Fall 2019 English Course Descriptions
English 1009G Section 001 CRN 95564
Charles Wharram
Stories Matter--Literature, Health, and Medicine 11:00-11:50 am MWF
This course will address two ways of looking at the connections between literary texts and questions of health and medicine. We will read about the ways that literature can shape and even transform the way we think about health and medicine. How do authors represent illness and disease? How do fiction and poetry illuminate the work of healthcare providers and institutions? On the other hand, we will consider how concepts from health and medicine might apply to our approach to literary texts. How seriously should we think about the viral aspects of reading? How does good reading practice help us become better at diagnostics? This course meets the "Humanities" general education requirement, and can be used for the Health & Medical Humanities minor program.
Notes: This course satisfies the Gen Ed Humanities & Fine Arts requirements. All majors are welcome.
English 1099G Section 099 CRN 95566
Charles Wharram
Stories Matter, Honors--Literature, Health, and Medicine 11:00-11:50 am MWF
This course will address two ways of looking at the connections between literary texts and questions of health and medicine. We will read about the ways that literature can shape and even transform the way we think about health and medicine. How do authors represent illness and disease? How do fiction and poetry illuminate the work of healthcare providers and institutions? On the other hand, we will consider how concepts from health and medicine might apply to our approach to literary texts. How seriously should we think about the viral aspects of reading? How does good reading practice help us become better at diagnostics? This course meets the "Humanities" general education requirement, and can be used for the Health & Medical Humanities minor program.
Notes: This course satisfies the Gen Ed Humanities & Fine Arts requirements. All majors are welcome.
English 1105 Section 001 CRN 92264
Melissa Caldwell
English Forum 3:00-3:50 pm W
What can you do with an English major? This course is designed to answer that question from a wide variety of perspectives. Topics include academic choices within the major, minor(s), undergraduate research opportunities, English-related student organizations, study abroad, internships, scholarships, career options and career planning, graduate and professional programs, study abroad and internships. You will begin to plan the direction you want to go with your English major and with your subsequent career through writing projects and attendance at Department and University events.
English 2000 Section 001 CRN 93045
Bess Kosinec
Introduction to Creative Writing 11:00 am-12:15 pm TR
Think of this class as imagination boot camp. Here, you’ll learn to tap into your innate creativity, and to give voice to ideas that excite you, intimidate you, even scare you.
Through a tasting menu of four different genres of creative writing, you’ll learn the basic tools necessary to turn your fascinations into work written, or performed, for others. This means you’ll learn both the habits of the artist and the artist’s tools in the form of writer’s craft, as well as engage in workshop by sharing your work with classmates and learning to critique the work of others constructively. The course culminates in the submission of a revised portfolio of workshopped writing.
English 2205 Section 001 CRN 93047
Julie Campbell
Introduction to Literary Studies 9:30-10:45 am TR
There are as many ways to view a text as there are readers, and each reader brings to a text his or her own perceptions, prejudices, and experiences. When reading and writing about literature are approached from a variety of perspectives, exciting things happen. Texts come alive artistically, historically, and politically in fascinating ways, and we realize that readers co-create meaning with writers. A text is a two-way street. English majors are encouraged to learn to view literature from a variety of critical stances that have evolved into the field called literary theory. In this course, we will read a selection of poetry, drama, and prose from several theoretical standpoints and discuss the historical development of literary criticism.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 1105 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 1105.
English 2760 Section 001 CRN 91527
Vietto
Introduction to Professional Writing 3:30-4:45 pm TR
Introduction to the principles and practices of writing in professional settings. Students will complete case-based and/or client-based projects in multiple genres and media. Course will also address ethical communication, document design, intercultural/global communication, collaboration, basic copyediting, and oral presentation.
English 2901 Section 001 CRN 91233
Melissa Caldwell
Structure of English 11:00-11:50 am MWF
Language is one key to empowerment. In this introduction to the English language, we will explore the analytic approaches to language that can help prepare us to use language to achieve goals of many kinds. Our study of the grammar of the English language is meant to help you think critically about language-related social issues and to apply an understanding of English grammar to a variety of practical uses, including your own writing in a variety of settings, teaching at a variety of levels, editing, and other language-related work. There will be several tests throughout the semester, a final exam, and a short research project.
