Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1101W-01 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45| Biggs, Fred 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011

1103W-01 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45| Tonry, Kathleen

Prerequisites: None

Also offered as: AMST 1201, HIST 1503

1201-01 | MW 12:30 - 1:45 | Capshaw, Kate 

This introduction to the field of American Studies explores the principles, myths, failures, and possibilities of American identity. We will analyze a variety of texts and deploy approaches drawn from literary studies, history, ethnic studies, gender studies, media studies, and art history in order to think with care about the frameworks that define American experience. Expect to discuss race, class, gender, ethnicity, material culture, political and social history, and media. Students will write in-class and take-home assignments, as well as quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam. Class participation is highly valued. Use of AI is prohibited in all work in the class.

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

1401-01 | W 5-7:30 | Barreca, Gina

This course, designed for serious readers of fiction and for students eager to improve their skills in critical thinking and writing, will focus on horror as a genre of literature. We’ll discuss how words on a page can make the flesh creep on your arm. We’ll examine how plots are resurrected, brought out of the past to live again, and what happens to stories when they appear in new shapes and contexts. We’ll exchange ideas about whether evil exists in places, persons, things, patterns, or in thought—or all on its own. We will, as Margaret Atwood would put it, “negotiate with the dead” and learn how certain kinds of stories emerge and why they refuse to leave us.  

We’ll be reading books by Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, and others. Attendance is mandatory. No electronic devices are permitted for use in the classroom; no exceptions. You will purchase and bring to class hard copies of the texts under discussion and you will take handwritten notes in your notebooks. There are frequent graded writing assignments which must be completed in-class, an in-class midterm and an in-class final.

1401-02 | MW 10:10-11:00 with discussion sections on Friday | Semenza, Gregory

This course focuses on the theory and history 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 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?

The course schedule is organized into two (somewhat overlapping) sections on Theory and History.  In the Theory section, we’ll pursue topics of special interest--such as the depiction of women in the horror film--in great depth and in relation to multiple films.  In the History section, we’ll work 1) to situate emblematic, groundbreaking, and/or influential films in relation to their specific subgenres and cultural-historical moments; and 2) to trace the development of the genre over time.

Please note that this course is not for the squeamish.  Many of the films contain graphic violence and gore, strong sexual content (including sexual violence), and generally disturbing themes.  I will do my best each week to help you anticipate any unusually graphic content, but please note that, in many ways, disturbing content is precisely the focus of this course.

Assignments include weekly reading and screening, serious notetaking in lectures, participation, a group project, a midterm, and a final examination.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

1601W-01 | TuTh 8:00 - 9:15 | McLain, Adam

If we agree with critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer that popular culture is similar to a factory producing standardized goods meant to manipulate society into passivity, what they call “the culture industry,” then we understand what it is that makes us lackadaisical and “brainrotted.” However, we do not need to accept Adorno and Horkheimer’s assessment—much has changed and much has stayed the same since they forwarded their ideas about popular culture. How might we see the idea of the culture industry play out in today’s popular culture? How do we see today’s popular culture fighting against this idea (or do we)? Using the lenses of race and gender, this class attempts to wrestle with what this idea of a culture industry means in our viral-oriented and virtual-based culture and what liberatory practices might be created in response.

The course is split into two parts. In part 1, the course develops some theoretical and philosophical approaches to race, gender, and the culture industry. Each class uses a class discussion around the assigned texts. Along with excerpts from philosophical and theoretical essays, texts are expansive and not limited to specific genres: potential texts include short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, Ted Chiang, and others (science fiction), Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer (an emotion picture), and Franny Choi’s Soft Science (poetry). In part 2, students engage with different parts of their own culture industries by taking the lead in the course. Students will choose a specific day that will be their day to assign the reading, develop a lesson plan, and present their work through a discussion of the assigned reading. Assignments include short response papers, class leadership around a specific text, and two longer research/response papers that include a revision component.

