In this intermediate writing course, students learn how to read and produce informative and persuasive essays. Students write essays and a research paper incorporating outside source material. Review of MLA citation and documentation style is included, along with practice in doing library and web-based research.

This course for potential English majors and minors introduces students to various critical reading strategies, provides practice in close reading and the development and defense of a thesis appropriate for literary analysis, and offers multiple writing opportunities. The course aims to convey a sense of literary history by exposing students to intensive study of the representation of a particular theme or strain (e.g., ambition, desire) in different genres over time.

The purpose of this course is to teach students to identify basic and advanced grammatical structures. Students are asked to apply this grammatical knowledge to exercises that require them to edit for grammar and punctuation.

Especially because of its strong historical emphasis on the individual and individualism, there has always existed in American culture a dynamic tension between the individual and society. This course explores how major American authors have chosen to present and interpret this theme by tracing it from its roots in early American literature to its most sophisticated expression in works written during the latter half of the 19th and first part of the 20th century.

• E250 Literary Imagination

This course studies the major American authors who were writing before 1900 and the veiled speech in which they (or their characters) were engaged. Students examine a variety of poetry and fiction to identify the “slant” (to use Emily Dickinson’s term) in the stories told by people constrained by a religious culture and by assumptions about race and gender. This course examines the ways in which authors use their art both to illuminate social problems, including slavery, sexism, and religious hypocrisy, and to conceal their aims from disapproving critics. Their texts also invite us to consider the effects of secrecy and shame on individuals and the moral freedom of speaking the truth.

• E250 Literary Imagination

This course focuses on the relationship between the American literary imagination and nature. It examines how American authors from the middle 19th century to the late 20th century have imaginatively perceived the relationship between nature and humanity. Students read and discuss American literary texts that embody a variety of perspectives on this relationship, leading to a deeper understanding of a pervasive cultural theme.

• E250 Literary Imagination

American Modernism studies the major American authors who were writing between the two world wars and the Modernist literary movement of which they were a part. Students examine a variety of poetry and fiction to identify the changes in form that emerged around the time of World War I; students make connections between the content and form of literature and what was happening in world history and in the world of art; and students consider the individual innovations of writers within the broad aesthetic movement known as Modernism.

• E250 Literary Imagination

In this course, students explore the advent and establishment of Christianity as the dominant mode of discourse in the Medieval and Early Modern periods of British Literature. This investigation hinges upon exposure to countercurrents which Christianity operated against as it established its primacy (such as paganism, Judaism, Islam), as well as to tensions within Christianity itself (heresies, humanism, patriarchy v. feminism, and the division between Catholicism and Protestantism). While the course thus is historical and cultural in its overall theme, the emphasis is on close reading and discussion of literary texts.

• E250 Literary Imagination

In this course students explore the development of medieval British Romance especially from its Celtic and French origins, then proceed to examine Spenser’s fusion of romance with epic in the context of the rising vogue of the epic in the Early Modern period, and conclude in a sustained engagement with Milton’s Paradise Lost. The course focuses on the development of these two genres, but with attention to the cultural context in which the texts to be explored were produced.

• E250 Literary Imagination

In this course, students produce a variety of essays that cover a range of rhetorical situations. Emphasis is placed on strategies for developing and organizing essays as well as on rhetorical concerns, such as audience, purpose, voice, and style. Attention is also be paid to integrating research, both formal and informal, into students' work.

This survey examines the major works and authors of the Restoration through the Eighteenth Century, including the historical, political, and social contexts of these works.

• E250 Literary Imagination

Between 1785 and 1830, British writers witnessed two major revolutions and participated in many cultural, political, and intellectual watersheds, from the rise of Romanticism and Republicanism to nation building to the beginnings of modern feminism. They dealt with these cultural experiences in new as well as traditional literary forms, including the historical novel, lyric and narrative poetry, essays, letters and journals. This course examines the lives and works of a selection of major literary figures from this period and assesses their contributions to the literary tradition in English.