English 2901 Section 002 CRN 90333
Jad Smith
Structure of English 9:30-10:45 am TR
This course is an introduction to the grammar of English. It is designed to help you learn to describe and analyze the structure of sentences in English and, as such, focuses primarily on syntax. However, phonology (pronunciation), morphology (word forms), and semantics (meaning) will also come up from time to time. Although we will consider grammar from both traditional and modern perspectives, we will take a rhetorical rather than rules-based approach. In other words, we will treat grammar as a tool for reflecting on possible stylistic choices, not as a set of inflexible rules. Ideally, this course will heighten your understanding of the complexity of the English language and help you develop strategies for communicating clearly and effectively in speech and writing.
English 2901 Section 003 CRN 90334
Jad Smith
Structure of English 12:30-1:45 pm TR
This course is an introduction to the grammar of English. It is designed to help you learn to describe and analyze the structure of sentences in English and, as such, focuses primarily on syntax. However, phonology (pronunciation), morphology (word forms), and semantics (meaning) will also come up from time to time. Although we will consider grammar from both traditional and modern perspectives, we will take a rhetorical rather than rules-based approach. In other words, we will treat grammar as a tool for reflecting on possible stylistic choices, not as a set of inflexible rules. Ideally, this course will heighten your understanding of the complexity of the English language and help you develop strategies for communicating clearly and effectively in speech and writing.
English 2950 Section 001 CRN 93048
Bobby Martinez
Transatlantic Literary History: Culture, Literacies, and Technologies I 2:00-3:15 pm TR
In this course we will examine some of the main events in the development of literature and language, its conception, production, and reception. More than simply an introduction to the key cultural movements and genres in British and American literary history, this course will ask you not just to accept but also to think critically about literary history and tradition. In addition to familiarizing you with the history of orality, literacy, and print technology in textual production from the Anglo-Saxon period to the beginning of the 18th century, this core course of the English major will prepare you to enter your concentration with a foundation in critical issues surrounding the lives and afterlives of texts, genres, and traditions. Specifically, in this course we will think about how the use of language changes our sense of self, our sense of others, and our consciousness altogether.
English 3001 Section 001 CRN 90335
Tim Engles
Advanced Composition 12:30-1:45 pm TR
This course will improve your writing skills as you gather your forces toward a career in a professional work environment. Nearly all professional fields include more writing tasks than those entering them usually realize, and the quality of a worker's writing greatly affects interactions with colleagues and supervisors. In addition to getting your skills up to speed for specific forms of professional writing, this course will help you anticipate key features of your future workplace, including those related to race, class, gender, and sexuality.
English 3001 Section 600 CRN 95571
Donna Binns
Advanced Composition Online
Advanced Composition centers on advanced applications of the principles of writing analyses and arguments. This course offers opportunities to explore a variety of research sources and genres of writing. Attention will be given to analyzing writing situations, including the purpose for writing, assumed audiences, and appropriate styles and tones. Active participation in online class activities is required. In addition to major writing projects, homework assignments will consist of analytic reading responses or pieces of writing that contribute to larger writing projects-in-progress. The class will have class and group discussions online during which students will discuss their responses to readings, collaborate on exercises, or provide feedback on strategies and plans for major writing assignments. Students will also evaluate and provide feedback on one another’s writing as part of peer response groups.