1601W-02 | MW 11:15 - 12:05 Hybrid Limited | Williams, Erika 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2013W-02 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 |Bugingo, Margaret 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2055WE-01|MWF 10:10 - 11:00 | Ziolkowski, Lauren  

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2100-01 |TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Hasenfratz, Bob    

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2101-01 |MW 2:00 - 3:15 | Nakhle, Marie Nour

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2107-01 |TuTh 3:30 - 4:45| Codr, Dwight 

The British Empire, Slavery, and Resistance focuses upon literature that encouraged and/or criticized the rise of the British empire and the institution of slavery for which it was largely responsible (roughly 1550-1833). Texts to be studied include a variety of genres, including travel writings, novels, essays, poems, and plays. This course will focus in particular on the empire's preparations for enslavement, the means and literary forms it used to justify and defend slavery, how slavery was represented in literary texts, and, most importantly, literary responses to slavery by Black writers. Each text for this course has been chosen with care and consideration. The primary goal is to introduce students to some of the attitudes that gave rise to England’s – later, Britain’s – imperial ambitions, to study the ways that the empire justified itself, and to bear witness to the damage it inflicted on the planet by way reading the voices of people who were its victims. What we will hear in those voices are not just sounds of woe; we will find memories of resilience and expressions of both strength and endurance.

Authors to be covered may include William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn, Olaudah Equiano, Quobna Ottabah Cuguano, James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Briton Hammon, Phillis Wheatley, and Mary Prince. Course requirements include short writings, a presentation, and an exam.

2107-02 |TuTh 3:30 - 4:45| Codr, Dwight 

Honors

See description above and contact instructor for additional honors requirements.

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.

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

In this course we will study important works of American literature from the turn of the twentieth century to the present.

The six books assigned for the course will be studied as masterworks of the novel. What all of these works have in common is that they are gorgeously wrought and ethically charged explorations of the American experience. Some are or were controversial. We will study them in pairs. The first two texts (Wharton and Dreiser) narrate the experiences of single young women in the industrialized American city at the turn of the twentieth century. One is born into wealth then experiences a downward economic spiral (in New York) and another is working class but has a quick launch into relative wealth (in Chicago then New York). The next couple (Williams and Faulkner), published during the 1920s and 30s, explore the legacy of United States history (colonialism, slavery, and the Civil War); both titles are also radical experiments in form. The final duo (Danticat and Erdrich) are two recent and extraordinary historical novels by a first-generation (Haitian American) refugee and a first nation (Turtle Mountain band Chippewa) American. Besides the exquisite artistry of these novels, both authors offer a subaltern woman’s view of twentieth-century American life.

Our approaches to these texts will range from historical, sociological, and psychological theories to various philosophical schools of literary criticism. Issues of race, violence, inter- generational trauma, class, gender, and sexuality will be discussed as well, since they are core topics in contemporary American literary studies.

Grades determined by three in-class exams and a class participation grade.

Also offered as: AMST 2207, HIST 2207

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 

2207-01 | MWF 12:30 - 1:20| Vials, Christopher

Through much of its modern history, mainstream commentary in the United States tends to treat "empires" as properties of other nations and other times, as in the "British Empire," the "Roman Empire," the "Ottoman Empire," etc.   But what does it mean to be an empire?  How might that term apply to the United States, both past and present?

Using literature and other sources, we will begin by discussing the country’s origins as a settler colony and how this has established deep cultural patterns which inform Americans’ sense of the world to this day.  Much of the course will focus on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when US capitalism became "global" in a new way following industrialization, and mainstream discourse focused on "new frontiers" in places like the Philippines, China, Hawaii, and Latin America.  As we will discuss, the pursuit of "overseas markets" often goes hand and hand with war.

But as the title suggests, the class is equally focused on "culture."  So we will also explore how relationships of domination in the world outside US borders came to influence politics, beliefs, demographics, and everyday lives inside them, and vice-versa.  From the "export" of Jim Crow to the Philippines after 1898 to the impact of Global South decolonization on civil rights and immigration, from the forcible creation of free trade zones abroad to closures of factories at home, and from the military-industrial complex to the manosphere, we'll see that "foreign" and "domestic" are often deeply entangled.

