Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1101W-01 | MWF 9:05-9:55 | Gallucci, Mary

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1103W-01 | Tu 5:00-7:30 | Pelizzon, V. Penelope

In this course, we’ll spend time with some of the most fabulous poems, stories, and novels of the last 500 years. We’ll read works by Polish, Russian, Turkish, Greek, French, German, Italian, Mexican, American, and English authors. We’ll work chronologically backwards, beginning with recent writers whose historical context is more familiar, moving in reverse to periods where we’ll call on secondary materials to help ground our understanding of the issues at stake for each writer. Authors likely to appear on the syllabus include Constantine Cavafy, Nazim Hikmet, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paul Celan, Wisława Szymborska, Marina Tsvetaeva, Virginia Woolf, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Anton Chekhov, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Louise Labé, and William Shakespeare. Projects include weekly response writings as well as three revised papers of 5-6 pages each.

Also offered as: AMST 1201, HIST 1503

Prerequisites: None.

1201-01 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Franklin, Wayne

This course carries general education CA4 credit.

As a basic introduction to the key issues of the field of American Studies, this course will explore such topics as: the role of space in American history; the role of immigration across history; the interplay of the arts with social and political ideas; the place of race, gender, class, and ethnicity now and in the past; patterns of everyday life; and architecture and material culture generally. Students will write brief reaction papers to their readings; midterm and final will be given. Course readings will include such books as these:

James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten. Anchor 0385483995

William Cronon, Changes in the Land. Hill and Wang 0809016341

John M. Baker, American House Styles. W. W. Norton 0393323250

Frederick Douglass, Narrative. Penguin 0143107305

Sarah Orne Jewett, Country of the Pointed Firs. Signet 0451531442

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby. Scribner 0743273567

Walker Evans and James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Mariner Books 0618127496

Leslie M. Silko, Ceremony. Penguin 0143104918

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1503-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Semenza, Gregory 

“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”  -- Robert Graves

After more than 25 years of teaching and studying Shakespeare, I still marvel at how good he really is.  In this introductory class, we will study about 7 plays—including Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, King Lear, and Macbeth—as well as several film adaptations.  My general goal is to share some of the things I've learned about his plays over the years, and to explore with you the reasons why his artistry continues to influence and move us 400 years after his death.  My technical goal is to instill appreciation and understanding of the following: the historical context in which Shakespeare lived and created his art; the major dramatic genres of comedy and tragedy; the chief characteristics of Shakespeare's dramatic style: systematic indeterminacy, pervasive metatheatricality, and dialectical structuring (we will define these in class!); the basic terms and devices of Shakespearean drama, including soliloquy, aside, play-within-the-play, and exposition; the major characters such as Hamlet, Lear, and Juliet; and the major dramatic themes, including nature versus nurture, fate and freewill, and sacred and profane love. 

This is a discussion-based class that values presence and participation.  Assignments include two short papers, a midterm, and a final.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1601W-01 | MWF 10:10-11:00 | Taylor, Kiedra

This course examines how the politicization of the Black girl image is informed by both movement politics and negative, racialized stereotypes of Black womanhood. In doing so, we will consider the theoretical, archival, and ethical problems posed when confronting the cultural work of Black girlhood in history and literature. Starting with landmark texts by major Black feminists, this course will have overlapping concentrations on sexuality and childhood, on racial stereotypes of Black girlhood, and on American identity and childhood. In each case, we will explore Black feminist approaches to shame and consider how shame functions as a tool for social regulation. We will explore the politics of respectability that has been imposed on Black girls, and how Black girl characters have resisted and challenged those politics.

1601W-02 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Williams, Erika

Prerequisites:  ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2001-01 | TuTh 3:30-4:45 | Courtmanche, Jason

Grant Writing will introduce you to the basics of grants and grant writing.  It is open to students from all majors.  We will explore your research interests, develop a proposal, identify possible sources of funding, review Requests for Proposals (RFPs), review successfully awarded grant proposals, talk with grant writers and other professionals who work in the field, and, finally, write, revise, and ultimately submit a grant proposal. 

We will mostly explore opportunities available to students through the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), such as IDEA, SHARE, and SURF grants, and we will have guest speakers from OUR, the grants division of the CLAS Business Services Center, the UConn Foundation, and the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), as well as fellow undergraduates who have been successful in their pursuit of grants.  I will also try to connect students to faculty members with related interests. 

Students in this course will engage in a lot of hands-on work—conducting research, working in small groups to share ideas, reading grant proposals as mentor texts, drafting and revising the texts of your own proposals, and giving and receiving feedback on your ideas and proposals. 

There will be regularly collected and assessed writing assignments specific to each grant, but due dates may vary depending on the deadlines prescribed by the differing RFPs being pursued by members of the class. 

In addition to the work of writing a grant, I will expect you to keep a weekly journal in which you write about the process.  These journals will be where you take notes, explore ideas, draft your proposals, and reflect upon the process.  I will collect and respond to these at key points throughout the course. 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2013W-01 | MWF 10:10-11:00 | Warrender-Hill, Kathryn

2013W-02 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Huang, Wei-Hao

In this course, we will place style in the center of writing studies, assuming that, in the words of Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri, “style is composition enacted” and that “style is what makes composition an art,” in the belief that style helps us answer the key question about writing: What do we talk about when we talk about writing? We will break our study of writing roughly into five modules (subtopics):

1. style as correctness (clarity, grammar, punctuation, etc.)

2. style as ethics (writer-reader relationship, phenomenology of writing, etc.)

3. style as drama (speech and writing, time flow, problem formulation, etc.)

4. style as invention (writing process, writing to learn, etc.)

5. style as play (voice, typography, personality on the page, etc.)

We will be reading three major texts:

1. Bad Ideas About Writing, edited by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe (available online)

2. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, by Linda Alder-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle (required textbook)

3. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams and Joseph Bizup (required textbook)

Each week, we start with a mini-lecture on the assigned reading, followed by in-class discussion or collaborative activities. In addition to journal entries and discussion board posts, you will work on three major projects: two response papers (2.5-page each), stylistic imitation (2-page) and stylistic analysis (8-page).

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2100-01 | MWF 10:10-11:00 | Codr, Dwight

This course provides a broad history of literature written in English up to the end of the eighteenth century, and covers such writers as the Beowulf poet, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Behn, Haywood, Pope, Defoe, Goldsmith, Swift, and Wollstonecraft. The texts chosen for this course address one or more of the following questions:

First: What is the status and value accorded to violence and what is the meaning of violence at different historical moments? How does literature promote, indict, or seek to sublimate violence?