English 3008 Section 001 CRN 93344
Melissa Ames
Digital Writing and Multimodal Texts 9:30 am-10:45 am TR
This course engages with the history, theory, and production of digital writing and multimodal texts. Students will consider the importance that multimodal literacy has for 21st century learners and consumers. Course study will involve analyzing how digital texts both reflect and influence larger cultural contexts and how such multimodal texts (and technology more generally) impact (or aim to impact) individual audiences. The required work for this course can be customized to fit students’ specializations and will include: case studies, individual and collaborative digital design projects, social media analysis, multimodal presentations, and a semester-long applied research study of online writing practices/spaces.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Genre, Form, & Poetics; Education & Society; Media, Technology, & Popular Culture
English 3009G Section 001 CRN 91235
Dagni Bredesen
Myth and Culture 2:00-3:15 pm TR
Modern society sometimes uses “myth” as another word for “lie” (“the Five Myths of Weight-Loss Exploded!”). But cultures and literary masterpieces have developed myths as a way to deeper truths. Myths help structure our thought or, to adapt a famous phrase by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, myths “are good to think with.” Rather than a chronological look at the myths of different civilizations, this course juxtaposes classic mythic stories of different cultures with modern ones. Appropriately, we will begin with the theme of “Origins,” and end by considering when myths collide. Assignments will include thoughtful reading of assigned texts, productive engagement in class discussions, occasional presentations, writing of various kinds--in-class reflections and essays--, a mid-term and final exam.
Theme: Genre, Form, & Poetics; Identity & Culture
English 3062 Section 001 CRN 93049
Woody Skinner
Intermediate Poetry Writing 11:00-11:50 am MWF
In this intermediate poetry course, we’ll experiment with poetic modes and forms, drawing inspiration from a diverse set of contemporary writers. We’ll begin the semester with a generative unit; you’ll draft new poems in response to a variety of prompts and exercises, and you’ll develop, through craft readings and class discussions, a vocabulary of poetry technique. During the second half of the semester, we’ll turn our attention to your work. You’ll share poems with the class, and you’ll read, critique, and discuss classmates’ poems, thus deepening your awareness of the revision and editing processes that prepare poems for publication.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 2000 or equivalent.
English 3063 Section 001 CRN 93962
Bess Kosinec
Intermediate Fiction Writing 2:00-3:15 pm TR
This class focuses on developing students’ knowledge of the craft of fiction through both the reading and writing of prose. The course is divided into two parts, the first being a writer’s craft unit, and the second being an intensive workshop of each other’s fiction. It culminates in the submission of a revised portfolio of workshopped prose.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 2000 or equivalent.
English 3099G Section 099 CRN 90339
Dagni Bredesen
Myth and Culture, Honors 3:30-4:45 pm TR
Modern society sometimes uses “myth” as another word for “lie” (“the Five Myths of Weight-Loss Exploded!”). But cultures and literary masterpieces have developed myths as a way to deeper truths. Myths help structure our thought or, to adapt a famous phrase by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, myths “are good to think with.” Rather than a chronological look at the myths of different civilizations, this course juxtaposes classic mythic stories of different cultures with modern ones. Appropriately, we will begin with the theme of “Origins,” and end by considering when myths collide. Assignments will include thoughtful reading of assigned texts, productive engagement in class discussions, occasional presentations, writing of various kinds—in-class reflections and essays--, a mid-term and final exam.
Note: Admission to University Honors College or Departmental Honors Program required.
Themes: Genre, Form, & Poetics; Identity & Culture
English 3300 Section 001 CRN 95579
Randall Beebe
Seminar in English Studies 9:00-9:50 am MWF
In The Song of the Earth, Jonathan Bate (a well-known scholar of Shakespeare and Romantic literature) asserts that “poetry is the place where we save the earth.” Can this be true? Can literature (the arts and humanities) play a role in sustaining or improving our natural world—with environmental challenges, natural disasters, and species extinction?
In this seminar we will interrogate Bate’s assertion about the importance of the literary imagination in both depicting and responding to our hazardous relationship with nature. To pursue this goal, we will read an array of writers (across several genres) from the late 18th century to the present, including such writers as Rousseau, Defoe, Malthus, Mary Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, Darwin as well as contemporary writers like Margaret Atwood, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Cormac McCarthy, J. M. Coetzee, and Barbara Kingsolver.
Our study will provide not only a historical survey of changing concepts of nature and the human—and their ongoing collision—but also a foundation for understanding contemporary debates about climate change that pervade our culture. Responding to troubling matters of climate change and natural disasters raises difficult questions no doubt for scientists and politicians. Equally important are how such questions are answered by writers, philosophers, artists, filmmakers, and students of literature.
As a seminar, this course will ask students to take lead roles in preparing and leading class discussions. Students will be encouraged to develop projects related to their concentration, and course activities will help students consider ways to use these projects for their future careers.
