Course offered through Upward Bound summer program.

Introduction to Narrative Practice develops creative-writing skills in service of students’ professional pursuits. Applying skills from creative-writing to their future careers allows students to develop their own imaginative lives, explore questions of identity, amplify underrepresented voices in their professional fields, and to develop programming utilizing creative-writing and close-reading to benefit their future colleagues, clients, and patients. This course employs community-based experiential learning to meaningfully connect narrative practices to systems change outside of the classroom.

Introduction to Narrative Practice develops creative-writing skills in service of students’ professional pursuits. Applying skills from creative-writing to their future careers allows students to develop their own imaginative lives, explore questions of identity, amplify underrepresented voices in their professional fields, and to develop programming utilizing creative-writing and close-reading to benefit their future colleagues, clients, and patients. This course employs community-based experiential learning to meaningfully connect narrative practices to systems change outside of the classroom. Intended for Health majors. Instructor Permission required.

Introduction to Narrative Practice develops creative-writing skills in service of students’ professional pursuits. Applying skills from creative-writing to their future careers allows students to develop their own imaginative lives, explore questions of identity, amplify underrepresented voices in their professional fields, and to develop programming utilizing creative-writing and close-reading to benefit their future colleagues, clients, and patients. This course employs community-based experiential learning to meaningfully connect narrative practices to systems change outside of the classroom. Intended for Business majors. Permission of instructor required.

Analytical reading, writing, and critical reasoning for a variety of rhetorical purposes, including argumentation (broadly conceived). Practice in developing ideas, insights, and claims through the use of both personal observation/experience and external texts and perspectives. From this workshop-oriented course, you should gain awareness of the composing processes of invention, drafting, and revision; the rhetorical concepts of audience and purpose, methods, for developing, organizing, and editing your writing; and strategies for reading and analyzing various texts.

"Literature was not born the day when a boy crying “wolf, wolf” come running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying “wolf, wolf” and there was no wolf behind him." Vladimir Nabokov In this course we explore how the ordinary stuff of life gets transformed into stories that delight us, anger us, inspire us, and spur us to action. What is gained in this process of transforming “fact” into “fiction”? We will read several novels and short stories and watch a few films to explore this central question. Focusing on the social and political functions of storytelling, we will examine the ways in which stories can reinforce, reinvent, or subvert the ways in which we understand our world.

Heroes are easy to find in REALLY good books, right? However, have you ever wondered what makes those heroes “heroic”? What makes heroic characters relatable and unreachable at the same time? Can villains be heroic? Can heroes be bad? Throughout your semester-long literary expedition, we’ll look at MANY types of heroic characters—some characters you might like and some you won’t; some you can relate to and some you can’t. We’ll begin our expedition by creating a literary guide and a literary roadmap in order to figure-out how to effectively identify heroic characters. As we navigate through myriad literary worlds, the following is a list of “heroes” we’ll likely bump-into (not in any particular order): Gilgamesh, Lisbeth Salander, Guinevere, Esther, Aragorn, Odysseus, Aeneas, Laura Ingalls, Beowulf, Harry Potter, Natty Bumpoo/Hawkeye, Wife of Bath, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Lucy Pevensie, Achilles, Katniss Everdene. Who knows, you might even encounter an Ironman or a Black Widow or a Rick Grimes or an Aladdin or a Xena along the way. Join us as we travel vast literary worlds in search of the sometimes elusive but always interesting literary hero.

Imagine asking your Smart-device to continue reading Isaac Asimov's book "I, Robot." Imagine attending a history lecture on The Plague. Imagine listening to a speaker on catastrophic climate change and its impact on humans in North America. Imagine having a discussion with a psychology professor or colleague about changing gender roles and expectations. Imagine watching an anti-gravity football game with your teammates. The common link between these “imaginings” is this: Fiction helps discuss science AND science helps inform fiction. In this introduction to reading fiction course, students will have the opportunity to explore intersections between worlds of fiction and worlds of science by reading and discussing works by authors, thinkers, and scholars such as Leonardo DaVinci, George Orwell, HG Wells, Stephen Hawking, Sun Tzu, Marie Curie, Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov (among others). Students will have opportunities to seek out places where new life might emerge, to explore strange new (and old) worlds, and to go boldly where they may not have gone before in their reading and collegiate experience.

In this course we will read fiction and poetry written by a variety of modern and contemporary authors who incorporate mythology and/or legends into their writing. As we begin each piece of fiction or poetry, we will simultaneously read versions of the myths or legends being accessed in the writing; in this way, we can see how the author may be re-imagining and translating the myth into his or her contemporary social, political, and artistic contexts. Students may expect to read writers from several different cultures and countries, to gain skills and confidence reading both poetry and fiction, and to explore the imaginative and critical dynamics of re-writing myth—both in our course readings and in multiple creative and critical writing exercises that we will undertake throughout the semester.

