Current Courses
Plan your Fall 2026 semester
Explore everything the English Department has to offer — from engaging courses to dedicated faculty ready to support your academic journey. Whether you’re planning your next semester or thinking about where English can take you, we’re here to help you chart your path through the program.
EN 103 – Writing Seminar I
Designed to be accessible to a wide range of students, this course uses a variety of real-world topics and text types as students build audience-based writing skills for effective communication and persuasion. Students will learn reliable strategies to gain confidence and develop an academic voice in a supportive community of writers, with special emphasis on making effective grammatical and stylistic choices. Along with writing skills, the course supports critical thinking, critical reading, and organizational skills that translate to other courses.
Students with an Expository Writing Placement of 103 must complete EN 103 by the end of their first year. Afterwards, they must complete EN 105 to fulfill the Foundation Requirement by the end of sophomore year.
EN 103 01 – Writing Seminar I
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:40 – 11:00 a.m.
Instructor: T. Niles
EN 103 02– Writing Seminar I
Wednesdays and Fridays, 8:40 – 10:00 a.m.
Instructor: A. Suresh
EN 103 03 – Writing Seminar I
Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:10 – 11:30 a.m.
Instructor: A. Suresh
EN 103 4 – Writing Seminar I
Wednesdays and Fridays, 12:20 a.m. – 1:40 p.m.
Instructor: A. Suresh
4 credits
EN 105 – Writing Seminar II
This course, like EN 110, fulfills the all-college Foundation Requirement in expository writing. Each section of 105 focusses on a particular theme and helps students develop effective writing skills and practices.
EN 105 01 – Writing Gender
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 8:00 – 8:55 a.m.
Instructor: R. McAdams
EN 105 02– Writing Gender
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 9:05 – 10:00 a.m.
Instructor: R. McAdams
Whether or not we always realize it, gender constantly, quietly shapes our experiences—from determining which bathroom we use at a gas station, to framing others’ responses if we start to cry in public, to influencing the way we speak and write. But what is gender, actually? How is it constructed and maintained? In this writing seminar, we will analyze the way that biological and social definitions of gender compete with and inform each other, as well as the way that gender identities and expressions have varied historically and culturally. We will read and write about practices like drag and cross-dressing that play with normative expectations, as well as about nonbinary and transgender identities that reject the reduction of gender to the biological sex assigned on a birth certificate. Above all, we will write and talk about writing—in essays, short assignments, and peer review sessions—and we will explore how writing reflects gender and shapes our understanding of what gender is.
4 credits
EN 105 03 – Capitalist Aesthetics
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40 – 5:00 p.m.
Instructor: A. Bozio
EN 105 04 – Capitalist Aesthetics
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:10 – 3:30 p.m.
Instructor: A. Bozio
Much, if not all, of the world is dominated by capitalism. But even as it shapes our lives, capitalism itself feels impossibly abstract. Terms like “inflation,” “supply and demand,” and “the market” are incredibly vague, and they often appear to have little (or no) relationship to the tangible realities of our lives. This course examines that paradox through a series of questions. What is capitalism? How does it shape culture, in general, and art, in particular? What can aesthetics (taken from the Greek word for “feeling”) tell us about what it means to live and work within capitalism? To answer those questions, we’ll first consider what defines capitalism as a political and economic system and how capitalism shapes both our conception and our experience of the world. We’ll then consider how capitalism influences the realm of aesthetics, drawing upon literature and film to guide our inquiry.
4 credits
EN 105 05 – Experience
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40 – 5:00 p.m.
Instructor: H. Hussaini
EN 105 06 – Experience
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:40 – 11 a.m.
Instructor: H. Hussaini
What is experience? How does the passivity of “something is happening to me” turn into the active realization of “I have gained experience”? And what is the relationship of individual experience to our understanding of the world? Picasso thought, “a painter should create that which he experiences,” and many experienced writers advise young writers to “write what you know.” There seems to be a consensus, then, that much of the art we see and books we read have somehow emerged from someone’s experience. Let’s read and look at some of these works together, especially ones owing their existence to direct experience or that have something to say about the whole ordeal of creating out of experience. One goal of this class is to understand the relationship between writing and experience, but more importantly, we’ll experiment with critical and expository writing derived from our own experience, because bringing one’s subjectivity to writing greatly enriches the experience of writing itself.
4 credits
EN 105 07 – Writing as Radical Empathy
Wednesdays and Fridays, 12:20 – 1:40 p.m.
Instructor: O. Dunn
“Language is far from being a closed, self-contained system, and words are deeply intertwined with our ways of engaging with the world. Language in this sense is more like an interface rather than a firewall, an array of devices that connects us to the things that matter to us,” says the scholar, Rita Felski. Good writing can give the reader an emotional experience, a chance to interact with another person’s mind and heart. But how does it do this? How does language convey emotion? How does a writer make us see what they see, feel what they feel? In this class, we’ll move outside of our comfort zone—away from simply reading works we might enjoy because they are “relatable.” We’ll explore what boundaries writing can cross. We’ll discuss how writing can create change in the world. We’ll look at work from writers and artists who actively work to make us see things their way, from poets to activists to visual artists. We’ll pay special attention to how each artist crafts their work; using these same tools, you’ll create powerful writing of your own. By the end of the semester, after drafting and revision, you’ll have a portfolio of polished writing.
