Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1101W-01 | MW- Hybrid 12:20-1:10 | Tonry, Kathleen

1101W-02 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 | Biggs, Fred

1101W-03 | TuTh 3:30-4:45 | Winter, Sarah

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1103W-01 | MWF 9:05-9:55 | Gallucci, Mary

Theme:  Nature, Wilderness, and Biodiversity in the Era of Colonialism

We will explore the themes of nature and wilderness, the savage and the civilized in a wide range of literary and cultural artifacts.  We will examine how Renaissance and early modern Europeans conceptualized “civilization,” “primitivism,” and “wilderness.”  From witches who threatened an orderly Christian world to savages and cannibals who menaced society, Europeans and their descendants were fascinated by ideas of the uncivilized other.  At the same time, were enticed by the natural riches of lands beyond their borders.

Authors and works will likely include Shakespeare, The Tempest, Thomas Middleton, The Witch, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Aphra Behn, Ooronoko, Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (selections), Voltaire, Candide, Diderot, Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony, J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarian, and Derek Walcott, Omeros (excerpts), in addition to documents relating to French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonization.

Assignments:  3 papers (6-7 pages), with revisions and a final exam.

Prerequisites: None

Also offered as: AMST 1201, HIST 1503

1201-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 |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

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: None.

1301-01 | Tu 5:00 - 7:30 | Moores, Don

This course is an in-depth study of one important strain of Eastern thought—Sufism—the mystical branch of Islam. Enormously influential, the Sufis impacted spirituality and poetry profoundly throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the U.S. (To this day, the best-selling poet in the West is Rumi, a Persian Sufi poet whose creative output rivals that of Shakespeare, Homer, or Dante combined!). In an engagement with the ghazals (lyrics) of several major poets, including not only Rumi but Rabia, Attar, Hafiz, and many others, we will explore the subtle contours of Sufi verse and its rich imagery. We also will engage the profound writing of two influential Sufi philosophers, Indries Shah and Hazrat Inayat Khan, whose work was responsible for introducing Sufism to many Westerners in the twentieth century. Because the Sufis foreground love, our focal point will be on the recurring image of wine-drinking, a complex metaphor suggesting the intoxications of divine inebriation and the ecstasy (self-transcendence) that it causes. Through student presentations we will learn about various Sufi orders and their techniques of ecstasy, such as circle-dancing or whirling, smoking hash, chanting, fasting, sleep deprivation, and others. Course measures include journal writing, short critical reaction papers, a presentation, and a final research paper. No final exam! Students will be required to purchase four books totaling about $85. So, join me, and together, we'll learn about the love and ecstasies of the Sufis at a time when the world needs more love and fewer guns.  

Prerequisites: Recommended preparation: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011

1401-01 | MW 10:10 - 11:00 with discussion sections on Friday | Semenza, Gregory

The Horror Film:

This course focuses on the history, politics, and theory of the international horror film, from the silent era through the present day; it also surveys the important sub-genres of horror, including the monster films, paranormal films, slasher films, gialli, and folk horror films, just to mention a few.  Often criticized—sometimes even dismissed—as the lowliest of all forms, horror has in fact always been one of the most capacious, formally innovative, and ideologically complex film genres.  The passionate responses it inspires in audiences, from cult-like devotion to outright disgust, raise fascinating questions about why we love (or hate) to be frightened.  How do the things that most terrify us change over time or within different locales?  How do we draw ethical lines (personal, institutional, or national) about what we are willing to depict or watch on film?  What do our individual and collective responses to horror say about us and the world in which we live? Over the course of the semester, we’ll watch about 20 films and read a healthy number of essays about them.  We’ll watch Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Tourneur’s Cat People (1942), and Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) before turning to the great horror films of the 1960s and early 70s; these include, but are not limited to, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).  Featured filmmakers of the mid 70s and beyond will include Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Julia Ducournau, and Jordan Peele.  Assignments will include participation, regular quizzes, a group project, and midterm and final examinations. Please note that this course is not for the squeamish.  Many of the films contain graphic violence and gore, strong sexual content, and generally disturbing themes.

Prerequisites: None

1503-01 | MWF 12:20 - 1:10 | 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 Twelfth Night, King Lear, and The Winter’s Tale—as well as several film and stage adaptations of them.  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 some short papers, a midterm, a group project, and a final.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011

1601W-01 | MW - Hybrid 1:25 - 2:15 |Anson, April

Race, Gender, and the Culture Industry examines the cultural production of Race and Gender. We will be studying race and gender as fictions that change over time and geographies and discuss how those fictions relate to types of cultural production like films, short stories, and music. Through lectures and class discussion, we will learn with canonical texts on the "cultural industry" and apply them to films like Barbie, television shows like Lovecraft Country, and short fiction by Toni Morrison, Tommy Orange, and others. We will discuss contemporary concerns like climate change, consumerism, disinformation, radicalization, violence, inequality, and the power structures that run through and between these topics. Assignments in this writing-intensive (W) course will include weekly reflections, an annotated bibliography, an in-class presentation, and revised drafts of a critical essay.