Second: In what ways does literary history record, promote, or impede women's claims to rights, sovereignty, and authority? What techniques and technologies do women writers use to demonstrate resilience and resistance?

Third: what can representations of labor and domestic space -- from houses to estates to villages to cities -- tell us about the changing nature of English cultural and political society?

While these questions – roughly speaking, about violence, gender, and labor – may seem discrete, students will be encouraged to bring them into relation in two examinations and in a series of short, reflective writings designed to enhance comprehension and foster creative thinking.

2100-02 | MWF 12:20-1:10 | Gallucci, Mary

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2101-01 | M 5:00-7:30 | Barreca, Regina

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2107-01 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Marsden, Jean

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the British empire grew rapidly, made profitable by the institution of plantation slavery in the Caribbean. Sugar plantations on islands such as Jamaica and Barbados fueled the British economy, culture – and literature. We will read a variety of historical and literary works from this era and explore the representation and reality of this world. Works read will include a range of novels and plays by British writers such as William Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, and Daniel Defoe. We will consider the tensions that appear when these works are contrasted with those written by formerly enslaved persons such as Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and Ottobah Cuguano. In addition, we will explore historical documents such as accounts of slave rebellions and, advertisements for runaway slaves. Assignments will include a group presentation, one five-page paper, several short written assignments, and a final exam.

This course fulfils the General Education CA-1 requirement and can be used to fulfill the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

Also offered as: AMST 2200

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2200-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Franklin, Wayne 

This course carries CA 1 Gen Ed credit.

This course examines the early written and oral record of the area that eventually became the United States. It does so within the context of various non-textual analogues (e.g., architecture, art, landscape, material culture, and social, economic, and political institutions). The goal is to achieve a holistic understanding of the ways in which peoples of many varied backgrounds, from the Asian-derived indigenous inhabitants of North America to the various immigrant populations from continental Europe and the British Isles and the enslaved Africans they introduced to the Western hemisphere, came to express their views of the land and their experiences on it and with each other. Primary readings are drawn from recorded Indigenous mythic and historic texts, travel accounts originally written in various European languages (e.g., French, Spanish, Dutch, German, and English), works centered on indigenous-Euro-American contact and conflict, social history documents of literary value, key political documents, and poetry, early fiction and autobiography. Quizzes or reaction papers on major texts plus a midterm and a paper on the final two texts will be required.

Booklist:

Cabeza de Vaca, Account. Arte Publico. 9781558850606

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, Dover. 9780486290737

Olaudah Equiano. Interesting Narrative. Penguin. 9780142437162

Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer. Penguin 9780140390063

Derounian Stodola, ed., Women's Captivity Narratives. Penguin 9780140436716

Giles Gunn, ed. Early American Writing. Penguin 9780140390872

C. B. Brown, Wieland and Carwin. Penguin. 9780140390797

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2201-01 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Salvant, Shawn

This discussion-based course provides a selected survey of key works and authors in American literature from the transatlantic and colonial eras through the post-Civil War period.  Students learn about the development of American literature during the nineteenth century with emphasis on issues of race, gender, and class as forces in shaping the American literary tradition.  We examine topics including : Native American oral and literary traditions; transatlantic African American writing; European American colonial writing; African American anti-slavery speeches and slave narratives; the American Renaissance and American Transcendentalism; mid-to-late nineteenth-century American novels.  Authors may include Hannah Webster Foster, James Gronniosaw, William Bradford, Phillis Wheatley, David Walker, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Solomon Northup, Herman Melville, Sojourner Truth among others.  Primary texts are supplemented by scholarly secondary readings and current articles.  Lectures are minimal; class discussion is our main method.  Final grade is based on discussion question assignments, participation, midterm exam, final exam, and final essay.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2201W-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Courtmanche, Jason

Many instructors would approach this course by assigning the Norton Anthology of American Literature and marching methodically and chronologically through the greatest hits of early American literature. I'm trying something different here.

For one, 19th century American literature can be anything but pleasant to read. It is often dense and long-winded. But I do love it and think it is important to our cultural heritage. So I want to make the course as relevant and enjoyable as possible. To that end, I want us to look at ways contemporary, living writers have re-storied the canon of the 19th century. Now, we only have 14 weeks together, so we can only look at a few examples. I'm leaving out Jon Clinch's Finn, which re-stories Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Naslund's Ahab's Wife, which re-stories Moby-Dick, and Brooks' March, which re-stories Little Women, and Green's Paper Towns, which sort of re-stories Leaves of Grass. If you're ambitious and a big reader, you can check those out on your own sometime. But we will read The Scarlet Letter, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and 13 tales and poems by Edgar Allan Poe, as well as contemporary re-storyings of each. I hope you will find this a fun and interesting approach to the course!

Most students taking this course are not English majors, so we will not be approaching the course like a bunch of literary scholars. We will approach the texts and the course as a group of educated, literate adults interested in finding meaning in novels and making meaningful connections to our lives and to the events of the world around us.

This is a W, so there will be lots of writing and writing instruction. What I am going to ask you to do is find two short stories from the 19th century (not those assigned for the course) and re-story them yourself. (Don't worry. I'll help everyone find a couple of stories not on the syllabus). I hope you will try your best to be creative and have some fun with this. Don't be afraid to take a risk or two!

There will be weekly discussion posts rather than quizzes, and you will work regularly in writing groups. I won't lecture much. We'll mostly talk as a group. I try to emphasize feedback over grades in my response to your writing, though I will give a holistic grade to each essay. Participation and effort mean much more to me than grades, and I think they are better indicators of learning. I hope you will enjoy learning in this class and not stress about due dates, deadlines, and grades.

Come see me any time about the class, your writing, your ideas, whatever. I will have regular office hours when you can drop by (though it's better if you schedule ahead of time in Nexus). If my office hours don't work for you, we can schedule a time. We can meet in person or via zoom (or some other platform).