Literature is an excellent way to illustrate and explore these questions, and it will be our main source matter.  We will pay special attention to how indigenous writers and writers of color have articulated "empire" and its impact on their lives.   Readings will also be interdisciplinary in scope, inclusive of literature, popular literature, essays, speeches, and secondary work by historians and American Studies scholars.

Also offered as: AFRA 2214

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2214-01 | MWF 10:10-11:00| Salvant, Shawn 

2214-02 | MWF 10:10 - 11:00| Fasipe, Emmanuel 

Also offered as: AMST 2274W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2274W-01 | MW 12:30- 1:45 Hybrid |Duane, Anna Mae 

Also offered as: AMST 2276

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 

2276-01 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15| Benevento, Brandon

How do labor, science, technology, and politics factor in utopian and dystopian fictions? Representations of work, the role of institutions, images of post-work futurism, strains of Luddism—these will shape our exploration of a few classic texts such as William Morris’s News from Nowhere, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, and Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood. From there, we’ll turn to more recent novels, short stories, and films, potentially including Allan Moore, Stephen King, Emily St. John Mandel, Ling Ma, Colson Whitehead, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, and Boots Riley. Students will take notes for every reading, participate in class discussion, write in-class responses, and take two exams.

Also offered as: AMST 2276W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 

2276W-01 | MWF 10:10 - 11:00| Perniciaro, Leon

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2301-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 | Benevento, Brandon

How do nations, cities, families and individuals manage the legacy and perpetuation of imperialism? How does literature represent—or even contribute to—the promise and challenge of decolonization, new nationhood, and emigration? These questions will shape our exploration of several late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century post-colonial texts. Using a selection of English-language novels from around the world (as well as a few other forms of writing and representation) this course explores decolonization, nation-building, and emigration, particularly at the intersections of economics, race, religion, and sexuality. Potential writers include Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Babsi Sidhwa, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, Jamaica Kincaid, Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, RF Kuong, and the Brixton Black Women’s Collective. Students will take notes for every reading, participate in class discussion, write short in-class responses, and take two exams.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2401-01 | MW 12:30-1:20|Hybrid|Forbes, Sean 

2401-02 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 | 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 | T 5:00 - 7:30 | Pelizzon, V. Penelope     

This course is an introduction to the delights of poetry in English. It’s designed to familiarize you with a range of poetic forms and modes from the 16th- through the 21st- centuries. We’ll read, discuss, and write about different kinds of poems, learning to appreciate their wealth of rhythms, figures, and rhetorical effects. Central to this course is learning to hear poems: we’ll listen to poems aloud in class, at visiting writer events, and online. You’ll also memorize and recite poems yourself, since memorization allows you inside a poem in a rather magical way. Participants should expect weekly quizzes, several short writing projects, memorization and recitation of short poems, a midterm, and a final, exam.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2401W-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 |Pieratti, Danielle

This course will offer an introductory survey of poetry in English, beginning with a brief overview of Anglophone poetic tradition followed by a more sustained exploration of English-language poetry and poetry in translation from the Victorian period to the present. Analyses will be grounded in an approach that demystifies the reading of poetry, making room for the strange, experimental, or otherwise “inaccessible” in our encounters with unfamiliar forms. Coursework will include close reading, discussion, collaboration, written analysis, and the drafting and revising of research papers.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2405-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Winter, Sarah

Honors Section

This course emphasizes the role of drama as theater – works written to be performed. In contrast to other forms of literature, drama was created as words to be heard and actions to be seen, three-dimensional and experienced in real time. Through intensive reading of major plays from classical Greek drama to the present, and exploration of differing styles of staging and performance, we will study dramatic genres such as tragedy, comedy, the history play, melodrama, one-act plays, epic theater, and theater of the absurd. By viewing videos of plays in performance and attending at least one production on campus, we will gain familiarity with changing theatrical conventions, including costuming, theater architecture, scenic design, lighting, staging, and acting styles from ancient theater to the present. Creative options for in-class activities and coursework will explore how plays were originally staged as well as consider the possibilities for staging them today in new cultural, social, and political contexts and new kinds of media. Assignments will include: a group presentation on the staging and performance of a play, with a short paper; a longer comparative paper on tragedy or comedy, or a rewriting of a scene from a play with a commentary on performance; take-home midterm; final exam; class discussion participation; and a review of an on-campus performance.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2407-01 | MWF 11:15 - 12:05 | Cordon, Joanne