Prerequisites:  ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2001-01 | Online Asynchronous| 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).

There will be weekly assignments that will help you incrementally complete your proposal.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2013W-01 | MW-Hybrid 1:25- 2:15 | Booten, Kyle

Does the arrival of powerful AI models (such as ChatGPT) threaten to make human writers obsolete, or does it unlock new challenges and potentials? How is writing a "tool for thought" that allows the writer not just to communicate ideas to others but also to clarify and develop ideas for themselves?  What are some successful strategies for teaching writing?  This course will introduce a variety of theoretical approaches and research methods that can be used to address these and other questions in the study of literacy.  Assignments will include reading responses, short written assignments to practice research methods, and a final paper that will be workshopped and revised.  This is a core course for the Writing minor.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2100-01 | MW - Hybrid 10:10-11:00 | HB | Codr, Dwight    

This course provides a broad history of literature written in English up to the end of the eighteenth century. It covers such writers as the Beowulf poet, Marie de France, William Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Oliver Goldsmith, and Thomas Gray. We will read full texts, some excerpts, and watch films to help place these authors and their literary productions into the thousand-year span that saw England go from a violent colonial outpost on the fringes of the former Roman Empire to the most powerful geopolitical unit on the planet. Some of the more specific questions we will ask and attempt to answer include the following:

First: From battles with mythic beasts to criminal adventures to colonial warfare, violence looms large in the British literary tradition. Do literary representations encourage or condemn such violence? What is the relationship between literature and violence? More particularly, what role does literature play in fostering positive or negative ideas about the role of violence in everyday life?

Second: The progress of literary history is inextricably bound up with the politics of gender. In what ways does early British 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: Popular imaginings of England often hinge upon the relation between dignified and wealthy nobles on the one hand and obedient commoners or laborers on the other (the classic dialectics of Masters and Servants, Lords and Vassals, etc.). What role does literature of the period we are studying play in validating or undermining the legitimacy of these social hierarchies? How does literary history reflect and promote the voices of members of the laboring classes? How does the tension between literature’s function as a tool for elite control of the masses and tool of popular resistance play out in terms of both the content and form of literary history?

While these questions – roughly speaking, about violence, gender, and social hierarchies – may seem discrete, students will be encouraged to bring them into relation in two examinations and in short, reflective writings designed to enhance comprehension and foster creative thinking. This class will meet for fifty minutes on Mondays and Wednesdays for discussion and lecture. To foster engagement with the material and to help improve reading comprehension, we will read parts of many texts online and collaboratively prior to class discussions.

2100-02 | MW - Hybrid 11:15-12:05 | Codr, Dwight 

See description for 2100-001

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2101-01 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 | Smith, Victoria

This survey familiarizes the students with British authors from the nineteenth to early twentieth century. Readings cover a wide variety of genres, including the novel, poetry, essay, short story, and drama. In addition to paying attention to genre and literary movements — an endeavor that will involve close attention to texts’ formal elements — we will explore the ways authors represent and respond to their historical, cultural, and political contexts, discussing topics such as nature, art, industrialization, class, nationalism, imperialism, gender, sexuality, science, and war. Throughout, we will examine literature alongside other literary and artistic forms, including newspaper articles, legislation, painting, photography, and the industrial arts. Authors may include Mary Wollstonecraft, John Keats, William Blake, Jane Austen, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and W. B. Yeats, among others. Course texts will include an online anthology accessed through an affordable subscription – cheaper than a print anthology! -- and readings made available online. This course will be discussion based. In addition reading and in-class engagement, assignments include small weekly annotation assignments and a multi-stage research project.

Also offered as: AMST 2200

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2200-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 | 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.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2201W-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Phillips, Jerry

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2203W-01 | MW- Hybrid 1:25 - 2:15| Williams, Erika 

This course will explore a select body of fiction and non-fiction texts gathered under the wide umbrella of U.S. American literature from 1880 to the present time. We will study a range of literary canons including romanticism, modernism, Black modernism, immigrant literature, and women’s literature. And we will engage several genres of writing including fiction, memoir, poetry, and auto-ethnographic performance. We will also supplement our reading by engaging relevant media and art (film, music, painting, etc.) Authors to be studied will likely include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Chesnutt, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ocean Vuong, and Percival Everett. Assignments will include short reflections, a group presentation, a midterm paper (with an opportunity for revision), and a final project.

Also offered as: AMST 2207, HIST 2207

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2207-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45| Phillips, Jerry  

Also offered as: AFRA 2214

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2214-01 | MWF 12:20 - 1:10| 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 will be highly selective, often featuring representative texts and authors from each major period.  Students will learn about the literary development of African American literature and the historical and political forces shaping this development.  Primary texts will be supplemented by scholarly secondary readings and current articles.  Lectures are minimal; class discussion will be our main method.  Final grade based on quizzes, discussion question assignments, midterm exam, participation, 1-2 short essays, final exam, and final essay.

