Spring 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 Courses
1103. Renaissance and Modern Western Literature
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
1103| MWF 12:20 - 1:10 |Kneidel, Gregory
1601W: Race, Class, and Culture Industry
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
1601W| TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Choffel, Julie
In this class we will explore the ways that race and gender are continuously reproduced and reimagined by works of literature, art, and popular media. Assigned readings in cultural theory will provide critical context as we examine historical and contemporary works of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and film. We will consider not only how we are perceived and shaped as subjects and consumers of culture, but also how we influence culture ourselves as participants and makers. As this is a W course, students can expect to write in and between every class and to revise their writing projects across the semester. Assignments will cover multiple genres to include journal reflections, collaborative writing, creative writing, and essays. Additional classwork will consist of discussion, group work, collaborative research, and class presentations.
1616W: Major British and American Writers
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011
1616W | MW 4:40-5:55 | Duni, Michael
During this semester we shall concern ourselves with selected works by both English and American writers. Authors have attempted to share their perceptions of the world and how it works. Consequently, the representations of man and his world according to various writers prove as varied as does each one of our descriptive explanations of our world. We shall examine major authors including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Pope, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman, Dickinson, Crane, Faulkner, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Doris Lessing, James Baldwin, and Michael Chabon to encounter each writer’s configuration of the world and what he or she has to say about it. In this way, our understanding of how the world might work and how man may fit into this world will become enhanced, if not further complicated! Beware: You are expected to read voraciously.
I have chosen works that I like and that I believe prove provocative. Provocative in that they offer suggestions about themes in life as well as insights about the characters and the authors of these characters. I feel that these works will say something about each one of us as well. Yes. We read about others so as to discover truths about ourselves. What might each work say about you?!
Along with our perusals and close examinations of these works, our composition tasks will become effective exercises for the expression of this enhancement or confusion. As authors offer their arguments, you will share your reactions, impressions, and further contributions regarding these literary works and their messages in written responses. Writing is a required and crucial component of this course. We shall gather on Mondays and Wednesdays at 4:40 p.m. until 5:55 p.m.
2000-Level Courses
2055WE: Writing, Rhetoric, and Environment
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
2055WE | TuTh 2:00-3:15| Campbell, Scott
This course joins environmental literacy to writing and rhetoric both as a topic of study (how science and environmental issues get “written up” and communicated) and as a practice (how we might write about and grapple with environmental topics and movements, such as climate). We will explore numerous cross-disciplinary topics and inquiries including visual rhetoric, translation across disciplines and genres, dissemination of complex information to broad populations, scientific controversy, post- truth polemics, and the sustainability of consumerism, consumption, and capitalism in the era of human-influenced climate change. A central goal of our work will be to foreground the rhetorical dimension of environmental discourse and feature writing itself as a component of environmental literacy.
Expect frequent small writing assignments and at least two major projects which will allow you to explore a particular site or example of environmental rhetoric and propose innovations, changes, or additions to the ways this site or example is written about or expressed. Contact Professor Campbell (scott.campbell@uconn.edu) with any questions.
2203W: American Literature Since 1880
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
2203W | MWF 9:05-9:55 |Horn, Jacob
This course offers students a historically situated exploration of American literature, including some expected texts and materials alongside many readings that come from minority and lesser-read communities of Americans. We will think about the central tensions of American identity as expressed in literature and across multiple centuries, primarily reading shorter pieces with a few longer examples. Students will be expected to work on their writing skills through two longer paper projects and regular shorter writing, and several smaller projects will ask students to engage with our anthology more thoroughly. A mid-term exam and final exam will offer students the chance to demonstrate their knowledge of our key concepts and ideas.
2301W: Anglophone Literature
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
2301W | TuTh 8:00-9:15 | Shea, Thomas
With an emphasis on diversity of perspectives, we will sample authors covering the seven continents: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. I prefer “World Literature in English” to the term “Anglophone,” but the emphasis will be on writings in English from the former British colonies.
Course grades will be based on class participation (40% of your semester grade), occasional brief writings, a Midterm Essay, and a Final Essay. (All writing will constitute the other 60% of your semester grade).
Usually, NO FINAL EXAM.
Questions? Email Thomas.Shea@uconn.edu
2409: Modern Novel: “Baseball, Crime, & Other Diversions”
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
2409 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Shea, Thomas
The purpose of this course is to enhance our appreciation of the Modern Novel as it develops during the 20th – 21st centuries. In April, as the spring sun heats up, we will feature classic novels involving America’s pastime—BASEBALL. We will explore novels such as Pulitzer Prize Winner Ironweed, and Bang the Drum Slowly, both of which were turned into excellent movies.
Dunkin’ Park—voted “Best Minor League Ballpark” in the entire USA— awaits us a few blocks away. With any luck, we may be able to include a research trip to see a Hartford Yard Goats professional baseball game.
Course grades will be based on class participation (40% of your semester grade), occasional brief writings, a Midterm Essay, and a Final Essay. (All writing will constitute the other 60% of your semester grade).
Usually, NO FINAL EXAM.
Questions? Email Thomas.Shea@uconn.edu
2640: Studies in Film
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to English majors, others with instructor consent.
2640| MWF 11:15 - 12:05 | Horn, Jacob
This course takes a gender-focused look at film, considering questions of gender representation in two primary genres: romance films and action films. The construction of gender as a social act occurs in film among many other places, and gendered experiences of film will be explored alongside traditional essays looking at the relationship of gender to film. Students will read academic materials offering insight into our films and complete writing projects bringing our academic ideas and our films into conversation, and at the end of the semester they will have the chance to create a video analysis of part of a film we do not watch in class.
2701: Creative Writing I
Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
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 students will be required to read and write daily through new styles and forms, to take unexpected turns and risks in their own writing, to destroy 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.