Prerequisite: ENG 2205 or equivalent.
English 3401 Section 001 CRN 90341
Donna Binns
Methods of Teaching Composition in the Secondary School 12:30-1:45 pm TR
This course explores various best practices and approaches to teaching and evaluating written composition in secondary schools. Coursework will consist primarily of reading and responding to pedagogical texts, applying the findings in such to contemporary educational concerns, and crafting/modeling instructional tools both independently and cooperatively in ways that mirror professional learning communities. The required work for this course includes crafting lesson plans, thematic units, a course design, and various reflective essays. This course requires five on-site pre-clinical experience hours and the live-text submission of one required assignment.
Themes: Education & Society; Genre, Form, & Poetics; Media, Technology, & Popular Culture
Prerequisites & Notes: ENG 2901 and SED 2000. EDP 3331 and SED 3330; for ISEP students, SED 3000 and 3100; for Middle Level Education majors, MLE 3110. University Approval to Teacher Education is required prior to taking this course.
English 3405 Section 001 CRN 95580
Staff
Children's Literature 2:00-3:15 pm TR
Study of the rich variety of texts written for or primarily read by children, including picture books, poetry, fairy tales, chapter books, and novels. Emphases include historical, cultural, pedagogical, critical, and theoretical perspectives.
English 3504 Section 600 CRN 95582
Murray
Film and Literature Online
This course highlights practical and theoretical relations between film and literature. The course will highlight “cli-fi,” a term coined by Dan Bloom for climate fiction literature, film, and media. These ''cli-fi'' texts in print and on cinema and other screens engage with the local and global impact of human caused climate change. In a May 2014 interview, however, Bloom takes this definition further, claiming that “cli fi novels and movies can serve to wake up readers and viewers to the reality of the Climapocalypse that awaits humankind if we do nothing to stop it” (Vemuri). As Margaret Atwood asserts, “Dystopic novels used to concentrate only on hideous political regimes, as in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Now, however, they’re more likely to take place in a challenging landscape that no longer resembles the hospitable planet we’ve taken for granted.” This section of ENG 3504 will begin to explore this emerging genre and its possible implications.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Genre, Form, & Poetics; Media, Technology, & Popular Culture; and Science & the Environment
Notes: This course may be repeated once with the permission of the department chairperson.
English 3705 Section 001 CRN 95583
Jeannie Ludlow
American Multicultural Literatures--Stories, Storytellers, and Signification 3:00-4:15 pm MW
Paula Gunn Allen, Laguna Pueblo poet and essayist, writes that in all cultures "stories are a major way we make communal, transcendent meaning out of human experience. What differs is structure and the respective communities' sense of the aesthetic" (Spider Woman's Granddaughters 1989, 7). Dominican American author Julia Alvarez has written that there are truths that “can only finally be understood by fiction, only finally be redeemed by the imagination” (Epilogue, In the Time of the Butterflies 1994, 324). If fiction is a path to truth, then stories must be powerful indeed. In this section of ENG 3705, American Multicultural Literatures, we will read contemporary stories from a variety of cultural and aesthetic contexts, in order better to understand the power of storytellers to create culture and critique privilege and oppression. Genres will include graphic novels, drama, poetry, and fiction.
English 3808 Section 001 CRN 95584
Christopher Wixson
Modern British Literature 2:00-3:15 pm TR
“How can we combine the old words in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth?" -Virginia Woolf
The experience of modernity was characterized by spatial, temporal, psychological, political, and existential dislocations; the “task of the [Modernist] artist” is, in Samuel Beckett’s words, “to find a form that accommodates the mess.” This course will explore this crisis of representation by reading and discussing a series of relatively short novels threaded by a handful of plays, stories, and poems. We will encounter writing produced not only by the “usual suspects” among British modernist authors (such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett) but by equally engaging though less well-known figures such as Barbara Comyns, Elizabeth Bowen, Sylvia Townsend-Warner, Helen Zenna Smith, Rebecca West, Jean Rhys, and Henry Green. We will read closely and meaningfully, exploring the texts in relation to Modernist architecture of time, space, genre, consciousness, and narrative as well as issues of identity, class, gender, nationality, race, and sexuality. There will be discussion, informal lecture, research, and both critical and creative writing.
