The Department of English has moved from Hellems and Denison to Muenzinger. The main office is in Muenzinger D110.

Fall 2018 Undergraduate Courses

First Year Seminars

Black and white drawing of an old Olympia typewriter.

ENGL 1001-001, 002: Freshman Writing Seminar (Fall 2018)

In this course, you will embark on a writing apprenticeship of sorts, honing your voice as you study the work of great essayists (along with a few duds--reading bad writing can help you refine your critical eye, too).

A drawing of a lightbulb meshing with a pen.

ENGL 1001-003: Freshman Writing Seminar (Fall 2018)

This course offers students an opportunity to practice composition skills in order to write literate, forceful and persuasive essays. Participants will work to develop a clean, efficient writing style.

General Literature & Language

Drawing of a Victorian woman laying by a pool with modern things like a cell phone, sunglasses, Variety magazine, etc.

ENGL 1500-001, 002: Masterpieces of British Literature

This course introduces students to a range of major works of British literature, including at least one play by Shakespeare, a pre-20th century English novel, and works by Chaucer and/or Milton.

A scary looking forrest on a moonlit night.

ENGL 1220-001, 002: From Gothic to Horror

Ghosts and monsters fill the pages of popular books and appear on our TV and movie screens. This course surveys the literary history of such creations and asks what we can learn from them. We will begin by exploring the origins of the Gothic genre.

ENGL 1230-001, 002: Environmental Literature

This course introduces students to the tradition of American environmental literature dating from Transcendentalism through realist and experimental contemporary literary texts.

Showing the faces of women throughout history

ENGL 1260-001, 002, 003, 004: Introduction to Women's Literature

This course introduces literature by women in England and America. We cover both poetry and fiction and varying historical periods while acquainting students with the contribution of women writers to the English literary tradition and investigates the nature of this contribution.

Cover of a cartoon called Strange Tales featuring Golem

ENGL 1340-001, 001B: Mysticism and the Jewish American Literary Tradition

In this class about Jewish mysticism and the Jewish-American literary tradition, you will enter a world filled with dybbuks and golems, with stories about Ezekiel’s Chariot and the Shekhinah or the female divinity. You will read stories about the creation of the universe about absence, nothingness, and divine constriction that are rarely read in university classrooms.

A gold pen doodling in a red, black, and gold scrolling design

ENGL 1420-001, 002: Poetry

This course introduces students to reading poetry by examining the great variety of poems written and composed in English from the very beginning of the English language until recently.

Cogs, wheels, and differently shaped letters spelling out Poetry

ENGL 1420-003: Poetry

This course introduces students to reading poetry by examining the great variety of poems written and composed in English from the very beginning of the English language until recently.

ENGL 1600-001, 002, 003, 004, 005: Masterpieces of American Literature

Masterpieces of American Literature enhances students' understanding of the American literary and artistic heritage through an intensive study of a few centrally significant texts, emphasizing works written before the 20th century.

Drawing of Shakespeare wearing sunglasses with city skyline in background

ENGL 3000-001: Shakespeare for Nonmajors

Tales of love, lust, jealousy, and betrayal; mirth and mischief; greed and murder; revenge, mercy, and redemption: welcome to the world of Shakespeare!

ENGL 3000-100: Shakespeare for Nonmajors

This course introduces students to the life and work of one of the world's great playwrights. One reason for William Shakespeare's ongoing popularity is the way that his plays ask the big questions: What does it mean to be a person? What is desire? What is the nature of evil?

Drawing of Shakespeare in front of a Mac monitor.

ENGL 3000-200: Shakespeare for Nonmajors

This HYBRID-ONLINE course introduces students to the life and work of one of the world's great playwrights. One reason for William Shakespeare's ongoing popularity is the way that his plays ask the big questions: What does it mean to be a person? What is desire? What is the nature of evil?

Drawing of a dragon perched on top of a mountain

ENGL 3060-014, 015: Modern and Contemporary Literature, Contemporary Fantasy

Since the publication of The Lord of the Rings in the United States in the mid-1960s, fantasy has become immensely popular. However, the fantasy that has become and remains popular tends to be that written in a mode very similar to Tolkien’s, involving quests, Dark Lords, battles between clearly distinguished good guys and bad guys.