4 credits
EN 105 08 – Under the Influence
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Instructor: T. Niles
Argument seems inescapable. As a central cultural practice of Western higher education, adherence to its rituals can determine the success of an essay or presentation, which is perhaps enough to motivate its study. But more compelling reasons for examination may come from the arguments that surround us in newspapers, advertisements, and everyday political discourse. Certainly, responsible citizens and consumers ought to critically examine attempts to influence their lives, gain their money, or win their allegiance. The skills we learn will help us understand the structure and strategy of arguments. Hopefully, what we learn will be relevant to our lives inside and outside of the academic sphere. In this writing course, we will explore some fundamental principles of argument (using real-life examples when possible) and examine rhetorical choices in a variety of situations. We will also explore how professionals confront various psychological, social, linguistic, and ethical issues related to persuasion. All this will prepare us to create a final project designed to enhance public discourse and decision-making—i.e., a useful text designed for a real-world audience.
4 credits
EN 105 09 – Last Words
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30 – 3:50 p.m.
Instructor: E. Sperry
For as long as we have been writing, we’ve been trying to out-write death. The written word has been held up by artists and authors as something that can outlast almost anything, especially our fragile bodies. This semester, we’ll first explore what it means to be mortal. How have others theorized what it means to die? What do you think defines mortality? Second, how can writing respond to our mortality? Is it a gateway to immortality, or does writing also eventually fade away? Finally, we’ll think about the future of immortality technologies—social media, bionics, and other augmentations that call into question what death might look like in the future. Throughout all this, we’ll think about the work of writing. We’ll develop careful analytical skills, work on practices like planning, drafting, and revising, and develop our own individual voices in conversation with the works we encounter.
4 credits
EN 105 10 – The Art of Persuasion
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8:10 – 9:30 a.m.
Instructor: K. O'Dell
We’ve all heard the cliché that the pen is mightier than the sword. This saying, where communication trumps combat, establishes language as a powerful force for change. Simple words—in all their mundane glory—can stoke the fires of revolution, topple regimes, and bring sweeping change to society. The ability to communicate persuasively is one of the most-valued skills in our world today. Rhetoric (or the art of persuasion) is thus located at the very center of politics, culture, memory, and literary production. In this course, we will develop and refine our personal writing styles while examining the power of language in our daily lives. Our primary questions will be: How is language revolutionary? How can we wield rhetoric successfully? And how do media and technology affect the way we engage with language and memory? We will study a range of genres from pre-modern to modern day: these include op-eds, essays, poetry, satire, advertisements, music, memes, and more.
4 credits
EN 105 11 – Fantasy and Worldmaking
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Instructor: K. O'Dell
Reading fantasy can feel like falling down a rabbit hole—the imagination delights in the excitement, escape, and joy of discovering new worlds. This writing seminar explores the allure of fantasy and its place in our society. We will begin by reading a short selection of medieval texts to understand how early literature informed the fantasy worlds we know and love today. As we move to modern day, we will examine a range of media, including books, video games, visual arts, fanfiction, and big-budget films. Our primary questions will be: Why has fantasy captured both the literary market and the hearts of its fans? How do authors create worlds to think through binaries like good and evil? And how are issues of gender, race, and class explored through crafting fantasy and otherworlds? Writing is central to these questions as we seek to untangle the art of storytelling, or what makes good fantasy so good. Through lively discussion and multi-draft essays, we will practice critical analysis and develop our individual voices as writers and storytellers.
4 credits
EN 105 12 – Vice and Villainy
Mondays and Wednesdays, 8:40 – 10:00 a.m.
Instructor: K. O'Dell
Villains and all manner of scoundrels have fascinated audiences for centuries, from medieval to modern. Whether it’s Morgan Le Fay, Dracula, or Satan himself, narratives about villains have continued to shape our written and oral traditions. But why do we create them? And perhaps more importantly, why does it feel so good to be bad? In this course, we will define what it means to be a villain and explore how this category has changed over time; this means investigating how villains inspire emotional reactions and why they keep us coming back for more. We will take on a range of genres and media, including poetry, novellas, short stories, film, visual art, and even recent research on monster theory. Writing is central to this seminar. Through lively discussions and multi-draft essays, we will develop and refine our personal writing styles while also cultivating critical thinking and close reading skills.
4 credits
EN 105 – Writing Seminar II: Honors Sections
This course, like EN 110, fulfills the all-college Foundation Requirement in expository writing. Fulfills Honors Forum Requirement. Each section of 105H focusses on a particular theme and helps highly-motivated students develop effective writing skills and practices. Students must have an EW placement of EN105H to enroll.
EN 105H 01 – Writing As Radical Empathy
Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:10 – 11:30 a.m.
Instructor: O. Dunn
“Language is far from being a closed, self-contained system, and words are deeply intertwined with our ways of engaging with the world. Language in this sense is more like an interface rather than a firewall, an array of devices that connects us to the things that matter to us,” says the scholar, Rita Felski. Good writing can give the reader an emotional experience, a chance to interact with another person’s mind and heart. But how does it do this? How does language convey emotion? How does a writer make us see what they see, feel what they feel? In this class, we’ll look at work from writers and artists who actively work to make us see things their way. We’ll explore what boundaries writing can cross, and how writing can create change in the world. We’ll pay special attention to how each artist crafts their work; using these same tools, you’ll create powerful writing of your own. By the end of the course, after drafting and revision, you’ll have a portfolio of polished writing.
4 credits
EN 105H 02 – Writing On Demand
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:40 – 2:00 p.m.
