 235Editing and Publishing the Small Literary Magazine1098
This course is an analytical and practical introduction to both the editing and publishing of literary magazines. Students will read essays from and about literary magazines in order to understand the history of the medium as well as the current discourse surrounding it. They will also examine the process of literary editing from a theoretical vantage point, looking at essays by editors, editor-author correspondence, and original and edited texts. In addition to this academic work, students in the course will serve as Readers for the university’s undergraduate literary magazine, Quiddity, whereby they will have the opportunity to apply the theoretical components of the class by reading, evaluating, editing, and curating student-produced work.
When should we rise up? When does resistance become revolution? How does literature ignite and give shape to social protest? In this course, we’ll examine key moments of social, political and cultural revolution from world history, and think about the ways in which literature has helped to spark widespread upheaval and change. We’ll read fictional and non-fictional works from the American and French Revolutions, the global movement to abolish slavery, the advent of class struggle, the campaigns against imperialism, as well as the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. We’ll think about “revolutionary” literature broadly to include discussion of protest music, folk songs, as well as popular representations of revolution such as Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton. Students will complete two course papers, conduct independent research on one of our course texts, and at the conclusion of the course, write a short piece of protest writing.
A workshop designed to immerse students in the practice of writing, revising and workshopping their original fiction works at an intermediate level. Students will read and critique the work of their peers while reading works of short and long fiction and also texts about creative writing. Readings include two novels, seven to ten short stories, and a creative writing instructional text. Course requirements include a minimum of two analytical essays exploring fiction writing as a craft and demonstrating expert understanding of particular craft elements.
A workshop designed to facilitate and encourage the student’s own style and voice in writing poetry. The course has three components: weekly readings, weekly writing prompts, and peer review workshops. Authors include Williams, Ashbery, Schuyler, Whalen, Armantrout, Hoagland, Smith, Scalapino, Lin, Berssenbrugge and others.
EN 267Introductory Fiction and Poetry Workshop1098
This course for beginning creative writers is designed to help students develop writing skills over four weeks through online discussions and workshops and also through personal feedback from peers and the instructor during both the weekend on campus and the four weeks of online workshops. Assignments include writing and revising original fiction and poetry, extensive reading of literature and writings on craft and technique, and a final portfolio of the student’s best work.
One-half writing workshop, one-half performance, this workshop looks at how we can translate our own written work into a stage performance. It begins with a traditional poetry workshop centered on students’ writing. It explores vocal and theatrical techniques to bring the written word to life. Readings include works of O’Hara, Sanchez, Williams, Shange and current performance artists. The course ends in a final public performance.
In fantasy and science fiction, readers and writers often marvel at the complexity of the worlds writers create. Writers in these genres use these worlds to provide escapist and exotic landscapes as backdrops to their fiction. But “world building” in fiction is more complex than this; truly well‐built worlds are deeply interconnected to the ecology, history, social fabric, and cultures of invented landscapes, and the process of building worlds in fiction impacts virtually every facet of writing, from characterization and detail to motive, conflict and subtext. This workshop course is designed to develop students’ awareness and attunement to elements of craft in fiction, particularly building believable, engaging worlds in science fiction and fantasy. Students will study established and emerging literary craft and trends, consider real‐life case studies in practicing consequential thinking and sociological imagination in genre writing, and create original works of fiction that both utilize and further develop the worlds that students create.
An intermediate-level investigation and practice of strategies of interpreting literary texts. Topics include multiple vs. single interpretations; the problem of political and psychological subtexts; and the relation among history, society and the author. Readings are drawn from fiction, poetry, drama and essays on critical theory. Required for English majors.
This course is an upper-level seminar for English majors. It is designed to extend students’ knowledge of strategies for interpreting literary texts and will offer an overview of major contemporary schools of critical thought. It is also designed to support students as they develop a research inquiry of their own as they move into their culminating project in the Senior Seminar.
EN 199 and EN 202 before enrolling in this course.