• E250 Literary Imagination

This course focuses on a representative group of Shakespeare's sonnets, comedies, histories, and tragedies. Emphasis is placed on close reading of the plays, with the intention of exploring some of Shakespeare's most pressing issues, including love, nature, death, dreams, relationships between parents and children, gender roles, freedom of the will, and reality itself. The course also address the cultural milieu out of which the texts were generated; the meaning of the terms "comedy", "history", and "tragedy"; and the relationship of the written plays to modern film adaptations.

This course explores the primary characteristics of British Modernism by studying authors writing before, during and after the high point of the movement in the early twentieth century. By studying Victorian, Modern and Postmodern British writers, the course considers the creation of modernism and its aesthetic aftermath and simultaneously questions the legitimacy of modernism as a distinct aesthetic category. Special attention is given to aesthetic, theological and philosophical questions and how these are reflected or addressed in literary works. Authors studied might include Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys and Peter Carey.

• E250 Literary Imagination

This course studies British Literature from the Victorian Age into the postmodern period by looking at it from the "outside." By studying works of literature from those writing on or about the periphery of the central literary tradition of the British empire, students gain a sense of post-1830 British literature and its relationship to the cultural conditions in which it was produced. Topics could include such areas as Colonial Literature, the Irish Literary Renaissance, and Women's Literature and consider writers such as Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Graham Greene, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, and Seamus Heaney.

• E250 Literary Imagination

This course focuses on literature in English that addresses colonization and decolonization. The course considers how postcolonial texts present the legacy of imperialism; how postcolonial writers inscribe their perspectives, politics, and lived experiences in literature; and how various fictional accounts (of origin, of colonization, of identity, of nationality) contribute to a contemporary understanding of community, history, and narrative.

• E250 Literary Imagination

A study of selected works in translation from non-Anglo-American cultural traditions. Students in this course examine how geographical and cultural differences contribute to varying literary representations of "universal" themes. Taking as our point of departure the notion of the artist figure, students examine ancient and modern ideas of creativity, authorship, and the role of the writer in society in cultures around the world.

• E250 Literary Imagination

A study of selected works in translation from non-Anglo-American cultural traditions. Students in this course explores literature from around the world with a focus on how identities, perspectives, and values are shaped by geographical and cultural circumstances. Students look particularly at literary dialogues and confrontations between the Western European tradition and writers from other cultures from the 19th century to today. Writers may include Goethe, Balzac, Rilke, Kafka, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Anna Akhmatova, Milan Kundera, Nabokov, Borges, Walcott, Neruda, Nadine Gordimer, Ngugiwa Thiong'o, and Zoe Wicomb.

• E250 Literary Imagination

African American Perspectives studies the literary works of major authors of African American heritage. We will examine poetry, fiction, and autobiographical narrative, in the spirit of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's call to "talk about race in a manner which is not diminishing, demeaning, reductive, or ad hominem." As Morrison states, "Race is a very difficult thing to talk about, because the conversation frequently ends up being patronizing, guilt ridden, hostile, or resentful. But for those interested in the study of literature and the writing of literature, it is something you have to confront and think about." This course studies African American literature as a tradition in its own right, as well as a means of better understanding African American culture and American culture as a whole. Our reading will allow us to see the ways in which African American writers have contributed to, have been influenced by, and have transformed America.

This course explores relationships and dialogues among literary works, literary criticism, and cultural theory. In a seminar setting, students wrestle with key theoretical concepts, such as identity, gender, power, language, and representation. The course investigates the contributions, methodologies, and assumptions associated with key figures in literary and cultural studies.

These courses, reserved for upper division English majors and minors, explore special topics in depth through careful reading and research in a seminar setting. Topics vary by semester (see specific descriptions on the course schedule).

Designed to be a capstone experience for senior English majors, this course provides advanced instruction in the research methods, drafting and revision, and bibliography work involved in writing a major research project. Students complete a major research paper in an area of their interest in literary studies and make an oral defense of their project at the end of the course.

This course surveys literature appropriate to the needs, interests and abilities of middle and secondary school students. It also focuses on the selection, effective presentation and the developmental value of currently available reading material based on specific developmental tasks, and identifiable characteristics, traits, special problems and reading interests of adolescents.

A study of the history, production methods, and social and economic factors of the mass media. This course gives students an understanding of print media, broadcast media and public relations by analyzing the technical development and social impact of media.