Spring 2025
FYEN 102P: First-Year seminar: Imagining Climate Change
The novelist Amitav Ghosh recently suggested that a key element in tackling climate change is the imagination. For Ghosh, we cannot address what we cannot imagine. Imaginative work such as fiction, poetry, film, visual and performative arts, and creative non-fiction all have a crucial contribution to make through their ability to raise awareness and enable people to understand the present, envision what a future of continued climate change may bring, and imagine adaptations and solutions to address that future. In this general education seminar, we will consider how imaginative work might help inform us about a scientific and social topic like climate change, engaging us in debate about it and promoting an ethic of climate change awareness based on critical reflection and shared responsibility. This section is fully online and asynchronous. It is restricted to students who meet the criteria for enrollment. Please contact LAS advising for enrollment. Enrolled students will need to exercise significant responsibility and self-motivation to fulfill course requirements and complete assignments regularly and on time.
ENGL 210: Composition: Business, Professional, and Technical Writing
Multiple sections and instructors
This course provides instruction and practice in writing the kinds of letters, memos,
emails, proposals,
and reports required in the professional world of business and industry. It emphasizes
both formats and
techniques necessary for effective and persuasive professional communication. We will
also discuss job
application materials such as resumes and cover letters. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 101,
102 or instructor's
consent. May be taken as part of the Professional Writing and Editing Minor. [WC]
ENGL 230: Exploring Literature
General education humanities course. Instruction in the critical reading of literature in its major traditional periods or genres (especially drama, fiction and poetry).This is a Kansas Systemwide Transfer Course. Pre- or corequisite(s): ENGL 102. [TA]
MW 9:30-10:45 [CRN 21945]
Instructor: TBD
Online [CRN 21974]
Instructor: TBD
Online [CRN 22974]
Instructor: TBD
This course is a general education class meant to guide students in critical reading of period- and genre-specific literature, including and specifically drama, fiction, and poetry. The class will focus in part on your reception and engagement of literature using critical reading strategies and discussions with classmates. Reading stories lets the audience step out into a different environment without responsibilities or anything on the line. You become a 3rd party entity that gains insight into a world and situations that aren’t your own. Hopefully, after reading and engaging with a piece, the audience walks away with new perspective that can transfer to life outside of the pages. A hope in this course is that students gain these perspectives through the literature assigned and conversations with fellow classmates. You’ll be encouraged to ask questions, critique, and form your own thoughts about the material based on an educational foundation. [TA]
ENGL 232K: Images of Insanity
Online [CRN 22271]
Instructor: Lael Ewy
General education humanities introductory course. You wake to the sound of screams. You are immobilized, the covers of your bed cinched down so tight that you can barely breathe. Craning your neck in the half-light, you can make out a room full of white lumps on bed frames—your co-inhabitants in a world of clinical white. Here, somehow, you must begin to heal. Images of Insanity uses the work of some of America’s greatest writers to bring students the realities of overwhelming emotional experiences and extreme states of mind. Together, we challenge stereotypes and break stigma to see how creating and engaging in the literary arts can bring us deeper understanding and greater compassion for what we face when we face madness. General education introductory course. Pre- or corequisite: ENGL 102. [TA]
ENGL 232D: Literature in the Jazz Age
The 1920s was one of the most fascinating decades in American history. Coined “The Jazz Age” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, this course examines the aspects and attitudes of American life as reflected in some of the literature produced during the period. We will also examine the period from a historical perspective to establish the foundation on which this period – which lasted only ten years – briefly existed. Our course reader, Joshua A. Zeitz’s Flapper, will assist us with this, as will our novels by Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Ernest Hemingway (hopefully we can watch some documentaries and a silent film or two). Throughout this course, you should gain a deeper understanding of American youth culture, the social liberalism of the 1920s, and the Harlem Renaissance. This decade of glitz, glamour, gin, flappers, and false opulence eventually came to a stunning – and abrupt – end. [TA]
ENGL 234: Young-Adult Literature
Online [CRN 25507]
Instructor: Melinda DeFrain
The course will explore a variety of young adult literature, from classics such as
the Sandra Cisneros
novel, The House on Mango Street and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird to more contemporary
work
such as Jesse Andrews’ Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the graphic novel American
Born Chinese by
Gene Luen Yang, and Walter Dean Myers’ work, Monster as well as others. Students will
be asked to
explore themes common in young adult literature as well as rarer themes such as youth
incarceration
and its correlation to race. The works are diverse and reflect a diverse youth population.