This course will both hone and investigate our literary interpretive practices, focusing on some of the most inventive and influential literature to emerge from Ireland in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We’ll read both past masters and current practitioners of the literary arts (some in translation), including, W.B. Yates, Elizabeth Bowen, James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Evan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. We will pay particular attention to the way these and other writers imagine(d) their work in conversation with that of their peers, creating and complicating notions of cultural and artistic identity.

What does literature mean? So often, a story or a poem mean more than one thing at the same time: and what they are really all about can seem to elude us. In this course we read poems and stories that clearly mean two things at once. But when is a snake just a snake, and when is it Satan? By reading medieval to contemporary texts, we learn to decipher this form of “double-speaking” otherwise known as "allegory." The works we read for class will often be about shape-shifting characters (such as Pinocchio and Gregor Samsa), while all of the stories themselves will appear to shape-shift before our eyes as they start out about one thing and turn into another. By the end of the course, students attain the skills to read these transformations with confidence and delight. Coursework involves attentive reading, reflective and analytical writing, and rigorous participation in class discussions.

Women, men, and aliens. This sounds more like a reality tv show than a college class, but in fact, it is a popular culture course that offers students a way to explore their personal identities. Through the critical examination of novels, short stories, and movies, students will be asked to think about their own gendered, racial, and ethnic identities. This discussion-based class will also push students to examine the influence of society and culture on identity.

In this course we will read multiple modern essayists whose work explores ideas of cultural and social difference and identity in our contemporary American culture(s). Writers will include Claudia Rankine, Kao Kalia Yang, Kiese Laymon, and others.

Years ago, TV cop Joe Friday left a permanent imprint on our nation’s sensibility with his signature phrase, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” In other words, he was only interested in the truth, the details that really mattered, as he endeavored to solve a case, to figure things out. Fiction, on the other hand, is not dependent upon facts as we generally understand them. (You want talking pigs? Meet Wilbur or Snowball. Ten-year-old wizards? Hello, Harry Potter.) And yet, for those interested in Truth with a capital T, fiction is the best source for questions such as What is Love? Or Loss? How does a mountain FEEL? Who am I? In this course, students will read fiction – specifically short stories from contemporary masters like Jhumpa Lahiri, George Saunders, ZZ Packer, and Jamel Brinkley – in an effort to better understand concepts of gender, race and ethnicity, and culture.

Monsters are an integral part of our narrative experience, from childhood ghost stories to contemporary tales of vampires and zombies. We are fascinated with monsters, the creatures that are like us but not quite, the creatures we might become. This course will examine representations of the monstrous in a variety of genres in order to examine identity in the contemporary United States, with a particular focus on race, ethnicity, and gender. We will ask: How do we conceive of the monster and the monstrous? Who decides who (or what) is monstrous and why? And above all, what does the monster reveal or show us about ourselves, especially how we understand and construct individual and social identity?

American mystery stories take a hard look not only at the scene of the crime but also at society. By bringing individual lawbreaking to public view, the detective reveals the tension, hypocrisy, and corruption of the surrounding society. This class introduces you to the detective fiction genre. We will focus on how American crime fiction explores and critiques social identities, especially race, ethnicity, and gender. Readings will include a variety of contemporary detective fiction by writers such as Tony Hillerman, Walter Mosley, and Barbara Neely.

What narratives do literature and film provide for understanding the complex ways that border crossing affects human identity? This course explores stories about how people are transformed by crossing the United States border; and, how these changes relate directly to their gender, race, and ethnicity (and the way each of those may be perceived and valued in the United States). Through our reading, we will endeavor to better understand social constructions of gender, race, and ethnicity. We will foster awareness of how dominant group features such as whiteness, heterosexuality, and citizenship status interplay with intersectional aspects of identity in meaningful and transformative ways. Together we will endeavor to better understand power dynamics surrounding the constructions and impositions of identity within United States culture.

Bloody murder, illicit sex, martyrdom, guts and gore: This course is a pleasure tour through some of the noisiest transgressions in the Western Literary Canon. After a brief grounding in the patricide and fratricide of Greek theatre, the Bible, and Shakespeare, we’ll see what shape these themes take in modern U.S. fiction. Expect Wise Guys and Men in Pink Suits. We’ll also consider, occasionally, what happens when women take these matters in hand. Not for weak stomachs.

Introduction to English Studies serves as a gateway to the English major. Course content focuses on an intersection between at least one major contemporary issue with English Studies and invites students to situate literary studies in conversation with current events, phenomena, topics, or problems. Methods include close reading, critical thinking, discussion, and writing and research skills. All sections of the course provide an overview of literary periods, literary movements, and contemporary areas of English studies. Topics and content will vary from course to course.