ENGL 3060: Modern and Contemporary Literature for Nonmajors

This course offers a close study of significant 20th-century poetry, drama, and prose works. Readings range from the 1920s to the present.

Famous drawing by Escher showing an artist drawing his own arm

ENGL 4820: Honors Seminar

This seminar is designed to help you write an honors thesis that is well-researched, historically and culturally grounded, and responsive to critical trends that have informed your particular topic. It will focus on sharpening the skills needed to write a successful thesis, including research skills, the formulation of an argument,...

Undergraduate Creative Writing

Drawing of a pen spouting a beautiful design.

ENGL 1191: Introduction to Creative Writing

This course introduces students to techniques of writing fiction and poetry. Student work is scrutinized by the instructor and may be discussed in a workshop atmosphere with other students.

ENGL 2021-001, 002, 003: Introductory Poetry Workshop (Fall 2018)

The primary activity in this class will be the reading and discussion of student work, in a workshop format. The workshop will be “craft-driven,” which means we will try to regard each other’s work with writerly eyes, looking at the “how” as rigorously as the “what.”

A woman is sitting at a desk in front of a typewriter

ENGL 2051-001, 002, 003, 004: Introductory Fiction Workshop (Fall 2018)

ENGL 3021-001, 003: Intermediate Poetry Workshop (Fall 2018)

Through group critique, discussion, experimentation, work and play, this course will create a space for you to simultaneously develop your poems and poetics. We will attempt to bridge the gap between intuitive artistic play and an intellectual understanding of the requisite work involved in the writing of poetry.

ENGL 3041-001: Studies in Fiction and Poetry (Fall 2018)

This course examines literary forms and themes with special emphasis on issues related to the craft of poetry and fiction. This course is taught in conjunction with visiting lectures by practicing writers. Does not count as Creative Writing workshop credit. Prerequisite: ENGL 1191 (minimum B). Student may be dropped from...

Close up of a page that says "My Story" loaded on a typewriter

ENGL 3051-001: Intermediate Fiction Workshop (Fall 2018)

This is an intermediate course in fiction writing. May be repeated up to 9 total credit hours. Required prerequisite courses are ENGL 1191 and ENGL 2051 (both with B grade minimum). Restricted to students who have declared the Creative Writing Track or Creative Writing Minor. Students may not take two...

Letters floating out of an open, illuminated book on a table

ENGL 3051-002: Intermediate Fiction Workshop (Fall 2018)

Woman at a desk with a typewriter looking frustrated

ENGL 3051-003: Intermediate Fiction Workshop (Fall 2018)

ENGL 4021-001: Advanced Poetry Workshop (Fall 2018)

This is an advanced course in poetry writing. May be repeated up to 9 total credit hours. Required prerequisite courses are ENGL 1191, ENGL 2021 and ENGL 3021 (all with B grade minimum). Restricted to students who have declared the Creative Writing Track or Creative Writing Minor. Students may not...

Introductory English Requirements

ENGL 2102-001: Literary Analysis (Fall 2018)

This course provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Woman with the words "Nervous Condition" below her

ENGL 2102-002: Literary Analysis (Fall 2018)

This course is designed for students in the English major and aims to cultivate in students the practice of reading and writing about literary texts. We will cover the basic concepts and vocabularies of literary criticism, and familiarize ourselves with the central genres of literature—poetry, drama, and the novel—and the...

ENGL 2102-003: Literary Analysis (Fall 2018)

This course teaches how to analyze poetry and prose. It assumes some experience with literary analysis but not advanced knowledge. It is divided about equally between poetry and prose, with poetry in the first half. The section on poetry explores, among other things, the relations between poetry and music, including...

Woman tracing the image of a circle in the air

ENGL 2102-004: Literary Analysis (Fall 2018)

This course develops the skills of seeing, hearing, noticing, and describing that are the foundation of literary study. We all have feelings about what we like and don’t like, but can you articulate precisely what it is about that book, that song, that film, that makes it amazing and sets...

ENGL 2102-005: Literary Analysis (Fall 2018)

ENGL 2102-006: Literary Analysis (Fall 2018)

This is a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

ENGL 2112-001: Introduction to Literary Theory (Fall 2018)

This course provides a survey of contemporary literary and critical theory. It is organized around a series of "keywords" in literary studies that are of established or new resonance in the reading, interpretation, and discussion of texts. Such keywords include, but are not limited to, "dialectics", "ideology", "unconscious", "différance", "discourse",...