Also offered as: AFRA 2214W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2214W-01 | MW 2:30 - 3:20 Hybrid | Jones, Briona

African American Literature 2214W is a writing intensive course that will focus on the intellectual production of African American and Afro-Diasporic writers, beginning with the 18th century to the present. This course will provide an examination of historical, social, cultural, political, and personal developments shaping established and recent discourses about Black life. This course will also deeply study and traverse topics of gender, sexuality, pleasure, spirituality, selfhood, migration, imperialism, lynching, and anti-black violence. We will closely examine how African American and Afro-Diasporic writers have historically responded to precarity, death, and futurity, through studying essay, speech, sound, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and other forms of writing. We will also study the functions of archives to further understand the various ways in which Black histories have been salvaged and made accessible to the public.

Also offered as: AMST 2274W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2274W-01 | TuTh 5:00 - 6:15 |Brueggemann, Brenda

An interdisciplinary examination of the symbolic roles of disability and the social implications of those roles. The central question for this course: How has disability/embodied difference been understood, imagined, represented, engaged in American literature and culture?  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 activities and assignments:   2 projects, one a posterboard/infographic and the other a (multimodal) presentation;  regular in-class brief writings; two short compositions (approx. 500 words each); shared notetaking (twice).  Major texts include approximately a dozen short articles and chapters (or website posts); screening 4 films (Crip Camp, Deaf Jam, Willowbrook, Lest We Forget: Forgotten Voices); and these full texts:   short op-ed essays in About Us: The Disability Experience from the NYTimes Collection (Catapano & Garland-Thomson, Eds.); novel True Biz (Nović); slave narrative Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (W & E Craft); historical novel Show Me a Sign (LeZotte); play script The Elephant Man (Pomerance).  

Also offered as: AMST 2276W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2276W-01 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 |Knapp, Kathy

In this class, we will focus on predominantly contemporary narratives that complicate our understanding of utopian and dystopian imaginaries by considering texts that are grounded in a realist tradition but which explore their characters’ desires for and efforts toward an alternative future.  This being an American Studies course as well as a literature course, we will read the utopian impulses fueling these novels alongside the ideals and mythologies that have underwritten what it means to be American: as we will discuss, from its inception, the U.S. has been a utopian project that has depended upon gathering some and excluding others by way of an exceptionalist ideology and the heady promises of the so-called American Dream.   We will read novels alongside films and other media as well as a variety of theoretical and cultural readings to ask if not answer a series of questions including but not limited to the following: what is the relationship between utopia and dystopia? Is utopia possible or even desirable? Is there a uniquely American version of utopia, and if so, what values and beliefs sustain it? As we respond to answers to these questions, we will develop our own working definition of the utopian. In addition to substantial reading and consonant with the requirements of a W course, students will write weekly responses, participate in discussion groups, and create three multimodal projects that respond to and extend course material. The hope is that  over the course of the semester, you will come to see that these efforts not only satisfy the requirements of a GenEd, but become building blocks for making a better present and future world. Possible novels and films include Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves; Lauren Groff’s Arcadia, Paul Harding’s This Other Eden, Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible, and Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts. Films might include Judas and the Black Messiah, Leave the World Behind, Don’t Worry, Darling, and Barbie.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2301-01 | MW 9:05 - 9:55 Hybrid| 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. This semester we will focus on contemporary fiction since 2000 that tackles the impacts of globalization, environmental crisis, and mass migration. We will manage new ways of writing history through fiction, the pressure to document the real as well as departures into the fantastic or the speculative. In-person meetings will be discussion driven and the remote component of the hybrid modality will focus on giving you the tools for effective analysis of the texts. The course assignments include reflection papers, PowerPoint presentations, a midterm and a final.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2301W-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Shringarpure, Bhakti

This course will introduce students to literary works written in English and which deliberately engage with the historical context of European colonialism. The class will be centered around the themes of resistance to empire, anti-colonialism and decolonization, global encounters, migration, the dynamics of language, and postcolonial constructions of race, gender and sexuality. We will read short stories, novels and poetry. Some theoretical reading and upto two films will also be included. Authors include Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ama Ata Aidoo, R.K Narayan, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Tayeb Salih, Jennifer Makumbi, Shyam Selvadurai, Derek Walcott and Jamaica Kincaid. Assignments include two short papers (2-3 pages), one 15-minute presentation, midterm paper (6-7 pages) and a final research paper building out of the midterm paper (10 pages).

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2401-01 | MWF 1:25 - 2:15 | 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 different 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 8:00-9:15 | 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.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2405-01 | TuTh 8:00 - 9:15 |Burke, Mary | This course will meet in-person for the majority of the semester with the exception of October 2nd through October 30th. From October 2nd through October 30th this course will meet in an online synchronous format during the scheduled class time.

We will read a variety of plays in chronological order and with an eye to staging, beginning with Greek tragedy. We will progress in chronological order, considering evolutions of genre, theme, and form, concentrating particularly on post-Ibsen (twentieth-century) drama, from Synge’s Irish “Greek” drama Riders to the Sea (1904) to Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun (1959) and Kushner’s Angels in America (1991). Assignments include: two papers and several short writing assignments.  