“Given that our life worlds become ever more game-like…it has become increasingly urgent to revisit the work on play and games as a serious, vital topic.” —Joyce Groggin, Play & Games in Fiction & Theory The Games and Fiction course serves as an introduction to studies in English and focuses on the many roles that literature plays in games and gaming. We study the construction of games and play in fictional narratives including novels such as The Hunger Games, graphic novels, short stories, films such as The Green Knight, and video games ranging from AAAs like The Last of Us to indie titles like Undertale. We discuss the ins and outs of the growing phenomenon of “gamification,” game theory, and how the ludic (play) operates in multiple aspects of our daily life. Students receive foundational training in reading and writing about literature as we explore how games are constructed and imagined in different literary worlds, changing concepts of games, and current forms of gameplay in US culture.

English 206 is a creative writing course for pre-health science majors. Students participate in a sustained clinical experience, delivering creative writing sessions to a clinical population, while developing their own writing lives. This course helps students increase their capacity for working with ambiguity (moral, creative and narrative), while helping them see “patients” as people who are not defined by their diseases. Additionally, this course helps future clinicians learn to communicate with precise imagery and metaphors, while revealing connections between the practice of medicine and the arts of poetry and fiction.

English 207 is a creative writing course for pre-health science majors. Students participate in a sustained clinical experience, delivering creative writing sessions to a clinical population, while developing their own writing lives. This course helps students increase their capacity for working with ambiguity (moral, creative and narrative), while helping them see “patients” as people who are not defined by their diseases. Additionally, this course helps future clinicians learn to communicate with precise imagery and metaphors, while revealing connections between the practice of medicine and the arts of poetry and fiction.

Craft and practice of writing creative nonfiction. Students write original works of creative non-fiction, including forms such as memoir, personal essay, photographic essay, and literary journalism. Students closely examine published essays, and participate in peer-review workshops. This course prepares students for advanced writing courses at the 300 level. Attention to style, grammar, paragraph development, etc. Prerequisite: completion of First-year Seminar.

Craft and practice of writing short fiction and poetry. Students write original works of fiction and poetry, closely examine published short stories and poems, and participate in peer-review workshops. This course prepares students for advanced creative writing workshops at the 300 level. Consult the English Department Course Description Booklet for a specific description of each semester's offering.

Exploration and incorporation of research into creative and critical works of original writing. Students examine research as a part of the creative and critical processes of writing-in genres including poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students evaluate and experiment with approaches to research as well as ways of incorporating it into their writing. This course is an excellent preparation for an Honors Thesis in the humanities.

This early western literature course starts in the ancient world and travels to the medieval as we read foundational masterpieces of literature. We read the famous Greek poets Homer and Sappho, and the later Roman poets Virgil and Ovid. We see how Virgil changes Homer in his later version to fit with the values of the Roman Empire. (We also look at some contemporary poems to see how modern writers retell Ovid’s classical myths.) In the Medieval period we see how Dante and other Christian writers transform the ancient, “pagan” stories into Christianized versions. Students see how a story changes over time as each writer turns old material into something new—something suited to his or her present time and place. We also study gender and sexual norms in these often sexually troubling works, and we see how marginalized female writers, such as Sappho and Christine de Pizan, depict their sex in their own words while carving out a place for women within a masculine tradition. Students in this course may expect to learn ways of reading literary texts, how to conduct literary research and analysis, as well as how to recognize allusions in later literature—a strong basis for future literary study.

In this course we will read some Masterworks of Western literature and drama in translation from the Early Modern period to the present day.  Our reading list includes some very famous texts, and other equally fascinating reads that may be less familiar to you.  Our texts come from Europe, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil and may include:  Voltaire’s Candide, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Machado de Assis’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, Kafka’s The Trial, Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, Camus’ The Plague, De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Rulfo’s Pédro Páramo, García Márquez’ Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Lispector’s Hour of the Star, and Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.

This course explores the earliest stories written in English. Funny, brutal, and mesmerizing, these tales from the medieval period--spanning 1,000 years—seem strange and yet oddly familiar. We'll divide the course into three sections, early, middle, and late medieval, reading foundational texts from each era, such as the extraordinary Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, and The Dream Vision of Piers Plowman. While we approach each text historically, we remain mindful of how medieval works exist in dialogue with literature from across the world and with later literature even into our present day. Students further enhance their study of manuscript culture and early literary production through hands-on visits to our HMML library and Book Arts Studio.

From 1580's to the 1680's England experienced an unprecedented literary renaissance, as writers resurrected and re-imagined classical literary forms to fit new cultural, political, and social pressures. We'll read and consider texts within this historical content, from the sonnet sequences of Lady Mary Wroth and Sir Philip Sidney, to epics such as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and John Milton's Paradise Lost, pastoral and country house poems by Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Johnson, and Andrew Marvell, the religious lyrics of John Donne and George Herbert, the occasional verse of Mary Herbert and Katherine Philips, and the Restoration era work of John Wilmot (the Earl of Rochester) and Aphra Behn.

