Department of English and Creative Writing

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS FOR SPRING 2026

Please Note:

All undergraduate courses are worth 4 credits.

All graduate courses are worth 3 credits.

Undergraduate Courses

ENG105 – Introduction to Creative Writing
Introduction to basic principles of reading and writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (may also substitute genres to include drama and/or screenwriting). (Lec. 3. Project 3/Online). (A3) (B1)

ENG110 – Introduction to Literature
Analysis of literature through reading and discussion of a number of genres derived from a variety of literary cultures. (Lec. 3, Online 1) (A3) (B1)

ENG120 – Poetry Out Loud
Study of great poetry through the art of performance. Emphasis on public speaking skills, self-confidence, and study of literature to understand and express fundamental beliefs about life, love, pain, happiness. (Lec. 3, Online 1) (A4) (B2)

ENG121 – OUTRAGE! Literature of Protest and Dissent
Study of proud history of poems, songs, plays, and fiction speaking truth to power. Examination of the ways selected literary texts have engaged with different kinds of oppression. (Lec. 3, Online 1) (A3) (C1)

ENG122 – Poplife: How Popular Culture Explains the World; M/W 2:00-3:15pm; Professor Kyle Kusz
Introduction to critical study of how social power and inequalities are reproduced and resisted through popular culture. (Lec. 3, Project 3) (A3) (C3)

ENG160 – Literatures of the World
Cross-listed as (ENG), CLS 160. Introduction to significant works of world literature. (Lec. 3, Rec.1, Online 1) (A3) (C2)

ENG205A – Creative Writing: Poetry Writing and analysis of works written by class members and professional writers. (Lec. 3. Project 3/Online) ENG 205A may be offered online. Students may repeat ENG 205 for a total of 16 credits but may not repeat the same letter (A, B, C, D).

ENG205B – Creative Writing: Fiction Writing and analysis of works written by class members and professional writers. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) ENG 205B may be offered online. Students may repeat ENG 205 for a total of 16 credits but may not repeat the same letter (A, B, C, D).

ENG205D – Creative Writing: Screen Writing Writing and analysis of works written by class members and professional writers. (Lec. 3, Project 3) Students may repeat ENG 205 for a total of 16 credits but may not repeat the same letter (A, B, C, D).

ENG211 – The Young Adult Novel
Close examination of the young adult novel genre with particular attention to the cultures and ideologies of adolescence, the teenager, and the young adult. (Lec. 3, Project 3) (A3) (C3)

ENG 221 – Introduction to Asian American Literature and Culture; M/W 3:30-4:45pm; Professor Janet Chow
Introduction to major authors, works, and topics in Asian American literature and culture. (Lec. 3, Online 1) (A3) (C3)

ENG243 – The Short Story
Critical study of the short story from the early 19th century to the present. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) (A3) (B1)

ENG 248 – African American Lit from 1900 to Present; M/W 2:00-3:15pm; Professor Janet Chow
Cross-listed as (ENG), AAF 248. Twentieth-century African-American literature, with emphasis on major issues, movements, and trends, including the study of W.E.B. DuBois, the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement, and the black arts movement. (Lec. 3, Project 3) (A3) (C3)

ENG 260 – Women and Literature; Spring 2026: Jane Austen, Therapist; Professor Sarah Eron
The sustained popularity of Jane Austen’s novels over the course of literary history is a testament to the fact that her texts have both a mind-altering and a consolatory power. Austen herself was deeply cognizant of readership and reading practices. Books are beloved, Austen suggests, because they possess their own fictional psyches, as well as an enticing power to transform the psychologies of their readers. This course explores concepts of the mind, body, and memory in Austen’s oeuvre. It does so by placing Austen’s works in the philosophical context of her contemporaries. We will consider how Austen’s novels engaged with various theories of mind and brain at a time when debates about memory and consciousness were on the rise. What can Austen’s novels teach us about the relationship between feeling and knowing? How do these novels explore the ethics of intention and the fuzzy distinctions between human conscience and consciousness? These are just some of the questions we will examine in this course as we address the role of minds and bodies, memory and nostalgia, time and environment, in Austen’s major works.

ENG 263 – Introduction to Literary Genres: the Poem; Spring 2026: The Neuroscience of Poetry; Professor Sarah Eron
Poetry is about somatic thinking. Historically, it has been our literary guide to how the mind maps and relates to the world by way of sensation. Poems use sound and sense to guide us into an emotional experience of their language. Reading poetry aloud is a visceral experience. The aesthetic properties of a poem require that we feel as we read. Through the visual medium of imagery, through the o/aurality of rhyme & meter, poetry brings to mind a whole set of sensory experiences. This unique art form, we will see, has a long-standing interest in the relationship between mind & body, text & touch.

This course will consider how poetry uses embodied experience to expound various philosophies of the mind. Some of the poets we will study are interested in memory, or the neural powers of association, some in the projecting and creative forces of the imagination. Others find consciousness in sexual experience or union, in bodily transport, in landscapes and environments, or even in the minds of others. Some poets treat minds as a part of nature’s design; others consider minds responsible for all the vital movements of nature. For all of these writers, poetry fashions surprising connections between feeling things. From John Milton’s Paradise Lost to contemporary hip hop music, this course aligns the history of modern poetry with scientific discoveries about our body & brain.