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2407-01 | MWF 1:25 - 2:15 | Sanchez, Lisa 

This course surveys American, Continental, British, and other significant writers. Our aim is to analyze the short story as art and artifact. Students will study the history and elements of the short story genre; master the key concepts involved in analysis of the genre; and participate in class discussions and group discussions. Grades will be determined by 3 exams and class participation.

2407-02 | MWF 2:30-3:20 | Cordón, Joanne 

Narrative Survival Kit

Joan Didion argues in The White Album that stories are fundamental to our survival: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” This survival benefit is not just personal, but also communal and ethical. Our narrative survey will allow us a glimpse into diverse persons, places, and time periods, and the story topics extend from the tame to the most difficult or sensitive parts of human existence. The book is The Story and Its Writer. Assignments will include participation in class discussion, a midterm creative project, a group presentation, a class debate of the “best” short story, and a final exam.

2407-03 | TuTh 5:00 - 6:15 |Grossman, Leigh

The years from the 1930s through the 1970s were sort of a golden age for commercial short story writers. With a wide range of popular magazines and less competition from television, long-form novels, and the nonexistent internet (though more from movies), you could make a living as a commercial short story writer, and many did. Much of that writing was done, not in glossy literary magazines, but in popular genre magazines ranging from “pulps” to rack-sized digest magazines.

This class will look at some of the best short story writing in genre magazines from the 1930s to today, with a focus on the relationship between the writer and the audience, and the technical side of short story writing. We’ll look less at larger themes than on specific writing techniques and the ways stories achieve particular literary effects, evoke particular emotional responses, and solve particular narrative problems. Each class we will look at one or two stories in context, focusing on what the writer intended to achieve with the story and how they would be read by contemporary audiences.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2408W-01 | MWF 1:25 - 2:15 | Cordon, Joanne

Antagonism & Innovation

This course follows the development of drama from Ibsen to the present, which may sound dull, but the hallmark of modern drama is innovative antagonism, whether because of its daring subject matter, avant-garde forms, or challenging theatrical techniques. Or, as Oscar Wilde puts it in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “the books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” Plays may include Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea, Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, August Wilson’s Fences. Course requirements: Class participation, short writing assignments, four essays, a final portfolio.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2409-01 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 | Winter, Sarah

This course will examine modernist literary experimentation in narrative technique and the representation of human psychology, sexuality, social identity, and consciousness, as well as the changing historical, cultural, media, and aesthetic contexts of novels by Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, and Chinua Achebe. The course will also serve as an introduction to narrative theory. Requirements: midterm exam; final exam; a short critical analysis paper and class presentation; reading and discussion participation; final paper.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2411-01 | MWF 2:30 - 3:20| Somerset, Fiona

You don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy this course–but it helps. This is a course about fandom, and the ways that it allows us to engage creatively and critically with hugely popular stories and the imaginary worlds they create. Millions of people enjoy the Star Wars movies and TV shows and toys and comics and novels. Or they resist them, reject (some parts of) them, parody them, rewrite or redub or remake them, or invent new stories of their own that better express what they want from the Star Wars universe. In this course we’ll try out Star Wars fandom by sampling the movies and TV shows and toys and many other spinoffs. We’ll dip into fan responses, parodies, and fan fiction. We’ll check out documentaries and articles about Star Wars fandom. And we’ll read about fandom and worldbuilding to help us understand and reflect on what we’re seeing. You will be responsible for weekly short written responses in a variety of formats, active participation and engagement in class throughout term, and a final creative or critical project. No midterm or exam.

2411-02 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45| Courtmanche, Jason

For our purposes, Popular Literature will include six novels and one collection of short stories, all by “American” writers, published between 1994 and 2022, so roughly a thirty year period. All the works I have selected deal with controversial subject matter that continues to plague our society and culture, such as racism, sexism, class, and PTSD. Three are works of realistic fiction while the other four all contain elements of the fantastic. Most could be considered dystopian in nature.

We’ll explore why these books are popular, what makes them resonate with contemporary readers, and why we as readers seem so drawn to the dark, the conflicted, and the dystopian.

This is not a W, but expect to write briefly every week on the Discussion Board of our class’ HuskyCT site. EXPECT TO PARTICIPATE IN CLASS DISCUSSION! There is a lot of reading, but it averages out to 22 pages/day or 153 pages/week. Pace yourself and you’ll be fine! We’ll do something fun and creative for the final.

Reading List:

Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods (1994)

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies (1999)

Octavia Butler, Fledgling (2005)

Moshin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)

Colson Whitehead, Zone One (2011)

Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House (2019)

Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark (2022)

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2411W-01 | OA | 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 about adolescence found in these award-winning books. Each student will also create an individual guiding question that will lead them to examine one specific self-selected topic throughout all the texts we read. The15-page writing project will be a series of responses that integrate scholarly publications with these unique guiding questions. This course begins with a close look at two adolescent dystopian novels: The Giver 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 in the second half of the semester with a word and image text: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, 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 a novel in traditional form. Our class requires regular participation in synchronous small group tutorials held via Husky CT’s Collaborate where students will read and respond to peer papers. Graded components include quizzes, tutorial participation, papers, and revisions.