EN 311Writing Center Issues1098
This course helps Arcadia University Writing Center consultants to develop the skills and understanding of Writing Center issues necessary to be effective tutors. Every semester addresses a different theoretical perspective or issue, including writing across the curriculum, effective structures of consultations, the rhetoric of student papers and tutoring, conversation models, research writing, and cultural issues in tutoring.
Students must be employed at the Arcadia University Writing Center as writing consultants.
EN 312Research in the Writing Center1098
This course extends the theoretical and practical training for Writing Center consultants into training regarding research, assessment and Writing Center scholarship. Students will develop and implement individualized research projects to explore a facet of Writing Center work. Students will collect and analyze their findings, report their results and reflect on how their research process influences their pedagogical approach(es) as tutors.
Students must be hired by the Director of the Writing Center and have completed their initial semester of training in the Writing Center in order to take this course. Students must also complete EN 311 prior to taking this course.
EN 313Sports Literature1098
Students closely read a variety of sports literature in several genres, including poetry, fiction, feature journalism, and long-form non fiction. Students articulate the themes, issues, and techniques present in each author’s work. Through their own research and critical writing, students continue exploring these ideas through the canon of sports literature.
The course offers a practical introduction to the consumer magazine industry and aims to equip students with the basic skills and understanding necessary to pursue full-time or freelance careers as magazine writers or editors. Students examine all forms of magazine writing from short front-of-book items to department stories to features, perform critical analyses of individual magazines, learn how to develop story ideas into compelling magazine prose, and write effective query or pitch letters. In addition to an overview of the industry, the course provides an understanding of the basic structure of magazines, the different types of stories that magazines publish, and the economic forces driving magazine publishing today.
This intensive study of technical documents for various careers covers catalog descriptions, descriptions of mechanisms, instructional and procedural manuals, bids, requests for bids, proposals, reports, memos and letters responding to customer inquiries. It emphasizes preparation of effectively written documents for various audiences and purposes. It presents the integration of graphic and copy elements in well-structured and designed documents. It includes individual and group assignments from a problem-solving approach. Requirements include a portfolio of work in-progress and two spoken presentations. It requires portfolios of work in-progress and two spoken presentations.
An intensive writing workshop offering an overview of the health-care communications field. Students become familiar with research tools (including online databases), interview techniques, and the integration of graphics to enhance text. They also develop an understanding of the audience and an appreciation for the knowledge base of the intended reader. This course covers the writing and editing of peer-reviewed technical journal articles as well as marketing materials, press releases, newsletter articles, feature and advertising copy.
Learn the set-up of the newsroom; practice the conventions of news and news features, such as profiles and issue-oriented stories. Fieldwork includes coverage of some live events with emphasis on writing the more complex story, with style, color, flair and substance.
EN 217 or another course in journalism, or experience in public relations/advanced writing; or permission of the instructor.
EN 320Classical and Medieval European Literature1098
This is a selective study and appreciation of texts from Western antiquity and the Middle Ages that remain influential and alive in our time. These texts are considered within the cultural contexts from which they sprang and to which they helped give definitive shape. Typically, readings are drawn from the plays and epics of ancient Greece; great Roman authors such as Virgil, Augustine, and Boethius: and such medieval works, genres and authors as Beowulf, the Arthurian romances, Dante and Chaucer. required for English majors
EN 321European Renaissance and Enlightenment Literature1098
This is a selective study and appreciation of texts from 16th, 17th and 18th century European literature with a focus on the English tradition and a consideration of the historical contexts of the works studied. Readings are drawn from Renaissance essayists and novelists such as More, Montaigne, Bacon and Cervantes; Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists such as Jonson, Shakespeare and Webster; English lyric poets such as Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne and Marvell; major works from later 17th century and Restoration authors such as Milton, Dryden and Congreve; and major figures from the 18th century such as Pope, Swift, Voltaire, Defoe, Fielding and Sterne. Required for English majors
This is a critical reading of major British works of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries in the context of cultural history. Readings include works by such writers as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Bronte, Browning, Tennyson, George Eliot, Conrad, Woolf, Beckett and others. Required for English majors
This is a critical reading of major American works of the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, approaching the texts as products of a specific place and historical experience. Authors include Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Jacobs, Twain, Dickinson, James, Faulkner, Frost, Hughes, Baldwin, Miller, Morrison and others. required for English majors
EN 327The discovery of Adulthood in British and American Fiction1098
This course explores, through novels and short stories, the cognitive, moral, social and psychological complexities of adolescent and early adult experience. It also deals with the literary problems involved in portraying these stages of human development. The aim of both of the readings and of the class activities is to enhance awareness of the magnitude of change implied in the term “growing up.” While the overall focus is primarily literary, there will be some brief side-excursions into related fields, especially psychology.