Students will be
asked to develop a multimodal final project.
ENGL 241: Jane Austen and Popular Culture
Online [CRN 26514] – [8-week course]
Instructor: Carrie Dickison
This 8-week course explores Jane Austen's original novels and adaptations of her novels, including films and emerging media. Texts include Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, and Ibi Zoboi' young adult novel Pride, the 2005 film Pride and Prejudice, the 2004 film Bride and Prejudice, and the 2012-2013 web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. [TA]
ENGL 273: Science Fiction
Online [CRN 12059]
Instructor: John Jones
General education humanities introductory course. Survey of key classic and contemporary works of science fiction and speculative literature, emphasizing themes and ideas common in the genre and its subgenres. Prerequisites: ENGL 101, 102. [TA]
ENGL 276: The Literature of Sports
TR 9:30-10:45 [CRN 22861]
Instructor: Clinton Jones
Unlock the drama of sports through literature and film by joining us this spring in the Literature of Sports! Dive into compelling stories with featured books such as The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, a gripping tale of rebellion and peer pressure; Bleachers by John Grisham, a reflective story about small-town football and confronting past mistakes; and The Fight by Norman Mailer, an unforgettable chronicle of the legendary Ali vs. Foreman boxing match. Alongside these literary works, we’ll explore iconic sports films like the Rocky and Creed series, the classic underdog boxing stories; Remember the Titans, a powerful film about racial unity through football; Hoosiers, depicting Milan High School's journey to the Indiana state basketball championship; and Miracle, capturing the 1980 U.S. hockey team’s remarkable Olympic victory. This course is perfect for sports fans who love great storytelling, literature, and film, and for anyone eager to examine the intersection of sports and culture. It’s also ideal for those interested in how sports reflect personal and societal challenges. Students will engage in thought-provoking discussions, improve critical thinking and writing skills, and gain new perspectives on competition, teamwork, and triumph. All majors welcome!!! [TA]
Upper-Level Courses
ENGL 285: Introduction to Creative Writing
MW 11:00-12:15 [CRN 21948]
Instructor: TBD
ENGL 285 is a course in literary writing—poetry and fiction. In poetry, students write
five poetry kick-starts and three poems, each centered on one technical skill: a poem
which uses enjambment, a poem in iambic pentameter, and a poem that uses slant rhyme..
In fiction, students write five fiction kick-starts and two short stories, each featuring
a character or plot reversal. Rough drafts are discussed in class, and revisions are
submitted in a portfolio.
Students find by semester’s end that they write with increased control of punctuation,
grammar, word choice, sentence variety, coherence, and unity, and that collaborating
with their fellow students to write poems and stories makes for an exciting and rich
experience.
General education humanities course. Pre- or Co-requisite: . [WC, TA]
TR 11:00-12:15 [CRN 23174]
Instructor: Jason Allen
ENGL 285 introduces the practice and techniques of imaginative writing in its varied forms – primarily literary fiction and poetry. Within your own fiction you will explore and develop skills concerning key craft elements, including: setting, description, characterization, dialogue, voice, and point of view; and in your poetry you will develop an array of skills as you work within a variety of forms. We will also read published works and discuss them through the lens of a writer. Some of these works may serve as examples of techniques to explore or styles to emulate. A large portion of the semester will be devoted to workshopping your creative writing and providing feedback to your peers, and then delving into revision of your work. The books we’ll use are The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, and The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. [WC, TA]
ENGL 301: Fiction Writing
MW 2:00-3:15 [CRN 21949]
Instructor: Margaret Dawe
English 301 continues the work begun in English 285 on writing literary fiction. Students will write a series of ten exercises and two short stories, and revise Story 1 or Story 2 for a final portfolio. Many of the exercises can be done to help with that final story revision. The exercises help students develop their craft. Topics include how to write a first line for a story, how to create characters who are complex and have rich inner lives, how to how to write dialogue and to combine dialogue with gesture, to name some. We’ll also read stories by published writers to study craft. The heart of the course is helping students to write a short story which is structured dramatically around a protagonist who experiences internal and external conflict and has a beginning, middle, and end, and to help students develop compelling characters. We’ll use What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, 3rd edition, College Edition, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.