Instructor: L. Hall
When the essayist Joan Didion was in her twenties, she wrote editorial copy for Vogue
magazine on a wide range of subjects. In her forties, she noted that it is “easy to
make light of this kind of ‘writing,’ [but] I do not make light of it at all: it was
at Vogue that I learned a kind of ease with words... a way of regarding words not
as mirrors of my own inadequacy but as tools, toys, weapons to be deployed strategically
on a page.” Inspired by Didion’s on-the-job apprenticeship, this course will ask
you to undertake the work of a professional copywriter or ghostwriter. What might
you be asked to compose? The introduction to the documentary “extras” for a television
series. The “Our Story” blurb for the website of a local restaurant. A capsule biography
for a mayoral candidate. A C.E.O.’s response to a request from Forbes: “Tell us about
the biggest mistake you ever made as a leader.” The instructor will furnish you with
material; with her guidance, you will shape it into publishable or, as the case may
be, presentable prose. Expect frequent short assignments, most of them graded.
4 credits
EN 105H 03 – Writing Skidmore
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:20 – 1:40 p.m.
Instructor: E. Sperry
The title of this course isn’t meant to describe a task—“writing at Skidmore”—but an action. What does it mean to write yourself? To make your way through writing? What does writing look and feel like when we transform it from something to do to a way of doing something?
In this course, we will approach writing as an act of communal making. Students will spend the semester engaged in collaborative ownership of the writing process: the class will function as its own editorial board, working together to choose a central topic and produce a printed essay collection by the close of the term. Students will work together to plan, draft, and revise their contributions to the collection; the final product will be entirely student-driven, from the included essays to features like illustrations, order, and layout. The course will culminate in the production of individual physical editions: using the writing produced during the semester, students will learn to make their own books in the Skidmore IdeaLab.
4 credits
EN 110 – Writing About Literature
This course, like EN 105, fulfills the all-college Foundation Requirement in expository writing. It immerses students in the process of producing finished analytical essays informed by close reading of literary texts. Special attention is given to developing ideas, writing from texts, organizing material, and revising drafts. Additional emphasis is on grammar, style, and formal conventions of writing. Students respond to one another's work in workshops or peer critique sessions.
EN 110 01 – The Literature of Friendship
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:40 – 2:00 p.m.
Instructor: J. Cermatori
During a time when isolation and loneliness are increasingly seen as urgent social problems, this course explores how literature has depicted friendship as a vital and complex aspect of human existence. How have writers across genres portrayed the joys and struggles involved with living in the company of friends? In what ways do literary texts depict the benefits, risks, and limits of amicability? Spanning various historical periods, we'll study important works of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction that bring friendship to life, asking how literature has shaped our views of friendship today. We'll examine literary friends alongside other figures of human connection and disconnection — peers, siblings, companions, comrades, rivals, enemies, acquaintances, strangers — while also paying attention to how social factors like gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class may shape the literary depiction of interpersonal relationships. All along the way, we'll inquire about how literature may help invent new modes of sociability for our modern world, whether friendship forms a sustaining basis for political work, and what it means to practice friendship as a way of life. Readings may include works by Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, William Shakespeare, Caryl Churchill, Kazuo Ishiguro, Walt Whitman, and others.
4 credits
EN 110 02 – The Self and Other Fictions
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Instructor: J. Parra
This course will introduce you to the study of literature through a focus on the idea of the “self.” The speaking “I” in a poem, the narrator who tells a short story, the characters we meet in the world of a novel—these are all ways that literary texts create the sense that readers are encountering not just words printed on a page, but other selves. Together, we will investigate how specific texts do this imaginative work. As we practice careful critical reading, we will ask what the concept of the “self” has to do with thinking and speaking; with having a body; and with being seen, heard and recognized by others. How much can a self-change before it is no longer…itself? In foregrounding these questions, the readings in this course also have a tendency to reveal just how tenuous a belief in the self is. Throughout the semester, we will discuss and experiment with various stages of the writing process, including developing an argument, drafting, and revision. Students will complete three short essays.
4 credits
EN 110 03 – Join the Banned
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30 – 3:50 p.m.
Instructor: T-C. Mathews
In this course, we’ll read “banned books”: novels suppressed because their depictions of politics, sexuality, and/or language were deemed ‘dangerous’ for adolescent consumption. Our central question is investigative: what exactly have authorities feared young readers might learn, feel, or question after experiencing these stories, and how can we as writers thoughtfully reflect on the conflict between protecting the impressionable and educating them? Through a combination of regular written reflections, two creative essays, two academic essays, and one major presentation, we’ll hone our oral literacy, critical reading, and analytical writing skillsets by examining the historical campaigns mounted against several literary works frequently assigned in U.S. secondary schools. Primary texts will range across novels, narrative non-fiction, poetry, and film, with possible texts including: Fahrenheit 451 (both the novel and the 2018 film); excerpts from Go Tell It On The Mountain, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and The Diary of Anne Frank; select poems from Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and Audre Lorde as well as a final project on a text of the student’s choice.
4 credits
EN 111 01 – Fiction
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:40 – 11:00 a.m.
Instructor: B. Black
An introduction to the art and craft of fiction, this course will cover an exciting
and diverse range of fiction writers including Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison, H.
G. Wells, Jhumpa Lahiri, Charlotte Brontë, Jennifer Egan, Roxane Gay, Anton Chekhov,
and Kazuo Ishiguro. Reading both novels and short stories, we’ll study such elements
of technique as point of view, setting, voice, characterization, and symbol. Our topics
of discussion will be varied: love, friendship, the individual and community, home,
journeys, justice. Regular “Connections” papers will have us writing and thinking
throughout the semester, building our facility with form, language, and technical
vocabulary. These “Connections” will serve as thought experiments that invite you
to connect works from our syllabus, to connect our course work to other courses you
are taking, to connect your life with our readings. We’ll think about fiction as a
space in which writers can experiment, testing out possible responses to problems
that are compelling for them. And we’ll join those writers in that rich space of hypothesis
and meaningful exploration; at times, we’ll examine how and why we get hooked to a
character, a writer, a plotline—how and why our imaginations work as we read. After
all, fiction is about “imagining otherwise,” for both author and reader.