In this intensive study of the work of one of America’s most important fiction writers, readings include five major novels and several short stories. In addition to understanding Faulkner’s extraordinary achievement as an experimental novelist, we look at his presentation of themes such as race, slavery, family and the natural world. This is an advanced course for students with experience in reading and writing literary criticism.
This course will examine cinema as text and discuss cultural, historical, and socio-political themes in cinematic productions by filmmakers across the African Diaspora in order to explore differences and intersections in the African and African-descended experience across the globe. Through the analysis of productions from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will probe representations of Black identity and culture in addition to key issues such as racism, xenophobia, stereotyping, etc. that affect the Black condition. We will also examine diverse cinematic genres such as the race film, Blaxploitation, Black horror, etc. that helped define unique categories of Black cinematic art. Throughout the semester, we will view select films, read and discuss relevant scholarly articles, apply cultural studies theories, and develop multimodal projects to analyze the films that we engage. Though themes will vary, films for study may include Abouna, La Noire de, Within Our Gates, The Emperor Jones, Moonlight, and BIPOC biopics.
What is the right relation between people and the laws they enact? Strict obedience? Civil disobedience? Conscientious objection? Violent rebellion? Silent subversion? This question and the responses it has drawn through centuries of human history are the subject matter of this course. Fiction, drama, essays and films have explored how people have grappled with the complex issues arising from the imperfect relationship between an individual and the law. We’ll read fiction and drama and view films that present the theme. And we will read essays by literary critics, philosophers, lawyers, judges and psychologists who write about the shared interpretive strategies of literature and law.
This introduction to ESL teaching methods provides background in lesson planning, cross-cultural communication, selecting English-as-a-second-language materials, and conducting lessons. It includes field tutoring experience in practicum with adult literacy learners or second-language students.
EN 334Introduction to Linguistics and Language History1098
This examination of the historical development of the English language and the various approaches to acquisition and use of language includes psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, dialectology, phonology, morphology, schools of grammar, semantics, syntax and stylistics. It surveys contemporary theories, such as speech act theory, concerning the interpretation of language. It does not count as a literature course.
In this advanced course in American literature, topics vary. Possibilities include Transcendentalism, Race in the Literary Imagination, Passing, Literature of the Early 1960s, the Jewish Novel, Between the World Wars, American Women Poets and others.
This is a historical introduction to the cultural and literary modes of India, China and Japan through the study and discussion of ancient and modern works of Indian, Chinese and Japanese literature, supplemented by some religious and philosophical texts. It includes such works and writers as the Ramayana, the Gita, Gandhi, Tagore; Confucius, Lao-Tse and recent Chinese poetry and fiction; Noh plays, haiku and The Snow Country .
The central objective of this course is to help students to enter imaginatively into the condition of people caught in extremis by disaster, death, and madness—or any combination of the three. The course is an intensely collaborative experience for the student and the instructor. Students give a seminar report on a public disaster that has been researched, review drafts of fellow-students’ work, write an original play, and participate in the production of the “class play.” The three common texts used in the course are John Hersey’s familiar Hiroshima ; Kai T. Erikson’s Everything in Its Path ; and Norman Maclean’s powerful—and posthumously published— Young Men and Fire .