Prerequisite: English 285 with a grade of B- or better [WC, TA]
This workshop-based course emphasizes storytelling through well-crafted scenes. We will focus on all of the key elements and techniques employed by published fiction writers, and students will write numerous short pieces, some which are spawned from in-class writing prompts. During in-class workshop sessions, students offer constructive criticism in order for the author to substantially improve their work. Close reading and discussions of selected published books and short stories further enable students to improve their own creative writing craft skills. We’ll use Orange World by Karen Russell, Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby, and Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy. [WC, TA]
ENGL 303: Poetry Writing
MW 12:30-1:45 [CRN 21950]
Instructor: Dr Adam Scheffler
“For me, always the delight is the surprise,” writes poet Louise Glück, but we might not believe her. Poetry can seem unappealing to people who are not used to reading it—it can, for instance, seem overwrought, antiquated, or overly difficult to understand. Yet poetry can also be intensely meaningful. When people fall in love or get married, or when they have a funeral, or experience a national political trauma, they often read poems out loud as if only poetry can do justice to the full scope of our joy and grief. This course explores some of the surprising delights of both reading and writing poems. We read a variety of contemporary poets, and students write and submit their own poems for discussion in weekly workshops. In so doing, we consider poetry’s capacity to be funny, wise, wild, and heartbreaking—its ability to offer a kind of pleasure available nowhere else. Books will include The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. [WC, TA]
ENGL 310: The Nature of Poetry
MW 2:00-3:15 [CRN 21951]
Instructor: Dr TJ Boynton
Poetry is the most caricatured and misunderstood of literary forms. Pop-cultural depictions of poetry portray it as a spontaneous gushing of flowery or sentimental language designed to woo a love interest, rhapsodizing over one’s passions, or brooding over one’s sufferings. Anyone who has these universal motivations and experiences can write poetry; they need only purchase a fountain pen and a moleskin notebook and find a secluded forest glade or a quiet corner of the local coffee shop. As this course will show, the popular perception of poetry is as wrong as it is clichéd. Poetry is not only a serious literary form marked by extreme technical discipline and imaginative creativity; it is, per square inch of text, perhaps the most difficult one to engage with in terms of both composition and reading comprehension. This course will train you in the concepts and skills required to appreciate and interpret this extremely challenging literary form. We will examine a wide variety of poetic genres by a historically and nationally diverse range of poets, and in the process we shall see that, in sharp contrast to its popular image, poetry is one of the most demanding and most rewarding of human creative pursuits. Prerequisite(s): . [TA, CL]
ENGL 315: Introduction to English Linguistics
Online [CRN 22273] [Cross-listed as LING 315]
Instructor: Dr Mythili Menon
The main goal of this course is to introduce students to the basic methodology, linguistic
principles, including phonological and grammatical concepts used in modern linguistics.
A secondary goal of this course is to teach analytic reasoning through the examination
of linguistic phenomenon and data from
English.
ENGL 319: Editing Professional and Academic Writing [New course!!!]
Would you like your writing to flow better? Would you like to know when grammar checkers are wrong? Are you interested in careers in publishing or professional writing? This class teaches you how to make written texts clear, concise, cohesive, and coherent. The first part of the class will review common grammar and punctuation rules with a strong emphasis on application. The second part of the course will focus on revising written texts for clarity, flow, and cohesion. You will leave this class with tools you can apply to any form of written communication, including academic papers, professional documents, and job application materials. May be taken as part of the Professional Writing and Editing Minor.