This course offers you a fresh perspective on the American Revolution—through the eyes of women as well as men, ordinary people as well as founding fathers, and enslaved as well as free Americans. We will examine how ideas about race, masculinity, and femininity shape concepts of liberty from the late eighteenth-century Atlantic revolutions to the US Civil War. Our discussions will focus on the messy and incomplete processes of social and personal transformation using a wide range of readings that trace experiences of escape and failure in early America, including Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, the novel Charlotte Temple, and Mary Prince’s freedom narrative.

This course introduces you to the literary culture of the nineteenth-century Americas by introducing you to its ghosts. Literary forms, like the poetic elegy, cultural movements, such as gothicism and romanticism, and new technologies, like the photograph, combined to make the Americas very ghostly places in the 1800s. The course will feature works by and about three of the most significant groups of ghostly Americans: Native Americans, enslaved Americans, and women. We will consider theoretical approaches to haunting from psychological, sociological, historical, and literary perspectives and the historical contexts of imperialism and war that contributed to the haunting of the Americas. Readings for this class may include short stories, poems, and narratives by writers including Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, and Henry James.

In this course we will consider the role of the outsider (socially, politically, culturally, ethnically, aesthetically, and more) in the literature of the Americas from World War II to the present. The outsider has long figured in American literature, an oft celebrated figure, such as Henry David Thoreau writing alone in his cabin at Walden Pond. In this class we will study writers and artists who have chosen to work outside expected norms and others who have not had the choice, whose outsider status is determined by the dominant culture. We will carefully read poetry, drama, fiction, cultural criticism, and nonfiction to understand: What does it mean to be an outsider? Who decides who belongs and who does not? How does the literature and art-making of this period demonstrate how individuals and groups agitate for belonging, create new communities of belonging, and/or challenge artistic and social norms? Authors and artists may include: James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, Leslie Marmon Silko, Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Claudia Rankine, John Cage, the Beat Poets, the Guerilla Girls, Kathy Acker, and more.

Supervised reading or research at the lower-division level. Permission of department chair required. Consult department for applicability towards major requirements. Not available to first-year students.

Introduction to literary and cultural theory. Students apply theoretical texts or concepts to literary or cultural texts (e.g., novels, films, television, popular arts, clothing, architecture, and public spaces).

On this May term, CSBSJU students travel to Pavia, Italy for an intercultural writing workshop to develop writing skills and intercultural competencies. While living in a beautiful and historical residential college, CSBSJU students take this course together with English-speaking students at the University of Pavia. Our creative writing course centers on writing exercises and workshops within a larger thematic framework: the ethics of creative writing. What ethical crises—moral, political, ecological—do American and Italian poets write about? What concerns do our cultures share and in what ways might we approach the same concerns differently? Through our reading of selected contemporary poets, we examine similarities and differences in perspectives we have on some of the challenges we share as humans in the modern age. Through generous support from the CSB Literary Arts Institute, the course incorporates a visiting Italian writer who meets with our class to discuss writing and to host us for a tour of Pavia to discuss its literary past and relationship to the writer’s own work. Students workshop together in small groups to help one another negotiate a foreign language (reading a few poems in English and a few in Italian); undertake creative writing exercises; and discuss one another’s work in a context the promotes intercultural writing and communication skills. Each student is supported in developing a writing portfolio in which they explore their own concerns in their own words.

Introduction to film as a medium of communication and representation. Possible topics include but are not limited to a survey of the development of film and the movie business, techniques of acting, directing, cinematography, narrative style, and film theory. The vocabulary of cinema and representative films of the first hundred years of filmmaking is covered. Recent titles have included "An Introductory Guide to Active Spectatorship" and "Introduction to Film Techniques, Meanings, and Pleasures."

Theory and practice of writing longer nonfiction forms (essays, articles) dealing with complex subject matter. This course explores the rhetorical strategies used in non-technical writing drawn from a variety of disciplines. Students focus on the development of their own voices and styles.

Advanced creative writing workshop in poetry or fiction. This course alternates its topic semester to semester to offer students opportunity to take advanced workshops in more than one genre of creative writing Consult the English Department Course Description Booklet for a specific description of each semester's offering.

Are you secretly a poet? Do you love to write? This course offers a careful study the art of poetry and the writing life. Together, we read a wide variety of styles and forms of poetry as we write original poetry throughout the semester. Students may expect readings and writing exercises to supplement their study and to stretch their writing. Regular writing workshops will provide sustained feedback on student writing, as well as exercise in reading and editing skills. As part of the course each student will read the major works of an individual poet in a guided study of that author’s achievements, and each student will produce a revised portfolio of creative work, meet with visiting writers, and participate in a poetry reading. The course primarily aims to develop creative writing skills and to help students grow as writers; additionally though, the course enhances students’ ability to read and discuss poetry, provides practice revising and editing written work, and expands students’ knowledge of poets writing in English.