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2203W-01 | TuTh 3:30-4:45 | Sanchez, Lisa

Also offered as: AMST 2207, HIST 2207

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2207-01 | MWF 12:20-1:10 | Phillips, Jerry

Also offered as: AFRA 2214

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2214-01 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Salvant, Shawn

This discussion-based course provides a selected survey of key works and authors in African American literature from the era of the transatlantic slave trade to the present.  With so much ground to cover, the readings are highly selective, featuring representative texts and authors from each major period.  Authors may include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Charles Chesnutt, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Nella Larsen, and Colson Whitehead among others.  Students learn about the development of African American literature and the historical and political forces shaping this development.  Primary texts are supplemented by scholarly secondary readings and current articles.  Lectures are minimal; class discussion is our main method.  Final grade is based on discussion question assignments, participation, midterm exam, final exam, and final essay.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2214W-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Jones, Briona

African American Literature will be taught as an interdisciplinary course that centers the intellectual production by African American, African Diasporic, and African LGBTQIA+ activists, writers, scholars, and artists. The course will also survey literary, disciplinary, and theoretical approaches to the study of queer African American, African, and Afro-Diasporic literatures to develop working descriptions of the multifarious ways different bodies of people understand the practices and politics of racialized sexuality and gender. The course will provide an examination of the historical, social, cultural, political, and personal developments shaping established and recent discourses about racialized sexuality and gender. The course engages various approaches and themes within African American literature by a range of academic disciplines including Black queer studies, Black Lesbian Thought, Black Feminist Theory, literary studies, history, critical race theory, feminist theory, trans* studies, and disability studies, to name a few. Our readings, films, and discussions will take us to various global sites such as North America and the Caribbean, and the African Continent. We will engage the work of Audre Lorde, Dionne Brand, Pat Parker, Alexis De Veaux, James Baldwin, Zanele Muholi, Essex Hemphill, and E. Patrick Johnson, to name a few.

We will also focus on modern paradigms of racialized sexuality and gender as we learn how these categories and orientations are enmeshed with race, and remain organizing principles of personal, political, cultural, and social life. Our study of African American literature will traverse topics of class, poetics, art, and revolutionary movements. The course requires students to participate in a critical examination of a wide selection of materials ranging from essays, speeches, poetry, history, and films. These comparative approaches will prepare students with an understanding of concepts such as colonialism, decolonization, and intersectionality, through meditations on topics of pleasure, eroticism, and protest, as reflected in the literatures and cultural production of African American, Afro-diasporic, and African peoples. Thank you for taking my course, I look forward to sharing space and learning from you.

Requirements include regular class discussion; close reading assignments; presentations; writing workshops; creative projects based on research; an optional 5-7 page research paper.

Also offered as: AMST 2274W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2274W-01 | MW 6:10-7:25 | Brueggemann, Brenda

An interdisciplinary examination of the symbolic roles of disability and the social implications of those roles. CA 1. CA 4

How has disability/embodied difference been understood, imagined, represented, engaged in American literature and culture? This will be the central question for our course exploration. We will engage many literary genres to approach this question and cover a significant time span in American history. The course work is not lecture based but relies on multiple means of action, expression, engagement (based on the principles of Universal Design for Learning).

Course Objectives

By the end of the semester, you should be able to:

1. Recognize how various learning styles and “intelligences” shape our own learning experiences while they also construct and contribute to the collaborative, community work we do in a classroom.

2. Understand common narrative structures and themes that have commanded, compelled, and even inspired texts about people with disabilities in American culture.

3. Compare generic (genre-based) approaches to representing characters with embodied differences

4. Evaluate and Apply different conceptual frameworks and key terms that circulate in the interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies in the 21st century.

Course Requirements and Grading

Individual conferences (2-3): 10%. Collaborative notetaking (twice): 10%. Short compositions (7 required. 1.5-2 pages each): 35%. In-Class writing/activities: 25%. Final project presentation (5-10 mins): 20%

Also offered as: AMST 2276W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2276W-01 | Th 12:30-1:45 | Hybrid | Knapp, Kathy

We know a dystopian landscape when we see one, perhaps because recent literature, film, and television abound with examples, from the popular YA franchise The Hunger Games to comic-book-turned hit-series The Walking Dead, to the serialized version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, all of which bespeak contemporaneous anxieties arising from large-scale problems that we currently contend with: climate change, the resurgence of fascism, the persistence of racial and economic injustice, the Covid pandemic, and more. Harder to find are compelling depictions of utopia, which translates from the Greek as “no place,” and which theorists Frank and Fritzie Manuel identify as a “fantasy” based on the myth of heaven on earth. In this class, we will focus on predominantly contemporary narratives that complicate our understanding of both dystopian and utopian imaginaries by considering texts that are grounded in a realist tradition but which mine the past in order to suggest the outlines of an alternative future. Using Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908) as a foundational text, we will read novels such as Lauren Groff’s Arcadia, Laura van den Berg’s Find Me, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Ling Ma’s Severance, and Kiese Laymon’s Long Division alongside a variety of theoretical and cultural readings to arrive at our own working definition of utopian and dystopian thought. In addition to substantial reading and consonant with the requirements of a W course, students will write weekly responses, participate in online discussion, and create two multimodal projects that respond to and extend course material.

2276W-02 | Tu 5:00-6:15 | Hybrid | Duane, Anna Mae

What happens when the world ends? This course explores how writers and filmmakers have imagined the possibilities that arise when all we know disappears. While the bulk of the course will explore the work of American writers, we will devote at least one unit to exploring how other nations have imagined both dystopia and utopia. In so doing, we will explore the political and cultural stakes of imagining both better and worse worlds.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2301-01 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Coundouriotis, Eleni

Anglophone literatures are English language works from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. These works were shaped by the history of British colonialism and its long aftermath in an ongoing decolonization. To tackle this complex history and the extensive movement of peoples that resulted, the course focuses on the theme of crossing boundaries whether they are physical boundaries, boundaries of identity, religion, or national affiliation. Although sometimes liberating, the crossing of boundaries often arises from or leads to crisis and added precarity. We will explore the experiences represented in these works but also the literary questions that crossing boundaries provoke. Most of our reading will draw from contemporary works and include fiction as well as drama and poetry. Assignments will include 3 shorter papers (3-4 pages), a video presentation posted on Husky CT, and a midterm exam.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2301W-01 | TuTh 3:30-4:45 | Hogan, Patrick

The obvious feature that connects Anglophone literatures is the colonial history (partially) shared by their countries of origin. Why would we otherwise link such different nations as Nigeria, India, Canada, and Australia? This course will, therefore, stress colonialism and the ways in which these diverse literatures emerged from colonial conditions. Of course, the diversity of these literatures is as consequential as the similarity. In connection with this, it is important to distinguish various kinds of colonialism. Colonialism in Nigeria is not the same as colonialism in Canada, for example. As this is a literature course, we also need to be aware of the various literary approaches to “emplotting” colonialism, which is to say, creating stories that address the colonial condition. We will begin the semester by considering just what constitutes colonialism (e.g., how we might define “colonialism”). From there we will turn to the chief varieties of colonialism and some of the recurring structures—particularly story genres—taken up by authors in examining colonialism.