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

This course looks at worldbuilding—building a believable setting that strengthens and deepens the story you want to tell—using recent adult and children’s fantasy literature as a framework. The course looks at the evolution of worldbuilding, both in terms of what authors are trying to accomplish, and what readers expect in a satisfying book (and how you do those things differently for adult and younger audiences). The class will start with works from the fantasy revival of the late 1960s (J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin), through the field’s dramatic changes in the 1990s (Michael Swanwick, Guy Gavriel Kay), with a special focus on major recent authors who are changing the field (Nnedi Okorafor, Sarah Beth Durst, Rebecca Roanhorse). We will also look at some critical writing, and some of the authors you are reading will be guests in the class.

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

2413W-01 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 | Knapp, Kathy

Over the past several decades, critics have come to recognize the value of comics as both an art form and as literature. This course will introduce students to key concepts and a working vocabulary for considering what it means to approach the graphic novel as a hybrid form: what can a graphic novel do that a novel can’t, for instance? And how does narrative shape the way we see? We will read graphic novel criticism alongside a variety of graphic novels and memoirs as we identify the possibilities suggested by a genre that asks us to do several things at once:  we spend more time with and attend more carefully to the page before us as a form of training for developing a new approach to understanding the world around us. Texts we will engage might include Linda Barry’s Making Comics,  Alison Bechdel Fun Home, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics,  Art Spiegelman’s  Maus, and Gene Luen Yang’s  American Born Chinese. This being a course about texts that depend on the interplay between image and words, written assignments will be multimodal, and will be both critical and creative (though no drawing skills are required!).

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

2600-01 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45| Dennigan, Darcie

This course, required for English majors, is an invitation to multifaceted approaches to thinking, writing, and research-- critical and creative, all three! You will be asked to produce one essay (three required drafts, and an option to write a fourth draft), one extended creative piece (two drafts), and one ten-minute presentation. All of these large assignments will build on smaller writing, research, and close reading assignments that you'll do in class or at home. Our touchstones for this work will be Eugene Ionesco's absurdist play The Bald Soprano and Christina Sharpe's book of essays In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. 

2600-02 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15| Dennigan, Darcie

See the description for 2600-01

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

2603-01 | MW 1:25 - 2:15 Hybrid| Dolan Gierer, Emily

The goal of ENGL 2603 is to gain a deeper understanding of the Bible as one of our earliest ancient texts, one which weaves together poetry, history, and personal narrative. We will explore the various literary genres of the Bible, examine the complex characterizations of both God and humans, wrestle with thematic ambiguities around gender, national identity, violence, suffering, and sacrifice, while also developing a better understanding of the narrative conventions of ancient Hebrew writers. This course is open to anyone interested in studying the Bible as one of the most popular and enduring literary texts of all times, and helps fulfill the Early Literary, Cultural, and Linguistic History requirement for English majors. Assignments include regular in-class writings, a mid-term exam, and a final paper. 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2605W-01 | TuTh 11:00 -12:15| Vials, Chris

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, 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, and essays.

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 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 racism in the rise of capitalism in the 17^th and 18^th century.

The second half of the course will shift to a more specific historical focus, as we look at two distinct periods in postwar capitalism: the Keynesian period of ‘reformed capitalism’ from the 1940s to the 1970s, and the neoliberal period that we still inhabit today, which is in many ways a return to laissez-faire (neoliberalism).  As we will discuss in class, the relatively affluent years of the 1950s and 1960s in much of the world saw the emergence of a set of global movements – including the U.S. civil rights movement – that questioned the historical use of race and gender as a markers of class.

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 9:30 - 10:45 | 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?

After surveying the historical fascisms of Germany, Italy, and Japan, we will turn to the United States, where we will devote much of the remainder of the class to exploring U.S. fascist or fascist-like movements.  Much of the class from this point on will be a study of the extreme right in the United States and across the world over the last century, with an eye toward its overlaps with actual fascist movements.

We will also discuss the applicability of the concept of fascism for the United States -- a country with a history of race rooted in settler colonialism, slavery, and immigrant labor.  When does structural racism cross the line into actual fascism?  What’s the relationship between racism and authoritarianism?  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.  What’s the difference between being “against fascism” and being “an antifascist”?  How does antifascism intersect with other politics and movements?  What kinds of action has it involved, and how has this shifted over time?  How productive or counterproductive has it been?  We will trace “antifascism” in the United States from a mass movement in the 1930s based around lobbying, civil rights, and union building to the punk-inspired “antifa” of 1990s and beyond.

Also offered as: DMD 2610

Prerequisites: None.