In this semester of Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction, we will delve deeply into reading and writing fiction with even greater attention to language, voice, and form. You will explore and better understand the practice of your own fiction writing, as well as study and attempt together to understand why a particular story works in a particular way. What makes this character engaging? Why does dialogue in this piece leap off the page while in another story the dialogue feels static? We will also expand our expectations of narrative and narrative conventions, while asking what makes a good story. You will strive to, as Lidia Yuknavitch writes in The Chronology of Water, “Make up stories until you find one you can live with. Make up stories as if life depended on it.” Workshop will be an essential component of the class. We will also perform writing exercises based on the readings, experiment with our texts, and work to stay present in the world and in the word.

With literary publishing in rapid flux, book publishers knit their brows and try to forecast demand for printed books and e-books. Every prediction prompts a new round of hand-wringing about the future of the book. The shift from print to electronic formats has had—and continues to have—enormous consequences for the publishing industry. Claims that this shift spells the death of books, however, demand careful examination. In English 315, we’ll explore the rapidly changing book-publishing industry, looking closely at the ways in which industry developments and new technologies affect writers, readers, and publishing companies. We’ll begin by studying the traditional book-publishing model, and then we’ll study the effects of digital technologies on the transmission of writers’ works to audiences of readers. By the end of the semester, we may not arrive at certain answers about the future of literary publishing, but we’ll understand many of the forces that will shape that future.

This course offers students the opportunity to study and practice the art of creative writing – both fiction and nonfiction genres – within the context of the natural world. Students will read and critique a variety of already published work by some of the contemporary masters of the form. Students will also have frequent opportunities to read and discuss drafts from other members of the class, using an adapted writing workshop format, as well as regular, one-to-one meetings with the instructor. Ultimately, and most importantly, students will create their own versions of how written language can be used to express and interpret the relationship between humans and nature. A pair of in-class, semi-formal readings will complete the Nature Writing experience.

Successfully navigating a business is tricky business; however, with planning, research, and execution, it is not an impossible task. This class is structured to give the student practice writing and communicating in four types of business climates: government, for-profit, non-profit, and education. This “practice” includes resumes, cover letters, formal reports, professional presentations, grant proposals, advertising copy for TV and radio, communications for emerging social media outlets, business plans, formal and informal memos, various forms of print media, etc. In the process, students will have opportunities to consider various career options and look ahead to professional life after college. In addition to the academic work in the classroom, students will hear from a number of business professionals as those professionals will come to class to share their collective wisdom about writing and communicating in the business environment. All in all, this class will help students realize that the theory and “book-learnin’” they experience in the academic arena really do have practical applications and a place in the world outside of academia.

In Arthurian Romances and medieval epics, the heroic knight commonly encounters dangerous folk and creatures that pose threats to his life and virtue. These monstrous figures threaten the knight with violence and with the allure of their otherworldly difference. Yet these monsters also reflect fears and attitudes about historical “Others” such as women, the Islamic East, Judaism, and the Orient. In this course we will examine these encounters with an eye to cultural anxieties surrounding difference. To better understand these anxieties, we will read and discuss the history and culture of the Middle Ages in relationship to our primary texts: Le Morte D’Arthur; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes; The Lais of Marie De France; Tristan and Isolde; and The Song of Roland. Reading critical texts such as Said’s Orientalism and Frye’s The Secular Scripture, we will explore the “line between ‘the West’ and ‘the Other’,” the quest as nightmare, the uncanny, and fears surrounding mixed blood. (If you are a fan of Game of Thrones, dragons, Lancelot and Guinevere, or medieval mystics, you’ll be among your people).

In this course, we will look at American novels that feature heroines facing the complications of marriage at a moment when national conversations about women’s education, their increasing independence, the relationship between difference and equality, and the limits of contract law take place in the context of a rapidly developing market for commodity exchange. Focusing heavily on Henry James—The Portrait of a Lady (1880) and The Ambassadors (1903)—and Edith Wharton—The House of Mirth (1905) and The Custom of the Country (1913)—we will meet some of American literature’s more sympathetic adulteresses as well as its most infamous single marriageable females. We will also test these characterizations against their limits in terms of the working class and immigrants with the novels of Theodore Dreiser—Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925)—and Anzia Yezierska.—Arrogant Beggar (1927). (This reading list is subject to revision.).