ENGL 2112-003: Introduction to Literary Theory (Fall 2018)

Literary theory has a reputation for being difficult, unfairly or not. Whatever the case, everyone approaches literature (or any sort of cultural production — film, painting, sculpture, website, fashion) with some preconception or assumption about how to read it, listen to it, see it, watch it, or otherwise interact with...

ENGL 2112-004: Introduction to Literary Theory (Fall 2018)

Introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. Covers major movements in modern literary/critical theory, from Matthew Arnold through new criticism to contemporary postmodern frameworks. Required for all English majors.

ENGL 2112-005: Introduction to Literary Theory (Fall 2018)

This course will sample a variety of modes of theoretical discourse that have influenced contemporary literary and cultural studies. The emphasis in the course will be on breadth of coverage, and on comprehending the fundamental principles and assumptions of each theoretical ethos or orientation. To the extent that time permits,...

British Literature to 1600

Illustration of a man with a sword and a torch hovering above a city

ENGL 3533-001: The Renaissance in England, 1600-1700

The seventeenth century in England was a maelstrom of revolution and historical change, from terrorism and civil war to the rise of the English empire and the beginnings of science. This tumultuous era produced some of the most daring and revolutionary literature that England has ever seen. This course surveys...

ENGL 3553-001: Geoffrey Chaucer

People have been reading Chaucer’s poetry for over 600 years now. Such long-lasting popularity has in part to do with the great variety of his writings. There’s a lot to like (and dislike): deeply moving tragedies, racy stories, philosophical meditations on the meaning of truth, and mocking diatribes against certain...

ENGL 4003-001: Introduction to Old English

Hwæt! English looked a lot different 1000 years ago. Although it sounds “old,” the history of our language has everything to do with how we use English today. Old English and Anglo-Saxon culture are the bases for Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and they are also often used in modern nationalist movements...

British Literature 1600 - 1900

Painting of two men and a woman in a Victorian interior room

ENGL 3164-100: History and Literature of Georgian Britain

In 1706 and 1707 the parliaments of England and Scotland ratified Acts of Union that gave birth to the Kingdom of Great Britain. Partly as a result, the Georgian era, named after the reigns of Georges I–IV (1714–1830), was a period of staggering political, economic, social, intellectual, and artistic transformations,...

William Blake painting of a man in the sky with beams of light emerging from his hands

ENGL 4524-001: Advanced Topics in Romanticism, William Blake

This class will cover contexts & works of the visionary poet and artist William Blake. Expect field trips to CUAM and to Special Collections, some hands-on printmaking, and to do independent research for a final paper.

American Literature

ENGL 2115-880: American Frontiers

This course considers the backdrop of the American West in literature, film, photography, and computer gaming. We will focus on a range of narratives and images depicting this wide swathe of American geography while simultaneously cultivating close reading skills, digital media analysis and film analysis that will aid you in...

Book shelf in the shape of the United States

ENGL 3235-001: American Novel

This course surveys the American novel. Covers the early development of the American novel, its rise in the 19th- and 20th-centuries, and its contemporary expressions. Students will be introduced to theories of the novel, the major movements and authors, as well as the characteristics that define the American novel as...

ENGL 4665-001: Studies in American Literature After 1900, Personal Writing in Modern America

This course studies modern American writers writing about their own lives. In addition, students will have a chance to do their own personal writing. We will consider not only writing that presents itself as autobiography or memoir but also fiction based on the writer’s own life. The texts will include...

Genre, Media, and Advanced Writing

Stacks of computers and keyboards on shelves

ENGL 2036-001: Introduction to Digital Media in the Humanities

This course will serve as a humanities-based introduction to digital media structures such as the digital archive and reading/writing software that fundamentally affects what we ourselves are able to read/write; theories and methodologies for undertaking digital media scholarship in the humanities; and, finally, digital textualities ranging from text messaging, blogging,...

Native Americans on horseback chasing buffalo

ENGL 3226-001: Folklore, Buffalo in Folklore

This course explores buffalo in American folklore from its earliest appearances in American travel narratives and colonial records. We will look at how British and French colonists related to the American continent through its inhabitants, buffalo being primary occupants. We will read texts that consider how Native Americans related to...

