Fall 2024 Course Descriptions: Hartford Campus

Fall 2024


Each semester the faculty for the Department of English provide course descriptions that build upon the University's catalog descriptions. These individually crafted descriptions provide information about variable topics, authors, novels, texts, writing assignments, and whether instructor consent is required to enroll. The details, along with reviewing the advising report, will help students select course options that best meet one's interests and academic requirements.

The following list includes Undergraduate courses that are sequenced after the First-Year Writing requirement and will change each semester.

1000-Level Course

1103: Renaissance and Modern Western Literature

Prerequisites:  ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1103 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 | Kneidel, Greg

A survey of representative works from the sixteenth-century to the present with a focus on the theme of human / machine interaction. Requirements may include in-class critical writing, in-class creative assignments, a midterm and a final exam and consistent, informed class participation.

 

1616W: Major Works of English and American Literature

Prerequisites:  ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1616W| MWF 11:15 - 12:05 | Shea, Tom 

One purpose of English 1616W is to enhance our appreciation of Major Works of British and American Literature, ranging from Shakespeare’s day to the Present. We will energetically explore short stories, novels, poetry, drama, and film. As a “W” course, this class will also help you further develop the critical thinking skills and the professional  writing skills that will distinguish you in your chosen career.

Course grades will be based on

  • Active Verbal Participation--40% of your semester grade

 

  • All Writing—60% of your semester grade, broken down as follows:

Occasional Brief Writings: 20%

A Midterm Essay: 20%

A Final Essay: 20%

 

Usually, NO FINAL EXAM.

 

2000-Level Courses

2214W: African American Literature

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
  • General Education Requirements:
    • Content Area Four (Diversity & Multiculturalism - USA)
    • The W version of this course satisfies a Writing Competency requirement
  • English Major Requirements: 
    • 2021-2023 Plans: Core Category: Antiracism, Globality, and Embodiment (Group 1) or one of Four Additional Courses
      • Meets one requirement for the Literature, Antiracism, and Social Justice Track
      • Meets one requirement for the Literary Histories and Legacies Track
  • Meets one of NEAG’s Secondary Education Multicultural Literature requirements for IB/M and TCPCG

2214W| MWF 10:10 - 11:00 | Campbell, Scott

ENGL 2214W provides a survey of African American literature from the eighteenth century to the present day and will include a very wide range of texts and genres. We can’t hope to “cover” this material, but we will make a series of investigations into texts we’ll use as examples, demonstrations, and cases. Our goals will include learning some historical context and developing a vocabulary and set of practices for engaging with African American literature. Along the way, we’ll question, too, the categories and boundaries we’re using to gather and define this work. For example, we will feature elements of African American rhetoric (forms of speaking and writing), including songs and speeches, as informing what we’re calling “literature.” Also, because coverage of a 400-year period is impossible in a single semester, our emphasis will be on the most recent century (1922-2022).

The course is discussion-driven, and you will be asked to take responsibility for shaping that discussion, sometimes in the form of HuskyCT posts or rotating leadership of class sessions. In addition to regular weekly work, there will be two graded major projects—each of which will go through a proposal, draft, review, and revision process—and a final exam.

ENGL 2214W fulfills the UConn General Education requirement of Content Area 4 (CA4). CA4 courses are designed to “inform, educate and initiate culturally conversant citizens who have a greater level of comfort with and the ability to navigate cultural differences.” CA4 courses enable students to become “aware of and sensitive to different cultural perspectives and representations of groups that traditionally have been misrepresented and/or underrepresented in mainstream media, education and other cultural systems.” See more about CA4 https://geoc.uconn.edu/ca4-assessment-and-learning-outcomes/

2408W: Modern Drama

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
  • General Education Requirements:
    • Content Area One (Arts & Humanities - Literature)
    • The W version of this course satisfies a Writing Competency requirement
  • English Major Requirements:
    • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
      • Meets the Literary Genres or Methods requirement for the Creative Writing Track
      • Meets the Cultural, Genre, and Media Studies requirement for the English Teaching Track
  • Meets one of NEAG’s Secondary Education Genre requirements for IB/M or TCPCG

2408W| MWF 9:05 - 9:55 | Shea, Tom 

The purpose of this course is to enhance our appreciation of Modern Drama as it developed during the 20th century and continues to develop in the 21st. Some of the playwrights we will engage may include Oscar Wilde, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Marina Carr, Samuel Beckett, Eve Ensler, August Wilson, and Martin McDonagh. We will also have opportunities to take advantage of live, professional theater in Hartford and the surrounding communities.