2610-01 | MW 11:15 - 12:05 Hybrid | Booten, Kyle 

This project-based course will explore how computers can help us to understand literature, history, and other fields of the humanities in new and powerful ways.  Starting with a humanistic topic of their choosing (e.g., a favorite poem or novel, a historical event, a philosophical question), each student will imagine and design a digital game or an interactive, web-based archive that aims to teach the player or user about this topic. Students will prototype these designs with beginner-friendly tools.

The course will also use hands-on activities to introduce other aspects of “the Digital Humanities,” including how to use computational tools to analyze vast quantities of historical or literary data.  Assignments include reading responses, in-class activities, and creative, design-focused midterm and final projects.

No prior technical experience of any kind is required or assumed. Especially welcome are students who are interested in games, design, digital media, or education.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2635E-01 | MW 10:10 - 11:00 Hybrid | Anson, April

Literature and the Environment explores how literature and other forms of writing represent and imagine human relationships to environment, and in turn how environment “takes shape” in human culture through the way we represent it. “Environment” in this course will mean both nonhuman nature and environments built by humans. We will read fiction known as “Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi) from authors such as NK Jemisin, Ursula K LeGuin, and Louise Erdrich, as well as engage nonfiction, poetry, film, and other media. The course will be organized thematically, around concepts like “nature” and “environment” but also notions of conservation, territory, race, and gender that have influenced each other across American history and culture. We will begin with several classic pieces before looking at recent ones that build on—and oftentimes against—this older work. We will ask not just what writers write, but how. We will write short weekly responses, lecture quizzes, a midterm presentation, final exam, and final project of critical analysis.

2635E-02 | Day/Time TBA | Hasenfratz, Robert

Literature and the Environment. We will be investigating ideas about nature and the environment in imaginative literature beginning in the ancient world but focusing more on contemporary and near contemporary literature and thought.  A frame for the course is Amitav Ghosh’s thought-provoking proposal that fiction isn’t or hasn’t up to now been effective in imagining climate change and in building consensus that we have to radically change our energy, food, transport, and agricultural systems.  We will look at foundational ideas about the environment, nature, and industrialization from Western culture with the aid of The Epic of Gilgamesh, poetic forms like Georgics and the Pastoral, essays like Raymond William’s “The Idea of Nature,” and put them in conversation with oppositional ideas indigenous and Native American literature such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braided Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants as well as African American literature and culture in the forms of lyric poetry and Octavia Butler’s speculative novel, Parable of the Sower, which imagines an U.S. American future shaped utterly by climate disaster. Writing projects will include weekly discussion board posts on the readings, a short essay or video project on a literary account of environmental disaster, as well as group presentations, and a final project.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2640-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 | Hasenfratz, Robert    

From Script to Screen

In this course we will explore how film story evolves from literary forms like novels and short stories to film scripts and then to finished films. To get insight into how film stories are shown and narrated, we’ll be reading the screenplays for around 15-20 films and investigating how they changed and evolved before arriving on actual screens.

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 dip into 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 classic films like Nosferatu (Frederich Murnau, 1922), The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949), The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960), Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962), as well as the scripts of later and contemporary film classics like Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989), Little Women (Gretta Gerwig, and Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023). You will respond weekly to readings and screenings in the form of discussion board posts, expand these into accounts of two separate movies of your choice evolved from scripts in various drafts to the finished work, and complete a final project as well.  I’ll consult with the class about the specific scripts and films we’ll look at before finalizing the syllabus.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

This course is only open by instructor consent for students working in the Writing Center

3082-01 | Tonry, Kathleen

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011. Instructor Consent

3091-01 | Arr. | Fairbanks, Ruth  

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011

3115W-01 | TuTh 12:30 -1:45| Marsden, Jean 

The Restoration and eighteenth-century was an age of radical change in Britain; it saw the upheaval of social classes, the explosion of empire, the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the advent of print as a source of profit and power. In this course, we will examine a range of texts that reflect these momentous changes, focusing in particular on the emergence of new voices, especially those of women and of the working classes.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011

3120-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 |Burke, Mary | This course will meet in-person for the majority of the semester with the exception of October 2nd through October 30th. From October 2nd through October 30th this course will meet in an online synchronous format during the scheduled class time.

We will analyze Irish myth and literary forms and themes in their historical, linguistic, and sociopolitical contexts and transitions. Writers will include Merriman, Wilde, Yeats, Gregory, Joyce, and Bowen. We will move from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth-century Irish Cultural Revival and momentum towards political independence in the 1920s. We will examine how Irish writers revived, revised, and rewrote past narratives as a part of a literary nation-making project.