Storytelling= Survival

In The White Album, Joan Didion argues that stories are fundamental to our existence: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” If stories do allow us to persist in our chaotic contemporary world, then the survival benefit is not just personal, but also communal and ethical. Our narrative survey will allow us a glimpse into diverse persons, places, time periods, and topics, including the most sensitive. The text you will need to buy is The Best Short Stories of 2025, edited by Edward P. Jones; we will also consider short story classics by writers such as Anton Chekov and Guy de Maupassant, as well as their American counterparts such as Todi Cade Bambara, Shirley Jackson, and Ursula K. LeGuin. Requirements include participation in class discussion, leading class discussion for one story with a group of classmates, a midterm creative project, an end-of-the-semester debate of the “best” short story, and a final exam.

2407-02 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 | Sanchez, Lisa

This course surveys American 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 determined by three in-class exams and a class participation grade.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2408W-01 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Burke, Mary 

We will read a variety of modern plays with an eye to staging and to how theatre in the twentieth century both departs from and harks back to the drama of preceding eras. Progressing in chronological order, we consider evolutions of genre, theme, form, and politics in drama from a variety of national traditions, from Henrik Ibsen through J.M. Synge and on to Susan Glaspell, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, the postwar British “Angry Young Men” (and women) scene, and Lorraine Hansberry. Coursework will consist of a practice essay, a midterm paper, response papers, group discussion, and a final assessment.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

2409-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15| Breen, Margaret

2409-02 | Tu 5:00 - 7:30| Barreca, Gina 

Some of the most important novels written published during the last 100 years, the books we’ll read in this class will be one you’ll remember for the rest of your lives. Recognized for the complexity of their characters and the power of their narratives, these works demand word-by-word, page-by-page close reading and sharp critical attention. Attendance is mandatory. No electronic devices are permitted; no exceptions. There will be regular in-class writings, an in-class midterm, and an in-class final. Hard copies of every book under discussion must be brought to every session, and part of your grade will depend on your performance during class discussions.

Novels will include ON THE BEACH, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, THE DEATH OF THE HEART, COLD COMFORT FARM, WHITE TEETH, and others.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 

2411-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Cormier, Emily

This section of Popular Literature will focus on historical fiction with gothic elements.  Expect novels featuring ghosts and hauntings across multiple time periods and locations. Our coursework will also include criticism to widen our knowledge of how scholars have seen the role of the gothic in literary studies and/or popular culture. We will read examples from bestselling literary fiction to exciting page turners to better understand how and why specters and phantasms capture the minds of readers. Assessment in this course will include blue-book quizzes and tests (not administered through HuskyCT), as well as in-class writing and class presentations. You will be expected to bring a notebook and the physical copy of the book we are reading to class.  No laptops or phones will be permitted during class, and no digital copies of the books will be permitted.

2411-02 | TuTh 12:30 -1:45 | Cormier, Emily

See description for 2411-01

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011 

2600-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45| Smith, Victoria Ford 

This course will introduce you to literary studies as a field and a practice. Broadly, our aims will be to think about what literary studies does, how it does it, and what it might do for you as a thinker, reader, and writer, at UConn and beyond. Some of the questions we will consider include:

• What approaches can we take to texts that help us understand them in complex ways?
• What are the affordances and limitations of those methodologies?
• How can we locate, understand, and join the conversations scholars in our field?
• What tools are available to stage arguments about texts that are persuasive, engaged, and meaningful?