After a couple of weeks on these theoretical topics, we will turn to literary works. In the course of the semester, we will consider narratives from different types of colony. For example, we may examine a work from Canada (such as Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing) and/or one from Australia (such as Nugi Garimara’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence); we will certainly examine some works from India (perhaps including some poetry and visual art about Kashmir), and works from two or three African nations, such as Kenya (e.g., Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat), South Africa (e.g., J. M. Coezee’s Waiting for the Barbarians), and Nigeria (e.g., Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun or Bandele’s film of the novel), as well as a selection of stories from across the continent--Ama Ata Aidoo’s African Love Stories. As the title of Aidoo’s collection suggests, we will pay particular attention to the ways in which authors take up the love story genre to address colonialism, though we will take up other recurring genres as well.

Coursework will include short responses to readings, one or two group presentations, and general class participation, one 6-page essay explicating part of one of the literary works or rewriting it creatively (in line with themes explored in the course), and one 10-page essay involving cultural or historical research integrated with explication of part of one of the literary works, as well as outlines and drafts of the two essays.

2301W-02 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Hogan, Patrick

See description above.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2401-01 | TuTh 8:00-9:15 | Forbes, Sean

This course is an introduction to poetry in English, designed to familiarize you with a range of poetic forms and modes from the 16^th through the 21^st centuries. We’ll read, discuss, and write about many kinds of poems as ways of enjoying their wealth of rhythms, figures, and rhetorical effects. We’ll pay attention to the way poems sound, you’ll hear poems aloud in class, and at visiting writer events. You’ll also memorize and recite poems yourself, since memorization allows you inside a poem in a rather magical way. By the end of the course, you’ll have a good understanding of how content and sound work together in poetry, and you’ll know a selection of important poems and poetic forms.   

2401-02 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Cohen, Bruce

This introductory course will focus on the close reading and analysis of verse to expand your appreciation of the traditions of poetry. We will explore poetic techniques, forms and strategies and learn to critically analyze poetry. In essence, we will delve into what makes a poem a “poem.” We will discuss some of the various “schools” of poetry to provide you with some historical context for the sensibilities and conventions of poetry. The goal of the course is to expand your interest in poetry to the point that you will read it outside of class, well after the course has concluded and be able to discuss poetry in an intelligent manner. Course requirements include class participation, written essays and a final exam.

2401-03 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Cohen, Bruce

See description above.

2401-04 | Online | Choffel, Julie

This course will offer a survey of poetry in English across traditions. We will study conventions of poetic forms, genres, and devices, and how poets have taken up, altered, or abandoned them. We will find out, from the poems themselves, how to read them and what they are for. Coursework will consist of close readings, discussion and group work, collaborative research and creative exercises, and a final paper.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2405-01 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Winter, Sarah

Honors

This course will provide an introduction to the history, theory, and performance of drama. We will study major plays, dramatic genres, and changing theatrical conventions from classical Greek drama to the present. Assignments will include: a presentation on the staging and performance of a play, with a short paper; a longer comparative paper on tragedy or comedy; take-home midterm; final exam; class discussion participation; and a review of a performance at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2407-01 | TuTh 9:05-9:55 | Fairbanks, Ruth

The short story form is remarkable in part for its brevity, allowing us with maximum efficiency to enter character’s lives at moments of difficult moral decisions or confrontations with life’s most intense problems and revelations. The manageable length of stories allows us to examine the narratological magic by which authors create minds and situations that unfold and involve us. We will consider stories from different periods and literary movements from the “dark Romantics” such as Hawthorne to writers of the Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, then to contemporary representatives of minimalism and post-modernism. We’ll also consider subgenres such as the ghost story and detective story and focus intensively on a few writers: Henry James, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Virginia Woolf, Georges Simenon.

Requirements include occasional quizzes, two short papers, a midterm, and a final. Classes will include lectures and discussions.

2407-02 | MWF 11:15-12:05 | Merola, Jonathan

This course will focus on the American short story as a form across the twentieth century with special attention given to stylistic analysis and the ways in which authors weave together different voices within a shorter text. We will read stories by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, John Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, and more. This course is open to any students.

2407-03 | MWF 1:25-2:15 | Merola, Jonathan

See description above.

2407-04 | TuTh 5:00-6:15 | Sanchez, Lisa

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2409-01 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Coundouriotis, Eleni

This course will focus on an awareness of modernity as crisis. The novels we will read span the twentieth century to our present moment and reflect a pervasive sense of homelessness that stems from major dislocations and historical disruptions. The dissolution of the European empires, war, changing gender roles, and environmental crises all become topics of great novels that also challenge past ways of telling stories, experimenting with the form of the novel. The course is reading-intensive but the assignments take that under consideration. There are two, take home essay exams, one group presentation, and frequent checks on the reading to make sure everyone is keeping up. Authors we will read include E.M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, Sam Selvon, Nadine Gordimer, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Bao Ninh, Amitav Ghosh, and Helon Habila.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2411-01 | W 5:00-7:30 | Barreca, Regina

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2411W-01 | TuTh 5:00-6:15 | Grossman, Leigh

Worldbuilding and Secondary Worlds in Fantasy from Tolkien to Today 

Ursula Le Guin said that JRR Tolkien “removed the apology from fantasy,” meaning that after Tolkien, writers could set their stories in a world distinct from our own without explaining that it was all a dream, or set in a distant past, or some other apology. But world-building has evolved a lot since Tolkien’s day, and many of the underlying theoretical assumptions that seemed so startling in the mid-1960s when the “pirated” edition of Lord of the Rings hit the U.S. market are tied to uncomfortable assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality. The course looks at how the way fantasy writers build secondary worlds has evolved from Tolkien’s day to today’s fantasies, both through primary works and critical essays. Readings will start with classic works by Tolkien and Le Guin, but will mostly focus on current writers such as Guy Gavriel Kay, Michael Swanwick, Sarah Beth Durst, Nnedi Okorafor, and Rebecca Roanhorse. 