English 3903A Section 001 CRN 95585
Campbell
Women, Literature, and Language, Pre-1800 12:30-1:45 pm TR
The pious expressions of Renaissance noblewomen and the seductive gazes of courtesans that grace the canvases of Renaissance artists from Bronzino to Tintoretto disguise the clever wits of women complicit with the strictures of their circumstances yet, in many cases, active as writers who participated in Renaissance literary society. This phenomenon of women portrayed in very limited ways, but who were actually well-educated, vocal, influential participants in literary circles was a fixture of Renaissance culture as it spread across Europe to England during the late fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. In this course, we will look at the lives and works of several women writers from a variety of social strata, and we will examine their writing in tandem with some works by their male contemporaries. The major theme that we will explore is the discontinuity of received history regarding Renaissance women, i.e., the notions that women were to be silent, chaste, and obedient, and were to be objects of spiritual and artistic inspiration for men vs. the facts that women were actively and vocally participating in salon and academic society, writing, publishing, and otherwise circulating their work, and searching for ways to represent women’s experiences in life and love, all the while pushing the boundaries of women’s place in intellectual and literary discourse.
English 4060 Section 001 CRN 93965
Terri Fredrick
English Studies Career Development 3:00-3:50 pm M
This course is designed to prepare English majors and Professional Writing minors for the job market and/or for graduate school applications. In this course, you will research job openings and professional organizations, participate in discussions with professional guest speakers, analyze your own professional skills and abilities, and read course materials related to career development. As part of the class, you will create your final resume, a cover letter template, a print portfolio, and a professional website or online portfolio.
English 4275 Section 600 CRN 94048
Terri Fredrick
Internship in Professional Writing Online
Students must meet with the Internship Coordinator (Dr. Fredrick) to arrange an internship placement before registering for ENG 4275.
A community-based experience featuring practical application of skills developed in the English curriculum, the Internship is open to any student who has taken ENG 2760 or ENG 3005. To the extent possible, placement is matched to career goals with the expectation that students might approach graduation and the job search with writing/editing portfolios to show potential employers. Recent English interns have worked as writers or editors for nonprofit organizations, small businesses, corporations, libraries, and local government offices.
English 4275 is a four-hour course offered on a credit/no credit basis. In addition to work created as part of the internship, students will engage in reflective writing about the internship and organizational culture. The coordinator and site-supervisors cooperate in evaluation. Students who have taken English 4275 previously may repeat it again as an elective; students who repeat the course will be placed at a different internship site.
English 4742 Section 001 CRN 93348
Bobby Martinez
Studies in Genre--New Directions in Latin American Literature 11:00 am-12:15 pm TR
ENG 4742 is designed to be a “focused study of genre. Topics vary each semester.” In this iteration of the course, we will cast a critical eye upon the term “Third World Literature” and explore a variety of exciting literature often obscured by the shadows of the United States/North America, Britain, and Western Europe. We will study the contemporary Latin American novel and some earlier modern works that helped to give rise to this genre. Our course will explore how Latin American literary (and some cinematic) narratives broaden our understanding of the complicated ways in which identity—both personal and national—have developed in the modern novel of the late-twentieth century and early twenty-first century. In particular, we will consider the innovative strategies that Latin American and Latino/a/Latinx writers bring to the genre of the novel to address problems of existence, political strife, and nationhood—from the excitingly bizarre literary experiments of “magic realism” to the current re-invigoration of gritty social realism and crime/mystery fiction. These literary experiments illustrate a new generation of global voices from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinos/as/Latinx writers in the U.S. responding to everything from life in the USA, to the brutal legacy of political dictatorships in South and Central America, to the ongoing culture of drug cartel violence.
Central to all these explorations will be a set of thematic questions: How do these writers imagine new conceptions of the self/identity in Latin American/Hispanic/Latinx conceptions of the novel? How are personal issues of love, romance, and family altered? And most importantly, just what is “history,” and how do narratives of the past affect us? Open to majors and non-majors. A great course for future teachers and anyone interested in gaining a more in-depth global perspective.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Law & Social Justice; Genre, Form, & Poetics; Media, Technology, & Popular Culture; Education & Society
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 2205. This course may be repeated once with the permission of the department chairperson.