ENGL 323: World Literature
TR 3:30-4:45 [CRN 21952]
Instructor: Dr TJ Boynton
Great writers are inevitably inspired by—and sometimes even model their own creations on—the great works of the past. As we consider the roles played by literature in human cultures and history, the relationships between newly-authored works of fiction, poetry, and drama and the prior works they draw upon proves especially illuminating. What can we learn about literature by looking at its debts to what has been written before? How do modern and contemporary books use previous stories, writing styles, and literary worlds to help shape their current visions? How do this recycling and inspiration help bring those past, great works forward into the present, thus giving them new life and relevance? These are the central questions this course will explore. We will read three pairs of texts, each one containing an older, canonical work of literature and a more recent work influenced by it. By placing these side by side, we will be able to shed light on the continued relationships the present world holds to the eras and cultures of the past, to consider the importance of literary and cultural artifacts to human history and the human imagination, and to draw connections between books written across millennia and the world. Along the way, we will also develop our skills as close readers, as writers, and as thinkers about literature and will gain increased awareness of and insight into the diverse cultures from which our chosen texts originate. Authors we’ll read include J.M. Coetzee, Daniel Defoe, Homer, N.K. Narayan, Arundhati Roy, and Derek Walcott. [TA, CL]
ENGL 330: The Nature of Fiction
MW 11:00-12:15 [CRN 21953]
Instructor: Dr Katie Lanning
In this section of the Nature of Fiction, we’ll study how fiction understands and represents itself by reading a survey of metafictional stories. We’ll track how fiction can be self-conscious of its own fictional status, even defiant or in denial about that status, and learn the larger history of fiction’s place in the world of literature. Why was fiction hated, even perceived as evil, in its early days? Why have so many audiences distrusted what fiction has to say? If fiction is a lie, what is it good for? We’ll use these questions to guide a lively examination of how fiction has fought back against its messy reputation. We’ll pay special attention to texts like Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair, Percival Everett’s Erasure, and Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea, with shorter fiction by Jonathan Swift, Italo Calvino, Amy Hempel, Julio Cortazar, and Kelly Link. [TA]
Online [CRN 22860]
Instructor: Dr Darren DeFrain
The boilerplate description of the class goes like this: General education humanities course. Acquaints the student with narrative fiction in a variety of forms: the short story, short novel and novel. Covers works of fiction drawn from different cultures and historical periods; focuses on the characteristics of fiction, giving some attention to historical development and to theories of fiction. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 102. But let it be known that DeFrain teaches this class by exploring boundary-pushing and transgressive works of literature that help us better understand how fiction operates. In short, we'll read some weird but exciting stuff! [TA]
ENGL 333: Literature and Law
TR 12:30-1:45 [CRN 25476]
Instructor: Clinton Jones, Esq.