2411W-02 | Online | Cormier, Emily

Popular Literature has always included books that attract a young audience; Young Adult books have often found a much wider audience than “young adults.” In this class we will focus on this segment of Popular Literature, concentrating our discussion on the convergence of ideas found in award-winning dystopian fiction, graphic novels, and realistic novels. By reading different sub-genres, we aim to see whether these divergent forms address similar anxieties about coming-of-age in America or if the form is more directly related to content. Each student will also create an individual guiding question that will lead them to examine one specific topic throughout all the texts we read. This course begins with a close look at three adolescent dystopian novels: The Giver,  Feed, and The Marrow Thieves.  In these novels our protagonists are trapped in worlds where they are constantly surveilled by forces that exert control, eliminate choice, and seem insurmountable. We continue with a unit on word and image texts: Fun Home, American Born Chinese, This One Summer, where we learn how to “read” images in as much detail as words. Finally, we read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and The Hate U Give, two novels in traditional form to complete our foray into this subset of (very) Popular Literature.

2411W-03 | Online | Cormier, Emily

See description above.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011. Not open to students who have passed ENGL 3621 when taught as "The Graphic Novel."

2413-01 | TuTh 8:00-9:15 | Capshaw, Katharine

Honors

This course explores the history and theory of the graphic novel.  We will explore a variety of approaches to the genre, from superhero narratives to graphic memoir, from manga to contemporary experimental texts.  While no single course can offer a comprehensive summation of such a vast and various body of work, our class will address the field’s major generic threads.  We will also develop an understanding of the ‘grammar’ involved in reading a panel, page, and entire comics sequence. Alongside the narratives we will read secondary sources that explore aesthetic and theoretical debates within the field.  One of our objectives is to support each other as we engage the critical discourse around comics and graphic novels: we will share sources and insights and offer constructive feedback as we work together to produce informed and incisive term papers.  

2413-02 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Cutter, Martha

Historical Graphic Novel: This class takes seriously the emergence of comics as a legitimate site of interdisciplinary inquiry and scholarly engagement and as a source of both evoking and revising history. Over the course of the semester, we will consider the ways in which graphic narrative presents a particularly unique approach to U.S. history that questions dominant accounts of racial progress and mainstream characterizations of American exceptionalism. From Jim Crow segregation to the Holocaust, from the forced relocation of Native peoples to the Japanese American incarceration/internment, and from de jure discrimination to systemic state violence, graphic narratives have become a literary genre in which to contemplate the contradictions of U.S. personhood, selfhood, and nationhood.

Books will include: Art Spiegelman: Maus I &2 (1986-1992); Kyle Baker: Nat Turner (2008); John Lewis, March Books 1-3 (2013-2016); Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece, Incognegro (2008), Gene Luen Yang, The Shadow Hero (2014); Allison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006); Robin Ha, Almost American Girl: An Illustrated Memoir (2020); Lynda Barry, One! Hundred! Demons! (2002); David A. Robertson, GMB Chomichuk, Iskwe, Erin Leslie: Will I See (2016); ed. Hope Nicholson Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Vol. 1 (2021); and Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (1993).

Requirements: class participation; HuskyCT postings; short paper; long paper/project or take home final exam. Please note: This is a student-learning centered class, so effective engagement in class discussion is a mandatory part of this course.

2413-03 | MWF 12:20-1:10 | Warrender-Hill, Kathryn

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800; open to English majors, others with instructor consent.

2600-01 | MWF 10:10-11:00 | Somerset, Fiona

This course is required of English majors: it is designed to teach you research, critical thinking, and writing skills that will help you do well in upper-division courses and beyond. You will be asked to produce three short papers (3 pages) that build on smaller research and writing assignments completed online and/or in class. Our readings will include poems, short items presented in digital media, and critical essays. You will be asked to learn some key terms and methods, and invited to begin using them to join the conversation among critics in the field.

2600-02 | MWF 12:20-1:10 | Codr, Dwight

If you are thinking of registering for this course, it is because you, like me, love to read and write. This course aims to foster that love -- and help you to imagine how to do it for the rest of your life! -- by introducing you to the work of English. In this section of Introduction to Literary Studies you will learn what kind of work English teachers and professors do, what kind of skills you need to do good work in upper-division English courses, and the life paths and careers that open up to students with degrees in English.

In addition to reading primary works of literature, we will also explore literary criticism, literary theory, and other media (film, television, memes, advertisements), and our conversations will take shape around and in relation to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a novel that takes work as one of its central, organizing themes.

Requirements include some combination of analytical writing and creative work, a portfolio built using digital research databases, attendance at one or more on-campus events, and activities relating to the Center for Career Development.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2605W-01 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Vials, Christopher

This course is built around the main questions: what is capitalism, what have been its human impacts across different groups, and how has it changed over time?  How did it spread from early modern Europe (particularly England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal) to encompass the entire globe, and under what terms?  How it has been experienced differently across lines of class, race, and gender?  What have been the main criticisms of it, and what have its critics meant by terms such as “socialism” or “communism”?  Many of our discussions will take the United States as an example, but we will not limit ourselves to this country. 

As an interdisciplinary course, we will use a variety of sources to examine these questions, including the scholarship of historians, works of philosophy, social theory, and writings by economists.  In lectures, the instructor will also cover histories, theories, and empirical data not directly referenced in the readings.  Most of your reading assignments, however, will be cultural works: novels, autobiographies, plays, essays, manifestoes, and reportage. 

We will begin by sketching out a working definition of capitalism, defining it in relation to the systems that came before its emergence in England in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.   The first half of the course, up until the mid-term, will focus on the broad global dynamics of capitalism that tend to recur throughout its history, yet on different timelines in the various continents and regions: dispossession from the land, urbanization and industrialization, and the creation and categorization of “a labor force.”  On the latter, we will explore how gendering and racial categorization have been crucial to capitalism since its origins.  Indeed, many scholars have found the origins of modern racism in the rise of capitalism in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Also offered as: CLCS 2609

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011. Not open for credit to students who have passed AMST/ENGL 3265W when offered as "Fascism and Antifascism in the US."

2609-01 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Vials, Christopher

In this course, we will explore the questions: what is fascism? How is it relevant for thinking about the culture and politics of the world today, and the United States in particular? And how does fascism differ from other forms of authoritarianism?