While it’s impossible to survey the entirety of literary studies in one semester, you’ll have the opportunity to read about and practice a range of ways of thinking and writing important to literary studies, from close reading to archival research to analyses steeped in book history, queer and feminist theory, historicism, and postcolonial theory. Our course reading list will be based on fairy tales and adaptations, from the eighteenth century to present, and will include literary texts (short stories, poetry, novels) and visual texts (illustrations, graphic narrative, a small bit of film). Fairy tales are useful as texts that are both familiar, as cultural touchstones, and as deeply uncanny, ripe for close analysis as they shift and morph over time and form. We’ll also be reading a significant amount of literary criticism and theory.

In addition to engaged and thoughtful class participation, students will engage in frequent, low-stakes writing assignments; a longer research project and the thinking, research, and drafting that entails, much completed in class; and reflective writing about the course and their own work.

2600-02 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45| Knapp, Kathy

This course introduces you to the field of literary studies and its central questions and methodologies. That’s a tall order: no single course can provide an overview of literary history, a guide to prosody and poetics, and a full sense of the spectrum of literary theory. This course will, however, give you a sense not only of how literary scholars approach texts, but why. We will engage a variety of different theoretical and analytical approaches and apply these to recent essays, novels, and films, focusing on what is involved in composing a literary critique and engaging with other literary scholars, and, it must be said, the larger world. This course is meant to launch you on your way by providing key terms and a skeletal framework to help you commence doing the things that English majors do: we will read critically, write critically, and think critically about the texts before us, recognizing that the more we practice these interrelated skills and develop an ever deeper contextual pool, the more difficult and gratifying the work becomes. Further, I’ve organized our reading and writing around a single keyword: value. I won’t presume to know why you’ve chosen to major in English, but I will assert that the discipline invites us to discern what, and who, we value as individuals and as a culture. My hope is that our classroom community emerges from our time together over the semester with a provisional sense of narrative’s power not merely to reflect and critique our world, but to shape it.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011  

2603-01 | MW 12:30 - 1:20 Hybrid| Dolan Gierer, Emily

The goal of this course is to understand the Bible as one of our earliest literary 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 daily quizzes, weekly journals,  a mid-term exam, and a final paper.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011  

2605-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 | Phillips, Jerry

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011  

2605W-01 | MWF 11:15 - 12:05 | Gregory, Patrick

Also offered as: CLCS 2609

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

2609-01 | MWF 10:10 - 11:00 | Vials, Christopher  

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.

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 that moved from fringe to mainstream.

We will 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?

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011  

2616-01 | MW 12:20-1:10 Hybrid |Booten, Kyle

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011  

2635E-01 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 | 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 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.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011  

2640-01 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45| Tribble, Lyn

This class explores the Hollywood musical from its beginning in the sound era of cinema to the present. Often dismissed as mere entertainment, the American film musical has a complex history, raising questions of national identity, race, and gender. Filmmakers turned a theatrical form into a distinctive cinematic experience, using music, dance, sound to tell stories in registers not available to more conventional forms.  A major focus of the class will be on adaptation, the process by which narrative or cinematic sources are transformed into musical experiences. We will examine the origins of the musical as Hollywood adopted sound; the exploration of musical and dance forms characteristic of the 1930s; the rise of the Technicolor musical and its decline in the 1960s, and the new and hybrid musicals that emerged thereafter. Attention will also be paid to the business side of the industry and the relationship between Broadway and Hollywood.

Among the films we will study include: Gold Diggers of 1933; Top Hat; Snow White; The Wizard of Oz; Meet Me in St. Louis; Stormy Weather;  Singin' in the Rain; West Side Story; Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; The Sound of Music; Cabaret; Jesus Christ Superstar; Little Shop of Horrors; Beauty and the Beast; Chicago; LaLa Land. Students are required to view films in advance and to read and respond to critical and theoretical readings posted on HuskyCT.