Whether you're passionate about gripping tales of courtroom drama or moral dilemmas that stretch far beyond the courtroom walls, this course is your gateway to a world where law meets storytelling in profound ways. Literature and Law provides a thought-provoking journey through novels and films that ask the toughest legal and ethical questions of our time. Explore works like The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, a tale of revenge, justice, and the limits of the legal system; The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an exploration of guilt, punishment, and redemption in Puritan society; Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, a true story of justice and mercy in the modern American legal system; and Love by Toni Morrison, a deep dive into familial disputes and the historical and personal consequences of injustice. Alongside these literary works, we’ll examine iconic legal films like 12 Angry Men (1957, directed by Sidney Lumet), a gripping exploration of the jury system and personal bias; The Jack Bull (1999, directed by John Badham), a Western legal drama about property rights and the quest for justice during the frontier era; Sleepers (1996, directed by Barry Levinson), which delves into themes of revenge, crime, justice, and the lasting impact of childhood trauma within the legal framework; and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979, directed by Robert Benton), a family law drama that challenges perceptions of parental rights and justice. The course requires no prior legal knowledge, and it is not a course in the study of law. This course should be of interest to anyone who wants to engage with the role of law in culture, the legal and literary representation of justice, and how law uses language. Students will engage with the legal and ethical dilemmas presented in these novels and films through discussion, mock trials, and debates. All majors welcome!!! [CR]
ENGL 361: Major British Writers II
MW 2:00-3:15 [CRN 22878]
Instructor: Dr Mary Waters
The second half of the British literature survey, covering the period from 1789 through the twentieth century, includes some of the most important and best loved of all British writers, many of them writing about some of the most contentious issues in British history—issues such as women’s rights, labor reform, the abolition of the slave trade, social responsibility, technological progress, gender relations, nationalism and patriotism, and the possibilities for a spiritual life. We will read works in all major literary genres—poetry, fiction, drama, essay, autobiography—by writers such as William Wordsworth, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Keats, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and many others. [TA]
ENGL 362: Major American Writers I
Online [CRN 23869]
Instructor: Dr Rebeccah Bechtold
Ever wonder why Edgar Allan Poe is a master of horror? Or where the idea of the “Yankee” in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” comes from? Have you ever wanted to trace the rise of abolitionist thought or the origin of the women’s rights movement in the United States? Have you ever wondered about how our history—of captivity and enslavement, of resistance and rebellion—informs the stories we tell about “America”? If so, come take Engl 362, a survey of American literature and culture from exploration through the Civil War. This class will introduce you to the representative works and historical events that frame our understanding of early American literature; throughout the semester, we will be reading the writings of Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and more! [TA, CL]
ENGL 363: Major American Writers II
MW 12:30-1:45 [CRN 22950]
Instructor: Dr Jean Griffith
This course will survey the major trends in American literature and culture from the end of the nineteenth century to the present, focusing on realist, modern, and postmodern innovations in short fiction, poetry, drama, and the novel. We will read works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and a variety of other major voices in American literature. Since our course will begin with the period in which the United States emerged as a world power, we will pay attention to the cultural conditions that made the twentieth century “the American Century” and how the writers of the period have responded and, in the twenty-first century, continue to respond to that context. We will also learn about the major events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the Progressive Era, First-Wave Feminism, and World War I to the Civil Rights Movement, the Viet Nam War, the election of Barack Obama, 9/11, and beyond. Along the way, we will explore the variety of stories that have been told about these events, keeping in mind that history is, after all, told in story form. [TA]
ENGL 365: African-American Literature
MW 9:30-10:45 [CRN 24034]
Instructor: Dr Jean Griffith
This course will examine African-American literature and culture from the colonial period to the present, from slavery through Emancipation, segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. We will be reading multiple genres—poetry, fiction, nonfiction—and examining the cultural forces and historical events that helped to shape and were shaped by African-American literature. We will read a diverse group of the major voices in African-American literature, such as Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, and Colson Whitehead. We will also explore the tremendous influence African-American literature and culture have had on American culture more generally, from abolition and jazz to the Civil Rights Movement and hip hop.
ENGL 376: Writing Graphic Narratives
TR 11:00-12:15 [CRN 26344]
Instructor: Dr Darren DeFrain
Have you ever thought about authoring your own graphic novel or comic book? This class will help students get familiar with the conventions for writing and publishing comic book scripts and the steps for seeking publication. The class will also be run in a workshop format so students can get feedback from their instructor and peers aimed at helping them produce the best possible script. Here's the unsexy nuts and bolts stuff: General education humanities course. Graphic narratives (graphic novels, comics, comix and more) bring together text and genre-specific ways. This course seeks to examine and explore the graphic narrative by looking at diverse historical examples of graphic narrative scripts, completed comics, and industry-specific methods and expectations. Writers need not have any drawing experience or skill. The course includes a workshop for student-produced work in addition to lectures and discussions of canonical comic texts. Course includes diversity content. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 102. May be taken as part of the Text Technologies Minor.