As a type of state, fascism was largely destroyed in 1945. But as an ideology and a set of political movements, it has appeared in countries across the globe, before and after World War II. As Oxford-based historian Roger Griffin wrote in 1993, “…as a political ideology capable of spawning new movements [fascism] should be treated as a permanent feature of modern political culture.”

After surveying the historical fascisms of Germany, Italy, and Japan, we will turn to the United States, where we will devote the rest of the class to exploring U.S. fascist or fascist-like movements, the U.S. historical memory of fascism, and the Cold War politics of de-Nazification. Much of the class from this point on will be a study of the extreme right in the United States over the last century and its overlaps with actual fascist movements.  We will also discuss the applicability of the concept of fascism in a country with a history of race rooted in settler colonialism, slavery, and immigrant labor.

Are practices like segregation or voter suppression ‘fascist,’ or do they come from a different kind of anti-democratic history?

Along the way, we will discuss what is has meant to be an antifascist, both in the United States and abroad.

Also offered as: DMD 2610

Prerequisites: None.

2610-01 | MWF 12:20-1:10 | Booten, Kyle

Prerequisites: None.

2612-01 | MWF 1:25-2:15 | Booten, Kyle

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2635E-01 | MWF 10:10-11:00 | Hasenfratz, Robert

In this class we explore a wide-ranging set of accounts of environmental disasters from the beginning of recorded literature, such as the flood account in The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis, early geography’s concept of temperate and intemperate zones, literary accounts of cataclysmic storms and hurricanes ranging from those by Homer, Virgil, to Zora Neale Hurston, as well as novels like John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Margaret Atwoods’s Oryx and Crake, John Chistopher’s The Death of Grass. We will read selected non-fiction books about environment and ecological disaster such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Harriet Washington’s A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and its Assault on the American Mind, Ayana Johnson and Katherine Wilkinson’s All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, Solutions for the Climate Crisis, etc. Shortly after you’ve all signed up for classes this spring (2022), I’ll consult with you about what specifically you’re most passionate about exploring in order to make sure the readings connect with directly and powerfully with your interests. Writing projects will include a short essay or video project on a literary account of environmental disaster, as well as a book review, presentation, and final project.

2635E-02 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Tonry, Kathleen

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2640-01 | MWF 12:20-1:10 | Hasenfratz, Robert

History of Screenwriting

We will investigate the evolution of screenwriting, mainly in an U.S. context. By all accounts the earliest films made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had no scripts at all or very informal ones that resembled story outlines, but by the time silent film had developed into a sophisticated vehicle for story telling in feature-length films in the 1920s, the shape and function of the movie script began to take shape and acquired many of the conventions it has today. You will learn to how to read scripts, evaluate story construction, identify the different types of script from the spec script to shooting script, learn about script continuity and the revision process. We will read the memoirs of early film script writers like Anita Loos and Marion Davies, scholarly accounts of screenwriting and storytelling like Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson’s The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, Norman’s What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting, Stempel’s Framework: A History of Screen Writing in the American Film, Horton and Hoxter’s collection Screenwriting, and Jill Nelmes’s Analysing the Screenplay as well as popular guides to storytelling and screenwriting like Yorke’s Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story, McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, and The Principles of Screenwriting, Snyder’s Save the Cat, etc.  It goes without saying that we will read and analyze a number of scripts of films like Sunrise (Murnau, 1927), The Crowd (Vidor, 1928), It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934), The Third Man (Reed, 1949), as well as the scripts of later and contemporary film classics I will choose after getting your ideas.  You will keep a running blog of your reading and viewing, analyze two scripts, and complete a final project as well.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011. May not be taken out of sequence after passing ENGL 3701, 3703, or 3713.

2701-01 | TuTh 8:00-9:15 | Dennigan, Darcie

2701-02 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | 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 on 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 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. 

2701-03 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Dennigan, Darcie

See description above.

2701-04 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Forbes, Sean

Honors

Finding Your Artistic Voice Through Creative Writing Prompts

In this introduction to creative writing class, we will examine the different approaches that a writer can take when trying to establish a speaker in a poem or short story. We will look at exemplary works of poetry and fiction from writers like David Dominguez, Allison Joseph, Richard Blanco, and Justin Torres. Students will produce a final portfolio of their original work. Class participation is an essential component to this largely workshop-based course along with weekly writing prompts such as writing in iambic pentameter and challenging prose sketches.  

2701-05 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Forbes, Sean

Finding Your Artistic Voice Through Creative Writing Prompts

In this introduction to creative writing class, we will examine the different approaches that a writer can take when trying to establish a speaker in a poem or short story. We will look at exemplary works of poetry and fiction from writers like David Dominguez, Allison Joseph, Richard Blanco, and Justin Torres. Students will produce a final portfolio of their original work. Class participation is an essential component to this largely workshop-based course along with weekly writing prompts such as writing in iambic pentameter and challenging prose sketches.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

3082-01 | Arr. | Tonry, Kathleen

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

3091-01 | Arr. | Fairbanks, Ruth

Also offered as: AAAS 3212

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.

3212-01 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Kim, Na-Rae

By exploring various artistic productions by Asian Americans, this course seeks to grasp central issues and themes for understanding contemporary Asian America, and furthermore, multicultural America. Asian American literary productions exhibit vibrant re-imagination of American history, nation-state, nationalism, citizenship, identity, and difference.   

This course is not a survey of these works, as Asian Americans are a diverse group of people whose literature reflect multiple backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Instead, our readings and assignments focus on key themes including: racism, stereotypes, gender expectations, migration, representation, and redefining America. Through this course, we consider how even the seemingly most personal relationships expressed in cultural production are rooted in and shaped by historical and social circumstances.  

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.

3240E-02 | Online | Plum, Sydney

Study of writings, from the colonial era into the 21st century, reflecting diverse ways of imagining humanity's relation to nature. Readings include classics of American nature writing — Thoreau, Austin, Abbey, Leopold and Carson — as well as contemporary writers on experiences in nature of previously marginalized people. Two required textbooks collect contemporary essays and poems. Other supporting materials comprise ecocritical and contextual studies. Lectures are previously recorded and available online. Students create journals to develop an individual sense of landscape and history of natural places. Contemporary nature writing engages with environmental issues that may be challenging to encounter, which is one reason to encounter them in a community. This course is presented asynchronously. There are no synchronous meetings. Individual, online conferences may be arranged, as requested. Grades are based upon thoughtful participation in discussions, written work that develops a thoughtful thesis, and a thoughtful final project.