CLASSES NUMBERED 4750 THROUGH 4999 - THESE CLASSES ARE OPEN TO JUNIORS, SENIORS, AND GRADUATE STUDENTS. GRADUATE STUDENTS ARE LIMITED TO TWELVE HOURS OF COURSEWORK IN THIS CATEGORY.
English 4760 Section 600 CRN 94049
Donna Binns
Special Topics in Professional Writing Online
This course involves focused study of professional writing, designed to enhance understanding of accessibility workplace writing and provide experience in producing it. Students will gain experience in writing proposals for improving accessibility for a wide range of audiences. Topics covered include accessibility, usability, universal design, and writing for international readers, people with disabilities, and people who do not read easily. May be repeated once (with a different topic) for credit. Topic will vary semester to semester. May be repeated once for credit.
English 4761 Section 001 CRN 90358
Daiva Markelis
Advanced Nonfiction Writing 3:30-4:45 pm TR
In this class students will develop a repertoire of artistic strategies in the writing of literary nonfiction prose. Students will deepen their understanding of creative nonfiction and its subgenres through intensive writing; at least four essays and revisions of essays will be required. Students will participate in workshops, submitting at least two essays for class critique.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 3061 or, with permission of Department Chairperson, ENG 3062, 3063, or 3064. May be repeated once with permission of the Department Chairperson.
English 4765 Section 001 CRN 91238
Terri Fredrick
Professional Editing 1:00-1:50 pm MWF
Editing is an important part of the work professional communicators do. In this course, we will practice all levels of editing: copyediting for grammatical correctness and consistency, fact-checking, editing for style, editing for design, and developmental editing for content and organization. We will edit texts from disciplines such as health, technology, business/marketing, and the sciences. Because editing, like all communication, is contextual, we will address the rhetorical choices editors have to make across cultures and disciplines, and we will look at the different style guides that might influence what and how you edit. Because editing usually takes place within a larger organizational setting, we will also discuss project management, editor-author relationships, and electronic editing.
Film 2759G Section 600 CRN 94806
Robin Murray
History of Cinema Online
This course offers a comprehensive yet selective overview of the history of cinema, integrating the basic tools for analyzing film as art. It will examine how the uses of camera, editing, lighting, sound, and acting contribute to the construction of meaning for audiences, as well as consider how meaning is filtered through various cultural contexts.
GRADUATE SEMINARS
English 5000 Section 001 CRN 90361 7:00-9:30 pm W
English 5000 Section 600 CRN 95165 Online
English 5000Z Section 001 CRN 95168 7:00-9:30 pm W
Randall Beebe
Introduction to Methods and Issues in English Studies
This seminar provides a foundation for the MA in English, serving as an introduction to methods and issues of advanced-level research and scholarship in English Studies. Students will learn to identify, locate and evaluate appropriate scholarly resources for their concentration, and will gain confidence in entering existing professional conversations. Students will also gain practical experience in developing a professional research, creative, or applied project, while they study and practice some of the primary means of communication in the discipline of English Studies, such as conference proposals and presentations, grant writing, and book reviews. This course will also look at how technology has changed (and is changing) how we work and communicate in English Studies.
English 5007 Section 001 CRN 91407 3:30-6:00 pm M
English 5007 Section 600 CRN 95588 Online
Tim Taylor
Composition Pedagogies
This seminar focuses on theories and pedagogies important to students interested in teaching writing at the college level. Students will explore diverse composition pedagogies, be introduced to the theoretical influences that have shaped the teaching of writing, and learn how knowledge gets made in Rhetoric/Composition. Since this is an inquiry-based seminar, active and constructive class participation is key activities.
The seminar will consist of these:
- Discussion
- In-class writing
- Group Work
- Formal and informal presentations germane to the teaching of writing
- Work as a discussion leader for selected articles
- Reaction Memoranda in response to reading assignments
- Two larger writing assignments--a synthesis paper and a seminar project.