EN 341The (Neo) Slave and Emancipation Narrative1098
This course will explore the structures and literary themes present in both the autobiographical and fictional accounts of the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and the escape to freedom in the works of African and African American writers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. We will also examine the neo-slave and emancipation narratives of contemporary writers of the African Diaspora that reflect on the brutality of slavery, the commodification of the Black body, and the efforts of resistance against cultural erasure and oppression. By studying these works, we will discuss the global impact of slavery and the literary methods used to address the institution, the propaganda of pro-slavery literature, and the pervasive stereotypes employed to justify the continued enslavement of African and African-descended peoples. Possible authors for study may include Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and Colson Whitehead.
EN 342Ireland in 20th Century Film and Literature1098
This is an intensive study of the myths and realities of 20 th century Ireland as represented by seminal works of film and literature. In addition to its examination of the culture of Dublin over the past 100 years, the course guides students through cinematic and literary works, exploring such themes as migration and the myth of the West, colonial and post-colonial political struggles, and the role of women in Irish culture.
An intensive writing workshop focused on the production of publishable fiction and nonfiction for the children’s market, the course provides an exploration of the creative process, including invention techniques, drafting, and revision. Plotting, characterization, and the writing of dialogue and description are examined. Students also engage in an in-depth study of the magazine and book publishing markets so they can effectively target their writings to specific publishers. The course includes such practical considerations as the writing of query letters, working with editors and agents, and preparing manuscripts for submission. It does not count as a literature course.
This seminar on advanced topics in literature provides an opportunity for intensive study in areas of special interest. Topics vary. Possibilities include Modern and Contemporary Fiction; American Women Writers; Cinema of Science Fiction; Women’s Cinema.
Junior standing or above. May be taken more than once for credit when topics vary.
EN 346Russian Fiction1098
This is a survey of the themes and narrative techniques of Russian fiction, with special emphasis on select works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgeniev, Babel, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn. It covers Russian history in outline, from the founding of the Kievan State to the emergence of new Russia. The course approaches individual works as cultural products of their times.
EN 347Tales of the City: Urbanism in Global Literature1098
This online course explores global urban spaces in contemporary literature representing different cultural and social environments. We will focus on character interactions and relationships to/with the geographical location. We will also discuss connections between identity formation and the built environment. The course is interdisciplinary. Readings will be taken from The City Reader textbook, novels, poetry, and film set in cities like Mumbai, Abidjan, New York City, and London, for example.
This in-depth study of the significant work of one or more authors focuses on an author’s literary development as well as the relationship between the author’s life and work.
Junior standing or above. May be taken more than once when topics vary.
EN 351Jane Austen1098
A study of Austen’s six major novels with attention to the culture of Regency England, the course examines the enduring popularity of Austen’s works and the growing library of film adaptations of the novels.
In this intensive study of one of America’s most famous writers, students read a selection of his novels, stories and essays to get a sense of how complicated a writer he was. The course also views Ken Burns’ documentary.
This exploration of the fiction of the American South focuses on recurring themes in Southern literature. Authors may include Mark Twain, Faulkner, O’Connor, Lee, Warren, Hurston, Wright, Welty and Jones.
This course focuses on literature that expresses the mood of the community in response to war. Most of the texts look at the community in the wake of war, not during it. Thus, the course is not a typical “war literature” course in that it is less focused on what happens on the battlefield than on what happens after the battles are over. Possible texts include Regeneration , WW 1 poetry, Mrs Dalloway , Sophie’s Choice , The Remains of the Day , Slaughter-house Five , WW2 poetry, The Things They Carried , All the Light We Cannot See .
Introducing students to the important genre of the memoir, this course explores how the memoir explicates childhood, alienation in a multicultural land, alternative (and mainstream) sexuality, homelessness, mental illness and aging. Readings include a selection of recent American autobiographies and memoirs. Students may practice writing their own memoirs.
This exploration of the styles and techniques of modern theater includes selected British, American and Continental plays by modern dramatists such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Synge, O’Neill, Pirandello, Brecht and Pinter.