 

Course grades will be based on

  • Active Verbal Participation--40% of your semester grade

 

  • All Writing—60% of your semester grade, broken down as follows:

Occasional Brief Writings: 20%

A Midterm Essay: 20%

A Final Essay: 20%

 

Usually, NO FINAL EXAM.

 

Questions?  Email Thomas.Shea@uconn.edu

 

 

2413W: The Graphic Novel

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
  • General Education Requirements:
    • Content Area One (Arts & Humanities -Literature)
    • The W version of this course satisfies a Writing Competency requirement
  • English Major Requirements:
    • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
      • Meets the Literary Genres or Methods requirement for the Creative Writing Track
      • Meets one requirement for the Cultural Studies/Media Studies Track
      • Meets the Cultural, Genre, and Media Studies requirement for the English Teaching Track

2413W | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Horn, Jacob

 

2600: Intro to Literary Studies

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

This course is required of all English majors and should be taken within a semester of declaring the major or at its next offering. This course is offered at all campuses, but only once a year at each Regional campus. 


2600 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15| Kneidel, Greg  

    This course takes up the fundamental questions of literary criticism: What are we reading? What does it mean? Why is it important? We will survey a broad variety of approaches to these questions, from textual scholarship to cultural materialism and much in between. We will focus more narrowly interplay of text and image in works from a variety of genres – likely including William Blake, The Songs of Innocence and Experience; Natasha Trethewey, Thrall; Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; Amma Asante, Belle (film); and Ali Smith, How To Be Both – and we will make a couple visiting to the Wadsworth Atheneum next door. Requirements may include short critical papers, creative assignments, and consistent, informed class participation.

    2635E: Literature and the Environment

    Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

    2635E LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

    • General Education Requirements:
      • Content Area One (Arts & Humanities - Literature)
      • Environmental Literacy Requirement
    • English Major Requirements:
      • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
        • Meets the Literary Genres or Methods requirement for the Creative Writing Track
        • Meets the Cultural, Genre, and Media Studies requirement for the English Teaching Track
        • Meets one requirement for the Literature, Antiracism, and Social Justice Track
        • Meets one requirement for the Literature of Place and Environment
    • Meets one of NEAG’s Secondary Education Genre requirements for IB/M or TCPCG

    2635E | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45| Choffel, Julie 

    In this class we will explore the many ways that literature reflects and shapes our relationship to the environment: How do the concepts we encounter about our environment frame the human and the nonhuman, the natural and the built, the living and the nonliving? How do our resulting interpretations continue to shift our roles within these ecologies? We will learn from environmental texts across many genres, including nonfiction, poetry, and visual media. In-class discussion and group activities will be essential to the course. Assignments will include regular writing responses with options for working in the genres that most appeal to each student.

       

      2701: Creative Writing I

      Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011. May not be taken out of sequence after passing ENGL 3701, 3703, or 3713
      • English Major Requirements:
        • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
          • Requirement for the Creative Writing Track

       


      2701 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 | Choffel, Julie 

      This course provides an introduction to the writer’s workshop in poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. We will approach creative writing as an experimental process that thrives in the shared perspectives of both author and reader. In this class you will be required to read and write daily through new styles and forms; to take unexpected turns and risks in your own writing, to take it apart and reconstruct through creative revision, and above all, to contribute to conversations about the results. We will talk and write about what we read and what we write and what happens next. Immersed in this practice, you will create your own works of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction, and revise your strongest works for a final portfolio. Additional class requirements include keeping a writer’s journal, completing writing assignments and workshop feedback on time, and participating in every class.