English courses may be chosen as electives by any student, regardless of major. Students who major in either “English” or “Professional Writing” should complete CORE 100, CORE 110, CORE 161-4, ENGL 200, and ENGL 241 before enrolling in other English courses.
ENGL 200 — Foundations Seminar: The History of Literature in English (3)
This course introduces students of literature and writing to the discipline of English. The course includes an overview of British and American literary history from Old English to hypertext; a study of the elements of literature and practice in close textual analysis with some introduction to critical theory; and seminar-style discussions of current topics in literature (canon studies, multiculturalism, popular culture, etc.). Prerequisite: CORE 161-4.
ENGL 222 — Introduction to Professional Writing (3)
To introduce students to the scope of writing as a profession, this course will explore the types and conventions of writing done in several different fields such as public relations, science and technology, and law. It will also introduce students to business writing genres, from basic correspondence to reports, proposals, and presentations; students will work with specific document models, learning to apply and adapt them to the specific rhetorical needs of the field being discussed. Students will hear from guest speakers in the individual fields, study sample documents, and create their own projects for each of the separate units.
ENGL 225 — Introduction to Creative Writing (3)
This course asks students to work in several genres, including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and/or drama. Class focuses on defining “good” writing and encouraging a process approach. Students will be asked to work through multiple drafts of work and participate in group editing sessions.
ENGL 241 — Advanced Writing (3)
Student writing supervised through seminars, workshops, and conferences. Overview of rhetorical theory and introduction to all forms of writing at the advanced level — informational, critical, argumentative, creative. The course deals with the rhetoric, structure, and presentation of material; and models of the writing of past and current authors are examined in detail. Weekly papers are assigned, and MLA style is taught for research. Prerequisite for all other advanced writing courses. Required in the sophomore year. Prerequisite: CORE 110.
ENGL 320 — Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry (3)
Student writing of poetry supervised through tutorial, small group, and class critiques. Some study of current techniques/practices in poetry will enhance the guided writing of poetry. Prerequisite: ENGL 241; ENGL 225 is recommended.
ENGL 321 — Creative Writing Workshop: The Short Story (3)
Student writing of short fiction supervised through private seminars and class critiques. Study of the techniques of short story writers (plot, focus, voice, point of view) and guided practice in writing the short story. Prerequisite: ENGL 241; ENGL 225 is recommended.
ENGL 323 — Writing for New Media (4) (includes one-hour lab)
Designed to help students develop their writing skills and their ability to create visually appealing web-pages, presentations, CD-ROMs, and other digital media. The course concentrates on the basics of good writing and the improvement of style in the context of digital media and its unique challenges for writers (modularity, multiple entry points, hyperlinking, design, etc.). The course includes a one-hour lab devoted to the mechanics of web design and maintenance, specifically using Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, and FTP programs. Prerequisite: ENGL 241 or ENGL 222.
ENGL 325 — Literary Journalism (3)
Study of and practice in reportorial writing. Students will write several journalistic reports in a literary style, combining the elegance, craftsmanship, and creativity of literature with the candor and referential quality of journalism. Prerequisite: ENGL 241 or ENGL 222.
ENGL 326 — The English Language (3)
A study of the history, dialects, usage, and modern approaches to the grammar of American English. Since the course examines the language in depth, it is appropriate for students of all disciplines. Required of candidates for teaching certification in English. Prerequisite: ENGL 241.
ENGL 327 — Special Topics in Writing (3)
Intended to cover a wide variety of writing topics, this course has a dual focus: special types of writing required in disciplines such as medicine, law, and science; and issues of relevance and importance to writers (e.g. ethics, gender, language, and politics). Prerequisite: ENGL 241.
ENGL 328 — Teaching Writing: Theory and Practice (3)
Study and practice in current theories of teaching of writing. Topics include collaborative learning, composition theory, writing across the curriculum, and the use of computers in the teaching of writing. Supervised experience in the classroom and the Writing Center; weekly writing assignments. Faculty nomination required. Prerequisite: ENGL 241.