Geoffrey Chaucer, legendary author of The Canterbury Tales, is considered to be the “father” of English Literature, English Poetry, and even the English Language. But who was he, and why is he important to us? This course explores Chaucer’s life and writing, examining the paradoxes and mysteries that surround his identity: what is known about his contemporaries, social networks, and political intrigues. We discover Chaucer writes about concerns pressing in the medieval period that remain relevant today: marriage; sex; political corruption and tyranny; Christianity and Islam; the mistreatment of women; anti-Semitism; refugees; loss; and the human longing for consolation. We read and listen to his writings in Middle English so we can appreciate the humor, beauty, and brilliance of his verse. We tour the genres that Chaucer incorporates into his Tales—including the fabliau (bawdy tale), saint’s lives, beast tales, and romances—both to deepen our understanding of medieval literature and to gain a clearer view of Chaucer’s innovations. The course also examines manuscript culture (looking at how his poems were first collected) as well as the most recent commentaries on his work, such as “Chaucer at Ground Zero,” to understand why his writing still matters now. In-class discussions and readings will support student learning throughout the course, and students will receive individual guidance in a critical and/or creative research project designed around their interests.

This course will focus on reading closely, discussing, and writing about key representative plays from Shakespeare’s career. We’ll consider how his work both contributed to, and moved past, the conventions of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical genres. We will move in a roughly chronological order, in order to consider the trajectory of the plays as well as historical and cultural shifts. Plays will likely include The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV Part One, As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Winter’s Tale.

Study of several works by one or two authors. Recent offerings include "William Faulkner/Toni Morrison."

Analysis and discussion of significant literary texts. Students will complete a substantial research project designed to facilitate the transition or studying beyond the undergraduate English degree. Thematic focus of the course varies with instructor.

This course offers a culminating opportunity for English majors to synthesize their college work, especially much of what they have learned in their English courses. The English Department has established this course to bring English majors into contact with each other over a semester to read, reflect, and write about a common reading list. Students in this course will gain a heightened awareness of the history, content and theoretical approaches to the discipline of English, will develop a substantial understanding of their major within a larger context of its discipline, and will come to know well their immediate community of majors. “Capstone” is organized around a reading list entitled “Books Every English Major Should Read.” Because this course is a requirement of the English Department, it will be taught by different faculty members and each faculty member will have a different reading list. My list will include novels, short stories, poetry, film, and works of Critical or Cultural Theory. Each category will be represented by selected works that “every English major should” know. The major texts for the course will be chosen from the categories listed above. Our texts will include: Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger (short stories); W. B. Yeats, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder (poetry and poetic essay); Haruki Murakami (contemporary novel TBA), and Walter Benjamin (theoretical essay). One or two other texts, including film, will be chosen at a later date in consultation with the class. I will provide a list of further reading suggestions. These suggestions will serve as souvenirs of the CSBSJU English major and may be read at any time in the future!

What can we make of the stubborn New World habit of giving symbolic power to black populations while simultaneously denying them real social power? Why are whites so often comfortable “at play” in black cultural forms? Our primary texts will be novels from the U.S. and Argentina, mostly from the second half of the 19th Century; we will also consider other fine arts forms such as minstrelsy, classical music, jazz, painting, and photography, as well as writings from Economics, New Musicology, Literary Theory, and Cultural Studies. Since this is a seminar, students will take central responsibility for their learning: expect a vigorous reading load, a substantive seminar presentation, and a research paper. We begin with Eric Lott’s Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Novels may include: Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884), James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Music may include works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, The American Songbook, and Charlie Parker.

Readers of Medieval European literature often encounter strange figures: demonized Saracens and non-Christian others, hybrid creatures, and monstrous, supernatural women. Who or what is being Othered in these representations? On whose authority are African people represented as half-animal? Or Muslims as demonic? Our course examines the creation of ‘outsiders’ in the Middle Ages and how medieval writers constructed difference. Topics of inquiry include: Othering of Saracens and non-Christians; Muslim-Christian Dialogues, Estranging the Feminine, Labyrinths, and Hybrid Creatures: Myth, Monsters, and the Imagination. #winteriscoming As part of this highly active course, our group visits HMML to learn about interfaith dialogue and co-existence in Middle Eastern manuscripts; we examine the Othering of women in scientific as well as literary treatises, as well as important responses to this Othering in the works of female Christian mystics and secular writers such as Christine de Pizan; and, we uncover hybridity as an image of difference: mythical creatures abound in medieval texts, romances in particular but also in epic poems and in sea-monster laden cartography. Writing projects throughout the semester focus on integrating research meaningfully into creative writing as well as literary and historical analyses.

Modernism and modern literature is often characterized by questions of identity, fragmentation, alienation, and the challenging of old forms. The modernist era is sometimes narrowly defined as the years between WWI and WWII; however, the thematic and formal considerations surfaced earlier, and resonated far later. Course readings will include a selection of fiction and/or poetry written in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.