3 credits
NOTE: Students who have taken EN 211 are not eligible to enroll in this course.
COUNTS AS A PREREQUISITE FOR EN 280, EN 281, and EN 282
EN 113 01 – Poetry
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:40 – 2:00 p.m.
Instructor: A. Bernard
We’ll focus on how poems are made and what they are for. Ballads are for telling sad stories; sonnets are for arguing; villanelles are for brooding; and so on. In addition to galloping through the history of poetry in English, we will read important examples from other languages, always looking at the mysterious business of how poets learn from the past to make an art that evolves. Students will learn to write and speak with confidence using poetic terms; to memorize and recite; and to write their own poetry exercises in imitation of various styles and forms.
NOTE: Students who have taken EN 213 are not eligible to enroll in this course.
COUNTS AS A PREREQUISITE FOR EN 280, EN 281, and EN 282
3 credits
EN 117 01 – Film
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40 – 5 p.m.
Instructor: R. Boyers
What makes a movie great, even unforgettable? How do we assess the role of the director, and differentiate it from the contribution of the screenwriter? Why is it that, for more than a hundred years, the best films have seemed irresistible to millions of movie-goers and stirred innumerable controversies? Would most of us know how to think about who we are and to make sense of our lives in society without having spent many hours in front of a screen, following the conflicts, love affairs and disappointments of characters whose fate seems somehow important to us?
The course is an introduction to the art of film which asks students to think about the difference between films and other forms of narrative and to consider the essential, distinctive features of film art. Over the length of the semester students will study more than a dozen feature films by leading directors--English, American, Italian, German, Indian, French and Japanese—and learn how to talk about what makes these films great and compelling. The films will include movies by Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Spike Lee, Erich Rohmer, Margarethe von Trotta, Francis Ford Coppola and others.
NOTE: Students who have taken EN 217 are not eligible to enroll in this course.
Counts toward the Media and Film Studies minor
3 credits
EN 129 01 – Science Fiction
Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:10 – 11:30 a.m.
Instructor: T. Wientzen
Establishing itself in the popular consciousness in the 1940s and 50s via dime store magazines, cheap paperbacks, and B-movies, science fiction was once thought to be little more than adventure tales for boys—the cultural trash of a nuclear age. But the genre was, from its very origins in the late nineteenth century, something much more than just extraterrestrial capers or tales of amazing superpowers. Emerging in tandem with new social structures of mass modernity and a body of science that was rapidly shifting entrenched notions of the cosmos, science fiction articulated new visions and fears about the future while giving readers the ability to see their present in defamiliarized ways.
This course offers an introduction to the genre of science fiction, from its inception until the present day. We will trace the evolution of the genre from its earliest days, through the pulpy “golden era” of the mid-century, the “new wave” of the 1960s, the “cyberpunk” of the 1980s and 90s, and into contemporary SF. As we move through this history, we will consider some of the scientific contexts (evolution, astronomy, quantum physics, etc.) that informed the political issues at the heart of the genre (labor, religion, race relations, feminism, totalitarianism, etc.). Texts include literary works by H. G. Wells, W. E. B. DuBois, Olaf Stapledon, Octavia Butler, and Carmen Maria Machado. Class requirements: active in-class participation and analytical essays.
3 credits
EN 205 – English Seminar
Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:10 – 11:30 a.m.
Instructor: T.C. Matthews
Introduction to the practice of literary studies as a scholarly discipline, with a particular emphasis on skills related to critical reading and research. Readings and discussions will focus on a range of literary texts and genres, as well as theoretical concerns and methodological approaches to the study of literature. Students will ask questions about what it means to synthesize and contribute to a critical conversation on a literary text. This course introduces students to the intellectual and artistic life of the English department beyond the classroom experience. It is a requirement of the English major and of the English and Creative Writing minors, and a prerequisite for courses at the 300 level.
3 credits
PREREQS: EXPOSITORY WRITING REQ (EN 105, 105H or 110) AND A 100- or 200-LEVEL LITERATURE COURSE
EN 210 – Marxisms and Literature
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30 – 3:50 p.m.
Instructor: B. Diaby
This class surveys the history of Marxist approaches to literary studies, with a particular focus on the last century. Marxism has produced a varied and contested field of critical thought on literature, history, and aesthetics. In addition to these topics, we will also discuss the further divisions that arise when we consider sexual politics, race, and other identity categories. After Marx himself, we will read thinkers ranging from Raymond Williams to Angela Davis. Along with these thinkers and topics, we will study literary texts that have inspired influential Marxist work. Students will post to a bi-weekly forum and present on a topic of their choosing.
3 credits
EN 229 01 – Early Modern Theatricality
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30 – 3:50 p.m.
Instructor: A. Bozio
“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare famously declared. But what does it mean to think of the world as a theater and life itself as a kind of performance? In this course, we’ll learn how Shakespeare and his contemporaries might have answered that question. Through a broad survey of early modern English drama, we’ll ask what plays can tell us about the power of performance. Topics will include gender as a performance; how race was performed at a time of global capitalist expansion; and how the performance of gender and the performance of race intersect with one another.
COUNTS AS AN EARLY PERIOD HISTORY REQUIREMENT
3 credits
EN 229 02 – Contemporary Film Genre
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:10 – 12:30 p.m.