ENGL 3796-001: Queer Theory

This course surveys theoretical, critical, and historical writings in the context of lesbian, bisexual, transgender and gay literature. Examines relationships among aesthetic, cultural and political agendas, and literary and visual texts of the 20th century. Same as LGBT 3796

ENGL 3856-100: Topics in Genre Studies, Comics & Graphic Novels

How does the comic book work, both on the page and in the world? In answering this, we'll go back to the comic book's beginnings and work our way book by book all the way up to now, where comic book movies are dominating the box office. Expect to read...

ENGL 4026-001: Special Topics in Genre, Media and Advanced Writing, Black Romanticism

How black is Romanticism? This question will be the central concern of our course, which will investigate the roots of British and American culture in the routes of trans-Atlantic economic trade of the late eighteenth century. We will contest the implied racial and national purity of British culture by examining...

Studies of Ethnicity, Race, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality

A sculpture of a person on a horse with the words, "Death and the King's Horseman" written below it

ENGL 2767-001: Survey of Post-colonial Literature

This course introduces students to the work of authors from formerly colonized nations in the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia. Focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on prose fiction, we will examine how postcolonial writers engage with issues of national identity and decolonization; negotiate the competing imperatives of English and vernacular...

ENGL 3377-001: Multicultural Literature, First Nations Film

This course examines contemporary films by First Nations directors, emphasizing works by women and LGBTQ2 filmmakers. We will view films across a range of genres, horror, fantasy, romance, documentary, sci-fi, and so on. The films will cover a range of issues germane to First Nations communities, including residential schools, treaty...

ENGL 3767-001: Feminist Fictions

This course examines a series of literary texts to consider how writers across the world have used fiction to creatively stage and reimagine gender and sexuality. Attends to the formal and narrative techniques by which these texts call attention to the fictionality--and thereby the creative malleability--of gender itself. Some cinematic...

Painting of a woman holding a pen to her mouth

ENGL 4277-001: Topics in Women's Literature, 19th and 20th Century Women's Poetry

This course will track developments in women’s poetry over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries in Britain and the U.S. We’ll consider the variety of styles they used to address questions ranging from marriage to science, motherhood to work, religion to politics. Although not all the poets we...

Literatures in English, 1900 to the Present

ENGL 2058-001: Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature

In this course, we will explore the remarkable literary innovations that developed during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. We will focus in particular on modernism, postmodernism, and the contemporary, with close attention to the work of major writers, including T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, Samuel...

Cartoon of a caveman writing a novel on a cave wall

ENGL 3008-001: Developments in the Novel Post-1900

This course will aim to survey the central formal modes and literary movements of the novel in the twentieth-and twenty-first centuries. In doing so, it aims to introduce students to the major stylistic incarnations of the novel form, especially modernism, naturalism, postmodernism, social realism, postcolonial fiction, and science fiction. The...

ENGL 4018-001: Global, Transnational & Postcolonial Approaches to Post-1900 Literature, The Novel in Global Capitalist Modernity

Like a pebble dropped in a pond, globalization is a force that has over the course of history rippled across the world, incorporating its furthest reaches into the political, social, economic, and cultural logic of capitalist modernity. It is at once an agent of connectivity and communication on an unprecedented...

Critical Studies in English

ENGL 4039-001: Critical Thinking in English Studies, Posthuman/Postnature

The course considers a selection of contemporary American ecofictions in the context of posthuman and postnatural theory. These ecofictions rework the category of “nature” outside of a realist narrative framework but still take their bearings from notions of environmental degradation and sustainability. In the wake of the new geological epoch...

ENGL 4039-002: Critical Thinking in English Studies, The Decadent 1890's

In the 1890s, certain cultural critics considered civilization to be on the verge of collapse, degenerating into a world dominated by sensual appetites. Yet it was also a period of the new, the “New Woman,” the “new sciences,” the “new imperialism.” It was a period of exciting developments in thought...

Protestors in front of a statue of Robert E. Lee

ENGL 4039-003: Critical Thinking in English Studies, Premodern Others

As we reach the one-year mark of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, we now recognize how a July 2017 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education foretold the scene that unfolded in Virginia just one month later. The Chronicle explains that “Alt-right online forums have co-opted themes from the...

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