Requirements: Viewing logs; a 'pitch' for a musical you would like to see on the syllabus; a notebook for your reactions to the films and critical articles; a midterm and a final; and a treatment for a musical adaptation of a literary work (novel, play, poem); a non-musical film or television show; or a historical or contemporary event with which you are familiar.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011  

2645-01 | MW 12:30 - 1:20 with Friday discussion| Semenza, Greg

Charlie Chaplin, King Kong, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, It’s A Wonderful Life, Marilyn Monroe, Alfred Hitchcock: these are just some of the important films and figures associated with the “Classical Hollywood Cinema.” The term refers to a style of filmmaking that dominated international markets from the 1910s through the 1960s, forever changing how people think about movies, the United States, and its inhabitants.

This course seeks to understand, analyze, and creatively explore an American artform and industry whose global influence would be impossible to overstate. In its basic form and concept, the course is broadly interdisciplinary, blending artistic, historical, philosophical, economic, and political modes of inquiry (to mention a few) to construct the most complete picture of a multi-billion-dollar industry whose cultural impact and complexity demand a diverse range of approaches and methods to be grasped. We will be required to wrestle with the ways in which, say, either complementary or conflicting creative, financial, and political priorities interact in specific historical moments to produce certain trends and specific products.

The sheer scope of Hollywood’s impact also demands that we come to terms with filmmaking as a collaborative artform that usefully challenges common assumptions and theories about art versus entertainment, art versus business, and globally- versus locally-oriented forms of commerce, communication, and expression. Such a study of collaboration will, in turn, be amplified and celebrated by multiple course assignments that teach us the value, and challenges, of learning and creating together—as well as conceptualizing and packaging our ideas and projects so that they can reach their ideal audiences.

Assignments include weekly reading and screening, serious notetaking in lectures, participation, a group project, a midterm, and a final examination.

This class will count toward the Film Minor.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 

301oW-01 | TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 | Pieratti, Danielle 

Advanced Composition for Prospective Teachers is a course designed for students interested in careers in education, such as Secondary English Education majors, dual degree students in English and Education, and English majors thinking of pursuing teaching. Students will study current approaches to composition, respond to research, and reflect on their own literacy. Readings will include articles on the history of writing instruction, contemporary composition theory, and literacy education by authors such as Peter Elbow, Gloria Anzaldua, Vershawn Ashanti Young, bell hooks, and others. In addition to reading and discussion, coursework includes regular reflections as well as three major revised projects, one of which will be collaborative.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011; open to juniors or higher. Cannot be taken for credit after passing ENGL 3011.  

3012-01 | TuTh 5:00 - 6:15 | Grossman, Leigh 

Where do books come from? This advanced publishing course delves into how book publishing works, and all of the steps a manuscript goes through in becoming a book or ebook—and why some books sell to mainstream publishers while others don't. The course also touches on the skills necessary to break into and to be successful in the publishing field, whether as a line editor, production editor, writer, agent, publicist, or other creative position. A number of publishing professionals will be on hand as guest lecturers on specific topics, and to answer questions.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.

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

3082-01 | Deans, Tom 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 . Instructor Consent

3091-01 | Arr. | Fairbanks, Ruth  

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011

3117W-01 | TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 | Igarashi, Yohei 

This course is an introduction to British Romantic literature. Though Romanticism was a relatively brief movement—approximately from 1785 to 1832—it was also a momentous one. We approach Romantic-era writing by examining competing and complementary ways of imagining human life during this period: in relation to the natural world and other species; from economic perspectives; according to philosophical treatises; in the context of slavery and abolition; as social beings; in connection with pleasure, pain, beauty and other aesthetic and affective experiences; as political subjects; and more. We consider how literary works shaped and contested these different understandings of the human, and how Romantic-era notions of the human continue to condition our world. Readings include one or two novels by Jane Austen, the slave narrative The History of Mary Prince (1831), canonical poems (with a focus on works by William Wordsworth and John Keats), personal essays, and contemporaneous philosophical, scientific, and political writing.