Instructor: P. Benzon
This course offers an introduction to genre as a tool of categorization and analysis in film studies. Approaching film through the lens of genre raises a range of open-ended interpretive questions: what defines and characterizes a particular genre of film—what are its aesthetic, narrative, and social concerns? How does genre relate to authorship, audience, industry, and identity? What are the boundaries of a given genre, and what is at stake, artistically and politically, in placing a given film within one genre or another—or across or between genres?
In this course, we will explore these and other questions through in-depth studies of several central genres of contemporary film. We’ll trace these genres across history, reflect on their changing aesthetic and social characteristics, and consider their places within contemporary culture. Over the course of the semester, each student will have the chance to explore a film genre of their choosing through a sustained research project.
COUNTS AS A LATE PERIOD HISTORY REQUIREMENT
COUNTS TOWARD THE MEDIA AND FILM STUDIES MINOR
3 credits
EN 229 03 – Sex, Adultery, and Transgression in Fiction and Film
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:40 – 2:00 p.m.
Instructor: R. Boyers
Debates on the representation of sex in fiction and in film have chiefly focused on moral and psychological issues. In novels and films built around sexual transgression society can sometimes seem like a “brothel,” marriage a prison, with ordinary relationships reducible to copulation and deception. Many leading writers and thinkers associate the rise of the novel with the conflict between convention and nature, with “nature” expressed most insistently as the performance of sexual desire and the over-stepping of conventional limits and practices. In films with overt sexual agenda central characters often betray a commitment to excess and a belief in desire as the only “truth” we can rely upon in a repressive society. Though there is reason to challenge some of the assumptions informing novels and films built around sex, there is no question that these works have opened up questions we wish—with whatever misgiving—to debate and confront.
This course will introduce students to a variety of masterworks that exemplify the virtues and conflicts entailed in the representation of sex. Assigned works will include short stories (Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice,” Phillip Roth’s “Whacking Off,” Garth Greenwell’s “Cleanness,” and Mary Gaitskill’s “Bad Behavior”), two novels (Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina), and four films (Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties, Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris).
3 credits
EN 229 04 – The Romantic Novel
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:20 – 1:40 p.m.
Instructor: B. Diaby
Associated with poetry, the Romantic period nonetheless plays a pivotal role in the evolution of the novel form. Nestled between the “rise” of the novel in the eighteenth century and the matured sophistication of the Victorian novel, the “Romantic” novel is defined by formal experimentation, genre trouble, and (to be frank) a weirdness all its own. After some historical background on what underpins these changes, we will turn to our main test cases: Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. We will also read contemporary and modern critical work on each text. Students will write three short papers and co-lead discussion once.
3 credits
Counts as a Middle Period History requirement
EN 235 – Writing Black/Writing Back
Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:10 – 11:30 a.m & Fridays 1:25 - 2:20 p.m.
Instructor: M. Stokes
A survey of African American literature from the 1700s to the present. We will examine
the uneasy relationship between “race” and writing, with a particular focus on how representations of gender and sexuality participate
in a literary construction of race. Though this course examines African American literary
self representations, we will keep in mind how these representations respond to and
interact with the “majority culture’s” efforts to define race in a different set of
terms. We will focus throughout on literature as a site where this struggle over definition
takes place—where African American writers have reappropriated and revised words and
ideas that had been used to exclude them from both American literary history and America
itself.
As a Bridge Experience course, EN 235 asks students to reflect upon their own positions
in their respective communities and on campus and to connect their study of power,
justice, and identity to other areas of their education, as well as to the world beyond
the classroom. Toward that end, students will work in pairs to create a podcast that
explores how one of the texts on the syllabus might help us think about power, justice,
and identity in our current moment.
4 credits
Counts as a Late Period History requirement
Fulfills College Bridge Course Requirement
Counts Toward the Black Studies Minor
EN 250H 01 – Honors: Peer Tutoring Project
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 9:05 – 10 a.m.
Instructor: E. Jorgensen
“. . .it is not the English language that hurts me,” bell hooks says, “but what the oppressors do with it, how they shape it to become a territory that limits and defines, how they make it a weapon that can shame, humiliate, colonize” (“Teaching New Worlds / New Words”). hooks then quotes Adrienne Rich: “This is the oppressor’s language yet I need it to talk to you.” Justice-focused teaching and tutoring of English requires thoughtfulness. In EN 250H, Peer Tutoring Project, we learn a toolbox of strategies for tutoring, including ways to structure sessions and respond to tutees’ expressed concerns. We learn Standard Academic English, even as we acknowledge its racist and ableist foundations, and consider ways to negotiate the meanings and demands of “academic writing.”
Much of the course is devoted to experiential learning, first through shadowing experienced tutors and then through independently tutoring in the Writing Center. In our class meetings, we will consider the roles of Writing Centers; strategies for effective tutoring sessions, including techniques for supporting student writers whose first language is not English; the problematic position of Standard Written English; approaches to papers from various disciplines; and methods for explaining grammatical and punctuation guidelines. Some class sessions will be small-group meetings to assess progress, to debrief, and to plan. Coursework involves reading and discussion in Writing Center theory and practice, short reflective papers, a research project, and four hours a week in the Writing Center.
NOTE: This course is the required preparation for tutoring in the Writing Center.
4 credits
Prerequisite: Permission of Instructor
Fulfills College Bridge Course Requirement
Fulfills Honors Forum Requirement
EN 251 – Reading/Writing Young Adult Fiction
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30 – 3:50 p.m.