ENGL 401: Fiction Workshop
MW 11:00-12:15 [CRN 21956]
Instructor: Jason Allen
Similar to ENGL 301, ENGL 401 is also a workshop-based course, though at this level we strive to create longer, more complex stories, and in some cases the opening chapters of a novel. There is greater emphasis on thorough revisions of short story and chapter drafts, with the goal of creating publishable work by the semester’s end. For both 301 and 401, we also read some published novels and stories and discuss them in terms of their writing craft. Close reading and analytical discussions of both peer work and of selected published works will further enable students to improve skills as a creative writer, editor, and critic of contemporary fiction. We’ll use Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, and Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy. Repeatable for credit. Prerequisite: . [WC, TA]
ENGL 403: Poetry Workshop
M 15:00-17:20 [CRN 21957]
Instructor: Dr Adam Scheffler
This workshop-based course aims to help you develop and deepen your poetry-writing skills past where they were in ENGL 303. In this class, you’ll continue to write original poems, discuss poems written by your peers, and read famous published poems which can serve as models for your own work. By having you do so, this class aims to inculcate a habit of poetry-writing that you’ll carry with you into the future—so that poetry can be a resource and refuge for you long after you’ve graduated. Not every poem and style that we read and discuss will appeal to you, but this course, by exposing you to more options and models for poetry, and by giving you lots of feedback on your own work, will help you pinpoint your own poetic voice and taste to help you write the poems that reflect that taste—to write the poems that only you could write. Books will include The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. [TA]
ENGL 527: Victorian Literature: The Victorian Gothic
This class will explore the repurposing of this popular nineteenth-century British literary form during what some call the “second wave” of Gothic literature. In doing so, we will look at how popular fiction constructed British Victorian identity and helped shape social consciousness. Since the course emphasizes novels, students will do a substantial amount of reading in that genre as well as short stories. They will also improve their ability to evaluate and draw upon secondary sources by reading some assigned secondary material and conducting research to draw on additional primary and/or secondary texts in support of carefully constructed and persuasive arguments about literature. As a result, students will improve analytical and writing skills, develop their research skills, and increase familiarity with library resources. Currently planned reading will include Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell, Silas Marner and The Lifted Veil by George Eliot, and additional readings as assigned. [TA]
ENGL 536: Writing By Women
Online [CRN 24659]
Instructor: Dr Chinyere Okafor
ENGL 546: Studies In Ethnic Literature – Native American Storytelling
Instructor: Dr Jean Griffith
In The Truth about Stories, Thomas King writes that “stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous.” Our course in Native American storytelling will use King’s work of non-fiction as a lens through which to explore fiction as well as various other genres, such as poetry and the vast oral literature that predates and continues to inform Native American writing. The course will cover a range of Native American authors and storytellers, from N. Scott Mamaday to Louise Erdrich to Tommy Orange, and you will have ample opportunities to earn about Native American history, cultures, and the issues that Native Americans face today. By engaging with this material, we will take up such questions as: why do we tell stories, and how are the stories we tell informed by who we are? How does culture inform storytelling? Do different cultures tell stories for different reasons? What opportunities do written stories—an art form foreign to traditional tribal cultures—hold for Native Americans? How can a “foreign” form of expression articulate Indian sovereignty and self-preservation? How can stories be “dangerous?” Our exploration of such questions will consider the relationships between written and spoken texts, history and literature, mainstream American culture and Indian country, and between tradition and change.
ENGL 577: Digital Textual Editing [NEW COURSE!!!]
Instructor: Dr Francis X Connor
First, what this class is not: we're not learning line editing, proofreading, or how to tell an author what 10,000 words need to be excised from their manuscript. [Although such skills are not unrecognizably far from what we will be doing.]
This course is an introduction to scholarly textual editing, the foundational practice of literary scholarship. It concerns how texts are created, from an author's mind to a written page to a printed book, all with a particular attention to how texts are reshaped, deformed, re-imagined along the way. Textual editors use this knowledge to create critical editions, which are printed or digital projects in which the editor makes an argument about what a text should be (e.g., demonstrating the author’s intended text, a publisher’s intended text, a text as represented in a particular document, and so on.) Whenever you've read a Norton Anthology, a Penguin Classic, the Oxford Complete Works of [your favorite author], or other such things, you've engaged with the work of a textual editor. In recent years textual editing has moved from a book-ish practice to an electronic one, with many recent scholarly editions being Born Digital.
