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.

Prerequisite: E120 or placement.

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.

Prerequisite: E120 or E120/220 placement.

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.

Offered spring semester. Prerequisite: E120 or equivalent.

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, and learn to situate their own readings of literary works in a theoretically informed critical conversation. The course investigates the contributions, methodologies, and assumptions associated with key figures in literary and cultural studies.

Offered spring semester. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Prerequisite: junior or senior majors only.

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.

Offered in alternate fall semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

This course focuses on the relationship between the American literary imagination and nature. It examines how early American romantic, naturalistic, and modernist authors 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 this pervasive cultural theme.

Offered in alternate fall semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

This course focuses on the theme of identity in American literature since the start of the 20th century and, in particular, on those authors and texts that explore the topic of identity in relation to the American dream. Students read and discuss a variety of American literary texts that embody varying perspectives on this relationship. These perspectives include, but are not limited to, the following: gender, ethnicity, sexual identity, geographical location, and religious affiliation.

Offered in alternate spring semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Offered in alternate spring semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Offered in alternate fall semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Offered in alternate fall semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Offered spring semester. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Offered in alternate spring semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Offered in alternate spring semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

This course examines contemporary literature in English by writers from around the world. The course aims to convey a sense of the stylistic and thematic tendencies that continue to evolve in the literatures of our world by exposing students to intensive study of the representation of a particular theme or strain (e.g., imperialism, desire) in works by authors from a variety of backgrounds and social/political situations.

Offered in alternate spring semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

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.

Offered in alternate spring semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

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, we examine ancient and modern ideas of creativity, authorship, and the role of the writer in society in cultures around the world.

Offered in alternate fall semesters.

A study of selected works in translation from non-Anglo-American cultural traditions. Students in this course explore literature from around the world with a focus on how identities, perspectives, and values are shaped by geographical and cultural circumstances. We look particularly at literary dialogues and confrontations between the Western European tradition and writers from other cultures, especially Russian and African, from the 19th century to today.

Offered in alternate fall semesters. Prerequisite: E250.

This course focuses on narrative strategies that are distinctive in literature by and/or about women and examine themes and issues that are common to women from a variety of social, historical, and/or political situations. In particular, the course examines how literature by and/or about women differs from literature by and/or about men, and how women writers inscribe their perspectives, politics, and lived experiences in literature.

Prerequisite: E250.

African American Perspectives studies the literary works of major authors of African American heritage. Students 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." 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. The reading allows students to see the ways in which African American writers have contributed to, have been influenced by, and have transformed America.

Prerequisite: E250.

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).

Prerequisite: junior or senior majors or minors only.

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.

Offered fall semester. Prerequisite: E220 or equivalent.

Through the reading of short stories, guided instruction and writing workshops, students in Short Fiction Writing study the genre of the short story and produce several examples of their own literary short fiction for an audience. In addition to composing original works that reveal their own artistic vision, students are expected to become informed of the literary tradition of the short story and provide critical and theoretical reflections on their work as well as the writing of other students and of published authors.

Offered in alternate fall semesters.

An introduction to professional communication, this course teaches students how to write documents commonly generated in the work world, such as memos, resumes, letters, manuals, reports, and proposals. Students are invited to write documents for different audiences, especially those in a student’s major field of study. Attention may be given to incorporating visuals as well. Finally, general principles of the composing process, of grammar and mechanics, and of style are reviewed as needed.

Offered spring semester. Prerequisite: E120 or equivalent.

This course aims to help students produce inspired and technically informed literary poetry intended for an audience. In addition to writing and discussing their own poetry, students become informed of both the techniques and the traditions of poetry writing. Course work includes the study of published poets and poems, essays and research papers on theoretical issues related to poetry, and the production of original poems by the students.

Offered in alternate fall semesters.

Please contact the department chair for more information.