Instructor: M. Stokes
The past two decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in young-adult fiction, as the genre has taken on the challenge of speaking to the diversity and complexity of young-adult lives. In this course, we’ll read a handful of recent young-adult novels, using them as models for our own writing. We’ll practice the elements of young-adult fiction, including narrative arc, character development, world building, and voice, and we’ll share work-in-progress in workshops. Students will leave the course with a polished first chapter of a young-adult novel.
4 credits
Fulfills College Arts requirement
EN 254 – Prose Boot Camp
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:20 – 2:10 p.m.
Instructor: L. Hall
“Can you really teach anyone how to write?” a New York Times reporter once asked Kurt Vonnegut. Writers—especially writers who teach—are accustomed to that question and generally have a ready reply. Vonnegut’s answer was unusual: “Listen, there were creative writing teachers long before there were creative writing courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors.” He neglected to mention a crucial difference between teachers and editors: the latter are responsible for preparing writing for publication. Teachers can let things go—in fact, they may have been trained to work with students on one or two weaknesses at a time.
If you are sincerely interested in improving your writing at the level of the sentence, Prose Boot Camp offers straight talk about problems and how to fix them. You will undertake the work and be held to the standards of a professional ghostwriter or copywriter. The instructor will furnish you with material; with her guidance, you will shape it into publishable or, as the case may be, presentable prose.
Note: “Prose Boot Camp” is similar to Professor Hall’s “Writing on Demand” course; the assignments themselves, however, are different.
4 credits
COUNTS AS A PREREQUISITE FOR EN 378 - NONFICTION WORKSHOP
Introductory Creative Writing Workshops
All introductory workshops count as pre-requisites for upper-level workshops in the same genre and count toward the Creative Writing Minor.
EN 281 01 – Introduction to Fiction Writing
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:40 – 2:00 p.m.
Instructor: M. Mayer
A collaborative exploration of fiction writing and rewriting. No prior experience with fiction writing presumed, only interest and eagerness to experiment. Class sessions will be devoted to analyzing short stories and exploring fiction as an art, craft, and practice. Central to our work will be the workshop, a collaborative discussion and critique of fellow students’ fiction. Outside of class, students will read, write creative exercises, and complete original short stories.
4 credits
COUNTS AS PREREQ FOR EN 380
FULFILLS COLLEGE ARTS REQUIREMENT
COUNTS TOWARD CREATIVE WRITING MINOR
EN 282 – Introduction to Poetry Writing
Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:00 – 5:20 p.m.
Instructor: A. Bernard
Weekly workshops, grounded in exercises in form (and subject matter) are designed to help poets find their footing in this art. We explore sonnets, villanelles, ballads, odes, syllabic verse, and the blues—all in an atmosphere of good will and good humor. This is the foundational poetry workshop for both majors and minors.
4 credits
COUNTS AS PREREQ FOR EN 379
FULFILLS COLLEGE ARTS REQUIREMENT
COUNTS TOWARD CREATIVE WRITING MINOR
EN 326W – Post-Internet Fiction
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:10 – 3:30 p.m.
Instructor: P. Benzon
How can prose fiction capture the experience of life in a world shaped by the internet? Can it? What might this genre—long associated with interiority and psychological depth—have to say about the conditions of life online, where so much seems to be characterized by surface, performance, and distraction? What political claims can fiction make in response to the new social, political, and economic forces that dominate digital culture?
In this course, we’ll bring these questions to bear on a series of fictional texts, all written in roughly the last decade, that take online life and culture as a primary narrative and thematic focus. These texts constitute a new literary genre, still in formation, and our task will be to take stock of its major concerns and characteristics. We’ll consider how these texts respond to the emergence of always-on life, what formal innovations and aesthetic strategies they introduce to represent that life, and what possibilities they imagine for agency, subjectivity, and resistance in the increasingly digitally saturated twenty-first century. Our ultimate goal will be to characterize the aesthetic and political concerns of the emergent genre of post-internet fiction, and in doing so to understand more broadly how profound technological and social change might yield meaningful literary innovation. Texts for consideration may include short stories and novels by Kristen Roupenian, Honor Levy, Patricia Lockwood, Lauren Oyler, Sally Rooney, Nick Drnaso, Esther Yi, Hari Kunzru, Gabrielle Zevin, Jarett Kobek, Olivia Sudjic, Vivek Shraya, Xu Bing, and others.
4 credits
Counts as the Late Period History requirement
EN 328R 01 – James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Nightmare of History
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30 – 3:50 p.m.
Instructor: T. Wientzen
Warning: this class is for the hardcore literary nerd.
James Joyce’s 1922 novel, Ulysses, is one of the most celebrated and despised novels in the English language. A major part of this novel’s legacy has to do with how goddamn hard it is to read. Many “serious” readers often find that they simply cannot get beyond the opening chapters. And yet, Ulysses is often classed as being one of the most important novels ever written—the great work of Ireland and perhaps of the modern English-speaking world. Loosely built on the model of Homer’s Odyssey, Joyce’s novel turns the mundane events of a single day in colonial Dublin (16 June 1904) into a modern epic about empire, love, gender, urban life, the transcendent beauty of everyday life, and the “nightmare” of history.
Because Ulysses is an unusually challenging book, there is only way to read it for the first time: with a dedicated community of peers and the guidance of an experienced hand. We will begin this epic journey by reading a few of Joyce’s early stories, in which he introduced readers to many of the dominant questions that preoccupy Ulysses. Moving on to Ulysses, we will attempt to disentangle the political, aesthetic, and philosophical strands Joyce laboriously weaved into his novel. We will undertake this task by analyzing Joyce’s distinctive understanding of his young century, one that could appear as both a moment of liberation and a waking nightmare. In so doing, we will attempt to understand how Ulysses became, in the eyes of many, the paradigmatic expression of a modernist sensibility.