This exploration of the novel as a literary genre that has eluded precise definition focuses on works that represent major stages in the evolution of the genre. Possible authors include Austen, James, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Ellison, Pynchon, Morrison and Byatt.
This is a critical reading of selected texts, both artistic and rhetorical, to explore the differences between modern and postmodern styles, methods and attitudes in the 20th century. It includes such modernist works as Joyce’s Ulysses (selections), Eliot’s The Wasteland , poems by Yeats and Stevens, and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot , as well as essays by Wimsatt and Jung; postmodern works by such poets as W. C. Williams, R. Lowell, Plath, Levertov and Rich; film directors Fellini, Resnais, W. Allen and essays by Altieri, Fish and Barthes.
This exploration of lyric poetry from the ancient world to the present, with emphasis both on what makes language poetry and on the theory of the lyric form, includes a historical survey of highlights of the English lyric. Students write critical and analytical papers and poetry.
This course seeks to give a student a fresh experience of the literature being produced in our culture here and now. The majority of the texts have appeared in the world very, very recently—texts by living writers who, as creative personalities, make a just claim on both our time and our attention. A number of these writers, among them Jean Valentine, C.K. Williams, Robert Pinsky, and T.C. Boyle, are well-established writers whose reputations are secure. Others are emerging or established writers about whom a student will know little, if indeed anything, at the beginning of the course, but who will afford the student experiences that will be richly worthwhile.
This study of central works of Jack Kerouac and several key literary sources he drew on includes On the Road , The Dharma Bums , and the poetry collection Mexico City Blues . Influences include others in the Beat Movement such as Allen Ginsberg, Cary Snyder, Diana di Prima; American predecessors such as Ernest Hemingway, Jack London and Walt Whitman; the French Symbolist poets (in translation) Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire; and finally the Romantic visionary William Blake.
The word “memoir” literally means to remember in French, but it has morphed into one of the most popular literary genres today. The course primarily is concerned with carefully crafted literary memoirs. Some questions that will be considered are: What is the difference between memoir and autobiography? What are the ethics involved on writing a memoir? What elements (dialogue, scene, description) go into crafting a memoir? How truthful is memoir? How do experienced writers render their memoirs?
EN 369Young Adult and Children’s Writing Workshop (Intermediate Level)1098
This course further develops writing skills and knowledge of the children’s and young adult markets with a concentration on the student’s own work-in-progress. This course differs from the introductory course in several ways: by offering more intensive, full-class peer review; by providing additional technique workshops and one-on-one conferencing; and by being more student-directed via journaling and student-teacher conferencing. The emphasis is on the student’s own writing as well as on distinct characteristics of the genre.
EN 343 /443: Writing for Children, or the equivalent from another institution, or permission from the instructor. Junior standing or above.
EN 371Career Internship in English1098
The internship is in a supervised professional setting for a minimum of eight hours per week. It includes meetings with other interns and the instructor to analyze and discuss the work experience. It requires a written log and a paper analyzing some aspect of the internship experience as it relates to personal career plans. Interested students must submit a written proposal for an internship before registering for the course. Students also must carry at least 8 additional credits at Arcadia University while enrolled in the internship unless regularly attending on a part-time basis. Required of English majors
In this advanced seminar course in writing, topics vary according to the needs and interests of students and faculty. Possibilities include poetry writing workshop, feature writing, editing, professional writing and critical writing.
This course introduces the elements of fundraising through grant proposal writing for nonprofit organizations. Students identify and work with a nonprofit organization to produce a viable grant proposal. In the process, students develop skills in the areas of needs assessment, program development, budgeting, conflict resolution and negotiation, development planning, and discerning organizational strengths and weaknesses. The course also integrates an understanding of the philosophy and practice of philanthropy in the United States. Instructional formats include lecture, group work, writing practice, guest speakers, media analysis, online discussion, and field experience.
At least EN 101 and a research writing-designated (RW course. Junior standing or above.
