Fall 2025
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ENG105 – Introduction to Creative Writing
(4 crs.) 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
(4 crs.) 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
(4 crs.) 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
(4 crs.) 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)
ENG160 – Literatures of the World
(4 crs.) Cross-listed as (ENG), CLS 160. Introduction to significant works of world literature. (Lec. 3, Rec.1, Online 1) (A3) (C2)
ENG201 – Principles of Literary Study (4 crs.) Introduction to the study of literature through reading and discussion of major methodologies, analytical approaches, and perspectives in literary study. Students will also participate in a series of faculty presentations reflecting current critical and creative practices in the discipline. Restricted to English majors. (Lec. 3, Rec. 1)
ENG205A – Creative Writing: Poetry (4 crs.) 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 (4 crs.) 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).
ENG205C – Creative Writing: Creative Non-Fiction (4 crs.) Writing and analysis of works written by class members and professional writers. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) ENG 205C 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 (4 crs.) 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).
ENG 210 – Reading Sport, Seeing Life (4 crs.) Analysis of texts in which literary, visual, and sporting cultures intersect, with a focus on critique of their aesthetic, symbolic, social, and political meanings in a variety of contexts. (Lec. 3, Project 3) (C3)
ENG 242 – U.S. Literature II (4 crs.) Selections from U.S. literature, mid-19th century to the present. (Lec. 3, Project 3) ENG 241 not required for 242. (A3) (C3)
ENG243 – The Short Story (4 crs.) 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 (4 crs.) 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)
ENG260 – Women and Literature. (4 crs.) Critical study of selected topics. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) (A3) (B1)
ENG263 – Intro to Literary Genres: The Poem (4 crs.) Introduction to the study of the poem. (Lec. 3, Project 3/Online) (A3) (B1)
ENG280 – Intro to Shakespeare (4 crs.) Introduction to the major plays and poetry of Shakespeare. (Lec. 3, Project 3) (A3) (B1)
ENG 304 – Irish Literature Into Film; Professor Heather Johnson
For a relatively small country, Ireland has produced many great writers, including three Nobel prizewinners. The importance of land, the legacy of colonialism, the impact of religion on society – all worked on the imaginations of these writers and have given us powerful stories, whether in fiction, poetry, film, or song. In comparison to the traditions of literature and music, the film industry in Ireland is relatively new. We will watch Irish and American films, including documentaries, to learn about the representation of Irish life in this medium, with a focus on translations from literature to screen. Writers include James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, William Trevor, Colm Toíbín, Claire Keegan.
ENG 305B – Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction; Staff; TuTh 9:30-10:45
ENG 320 – Thinking Otherwise: Disability, Neurodiversity, Cripistemology; Professor Sarah Eron; MW 3:30-4:45
This course examines disability narratives and representations of disability, neurodiversity, and chronic illness in eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature. We begin with a foundational introduction to various terms and concepts from disability theory, such as : “disability,” “accessibility,” “accommodation,” “neurodiversity,” and historical discourses of “deformity” and “monstrosity” in disability aesthetics. By taking an intersectional approach to disability studies (race, gender and sexuality), we consider questions of ethics and social justice in light of the lived experience of disability. In particular, this course focuses on a concept in disability studies known as “cripistemology.” How do non-normative “bodyminds” inhabit, experience, and know the world differently? How did historical writers resist dominant theories of mind and body that pervaded the culture of their time? How did they celebrate what today we might call “neurodiversity”?
ENG 339: Literary Nonfiction: Culture and Criticism; Professor David Faflik
The focus of this course is the literary genre of the essay as considered from a historical perspective. To that end, we will examine the close relation that has existed between culture and essayistic criticism from the early modern period up to our own postmodern moment in the twenty-first century. Our approach is comparative. We’ll proceed through the semester by pairing a variety of different forms of cultural expression (including novels, poems, politics, film, and music) with a selection of the “classic” essays they elicited by way of critical response. If the audience, purpose, and tone of these essays vary widely, so do the occasions that marked their “elevation” to the recognized status of cultural criticism in the first place.
Please note that this is a reading-oriented course with some student writing, rather than a creative writing course per se. And we will read widely. Readings draw from early modern originators of the essay form like Michel de Montaigne as well as stalwart essayists from later times. Among these more recent writers, we will read selected essays from Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Henry James, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, and David Foster Wallace, among others.
ENG 350 – Literary Theory & Criticism; Prof. Scott Kushner (4 crs.) Introduction to theories of literature and their application in the analysis of selected texts. Topics may include representation as problematized in works selected from classical to contemporary thought. (Lec. 3, Project 3) May be repeated for credit as often as topic changes.