ENGL 329 — Editing (4) (includes one-hour lab)
The course examines the roles editors play in the lives of writers, readers, and publications. Elements discussed include responsibility, sensitivity, ethics, fairness, and skill. At least one-third of class time is spent in a “lab” setting, during which students focus on sharpening proofreading and editing skills through hands-on work with documents, some “real,” some manufactured. Prerequisite: ENGL 241 or ENGL 222.
ENGL 331 — Rhetorical Theory (3)
This course provides an overview of rhetorical theory, including contributors such as Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Erasmus, John Locke, I. A. Richards, Gertrude Buck, Kenneth Burke, Wayne C. Booth, and Andrea Lunsford. The course seeks to develop in students a lifelong interest in rhetoric and an understanding of how it contributes to the foundations of Western thought and higher education. Attention is also given to applications of rhetorical theory. We will discuss how rhetoric can help us to shape identities, interpret texts, and communicate effectively. Prerequisite: ENGL 241.
ENGL 332 — Document Design (3)
This course emphasizes principles of visual rhetoric and explores how elements of layout and design contribute to, enhance, and enable a document’s effectiveness. Students will analyze the design elements of print and digital documents. Desktop-publishing software, such as InDesign, will be used to help students work first-hand with design manipulation including attention to color, typography, grouping, and visual hierarchies. Students will also learn to work with templating and style tools to manage the consistency and efficiency of their design work. Prerequisite: ENGL 222 or ENGL 225.
ENGL 333 — Creative Writing Portfolio (3)
Students work with faculty to write new material, revise old material, and assemble a portfolio that best represents their creative writing goals, strengths, and achievements. Creative Writing majors intending to use this course to satisfy the Internship requirement (ENGL 499) must have a demonstrable record of creative writing achievement and need to consult with, and obtain permission from, the Chairperson. Prerequisite: ENGL 225 and either ENGL 320 or ENGL 321.
ENGL 334 — Translation/Adaptation/Parody (3)
This course will introduce students to theories of literary criticism and translation; themes to be discussed include formal vs. dynamic transfer of meaning, translation as criticism, the value of re-translations and “corrective translations,” adaptation, parody, and translations strongly “directed” toward particular groups of receivers. The course will also address cross-cultural and cross-generic interpretation and adaptation. Students will work closely with texts to understand the source text’s rhetorical stance and to reposition that rhetoric for other audiences, purposes, and media. Prerequisite: ENGL 241.
ENGL 335 — Freelance Writing (3)
This course provides an overview of opportunities for freelance writers, ranging from ghost writing to corporate communications to feature articles. Students study a variety of models, identify types of freelance work they want to pursue, learn to position and market themselves, and build a portfolio. Prerequisite: ENGL 222.
ENGL 336 — Essay Writing (3)
Students will study and write essays ranging from personal (ruminative, digressive, self-reflexive, and informal) to journalistic (research- and interview-based, informative, formal but non-academic). A governing assumption of the course will be that the essay genre is loosely defined and fluid, particularly as new technologies and forums (such as the web and blogging) create new opportunities and constraints for writers. Students will study essays from Montaigne to the present, examine outlets for essay writing, and write and revise their own work to develop an individual essay-writing voice. Prerequisite: ENGL 241.
ENGL 440 — Professional Writing Capstone (3)
An advanced, intensive study of a topic that engages rhetorical theory. Students in this class will examine and discuss complexities of negotiating rhetorical situations, competing ideologies, and other elements that factor into modes of human communication. The course provides English majors opportunities to demonstrate both liberal learning skills and a sophisticated command of subject matter and methodology appropriate to an English major about to graduate. The seminar project includes an oral presentation to other majors and to the English Department faculty. Prerequisite: ENGL 241.
ENGL 441 — Advanced Technical Writing (3)
Intensive practice in various types of informal and formal reports used in business, technical, and professional contexts. A major research project in the student’s professional interest is delivered orally and submitted in written form. Students work on projects in teams with frequent conferences conducted by the instructor. Prerequisites: ENGL 222 and ENGL 241.