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

3122W-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Burke, Mary 

This course introduces a broad range of Irish literature in English (and, to a lesser extent, in translation from the Irish) since 1939. Students will explore themes and subjects such as post-colonialism and social change, examining particularly how authors in the post-independence (post-1922) Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland contended with inherited traditions. Readings will be situated in the context of Irish history, politics, and linguistic and cultural traditions. Fiction, drama, and poetry by writers such as Bowen, O'Brien, Heaney, Ní Dhomhnaill, Tóibín, McDonagh, and Rooney will be included. Coursework will consist of a practice essay, a midterm paper, response papers, group discussion, and a final assessment.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011. Not open to students who have completed ENGL 3119.  

3123W-01 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 | Smith, Victoria 

What does it mean for a century to end and a new one to begin? Thomas Hardy, in 1900, bemoaned “the Century’s corpse outleant,” but really, that dead body doesn’t do this period justice. There was a lot happening as the 1890s progressed into the twentieth century. Queer writers questioned the boundaries of sex and gender alongside women authors who weighed the freedom of the workplace and the vote against the expectations of the home and the nursery. Photographers tried out their new technology by capturing images of dead bodies, ghosts, and fairies. Technological innovations like the telegraph, new art forms like film, and scientific theories like relativity likely made it feel like voices were detached from bodies, like bodies were detached from time. And then World War I transformed everything: the rise of modern warfare not only traumatized an entire generation but also introduced the sounds of machine guns into a soundscape already buzzing with the clamor of growing cities and the atonal orchestrations of experimental composers. 

In this course, we’ll explore some of this period’s most dramatic conflicts and conversations in science, art, politics, and gender in this tumultuous period of cultural history. Our work will be rooted in literature considered both “highbrow” and “lowbrow”  — novels, short stories, poetry, drama, children’s literature, popular magazines — but we’ll branch out into an array of cultural forms, including painting, photography, music, and dance, primarily from England but occasionally from the US and across Europe. A selection of creators who may appear on our syllabus: Oscar Wilde, Amy Levy, Max Beerbohm, H. G. Wells, Radclyffe Hall, Claude McKay, Pablo Picasso, Siegfried Sassoon, Igor Stravinsky, and Virginia Woolf. In addition to engaged class participation and reading, coursework will include a series of writing assignments building toward a 10- to 12-page research paper. 

Also offered as AAAS 3212

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011; 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.

Also offered as AFRA 3217W.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.

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

Also offered as AMST 3265W.

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

3265W-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45| Anson, April 

 This interdisciplinary research and writing-centered class will focus on the role of LAND to what is considered America or American. The class will provide an introduction and overview of research methods in American Studies. We will read foundational and contemporary research as well as discuss fiction, film, poetry, and other forms of artistic representation. Students will write weekly responses, two short research assignments, a midterm, and a final exam. Course time will be used for short lectures, class discussion, group work, and individual presentations. This course is open to anyone. There are no recommended prerequisites.

Also offered as AMST 3267W

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.

3267W-01 | MW 5:00 - 6:15| Reynolds, Kristen 

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

3301-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Biggs, Fred 

3320-01 | Online Asynchronous | Moores, Donald

In this course we will attempt the impossible: to survey the literature and culture of India in one semester. Because we are limited to fourteen weeks, our engagement with the subcontinent must be restricted to a representative sampling and thus include a few works while excluding many others. To this end, we will engage Indian history, religion/philosophy, poetry, film, and fiction. Readings and media include short documentaries, two influential sacred texts (the Upanishads and the Gita), a medieval poet, a Nobel Prize-winning modern poet, three award-winning films, and a novel by Nobel Prize-winning novelist V. S. Naipaul. Please know that India, throughout most of its history, has remained a plurality. To refer to India is to prompt the question: Which India? The subcontinent is a diverse amalgam of cultures, each with different languages, values, assumptions, and ideologies. During the semester, we will skim the surface of an immeasurable deep ocean. I hope the material will motivate students to take further dives on their own.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.