Also offered as: AMST 3267W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

3267W-01 | Tu 3:30-4:45 | Hybrid | Duane, Anna Mae

This course provides students with opportunities to observe and critique how scientific and cultural narratives have reinforced one another in ways that can embed racial biases in medical, scientific, and technological discourses. By reading both popular scientific and fictional texts, we will engage in a critical exploration of key tenets underlying racism and colonialism. This course will foreground student writing and research, in the hopes of enabling imaginative approaches to disconnecting the entangled legacies of scientific racism.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

3420-01 | M 4:40-7:10 | Cormier, Emily

In this class we will study Children’s Literature from multiple angles, paying particular attention to what these artifacts say about the meaning of childhood in different time periods for different audiences. We will consider what expectations, biases, and assumptions are implicit in works published for children, and what we as readers expect, project, and assume. These conversations will help us better understand the canon of modern Children’s Literature as well as meaningful new directions in the field. Our reading list will include fairy tales, poetry, fiction, picture books, and graphic novels, with particular attention to writers of color in the second half of the course. We will also “converse” with published scholars and critics through reading, writing, and class discussions.  During our picture book unit, we will take a field trip to the Archives and Special Collections here at UConn, where we will examine the Maurice Sendak collection.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800; open to juniors or higher.

3422-01 | MWF 1:25-2:15 | Taylor, Kiedra

The image of Black girlhood in literature continues to be a subject of interest for writers, educators, librarians, and literary scholars who recognize the need to counter the historically demeaning and stereotypical representations of Black folks in American literature. This course will look at constructions of Black female adolescence by Black female authors who have directly challenged stereotypical renderings of Black girls.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.

3501-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Biggs, Frederick

This course investigates how Chaucer transformed an already stunning literary career and English literature as a whole through his dramatic experiments in the Canterbury Tales. Readings will include much of this work as well as a selection of sources and analogues for individual tales. Students will present their research in class and write two papers. There will also be a midterm and a final.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011. May not be taken out of sequence after passing ENGL 3505.

3503-01 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Tribble, Evelyn

We will explore Shakespeare’s work through three modes: stage, page, and screen. You will learn to read Shakespeare’s language and how he wrote for the stage; we will use some class time for staging experiments. We will also explore how Shakespeare’s work has been translated into film and how directors use cinematic techniques to convey their interpretations of his work.

Requirements include: Brief response papers or posts reflecting upon the staging experiments, discussions, practical activities, and screenings; three brief skills assignment on staging, cinematic analysis, and close reading; a  take-home final in which you demonstrate your ability to interpret Shakespeare on page, stage, and screen; one traditional essay and one “Unessay.”

Plays to be read include Much Ado about Nothing, Richard III, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and The Winter’s Tale.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.

3509W-01 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Marsden, Jean

Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë

A careful investigation of three of the greatest English novelists: Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, and Charlotte Brontë. Although they wrote within the same half century, their novels differ radically–so much so that Charlotte Brontë declared she could not tolerate Austen’s novels. We will examine these differences and search for the deeper roots of Charlotte Brontë’s dislike of Austen’s work. Finding an answer to these problems will involve a careful examination of the structure and thematic content of each writer’s work. We will pay special attention to their differing representations of women in (or out) of society. Readings will include four novels by Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion), Jane Eyre, Villette, and Wuthering Heights. Assignments will include a midterm, final exam, two five-page papers with creative options, and several ungraded written assignments. 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.

3601-01 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Biggs, Frederick

The goal of this course is to improve the students’ writing by explaining key elements of the grammatical structure of English. A collateral benefit will be their ability to teach this subject to others. The text, A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar, by Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and Brett Reynolds, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: CUP, 2022), provides a detailed account of many of the rules which control the language. It is an essential starting-point for linguists. Our focus, however, is slightly different: the rules which underlie the related syntactic structures most often involved when revising written work.

Supported by robust HuskyCT site, this course consists of lectures, self-check exercises, ten preliminary tests, a midterm, and a final. Other assignments include discussion board posts and journal entries on topics such as the dialects of English and the language in a digital age.

Also offered as: WGSS 3613

Prerequisites: None.

3613-01 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Breen, Margaret

This course offers an opportunity to discover, read and discuss unknown and landmark LGBTQ+ works of fiction—from long ago and from our own time.

Likely texts include the following:

• Alan Dale: A Marriage Below Zero (1889) (978-1-55111-983-0) Broadview
• Aimée Duc’s Are They Women? (1901), which has just become available in English translation and is one of the earliest lesbian novels and one of the very few that published before 1969 offer a happy ending Broadview ISBN: 9781554814800 / 1554814804
• Clare Morgan’s [Patricia Highsmith’s] The Price of Salt, whose film adaptation, Carol, was released some five few years ago
• James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, a beautifully written if heartbreaking novel by a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement
• Jeanette Winterson’s 1993 queer novel Written on the Body
• Casey Plett’s 2014 short story collection A Dream of a Woman (2021)
• Chinelo Okparanta’s award-winning coming-of-age/coming-out novel Under the Udala Trees (2015), set in Nigeria
• Kristen Arnett’s Mostly Dead Things (2019) Tin House Books 9781947793835

Two take-home essay/creative exams and one 2000-word essay or equivalent creative project.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

3623-01 | Tu 3:30-6:30 | Sibelman, Grae

The Holocaust in Print, Theater and Film

How do you represent the unimaginable? As daunting of a task as this is, the Holocaust is one of the most dramatized and written about events in history for the amount of time since its passing.

In this course, we will be examining how authors and directors have attempted to represent the Holocaust. We will discuss what tools were used including choices made in written structure, visual imagery, and the use of language. We will also discuss the systemization of the Holocaust and explore the societal repercussions.

As well as examining both dramatic works and films that depict the Holocaust, we will read first-hand accounts and watch documentaries to broaden our knowledge of the Holocaust so that we can better reflect upon the statements being made in the representations.

We will also be reading a large body of criticism relating to both the dramatization of the Holocaust and the Holocaust itself. Some of the works being studied in the class include Akropolis by Jerzy Grotowski, Endgame by Samuel Beckett, The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, Who Will Carry the Word by Charlotte Delbo and Ghetto by Joshua Sobel as well as many others. We will also be examining films including Ida directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, The Pianist directed by Roman Polansky, and Amen directed by Costa-Gavras.