ENGL 351 — Medieval Literature (3)
A study of literature produced in the British Isles and on the Continent from the fifth century A.D. to 1500. Principle genres will include romances, lyrics, ballads, fabliaux, dramas, allegories, and legends. Attention will be given to the social and cultural backgrounds of the period. Course material may be arranged by either genre or by theme.
ENGL 352 — Renaissance Literature (3)
A study of the major writers in England between 1500 and 1660, especially More, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Milton. Concentration on the history of ideas (e.g., Christian Humanism, movement from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe) as expressed in the prose, poetry, and drama of the period.
ENGL 353 — Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature (3)
A study of the literature of England during the Restoration and the 18th Century (16601800), including authors such as William Congreve, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn, Lady Montague, and Daniel Defoe. Major ideas discussed include empire and nationhood, social class, slavery and abolition, and the use of literature as a political tool.
ENGL 354 — The Romantic Age (3)
Analysis and criticism of the works of well-known Romantic writers (Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, the Shelleys,) and several lesser-known writers (Smith, Baillie, Clare). Historical, social, literary and political context is established through the work of several important essayists (Paine, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Lamb, Hazlitt, and De Quincy) and through a brief look at 18th century precursors to the Romantic Movement (Gray and Young).
ENGL 355 — Victorian Literature (3)
A study of the major poetry and prose of England from the 1830’s to the turn of the century. The course will focus on the era’s preoccupation with various forms of “change” (religious, social, scientific, technological and political, etc.) as reflected in the works of selected writers such as Carlyle, Mill, Dickens, Tennyson, the Brownings, Ruskin, Arnold, Hopkins, the Rossettis, and Gaskell. Attention is also given to the seeds of modernism within the writing and thought of the period.
ENGL 356 — Twentieth Century British Literature & Beyond (3)
This course explores key British writers in the 20th & 21st centuries. Texts will be examined in various literary, social, and political contexts, including modernism, Freudianism, imperialism, world wars, postmodernism, and gender and race politics. Writers to be covered may include Joseph Conrad, G.B. Shaw, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, W.H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Graham Greene, George Orwell, William Golding, John Osborne, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, and Ian McEwan.
ENGL 361 — Early American Literature (3)
A study of American traditions and forms from native myth and discovery narratives to colonial and enlightenment poetry and prose.
ENGL 362 — American Renaissance (3)
A study of the nineteenth century writers’ quest to make a new American consciousness. Attention will be given to how writers reflect and engage Puritan, colonial, and democratic traditions. Consideration of the relationship between individuality and American identity will also be given. Readings will include major works by Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Poe, and Dickinson.
ENGL 363 — American Realists (3)
This course examines literary texts that dramatize, reflect, and engage changing social and economic realities at the turn from the 19th century into the 20th century. Special attention will be devoted to literary “realism” and to matters of narrative, work, region, science, religion, gender, and language. Readings will include texts by Twain, Howells, James, Chopin, Gilman, Crane, Norris, Dreiser, Adams, and Wharton.
ENGL 364 — American Modern Writers (3)
Studies major U.S. figures of the “Modernist” movement—Cather, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Pound, Eliot, Moore, Hemingway, O’Neill, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hughes, Baldwin—for their experiments with narrative technique (disjointed narratives, stream of consciousness, etc.) and their interests in matters of culture, tradition, urban life, and societal collapse and renewal.
ENGL 365 — American Contemporary Writers (3)
Considers how postmodern writers explore the ‘exhaustion’ and ‘replenishment’ of literary form and engage philosophical questions about the limitations of language, access to reality, the death of the author, the instability of meaning, and the American quest for identity. Writers to be examined may include Pynchon, Mailer, Williams, Kennedy, Shepard, Walker, Morrison, Ellison, Barthelme, Gaddis, Beattie, Tyler, and Kingston.
ENGL 370 — Literary Theory (3)
Study in the theories and methods of literary analysis from ancient times to the present, as represented in the work of selected literary theorists and critics. Students will learn about major theoretical movements and orientations, including the New Criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, race and postcolonial studies, and cultural studies. Emphasis will be placed on applying particular theoretical orientations to specific literary and cultural texts.