EN 375Fiction Writing Workshop1098
This workshop is limited to undergraduate students of junior and senior standing who wish to further their skills, which must be already well-developed, as writers of fiction. Students critique one another’s works-in-progress, consider works of fiction by professional writers, and participate in intensive, cumulative workshops on the fine points of writing fiction. Each student must complete a body of work that comprises four finished short stories as well as a series of exercises.
EN 212 or the equivalent; or permission of the instructor, which is based on the submission of a portfolio of stories that gives clear evidence of solid training in fiction writing.
EN 376Writing for Digital Media1098
In the rapidly changing world of business and industry, one thing hasn’t changed—the high demand for professionals who can deliver high quality, strategic copy for a variety of new media formats, including company websites, intranets, and other digital media. This course, which draws on current usability research, explores key differences in print vs. electronic writing, details rhetorical strategies for new media formats, and helps students understand how to integrate visual and written elements. Students analyze, construct and write multimedia text in various assignments, creating a portfolio of electronic writing samples.
The course aims to develop understanding of grammar and rhetoric in varied written applications (academic, creative, professional), with particular emphasis on editing techniques for these different types of writing. Workshops focus on appropriate editing styles applied to student work.
This course equips students with the fundamental tools needed to write effective poetry and to read poetry intelligently. It emphasizes the craft of poetry in a workshop setting where students’ poems are critiqued, and it includes a careful consideration of the works of accomplished poets, poetic theory, and the rules of prosody.
EN 384Graphic Fiction Adaptations from Literature and Life1098
A study of graphic fiction as a hybrid narrative medium through a deep analysis of its synthesis of the narrative approaches of literary fiction, drama, journalism, and visual arts; and its distinctive blend of visual and verbal languages to produce graphic adaptations of print literature (as well as narrative media like film and television). Introduces fundamental narrative and dramatic devices of the two languages and various media, provides a critical vocabulary for interpreting graphic fiction, and guides careful textual analysis of important graphic fictions together with their narrative sources. Offers regular opportunities to discuss and interpret fiction in class and in writing, including the creation of graphic fiction works. Offers regular opportunities to discuss and interpret fiction in class and in writing, including the creation of graphic fiction works.
This is an intermediate to advanced course wherein students refine their skills in poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction or a combination of the above. The students and faculty meet in person for one weekend to participate in workshops, lectures and presentations. Then the course continues online for the following four weeks and includes peer-review workshops on Blackboard and one-on-one work with a professor.
This course is an examination of feminist rhetorical theory and women’s voices. We will study the way women have been represented through language, as well as how cultural, social and historical circumstances have shaped the way women speak and write. We will also explore the complications inherent in the term ”woman” specifically and gender in general. Some of the authors we will read include Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Nancy Mairs, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Zora Neale Hurston.
This is the culminating course for seniors enrolled in the Creative Writing Concentration. The student will work on a manuscript that may or not be inspired by a work produced in another course over their student’s four years of study. The manuscript will be about 50 pages in length and can be a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry. This course will be team taught by professors who specialize in the possible genres. The course will meet three hours once a week and include lectures on elements of craft and form, whole class discussions of elements of craft based on assigned readings, development and peer review sessions, lab time when students can work on revising their manuscripts, ask questions immediately and get advice from a professor or a peer. Students will produce and revise his or her manuscript throughout the semester and will also critique other students’ work-in-progress. By the end of the course, the student will have completed the manuscript and will read from their work. at a senior reading event. Required of English majors in the Creative Writing Concentration
Junior standing or above, a minimum GPA of 3.0 and permission of the Chair.
EN 399Senior Literature Seminar1098
This is the culminating course for seniors enrolled in the Literature Concentration. Students will explore contemporary literary theory and cultural criticism while completing a thesis-length literary analysis. The course requires heavy revision, extensive library research, an understanding of how to use and create scholarship, and familiarity with literary theory. By the end of the semester, students will have a completed senior thesis. This project will be presented at the University-wide thesis reading day held each spring.