3420-01 | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15| Sembu, Kazuki

This course explores representations of children and animals in British literature, examining how writers and other figures have imagined and depicted them. We will address critical questions concerning children and animals (or more broadly, nonhumans), analyzing how British writers negotiated these concepts under the influence of shifting social conventions. Our primary focus will be on 18th- and 19th-century children’s literature by writers such as Sarah Trimmer, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Aikin and Anna Barbauld, Edward Augustus Kendall, Charles Kingsley, Lewis Carroll, Ouida, Christina Rossetti, and Anna Sewell, while also engaging with some writers outside this period. Covering fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and other media, these texts provide a critical framework for considering various issues concerning children and animals, connecting historical perspectives to our contemporary world.

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

3422-01 | Online Asynchronous | Cormier, Emily

3422-02 | Online Asynchronous | Cormier, Emily

Prerequisite: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.  

3640-01 |TuTh 9:30 - 10:45| Hasenfratz, Bob 

Prerequisites: ENGL 2701; instructor consent required. May be repeated for a total of 6 credits 

3701-01 | MW 9:05 - 9:55 Hybrid | Forbes, Sean 

Poetry and Fiction

3701-02 | MW 12:30 - 1:45 | Dennigan, Darcie

"Extremity and Ephemera"

The two genres you'll explore in this course are longform poetry and epistolary forms. Take this class if you want to write (& sometimes send) long letters and postcards. Take this class if you want to push your poems to take up space beyond a single page, to forget that poetry is an art of endings, and to experiment with time constraints, fractals, narrative, and collage. You'll study book-length poems by Bhanu Kapil, Hector Viel Temperly, and CD Wright, as well as some of the great literary letters by Kafka, Emily Dickinson, and James Baldwin, plus learn about Ray Johnson's very, very serious-minded New York Correspondence School. By semester's end, you'll have written and revised one literary epistolary project and one 10-page poem.

3701-03 | W 5 - 7:30 | Pelizzon, V. Penelope

"Being Stylish: Poetry and Nonfiction"

How do we talk about a writer’s style? Is style the same as “voice”? Who are some of the most interesting  contemporary poetic and nonfiction stylists? How do we develop our own distinctive styles as writers of original poems and nonfiction? These are some of the questions we’ll ask in this creative deep dive into BEING STYLISH.

Be prepared to read many diverse poems and nonfiction works and to write with gusto in a variety of styles within the genres of poetry and nonfiction. Class members will write, workshop, and revise four major projects; offer sustained written feedback for peers; lead discussion of class texts; and engage actively in conversation at each meeting.

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

4201W-01 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 | Knapp, Kathy

In this capstone course, The US Novel in the 21st Century, we will read several contemporary novels in the context of the surrounding culture and from a variety of critical and historical perspectives to determine how they engage, adapt, or abandon earlier literary traditions in order to reflect and negotiate the  interlocking disasters of reality—intractable racial and income inequality, the rise of authoritarianism, endless war, genocide, global pandemics, and a planet melting before our eyes—that have come to define the way we live now. Novels may include Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, Kevin Powers' Yellow Birds, Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts, Emily St Jophn Mandel's Exit Party , Tommy Orange's There There , and others.  The class is designed to be highly participatory and will involve a number of creative and critical assignments.

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

4613W-01 | TuTh 9:30 - 10:45| Codr, Arianna

Queer Memoir and Life Writing

This advanced study of queer memoir, fictionalized autobiography, autotheory, and other kinds of life-writing explores how LGBTQ+ writers have represented their personal lives and intimate experiences. Central to our conversations will be how writers represent queer identity within the matrices of race, gender, class, and nationality in specific cultural and historical moments. Applying feminist and queer theory, we will examine how queer life-writing resists heteronormative narrative structures, plots queer experiences, imagines queer futures, and represents queer subjectivity. The course is an opportunity for students to gain familiarity with queer and feminist literary theory and criticism and refine research and analysis skills in literary studies. Depending on career or personal goals, students will choose to compose either a work of creative criticism (which may incorporate life-writing) or literary criticism. In-class writing activities, short writing assignments, and peer and instructor workshopping will support students in the writing process. Course texts may include The Diaries of Anne Lister, Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, T. Fleischmann’s Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, and George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue.

Enrollment Requirements: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011; open to juniors or higher; open only to Honors students. 

4897-01 | Arr. |Williams, Erika