English 5009 Section 600 CRN 95589
Woody Skinner
Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature--American Naturalism: The Individual and the City Online
American naturalism, a late nineteenth-century literary movement, represented a crucial transition in American letters. Naturalists resisted the lingering influence of mid-century romantics like Hawthorne and Melville and diverged from the genteel realism of Howells and James in favor of grittier—often urban—subjects. In this seminar, we will explore this underexamined movement, studying a range of naturalist novels and accompanying critical texts. Our readings will likely include works by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland, Ellen Glasgow, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, and Frank Norris.
Along the way, we’ll devote special attention to individual narratives of urbanization, investigating the influence—aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural—of transformations in urban life. We’ll also consider, as the semester progresses, naturalism’s complicated legacy. In what ways did the movement anticipate modernism? Why did these authors so quickly fall out of fashion? And, on a potentially related note, why did these novels—many of which foreground pressing social problems—routinely present anti-Semitic ideas, along with blinkered visions of race and gender?
English 5025 Section 001 CRN 92266
Bess Kosinec
Creative Writing Professional Development--Joining The Lit Community 3:30-4:20 p.m. T
Being a writer is all about the writing—but, when you’re not writing, there are myriad ways to engage with local, national, and international writing communities.
In this hands-on class, students will learn about the ins-and-outs of publishing and managing a literary journal by completing a directed project with the Bluestem editorial team. They will also deepen their knowledge of the “lit community” and the concept of “good literary citizenship,” and explore possibilities for publication, as well as learn about further graduate study in creative writing, working toward developing both a plan for their next steps and a strong statement of purpose.
English 5061A Section 001 CRN 95591 3:30-6:00 pm T
English 5061A Section 600 CRN 95592 Online
Robin Murray
Special Topics in Literature and Literary Theory--Ecocritical and Media Literature and Literary Theory
These interconnected sections of ENG 5061A will focus on ecocritical and media theory. Ecocriticism and media ask how the literary and media arts—one of the richest arenas for the practice of human imagination—does, has, or could shape environmental thought and action. We will read critical environmental theory, literature and media to pry open new and urgent questions about this burgeoning field and its applications. Grounded in the research and writing methods of literary and cultural studies, this course also asks participants to be global citizens – to think across national borders and disciplinary boundaries – in order to open up earthy and alternative ways of interpreting the ecological crises that are arguably relevant to students in any discipline.
English 5260 Section 001 CRN 94641
Terri Fredrick
Communication in Science and Technical Organizations 2:00-4:30 pm W
This graduate course looks beyond academic writing to the types of communication professionals use in their careers. The course will introduce students to practices and principles of audience-centered communication within organizational settings. The applied and strategic nature of this communication will be emphasized throughout the course, and students will learn to communicate scientific and technical information to internal and external stakeholders. Thus, the broad content areas covered in the class will include organizational communication, professional writing, technical writing, and public relations.
**This course is cross-listed with Communication Studies and will be team-taught by a faculty member in Professional Writing and a faculty member in Public Relations/Organizational Communication.**
English 5960 Section 600 CRN 94145
Terri Fredrick
Internship in Professional Writing Online
Students must meet with the Internship Coordinator (Dr. Fredrick) to arrange an internship placement before registering for ENG 5960.
A community-based experience featuring practical application of skills developed in the English curriculum. To the extent possible, placement is matched to career goals with the expectation that students might approach graduation and the job search with writing/editing portfolios to show potential employers. Recent English interns have worked as writers or editors for nonprofit organization, small business, corporations, libraries, and local government offices.
English 5960 is a three-hour course offered on a credit/no credit basis. Internship work is part time (an average of 10 hours per week over a 15-week semester) and can be completed while enrolled in other courses and/or while holding a graduate assistantship. In addition to work created as part of the internship, students will engage in reflective writing about the internship and organizational culture. The coordinator and site-supervisors cooperate in evaluation.
Notes
- ENG 1002G is a prerequisite for 2000-level courses and above.
- All courses designated with a G (for example, ENG 1009G) fulfill requirements in the EIU General Education Program.
- Concurrent or prior registration in ENG 2205 is strongly recommended for majors in all courses at the 2000-level and above.