The coursework will include keeping up with weekly readings as well as discussing them in class. There will also be quizzes, a take home essay style mid-term, a final presentation, and an essay style take home final exam.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to sophomores or higher. May not be taken for credit after passing ENGL 3623 offered as Rhetoric of Political Discourse.

3633W-01 | MWF 2:30-3:20 | Phillips, Jerry

Prerequisites: ENGL 2701; instructor consent required. May be repeated once for credit.

3701-01 | TuTh 3:30-4:45 | Cohen, Bruce

Poetry and Prose-Poetry

The class will be a poetry and prose-poetry writing workshop. It is designed for students who have a serious and committed interest in writing and discussing poetry and have taken 2701. We will be reading and analyzing five books of poems and will be unraveling the craft and esthetic design of the various poets. We will also dissect the differences between poetry & prose poetry. Naturally, students will be required to produce original work and actively participate in the writing workshop. Students will be asked to research outside writers and share work with the class. It is assumed that all students have an active vocabulary and understanding of poetry. The class is by permission only and students will be asked to submit poems for consideration for entrance into the class.

Prerequisites: ENGL 2701; instructor consent required. May be repeated once for credit.

3703-01 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Litman, Ellen

Fiction

This seminar is designed for upper-level undergraduate students interested in writing fiction, and as such it will require a great deal of writing, reading, and revising. Students will write 3 original short stories (or novel chapters) and complete a series of exercises. Most pieces will be then revised for the final portfolio (the final project for this class). The students will be required to actively participate in the discussions (in-class and on HuskyCT) of the assigned readings and their peers’ work. The course texts will likely consist of craft essays, individual short stories or novel excerpts, and a couple of short story collections and/or novels. For a permission number, please e-mail Professor Litman at ellen.litman@uconn.edu.

Also offered as: DMD 3830, DRAM 3145

Prerequisites: Open to juniors or higher, others with instructor consent.

3707-01 | TuTh 2:00-4:30 | Ozdemir, Tanju

This course introduces the arts and crafts of narrative scriptwriting; idea generation, formatting, conflict, story structure, concept, character and plot development, effective and impactful dialogue writing and outlining. Through lectures, readings, workshops, screenings, and guest speakers, you will learn how to think and write as a professional screenwriter. The exercises and assignments will prepare you to complete a final project as a short narrative screenplay between 5-20 pages. 

Scriptwriting is not only about writing but also reading and analyzing scripts. Therefore, be prepared to read your peers scripts and other produced screenplays outside of the course assignments and provide and receive critique in a conscientious and productive manner.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher; instructor consent required. Recommended preparation: ENGL 2701.

3711-01 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Dennigan, Darcie

Goodnight Nobody

According to the great and weird Margaret Wise Brown, the world of children's literature is "one of the purest and freest fields for experimental writing today." A prerequisite for this class is taking that statement to heart. We'll start and end as far away as possible from what we already know. Instead, you're invited to invent words and worlds, and to write abundantly, even excessively, in class and out of class. The second prerequisite for this course is your commitment to be there, in class, every week-- to create a community of writers you can trust and be challenged by. To the extent possible, you will also test out at least one draft of each project with corresponding preschool or high school readers.  Writers we'll use as lodestars: Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss & Maurice Sendak (we'll study their process at the Dodd), Sara Farizan, and Amos Tutuola. At the end of the semester, you will have drafts of work for preschool/toddler children and a substantial draft of a YA novel.  Instructor permission required. Email a writing sample to darcie.dennigan@uconn.edu.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; at least 12 credits of 2000-level or above English courses or consent of instructor; open to juniors or higher.

4203W-01 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 | Cutter, Martha

Race, Gender, and Medical Humanities in Literature and Film

This class will be a seminar on literature and medicine, with a special focus on race and gender, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought renewed attention to health disparities. Although there will be some older texts dealing with medicine and literature, the focus will be contemporary readings and films having to do with medical humanities and health. We will seek to understand how race and gender have impacted the medical treatment and perception of bodies, as well as the ways in which individuals have asserted control over healing and their bodies in the face of medical disciplining of them. Alternative (Indigenous, native, or folk) modes of healing will be considered as aspects of this field of study.

Tentative List of Fiction (most of these but not all)

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (1892-1915)

Harper, Frances. Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892)

Ernest Hemingway, “Indian Camp” (1925)

Schuyler, George. Black No More (1931)

Sontag, Susan. “The Way We Live Now” (1986)

Morrison, Toni. Paradise (1997)

Morrison, Toni. Home (2002)

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go (2005)

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

Czerwiec, MK. Taking Turns (graphic novel) (2017)

Maples, Kwoya Fagin. Mend (2018)

Ruffin, Maurice Carlos. We Cast a Shadow (2019)

Boyer, Anne. The Undying: Pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care (2019)

Greenidge, Kaitlyn. Libertie. (2021).

Tentative List of Films

Red Corn, Priscilla. Medicine Woman (film).

Rotberg, Dana. White Lies. (film) (2016).

Jordan Peele, Get Out (film) (2017).

Excerpts from Secondary Scholarship including:

Altschuler, Sari. The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States (2018)

Browner, Stephanie P. Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America (2005)

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (2006)

Charon, Rita. Narrative Medicine (2006)

Jones, Therese, Delese Wear, and Lester Friedman. Health Humanities Reader (2014)

Requirements: Frequent HuskyCT “mini-papers” (1-2 pages), an oral presentation, an illness narrative, and a final seminar paper (10-15 pages) that can grow out of the HuskyCT postings or be on a new topic. Please note: This is a student-learning centered class, so effective engagement in class discussion is a mandatory part of this course.

4203W-02 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Litman, Ellen

Modern Immigrant Narratives

America is known as a country of immigrants, a “melting pot,” the land of opportunities and a welcoming place for those in need. This, at least, is the story we have learned from the traditional immigrant narratives, found easily in popular literature and film. In this class, however, we will study modern immigrant narratives that challenge the traditional model and tell a more complex story. The narratives might include memoirs (e.g., The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri), novels (e.g., The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo), short story collections (e.g., Afterparties by Anthony Vans So), poetry collections (e.g., My Name is Immigrant by Wang Ping), graphic novels/illustrated memoirs (e.g., The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, Almost American Girl by Robin Ha), and films (e.g., The Immigrant, Maria Full of Grace). Likely requirements: active participation in class and online discussions, two short essays and one longer research paper, one class presentation.