ENG 355 – Topics in Literature & The Sciences; Prof. Janet Chow (4 crs.) Study of the representation of scientific themes in literature and/or the relationship between literature and the sciences. (Lec. 3, Project 3) Pre: Junior or senior standing. (D1)
ENG 379 – Contemporary Literature; Prof. Peter Covino (4 crs.) Studies in contemporary literature with an emphasis on cultural and interdisciplinary issues. Movements and emphases may include multiculturalism, culture and technology, globalization, and politics of the body. (Lec. 3, Project 3)
ENG 388 – Queer Literatures, Queer Cultures; staff; TuTh 2-3:15
ENG 405 – Capstone in Creative Writing; Professor Peter Covino; W 4-6:45
ENG 410 – Capstone in English Literature; Professor Jennifer Jones TuTh 12:30-1:45
In this course, we will study the powers and pleasures of imaginative literature through close attention to emotion – as a concept, theme, and effect. We will also study the art of formally responding to the aesthetic, political, and ethical complexities of literature in critical writing, giving textual voice to our ideas through the genre of the scholarly essay. In the process, we will read influential imaginative texts in English. We will also read influential critical essays of the 20 th and 21 st centuries, focusing on how they are written and how to read them to think with and respond well to the minds of others. Finally, we will practice the art of research, the culmination of which will be the creation of your own scholarly research paper.
ENG 446 – Seminar in Drama: Tragedy Across Time; Professor Jennifer Jones;
In this course, we will study the powers and pleasures of imaginative literature through the genre of drama and specifically, tragic drama. Originating in the city-state of ancient Athens more than 2500 years ago, tragedy is an artform devoted to the causes and effects of human suffering. As one critic put it, and this seems to me an especially poignant formulation in our 21st-century society, “tragic drama presents situations in which there is a desperate urgency to assign blame” and to act on it, which ushers in the severe limitations and anguishes of human judgment in its attempt to give or receive justice. We will study a wide-ranging group of plays that span thousands of years, including such authors as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Joanna Baillie, Susan Glaspell, Jack Thorne, and Liz Lochhead.
ENG 472 – Shakespeare; Professor Travis Williams;
ENG 480 – Jane Austen, Therapist; Professor Sarah Eron; MW 2:00-3:15
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 482 – American & US Authors to 1820; Prof. Martha Rojas; (4 crs.) Studies in works by one or two major American and U.S. authors to 1820. (Seminar) May be repeated once for a total of 8 credits, barring duplication of writers. Not for graduate credit.
Graduate Courses
ENG 511 Introduction to Professional Study II
Required for 1st-year students — 1.5 credits
Professor Martha Elena Rojas
Tuesdays, 4:00-6:45 PM
ENG 555 Studies in 19-Century British Texts: Victorian Bodies and Minds
Professor Carolyn Betensky
Wednesdays, 4:00-6:45 PM
This course will consider Victorian representations and explorations of bodies and minds—and the relationship between bodies and minds—in an era in which their norming and typologizing was an urgent but fluid preoccupation. We will read texts by George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, John Swanson Jacobs, Charles Dickens, Dinah Mulock Craik, and Mary Seacole, among others.
ENG 601 Seminar in Creative Writing: Narrative Technique
Professor Derek Nikitas
Mondays, 4:00-6:45 PM
In this course we’ll explore the dialogic relationship between narrative technique and reader reception, from a theoretical perspective and as practitioners of narrative craft (primarily fiction. but the course is designed to be useful to all those who write, or write about, narrative). The course title may emphasize the practical aspects of written storytelling, but we’ll proceed with the understanding that technique is a fluid and context-driven concept, and with the goal of expanding creative horizons in our own creative and critical work.
ENG 601 Seminar in Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor Talvi Ansel
Wednesdays, 4:00-6:45 PM
ENG 620 Seminar in Critical Theory: American Islands: Poetics of Imperialism and Paradise
Professor Janet Kong-Chow
Thursdays, 4:00-6:45 PM
United States American culture often imagines its history as separate/distinct from postcolonialism, despite pre-Independence status as British, French, and Spanish colonial territories. Another pervasive narrative in the U.S. is the belief that it never participated in colonialism or owned colonial possessions, contributing to the continued erasure and invisibility of residents of unincorporated territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guåhan (Guam), Samoa, and the Virgin Islands.
This course examines the influence of three postcolonial geographic discourses—the Caribbean, Africa, and the Pacific—upon postwar North American cultural and artistic production. We will focus on past and present overseas territories of the United States, with emphasis on Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, Hawai’i, and the Philippines. We will engage interdisciplinarily on theories of diaspora, imperialism, global Blackness, and Orientalism; selected texts may include works by Dionne Brand, Édouard Glissant, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Gayatri Spivak, Walter Rodney, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, M. Jacqui Alexander, Amilcar Cabral, Lisa Lowe, Jamaica Kincaid, among others. Of particular interest will be geopolitical contexts such as the Cold War, militarization and globalization, “free” trade, modern tourism, environmental justice, and the global war on terror.