4 credits
Counts as the Late Period History requirement
EN 341R – Monsters of the Middle Ages
Mondays, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Instructor: T-C. Matthews
What makes a monster…monstrous? Is it their aesthetics, their appetites, or the fact that so many of them seem like anti-heroes? In this course, we’ll read a variety of tales from Europe’s Middle Ages, hunting for the answers to questions about who society relegates to the role of ‘monster,’ why/why not, and what has (or hasn’t) changed about that process—encountering varying modern-day adaptions of a few of these medieval tales along the way! Possible texts include: the short and aptly named ‘beast poems’ by Marie de France, excerpts from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”
4 credits
Counts as an Early Period History requirement
EN 350P – The Experimental 18th Century
Wednesdays, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Instructor: B. Diaby
We don’t always think of eighteenth-century literature as experimental, despite the period witnessing the birth of the novel, the dawn of Romantic poetry, and the formation of modern conceptions of literature. In this seminar, we will examine how experimental the texts of the period were, from the unique narrative voice of Jane Austen to Tristram Shandy, a book that nearly ends before its protagonist is even born. We will also study how many of these formal innovations (or subversions) were responding to other factors in the so-called “Age of Enlightenment,” such as the rise of women’s writing and new theories of science and knowledge like Empiricism and Idealism. We will read work by Jane Austen, Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth and others while attending to the tensions between form and gender, politics, and philosophy. Students can choose between writing two short essays or one final research paper with a proposal.
4 credits
Counts as a Middle Period History requirement
EN 359R – Modernism and Drama
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:40 – 11:00 a.m.
Instructor: J. Cermatori
This course examines playwrights and artists who remade theater into a laboratory for artistic innovation during the early twentieth century (ca. 1880–1955). Across a broad network of countries and languages, modernist aesthetics leveled challenges to widespread norms of dramatic representation. How did modernism take shape in drama and how did the modern theater seek to reflect and intervene in the modern world? Seeking a comparative perspective, we will read texts in English and in translation from a range of other languages. Along the way, students will develop advanced undergraduate research skills in theater and drama studies through in-class presentations, annotated bibliographies, and research papers. Authors may include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Bertolt Brecht, Thornton Wilder, Gertrude Stein, and others.
4 credits
Counts as the Late Period History requirement
EN 364P 01– Psychoanalysis and Literature
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40 – 5 p.m.
Instructor: J. Parra
Since its inception, psychoanalysis has never ceased to be a scandal. This course introduces students to the history of analytic thought and some of its major developments from Freud to the present. Special attention will be paid to the often neglected theorists and practitioners devoted to liberating the psyche (and psychoanalysis itself) from the alienating effects of capitalism, colonialism, and racism. In addition to work by theorists of the talking cure, we will read writing by cultural critics who use psychoanalytic frameworks to find new ways of approaching literary works.
4 credits
EN 364P 02/ AS 351 – Buddhism and Poetry
Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:10 – 11:30 a.m.
Instructor: M. Greaves/B. Bogin
An exploration of poetry within Buddhist contemplative and literary traditions. Students will learn about the poetry traditions of different Buddhist cultures and consider the power of poetic language to express topics such as emptiness, compassion, and awakening. Along with reading Buddhist poetry translated from Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan, we will read contemporary Buddhist poetry composed in English. Students will also write and revise original poems engaged with Buddhist traditions.
4 credits
PREREQS: RE 221 (BUDDHISM: AN INTRODUCTION), or EN 113 or 213 (POETRY), or PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR
FULFILLS THE GLOBAL CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE REQUIREMENT
COUNTS TOWARD THE ASIAN STUDIES MAJOR
EN 377 01 – Translation for Vampires and Poets
Tuesdays, 6:30 – 9:30 p.m.
Instructor: P. Boyers
We all have the experience of being “stuck” in our own voices and experiences. This is a course in which students will learn to use the practice of translation as a means to get un-stuck, released from the captivity of our own habitual structures and themes. Translation will be engaged in not as a pure enterprise in the service of someone else’s art, but selfishly, as the practice of throwing our voices to new places by following the paths of writers who have come before us. Thus, vampirically, we will hope to refresh our poetic life-blood, our diction, as well as our familiar frame of reference by swallowing whole that of others and by making of that ingestion something new.
Jorge Luis Borges, Carilda Oliver Labra, Pablo Neruda, Artur Rimbaud, Saint Theresa, Patrizia Cavalli, Sor Juana, Dante Alighieri, Martin Heidegger , Simone Weil and Paul Celan will be among the writers whose works we will consider and “translate”—freely and then more freely—gradually changing and adapting the work in order to compose new original poems.
Cultural and gender lines as well as language barriers will be crossed in order to find unfamiliar terrain on which to set up shop. Various genres —drama, fiction, non-fiction, film, poetry—will be raided as well for the purposes of pushing students’ work to new places. The course will be conducted as a workshop in which students will be expected to produce new work for each class. Knowledge of other languages is not necessary for this class.
4 credits
Fulfills College Arts requirement
EN 371 – Independent Study
Instructor: The Department
Research on literature and special projects in creative writing. Independent study
provides an opportunity for any student already well grounded in a special area to
pursue a literary or creative writing interest that falls outside the domain of courses
regularly offered by the department. The student should carefully define a term’s
work which complements their background, initiate the proposal with a study-sponsor,
and obtain formal approval from the student’s advisor and the department chair. Application
to do such work in any semester should be made and approved prior to registration
for that semester or, at the very latest, before the first day of classes for the
term.