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

Also offered as: AAAS 3212

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

Also offered as: AFRA 3217

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

3217-01 | MWF 11:15 - 12:05 | Salvant, Shawn

A semester-length study of the life and work of James Baldwin. Why should you read James Baldwin now?  His voice continues to influence political commentary and artistic production today.  In addition to recent studies of Baldwin by Eddie Glaude (Begin Again) and others, Baldwin's work has inspired the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me), Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow), and Jesmyn Ward (The Fire This Time) just to name a few.  Black Lives Matter once designed a syllabus around his work (alongside speeches of Malcolm X).  The recent Baldwin documentary I am Not Your Negro was nominated for an Academy Award, and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins produced an adaptation of Baldwin's novel If Beale Street Could Talk.  Why are so many scholars, artists, intellectuals and activists turning to Baldwin now?  This discussion-based course examines the continuing relevance of the thought and work of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers and thinkers of the twentieth century.  Best known for his work produced during the Civil Rights era, Baldwin was a novelist and playwright, literary and cultural critic, and one of the greatest essayists of all time.  Many of the topics that drew Baldwin’s attention remain critical topics of our public discussions: race and racism, economic and social equality, gender and sexual orientation, the social role of the artist, the political role of literary art, as well as alienation, love, and faith.  We will read selected major works by Baldwin and delve into his incredible insights into American race relations in the 1950s and 1960s, but we will also discuss the relevance of his thinking and writing for our own time.  The class features a visit from individuals who knew Baldwin and helped to shape his legacy.  Students should expect frequent assignments and opportunities for discussion.  Lectures are minimal; discussion will be our main method.  The final grade will be based on assignments, a midterm exam, final exam, essay, and class participation.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

3420-01 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 | Smith, Victoria

In this course, we will explore a range of children’s literature in English, including picture books, realism, historical fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and graphic narrative. Our task will be to think critically about what these texts tell us about children’s literature as a genre; what literature for young readers reveals about how we understand childhood, including questions of representation and diversity; and how these books participate in larger movements in history, culture, and art. Our course material will include important texts in the history of the genre but will focus on more recent examples that help us explore the changing landscape of literature for young readers in relation to matters of diversity of representation, such as Show Me a Sign by Anne Clare LeZotte, Melissa by Alex Gino, and Dreamers by Yuyi Morales. Please note that this is not a course on teaching children’s literature to young people. We may touch on the role of children’s literature in education, but we will not be discussing teaching practices. This will be a discussion-based course. In addition to engaged and thoughtful class participation, students will complete a series of three research and writing assignments across the semester.

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

3422-01 | MW10:10-11:00 Hybrid Online Synchronous | Cormier, Emily

In Young Adult Literature we study both the origins of this genre and the most recent contributions, as well as multiple scholarly articles that offer windows into overarching genre questions (What is YA Lit?) and current scholarly trends (How do contemporary scholars write about YA Lit?). Students also conduct their own research into the scholarship of the book of their choice, create their own arguments, and test out their own voices and perspectives. Together, we read a book from most decades, starting in the 1950s, trying to piece together how audiences, power dynamics, publishing trends, and popular ideologies of adolescence shift over time. We pay special attention to how race, sex, gender, class, and sexuality influence the hierarchies, anxieties, problems, and even the joys of YA texts. Early books include The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar; later books include the graphic novels Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me and Dragon Hoops. In between we will read a selection of books from the 80s, 90s, and first two decades of this century, including Marilyn Nelson’s book of formal poetry, A Wreath for Emmett Till. Forms of assessment include midterm exam, final exam, weekly analytical responses, small group discussion leadership, and class participation.

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

3503-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 | Mahoney, Charles

An intensive study of Shakespeare’s plays across a variety of genres (history, tragedy, “problem play,” Roman plays, romance) with attention both to many of Shakespeare’s major characters (e.g. Juliet, Hamlet, Richard III, King Lear, Prospero) and to many of the predominant features of his dramatic style, in terms of the architecture of individual plays as well as the components of his technique (such as soliloquies, metatheatricality, dramatic irony, et cetera). We will also selectively consider criticism of Shakespeare from the eighteenth century (e.g. Samuel Johnson), the nineteenth century (e.g. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Anna Jameson), and the twentieth (e.g. A. C. Bradley and T. S. Eliot). Plays likely to be considered include Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Likely requirements will include regular attendance and active participation, short quizzes, short papers, and a final examination.

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

3601-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Biggs, Frederick   

Also offered as LLAS 3233

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

3607-01 | MWF 11:15 - 12:05| Sanchesz, Lisa   

This course is an introduction to literatures of communities considered “Latino” in the U.S. This nomenclature is highly contested and often misunderstood. For literary historians, Latinas and Latinos refer to American citizens living in regions annexed by the U.S., through warfare, in the nineteenth century (primarily the Northern Mexican territories in 1848 and Puerto Rico in 1898) and their descendants, wherever they live in the U.S. The term also includes migrants to the U.S. from Latin America during the twentieth century, whether they are U.S. citizens, residents, guest workers, or denizens. Latinos are a heterogeneous group; some are of European descent, some are of African descent, some are of Native American descent, some are of Asian descent, and some are of a mix of these and other regional, national, ethnic, or religious identities. What unites Latinos as a group is that the U.S. government, the U.S. mainstream media, and U.S. popular culture tend to mark them as a distinct (and inferior or dehumanized) ethnic group. Latino studies critically addresses the character and history of that marking.