ENGL 371 — Literary Nonfiction (3)
Study and analysis of contemporary nonfiction prose and its historical backgrounds. Concentrating chiefly on the essay, the course may also investigate other examples of the genre, such as biography, literary diary and letter, profile, review, and shorter historical, scientific, business, and technical essays.
ENGL 372 — The Short Story (3)
A study of short fiction, its tradition and development, its techniques and its insights into human character and motivation. Major attention is given to modern British and American stories.
ENGL 373 — The Novel (3)
A study of the development of the British and American novel from the 18th century to the present. Selected novels by major authors.
ENGL 374 — Poetry (3)
A study of the method of explication de texte in its application to poetry. Poems representing a variety of forms and periods are examined in terms of their intellectual, imaginative, emotional, and technical phases to see how these combine to create the experience of the poem as an organic unit.
ENGL 375 — Drama (3)
A study of selected major playwrights in historical and cultural perspectives, the purpose of which is to develop the student’s analytic and critical understanding of themes, forms, developments, and experiments in the dramatic genre. Offerings include American Drama, English Drama, and Comparative Drama.
ENGL 381 — Major Authors (3)
Intended to cover the life and selected works of one or more major writers, such as Chaucer, Eliot, Bronte, James, Dryden, Pound, Austen, Dickinson, and Joyce, this course enables students to appreciate the literary achievement of extraordinary individuals and to recognize the significance of their place in literature. Since the author studied varies each year, this course may be taken more than once.
ENGL 382 — Shakespeare (3)
Focusing on the major dramatic genres of tragedy, comedy, history, and romance, this course introduces students to the works of Shakespeare and, through biographical, cultural, and performance perspectives, enables them to discover Shakespeare’s significance within and beyond his age.
ENGL 392 — Special Topics in Literature (3)
This course studies a specific genre, theme, issue, or literary movement. Topics, which may vary each year, include Heroes East and West, Islands in Literature, Anglo-American Literature, and Literature and Mythology of Ancient Greece and Rome. Depending on the topic, this course may satisfy other literature requirements (Major Author, Literary Period, etc.), pending approval from Department chairperson.
ENGL 395 — Comparative/Multicultural Literature (3)
Courses offered under this heading allow students to examine writers outside mainstream British or American canons. Offerings in this category include African American Literature, Comparative Literature, Cultural Diversity in Literature, Jewish Literature and Film, Native American Literature, and Contemporary Ethnic American Women Writers.
ENGL 399 — Methods of Teaching English in the Secondary Schools (3)
This course is designed to acquaint students with contemporary and successful methods of teaching literature, writing, and grammar in the secondary schools. Students will learn how to plan and teach lessons using lecture, plenary discussion, collaboration, and individualized instruction. Students will learn various means of assessing pupil progress. Attention will be given to various state and federal assessment tests and their implications for instruction. The emphasis in this course will be on giving students practice in utilizing sound methods of instruction.
ENGL 491 — Senior Seminar in Literature (3)
An advanced, intensive study of a literary topic, this course provides English majors the opportunity to demonstrate both liberal learning skills and a sophisticated command of subject matter and methodology appropriate to an English major about to graduate. The seminar project includes an oral presentation to other majors and to the faculty of the English Department.
ENGL 496 — Independent Research with Tutorial Supervision (3)
Development of an independent research project with the approval of a department member who directs the progress and evaluates the results. Because of the expectation of high quality for the project, the student will present it orally at a department symposium and will submit a final, revised, written copy to the department. Admission is restricted to senior English majors by invitation only.
ENGL 499 — English Internship (3-6)
In consultation with English faculty and the Office of Career Planning, students can participate in internships, typically worth three to six semester hours of elective credit. In special circumstances, where internship activities and learning outcomes can be identified as equivalent to those of a specific advanced course in English, credit toward the major may be awarded, pending approval from the Department Chairperson. Generally, any student in the Professional Writing major will participate in a 3-credit internship that gives him or her practice and experience with professional or technical writing. Through these internships, students will have opportunities to write reports, proposals, documentation and instruction sets, grant applications, and digital media texts, along with other materials as approved by faculty advisors.