ENG 264 – Introduction to Literary Genres: Drama; Tu/Th 11:00am-12:15pm; Professor J. Jennifer Jones

Introduction to the study of drama. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) (A3) (B1)

ENG 302 – Topics in Film Theory and Criticism; M/W 2:00-3:15pm; Professor Ryan Trimm
Spring 2026: Making Time in Film Theory

This course will survey major issues in film theory: What distinguishes film from other visual arts? How does film relate to other art forms? How should we think of the relationship between viewer and film? What role does the framing of the film image, the editing of shots, the role of sound, the status of the performer play in how we find meaning in a film? Are films necessarily linked to the nations of their setting and production, or are they now truly global? Does the transition to digital force us to rethink all the assumptions associated with the seemingly antiquated technology of “film”? We will pay particular attention to how films construct a sense of time, examining questions of genre, editing, the “reality effect,” and the like. The course will proceed by pairing major pieces of film criticism/theory by authors such as Christian Metz, Gilles Deleuze, and Laura Mulvey with exemplary films by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Julie Dash.

ENG 305A – Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry; M/W 2:00-3:15pm

Intensive writing and reading workshop for students at the advanced level who have preferably taken at least one previous class in creative writing. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) Student may repeat ENG 305 for a total of 16 credits but may not repeat the same letter (A, B, C, D).

ENG 305B – Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction; M/W 2:00-3:15pm; Professor Shastri Akella

ENG 305D – Advanced Creative Writing: Screenwriting; Tu/Th 3:30-4:45pm; Professor Derek Nikitas
Intensive writing and reading workshop for students at the advanced level who have preferably taken at least one previous class in creative writing. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) Student may repeat ENG 305 for a total of 16 credits but may not repeat the same letter (A, B, C, D).

ENG 315 – Special Topics in Literary and Cultural Studies; Tu/Th 9:30-10:45am; Professor Heather Johnson
Spring 2026: The Fiction of Angela Carter

This course on British writer Angela Carter’s fiction will explore her innovative use of the gothic genre and magical realism and her feminist reworkings of fairy tales. Her material, she said, comes from the “lumber room of the Western European imagination.” Full of surreal imagery, her novels and stories are highly imaginative and intellectually rigorous, exploring themes of female desire and power and challenging both cultural and literary conventions.

ENG 333 – The Sensuous Sentence: Grammar for Grammarphobes; M/W 2:00-3:15pm; Professor Travis Williams

A critical and historical examination of style, tone, diction, grammar, and sentence form as aesthetic and ideological qualities of literary texts. (Lec. 3, Project 3) (A3) (C3)

We will read widely in the theories and structures of English style and grammar, with special attention to the binary contrast of descriptive and prescriptive grammatical systems; how the binary breaks down under critical attention; the historical, political, and social roles of grammar; and the evolution of the English sentence. Readings are likely to include works by Shaw, Kelley, Jonson, Austen, Woolf, Díaz, and many commentators on grammar and style. The tone of the course will be conversational, exploratory, and adventurous. We will not labor under the turgid rules of punctuation, but you should nevertheless expect to come away with a refined and expanded understanding of the basic rules of English style, punctuation, and mechanics. Frequent in-class participation and contribution to online discussion threads will be required.

ENG 338 – Native American Literature; Tu/Th 5:00pm-6:15pm; Professors Martha Rojas and Wanda Hopkins

Study of literature written by Native Americans. This course may consider early texts and traditions as well as contemporary works. (Lec. 3, Project 3)

ENG/AAF 352 – Black Images in Film; Tu/Th 2:00-3:15pm; Professor Catherine John

Cross-listed as (AAF), ENG 352. Exploration of the cultural, economic, political, and ideological motivations behind the standard representation of people of the African diaspora in cinema in the U.S. and other areas of the world, while examining film as a genre with a vocabulary and idiom of its own. (Lec. 3, Project 1) (A3) (C3)

ENG 368 – The Bible as Literature; Tu/Th 11:00am-12:15pm; Professor Derek Nikitas

Study of the Bible in English (Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha) as a literary text. (Lec. 3, Project 3) (A3) (B4)

ENG 383 – Modernist Literature; Tu/Th 12:30pm-1:45pm; Professor Heather Johnson

Poetry, drama, fiction, and/or nonfiction prose with an emphasis on writers such as Eliot, Faulkner, Hurston, Joyce, Stevens, Yeats, Woolf, and Wright. (Lec. 3, Project 3)

ENG 396 – Literature of the Sea: The Rumowicz Seminar; Tu/Th 2:00-3:15pm; Professor Martha Rojas

Studies of maritime literature and culture. Guest lecturers and field trips. (Seminar)

ENG 405 – Creative Writing Capstone; Wed. 4:00-6:45pm; Professor Peter Covino
A capstone course in creative writing for English majors taking the Creative Writing Option; includes workshop, portfolio creation, critical responses to texts, exploration of creative writing field. (Lec. 1, Workshop 2, Online 1) Pre: ENG 205 and 305, or two ENG 305 courses in different genres (ENG 305A, 305B, 305C, or 305D).

ENG 410 – Capstone Seminar in Literary and Cultural Studies; Spring 2026: No Easy Answers!; Professor Carolyn Betensky; Tu/Th 12:30pm-1:45pm

This capstone seminar invites you to further develop the theoretical frameworks and historical knowledges you have acquired as students of literature and culture at URI by integrating and applying them to the study of texts that grapple with complexity. Each text featured in this class asks difficult questions about meaning, belonging, justice, and love. Our job will be to discover rigorous ways to respond to the challenges these works pose without flattening them.

A capstone course in literary and cultural studies research for English majors: requires the completion of a scholarly essay or another research-intensive project. (Lec. 3, Practicum 1) Pre: two 300- or 400-level ENG courses (excluding 477). (B4) (D1)

ENG 469 – The Novel; Tu/Th 2:00-3:15pm

Focuses on generic considerations of the novel in relation to historical contexts such as national/cultural politics, philosophy, psychology. The ‘novel’ is examined against the historical specificity of its production. (Seminar)