3 credits
EN 399 A-D – Professional Internship in English
Instructor: The Department
Professional experience at an advanced level for juniors and seniors with substantial academic and cocurricular experience in the major field. With faculty sponsorship and department approval, students may extend their educational experience into such areas as journalism, publishing, editing, and broadcasting. Work will be supplemented by appropriate academic assignments and jointly supervised by a representative of the employer and a faculty member of the Department.
1-4 credits
Advanced Creative Writing Workshops
Students hoping to enroll in 300 level creative writing workshops need permission of the instructor. To receive permission, students should email the professor in advance of registration.
EN 379 – Poetry Workshop
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:20 – 1:40 p.m.
Instructor: A. Bernard
Class meets twice a week. Each student will write one poem a week, due every Monday with copies for all. You will read and make thoughtful notes on the poems of your classmates’, which will be handed back in Wednesday’s workshop class. Workshops will be conducted in an atmosphere of good humor and good will. Additionally, you will read assigned poems and write occasional short critical papers; and each of you will read and report to the class on two volumes of contemporary poetry over the course of the term. A revised portfolio of poems is due on the last day of class.
4 credits
Prerequisite: EN 282 plus permission of the instructor (see above)
Fulfills College Arts requirement
EN 380 01 – Fiction Workshop
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:10 – 3:30 p.m.
Instructor: M. Mayer
In a creative writing workshop, a community of other minds helps us to interrogate our own. By providing us with travelogues of their ventures into our fiction, our peers help us perceive what we have dreamt. This process requires difference—readers with their own instincts for language, their own sensitivities to experience, and their own narrative intuitions—and solidarity, a shared commitment to putting this difference in service of the author’s vision.
We will invest ourselves in this process, attending not only to craft questions—plot momentum, emotional interrogation, character revelation, sentence structure—but also to the subtle work of discerning our own textual reflexes and building collaborative artistic community.
You’ll have the freedom to pursue your ongoing projects, and where appropriate, critiques will consider stories and chapters in the context of book-length projects. We will also discuss published fiction, representing a variety of narrative and emotional strategies, as well as some works of theory and literary criticism. Students will have the opportunity to shape our reading list based on their interests.
4 credits
Prerequisite: 281 and permission of the instructor
Fulfills College Arts requirement
NOTE: The Senior Coda is satisfied in most cases by a Senior Seminar (EN 375) or Advanced Projects in Writing (EN 381). Students with appropriate preparation and faculty permission may instead choose the senior thesis or project options: EN 376, 389, 390.
EN 375 01 – Senior Seminar in Literary Studies
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:40 – 2:00 p.m.
Instructor: B. Black
In this advanced research seminar, students will have the opportunity to develop an extended scholarly paper on a literary topic of their own choosing. At the start of the semester, you’ll reflect on your work as an English major up to that point, imagining potential topics and pathways for further research and writing, and we’ll explore several short texts together in order to practice research methods as a group. From there, you’ll develop an individualized research project, moving from brainstorming to a proposal and bibliography and then to a series of scaffolded drafts. While our group’s research projects may be spread over a diverse range of texts, genres, periods, and concerns, our work will be collaborative and communal, emphasizing frequent workshopping, conferences, and an approach to research as a process of shared inquiry.
4 credits
Qualifying work will earn honors
EN 376 01 – Senior Projects
Advisor: The Department
Senior Projects offer students an opportunity to work independently, with the guidance of a faculty supervisor, on a hybrid project that does not fall under the parameters of Senior Seminar (EN 375), Senior Thesis (EN 389, 390), or Advanced Projects in Writing (EN 381). Such hybridity might include a mixing of genres (e.g., a project that combines memoir with a research- based analytical piece or poetry and short fiction) or media (e.g., a project that involves the creation of text as well as music, film, or art); a translation project; an applied learning project; and so on. Students must find a project supervisor in advance of registering for EN 376 in the fall or the spring of their senior year. May be repeated once for credit. All requirements for a regular Independent Study apply. To register, fill out a “Senior Thesis or Senior Project Registration” form, available on the English department’s website.
3 credits
Qualifying work will earn honors
PREREQUISITES: COMPLETION OF THE INTRODUCTORY REQUIREMENT, PERMISSION OF THE DEPARTMENT, AND SENIOR CLASS STANDING.
EN 389 01 – Preparation for Senior Thesis
Advisor: The Department
Required of all second-semester junior or first-semester senior English majors who
intend to write a thesis (EN 390). Under the direction of a thesis advisor, the student
reads extensively in primary and secondary sources related to the proposed thesis
topic, develops their research skills, and brings the thesis topic to focus by writing
an outline and series of brief papers which will contribute to the thesis.
3 credits
PREREQUISITES: APPROVAL IN ADVANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT
EN 390 01 – Senior Thesis
Advisor: The Department
Intensive writing and revising of senior thesis under the close guidance of the student’s
thesis committee. The thesis provides an opportunity for English Majors to develop
sophisticated research and writing skills, read extensively on the topic of special
interest, and produce a major critical paper of forty to eighty pages. Not required
of the English major, but strongly recommended as a valuable conclusion to the major
and as preparation for graduate study. Distinguished work will qualify eligible students
for departmental honors. To register, fill out a “Senior Thesis or Senior Project
Registration” form, available in the English department and on the English department’s
website.
3 credits
Prerequisites: EN 389 and approval in advance by the Department
Qualifying work will earn honors