The term “Lost Generation” refers to those who came of age during World War I and helps describe the upheaval and loss experienced by an entire generation for whom the world had changed forever. This course focuses on American and British writers working in the period between the world wars, a period known as literary modernism. In the face of world war, a global pandemic, and more, these writers were breaking away from past models of writing and challenging social and political norms. You will read carefully, write argumentative literary analyses, and conduct scholarly research. Readings by such authors as Virginia Woolf, Jean Toomer, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, Nella Larsen, and others.

A selection of fiction, poetry and/or other forms written in the past 30-50 years. Recent courses have emphasized emerging forms, including graphic novels, hybrid works, and online works. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Practice and refinement of creative writing in a chosen genre. Students explore their creative writing practice through a deeper engagement with the literary arts, including analysis of genre and form, discussion of significant texts and writers, and a sustained writing project culminating in a portfolio of original creative work. This class prepares students for writing beyond undergraduate studies. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Study of selected critical theories and application, using such approaches. Recent course offerings have included "Globalization and American Literature." Recommended for majors planning for graduate English studies. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Do you fancy yourself a novelist or a writer of short stories? Not sure how do you develop your main characters? How should you structure the plot? What point of view should you choose? The focus of this course will be decidedly practical as students learn to read as writers, gleaning tips on the craft. Students will consider the processes of writing, aiming to uncover various methods of confronting potential issues. London’s own vibrant arts scene and literary traditions form a fascinating focus and locus for the study of creative writing. Class members will engage with local novelists, poets and playwrights through guest lectures and readings.

Is London fairly represented in literature? Has the way London is presented changed over time? Is there a difference in the London of a novel and the London of a travel guide? London is a city of stories and has been an inspiration and subject for writers over hundreds of years. This course introduces students to London, both as an object of enquiry and as source, setting, and inspiration for numerous literary texts. Exploring the places, tropes, symbols, and characters in a selection of texts enables students to think about the city in relation to key theoretical and historical/cultural events that have helped shape the way we each experience London. Different approaches to ‘writing and reading’ London are addressed alongside an analysis of the ways in which the city acts as a basis for critical interrogation and understanding.

You’re undoubtedly familiar with William Shakespeare, but how did he and other Elizabethan wordsmiths define an era and create a timepiece of this dramatic time with their works? How are Elizabethan values and stereotypes portrayed within the works of the age’s most celebrated poets, authors and playwrights? What was it like to enjoy live Elizabethan theatre? Students taking this course will be introduced to the life and work of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries through lectures, workshops, field trips and theatre visits.

What is travelling and what does it mean to each of us. What is it for? Why do we travel, and how do we decide where to go? What is travel writing? What do we want from it? Do you feel more ‘American’ now you’re out of America (if that's where you're from)? Why and How? As Tim Cahill, the legendary travel writer and former editor of 'Outside Magazine', once wrote, “It isn’t the travelling, it’s the writing.” Cahill, Andrew Bain, Rory MacLean, Sara Wheeler, Rolf Potts, Bill Bryson–these are writers with wildly different styles, and many of them travel to completely mundane locations, but they all manage to learn something about themselves, and why they travel, in the process of writing. In other words, it’s not where they go; it’s how they experience the place, and how they write about that experience.

Supervised reading or research at the upper-division level. Permission of department chair and completion and/or concurrent registration of 12 credits within the department required. Consult department for applicability towards major requirements. Not available to first-year students.

Here’s the truth: fake news wasn’t invented in the run-up to the 2016 American presidential election. This course uses nineteenth-century fiction to explore the United States’ love-hate relationship with fakes, frauds, and cons. On the one hand, the American Dream of social mobility seems to always entail a little bit of “fake it ‘till you make it.” Some class climbers and tricksters who deceive their way to success, like Benjamin Franklin, are our cultural heroes. On the other hand, writers have explored how deception and hypocrisy threaten democratic social order and the possibility of faith in something larger than our selves. This class explores how nineteenth-century American literature examined both its own practices of deception and those of the culture around it. Readings may include Native trickster stories and works by Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Fern, Anna Cora Mowatt, and Charles Chesnutt. Students in this class can expect to gain a better understanding of the historical context for contemporary debates over authenticity in media. We will also debate the role of self-invention in religion, race, gender, and capitalist democracy in America. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing

Selection of works written by women. Recent course offerings include "Literature by Women: African, Asian, and Caribbean." Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

This class undertakes advanced exploration of how literary works represent, construct, and evolve to respond to race and ethnicity in the Americas. We will examine how constructions of race and ethnicity in literary works intersect with similar constructions of gender, sexuality, or class, and how these constructions vary across time, cultures, and societies. Coursework will critically analyze the way that these forms of identity dynamically connect to systems of power and raise questions of justice. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

A study of literature, partly in translation, from African, Asian and the Caribbean countries. The course examines the specific historical and cultural contexts in which these literatures arise. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