In this class you will take the first steps to become a scholarly textual editor. We'll grapple with the core issues of textual theory, which we will apply through workshops and coursework as we gradually initiate a short edition of our own design. We'll think about the nature of ERROR, theories of print and manuscript transmission, constructing commentaries and annotations, deciding when spelling and punctuation do and don't matter, deciding when authors do and don't matter, and other such things. To familiarize ourselves with the basic tools of Digital Humanities we'll be gently introduced to XML-TEI, and think about how we can use digital large language corpora in our work. In short, this course is an opportunity to approach literature with closer attention to its subtleties and complexities than you ever have before, and to develop a better understanding of how meaning is made. Authors we'll read and subject to textual analysis [tentatively but probably] include Anonymous, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, William Blake, Phyllis Wheatley, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and many more.
tl;dr: if you're thinking graduate school in English is in your future, this is an arrow you'll want to have in your quiver. May be taken as part of the Text Technologies Minor. [TL]
ENGL 582: Studies In Composition: Writing Center Theory and Practice
Hybrid MW [CRN 26343] [Contact instructor for meeting details]
Instructor: Kerry Jones
This course blends theory, pedagogy, and hands-on experience to unlock the art of supporting student writers. We’ll explore the philosophy (and history) behind writing centers as collaborative spaces and explore key concepts like peer tutoring, writing across the curriculum, and diverse learning styles. Writing centers have come a long way over the last few decades, and are hubs of creativity, learning, and collaboration. You’ll examine current research, real case studies, and examine (and take part in) “tutoring in action” to better understand how to foster critical thinking and effective communication in writers of all levels, with a particular focus on college-level writing centers.
ENGL 585: Writer's Tutorial: Prose Fiction
[Contact Margaret Dawe for details on enrolling]
Instructor: Ladee Hubbard
Ladee Hubbard is this year’s visiting distinguished writer, in residence February 17-March 14. She is the author of two novels: The Talented Ribkins, which received the 2017 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction and the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and The Rib King. The Last Suspicious Holdout, her collection of short stories, was published in 2022 and was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her short fiction and nonfiction have been published in The Times' Literary Supplement, Guernica, Oxford American and The New York Times, among other publications. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Award, The Berlin Prize and a Radcliffe Fellowship. She has also received fellowships from MacDowell, The American Library in Paris, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among other organizations. She received a BA in English from Princeton University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
ENGL 586: Writer's Tutorial: Poetry
[Contact Margaret Dawe for details on enrolling]
Instructor: Michael Prior
Michael Prior is this year’s visiting emerging poet, in residence March 24-April 18. His most recent book of poems, Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House, 2020), won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the BC & Yukon Book Prizes' Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Model Disciple (Véhicule Press, 2016), which was named one of the best books of the year by the CBC. Michael is the recipient of fellowships from the Amy Clampitt Residency, the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Jerome Foundation, and Hawthornden Literary Retreat. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies across North America and the UK, including Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, Sewanee Review, Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, PN Review, Ambit, Global Poetry Anthology, and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series. Michael holds graduate degrees from Cornell University and the University of Toronto and is an Assistant Professor of English and ACM Mellon Faculty Fellow at Macalester College. He currently edits the Véhicule Press poetry imprint, Signal Editions.
ENGL 663: Language Attitudes
T 2:00-4:30 [CRN 24655]
Instructor: Dr Mythili Menon
ENGL 680: Theory and Practice in Composition
Online [CRN 21959]
Instructor: Melinda DeFrain
Introduces theories of rhetoric, research in composition and writing programs, and practices in schools and colleges. Students investigate the process of writing, analyze varieties and samples of school writing, and develop their own writing skills by writing, revising and evaluating their own and others' work. Designed especially for prospective and practicing teachers.