Our main focus this semester is to explore the literature of the Puerto Rican diaspora.

This course is a study of a subaltern American literary tradition. Students will learn how and why the aesthetic, cultural, historical, geographical, and ethical complexities of this body of writing matter to contemporary readers. Grades will be determined by 3 exams and class participation.

Also offered as: HEJS 3629

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to sophomores or higher. Not open to students who have passed ENGL 3623 or 3619 taught as Holocaust literature

3629-01 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 | Breen, Margaret

It has been nearly 80 years since the end of World War II, during which over 6 million Jews—60% of European Jewry—were murdered. Other groups were also targeted; they include Communists, Jehovah Witnesses, Sinti-Roma, Afro-Germans, homosexuals, Poles, and people with disabilities. That historical event remains an ongoing phenomenon through its resultant cultural production.  The Holocaust lives today even as the events and people connected to it become part of the past.  The literature calls to awareness in our present moment while its history still unfolds.

The subtitle for this course is “Testimony, Memory, Survival, and Legacy,” and accordingly we will read pay special attention to the range of voices who have recorded their experiences and memories of genocidal atrocity. What does it mean to be a survivor? What is the legacy of survivor testimony?  Even as we contemplate the horrors of genocide, hope and endurance will serve as our recurring themes.  We will interrogate the meanings of “altruism,” “rescue,” “resistance” and “humanitarianism” – and “survival” -- at individual and collective levels.  What do studies of “survival” teach us about community and human relationship?

In studying literature of the Holocaust, we will explore how trauma shapes identity and consider the commitment to write: to document the unspeakable.  We will examine memoirs across a variety of literary genres, including essays, poetry, and fiction, and in documentary films.  All of these works share an absolute imperative – at times even a compulsion – to tell and witness stories of the Holocaust, whether experienced directly or inherited. If is true, as Elie Weisel claims, that at Auschwitz not only man died but the idea of man, how do we now conceive of the human?  How do we survive?  As readers, viewers, and listeners, we witness the human spirit’s drive to remember and be remembered.

Likely Assignments: Midterm; Museum Project; Group Project; Final Essay or Creative Project

Also offered as: HRTS 3631W

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

3631W-01 | MW 10:10 - 11:00 Hybrid| Coundouriotis, Eleni

The refugee is a foundational figure for humanitarianism. This course focuses on how we tell the stories of refugees and migrants. We will examine the figures of the refugee and the migrant as they appear in stories about them. The focus will be on the analysis of narrative modes across different media (literature, film, long-form journalism, photography, etc). We will frame our discussion with attention to legal, historical, philosophical and journalistic discourses that address the plight of refugees. Frequently rendered stateless, refugees are among the most vulnerable populations. With migrants, they occupy highly contentious spaces such as camps, remain in legal limbo for extended periods (sometimes generations), and frequently suffer from trauma, having survived events of extreme violence. The course will trace the development of humanitarian thought on refugees through various story-telling strategies that have been adopted by displaced persons and others speaking on their behalf. Paper assignments will include a photo essay. The W component of the course requires 15 pages of revised writing. In person meetings will be discussion driven. The remote component of this hybrid course will focus on explaining the conceptual terms and theory that we will use to analyze the primary texts as well as strategies for the writing assignments.

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

3701-01 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 | 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 9:30 -10:45 |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 novels and/or short story collections. For a permission number, please e-mail Professor Litman at ellen.litman@uconn.edu.

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

Also offered as: DMD 3830, DRAM 3145

3707-01 | MW 4:40 - 7:10 |Staff 

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.

4600W-01 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 | Brueggemann, Brenda

Disability in Children's and Young Adult Literature

We will engage children's and YA Lit classics (Jane Eyre [Brontë] The Secret Garden [Hodgson] ) and move then to the explosion of disability narratives and disabled characters in current children's and YA Lit in the last two decades: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Haddon), Wonder (Palacio), Wonderstruck (Selznick) , All Ways (by current UConn grad student, K Coons), El Deafo (Bell), Show Me a Sign (LaZotte), True Biz (Nović) --alongside screening film and theater performance clips for some of these texts.    Writing for the course will include: multimodal annotations and discussion leadership on chosen texts; a shared class (creative and critical) blog; and a final project.

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.

4613W-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Breen, Margaret

Queer Literary Resistance

“Queer Literary Resistance” is the theme of our LGBTQ+ literature capstone. This course seeks to introduce readers to a range of LGBTQ+ texts: American, British, Asian, and Native American. These works reveal something of their cultures’ understanding of same-sex, non-heterosexual, transgender and queer subject positions or identifications, and all enact some form or forms of stylistic and representational resistance in order to write about queer experience.

The course will likely include, but not be limited to, the following texts: Maurice by E. M. Forster, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, Zami by Audre Lorde, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, Bestiary by K-Ming Chang, Real Life by Brandon Taylor.

Likely Assignments: one 5-page essay; one 10-12 research essay; one annotated bibliography