This course explores the long history of American writing about nature and the environment, with particular attention to questions of the human place in nature. Some of this literate is about exploration—what is out there? Some of this is about the utility of nature—what can we do with vast forests, grasslands, or rivers? But the most interesting examples are often about what we can learn from nature and what obligations we may have to non-human life—what is our place in nature? The styles and traditions of American nature/ environmental writing have changed dramatically over time and today are quite diverse, incorporating at times elements of philosophy, theology, ethics, science, economics, politics, and art. Through reading, thinking, and discussing, and writing critically about a wide range of examples from genre students will gain an appreciation for the depth of the American literary approach to nature, become familiar with many of the writers and texts that could be said to form a “canon” in the field. And will learn to actively engage such writing form a variety of approaches including historical analysis, ecocriticism, and ethical reasoning.

There has been a consistent strain in Western ideology, which has defined the East as absolutely Other. Whether it is judged to be execrable or laudable, India, China, Japan, and other countries in the area have been seen as mystical, inscrutable lands where even the most ordinary actions [are] imbued with symbolism. --Patrick Colm Hogan, “Beauty, Politics, and Cultural Otherness: The Bias of Literary Difference” This course is an attempt to recover the Indian subcontinent from a persistent tendency in the Western media to cast the land as “mysterious” or “mystical” and its people as “spiritual” or “exotic.” Our readings of literary texts from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, will reveal the concerns expressed by the writers of these countries—concerns that are rooted in and shaped by the material and historical world they inhabit. This course is not an introduction to the “culture” of the Indian subcontinent, but an attempt to understand the complex relationship between cultural production (literature) and what Terry Eagle-ton calls “its enabling material conditions” (“Introduction,” Marxist Literary Theory). We might indeed encounter veiled women and snake charmers—perhaps even elephants—in our readings, not as symbols of an unknowable, exotic East, but as representations of certain forms of social consciousness. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

This course will focus on excellent, representative works in South African literature: English by white and black writers, Afrikaans literature in translation, written by men and women from diverse cultures and races. The main focus is to give a profile of the best of South African literature and to highlight current literary debates against the relevant socio-historical and political context. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

This course will examine the evolution of our modern understanding of the natural world. How do we imagine nature, and do other cultures (past and present) imagine it differently? Where exactly did our current understanding of the natural world come from, and where does it seem to be heading in the future? In asking these questions, we will also explore how different visions of nature (nature as God's creation, nature as a mechanical structure, nature as a complex ecosystem, human nature etc.) have shaped our approach to our understanding of the lives we live. Students will examine a mix of history, biology, political philosophy, literature, film and cultural theory texts as part of a course of study designed to investigate where, why and how writing and nature intersect in our world today. Course Objectives: 1. To explore the social and historical importance of influential visions of nature from the ancient world up to more recent modern and/or postmodern periods, 2. To investigate the relationship between nature, economics and literature, 3. To examine how certain visions of nature have been used to justify social inequalities, 4. To read debates about the natural world from politically informed perspectives and 5. To study how different visions of nature shape and reshape our understanding of the natural and social worlds in which we all live. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

During the Middle Ages, commonplace depictions of women portrayed them as all-powerful temptresses or husband-destroying nags. Yet in reality women enjoyed little to no sexual freedom or legal authority in marriage. In this course, students examine the gap between these images and gendered realities as we study complex relationships between women and power in medieval literature. We look carefully at women as writers of and as subjects in medieval texts, reading for instance the romances of Marie de France and Chretien de Trois, the defense of women written by Christine de Pizan, and excerpts from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. We read medieval women Christian mystics as well, Julian of Norwich among other, often surprisingly powerful, female visionaries. The course provides historical context for reading these figures, and specifically draws attention to the material conditions in which different genders were able to write. Students explore how gender affects one's ability to communicate in writing and to make his or her voice heard.

This course analyzes film through one or more theoretical aspects. Psychoanalytical, feminist, cultural studies, and reader-response theories are among possible approaches offered. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. COMM 286 or ENGL 286 recommended.

Linguistics, as a discipline, is the scientific study of human language. This course will cover the core of linguistic study: phonetics and phonology (sounds and sound systems), morphology (word shapes), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (the meanings of linguistic forms), and pragmatics (meaning in context). We'll also look at a wide variety of other topics including sociolinguistics (language and identity), language contact, change, death, and revitalization; and writing systems. This challenging but fascinating topic area will prove relevant not only to students of English and education but also to those majoring in foreign languages, philosophy, psychology, or computer science. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Critical reading of such popular arts and practices as film, television, music, newspapers, etc. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Integration of the skills of the English major, a liberal arts background and the expectations of a career. Individually tailored by the student with the advice and approval of a department advisor and the college's director of internships. S/U grading only.