Department of English

Class meeting locations are subject to change. Consult the following page for an explanation of the class period abbreviations.

Spring 2022

Lower-Division (1000-2000) Courses

Note: Course numbers listed in the table are linked to course descriptions below.

Course #	Section	Class #	Time(s)	Room	Course title	Instructor
AML 2070	0473	10438	MWF 3	MAT 0115	Survey of American Literature	Tiffany Pennamon
AML 2070	0535	10439	MWF 8	MAT 0010	Survey of American Literature	John Mark Robison
AML 2070	6101	10440	MWF 7	CBD 210	Survey of American Literature	Fi Stewart-Taylor
AML 2070	M102	26268	MWF 4	MAT 0005	Survey of American Literature	La-Toya Scott
AML 2410	1615	10441	MWF 6	MAT 0115	Issues Am Lit and Cult: History and the Self in American Fiction	Ryan Kerr
AML 2410	4800	10442	T 8-9/ R 9	MAT 0116/ MAT 0113	Issues Am Lit and Cult: Asians in America	Deepthi Siriwardena
AML 2410	9132	20355	T 5-6/ R 6	NRN 1001/ TUR 2319	Issues Am Lit and Cult: Appalachia	Laken Brooks
CRW 1101	1632	12319	T 9-11	MAT 0009	Beginning Fiction Writing	Vix Gutierrez
CRW 1101	1633	12320	W 9-11	TUR 2336	Beginning Fiction Writing	Janice Whang
CRW 1101	6730	12321	R 9-11	CBD 0210	Beginning Fiction Writing	Avery DiUbaldo
CRW 1101	6752	12322	F 6-8	MCCART 2196	Beginning Fiction Writing	Ara Hagopian
CRW 1101	6754	12323	T 9-11	LIT 0207	Beginning Fiction Writing	Jacob Bartman
CRW 1301	16E1	12324	W 9-11	TUR 2303	Beginning Poetry Writing	Lupita Eyde-Tucker
CRW 1301	6989	12325	M 9-11	AND 0032	Beginning Poetry Writing	Jason Walker
CRW 2100	0121	12326	W 9-11	MAT 0002	Fiction Writing	Patrick Duane
CRW 2100 (H)	132A	12348	T 9-11	LIT 0205	Honors Fiction Writing	Victor Imko
CRW 2100	1337	12349	W 9-11	MAT 0007	Fiction Writing	Angela Bell
CRW 2100	7005	12350	R 9-11	CBD 0220	Fiction Writing	Cassie Fancher
CRW 2300	1644	12351	M 9-11	MAT 0002	Poetry Writing	Liz Agans
CRW 2300 (H)	1645	12352	W 9-11	MAT 0004	Poetry Writing Honors	Olivia Ivings
CRW 2300	5311	12353	R 9-11	TUR 2303	Poetry Writing	Anna Egeland
ENC 1136	9122	20309	MWF 2	WEIL 0408E	Multimodal Writing/ Digital Literacy	Kimberly Williams
ENC 1136	9123	20312	T 4/ R 4-5	WEIL 0408E	Multimodal Writing/ Digital Literacy	Amanda Rose
ENC 1136	9124	20313	T 2-3/ R 3	WEIL 408A	Multimodal Writing/ Digital Literacy	Motunrayo Ogunrinbokun
ENC 1145	35G2	12975	MWF 8	MAT 0011	Topics in Composition: Raised by Monsters	Lillian Martinez
ENC 1145	35G3	12976	T 2-3/ R 3	AND 0032/ FLI 0115	Topics in Composition: The “Despicable” Millennials – The Culture and Literature of an Underrated Generation	Burcu Kuheylan
ENC 1145	35G4	12977	T 8-9/ R 9	LIT 0221. MAT 0117	Topics in Composition: The Art of Breaking Rules	Mitchell Galloway
ENC 1145	35G8	12978	MWF 8	MAT 0115	Topics in Composition: Writing About the (Visual) Rhetoric of American Advertising	Alexander Slotkin
ENC 1145	6431	22324	MWF 2	AND 0019	Topics in Composition: Addiction and Drug Use in American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture	Elijah Drzata
ENC 1145	M144	27272	MWF 9	TUR 2333	Topics in Composition: First-Generation Americans’ Literature of Belonging	Ivette Rodriguez
ENC 2210	34F7	12979	T 2-3/ R	TUR 2346	Technical Writing	Claudia Mitchell
ENC 2210	34GD	13004	T 8-9/ R 9	TUR 2303/ MAT 0116	Technical Writing	Allyson Blinkhorn
ENC 2210	34GE	13005	MWF 4	FLG 0260	Technical Writing	Elizabeth Lambert
ENC 2210	35F2	13006	UFO	Online	Technical Writing	Luke Rodewald
ENG 1131	1786	12889	MWF 5/ M 9-11	ARCH 0213/ TUR 2349	Writing Through Media: Is the Book Truly Better than the Movie? Introduction to Film Adaptation	Felipe Gonzales-Silva
ENG 1131	1788	12890	MWF 6/ W 9-11	WEIL 0408A	Writing Through Media: The Antihero in Popular Culture	Erika Rothberg
ENG 1131	2463	12891	T 7/ R 7-8/ T 9-11	WEIL 408A	Writing Through Media: A Sense of Place in Film and New Media	Kevin McKenna
ENG 2300	1793	12892	MWF 3/ M 9-11	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	Matthew Knudson
ENG 2300	1794	12893	MWF 4/ W 9-11	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	Faith Boyte
ENG 2300	4784	12894	MWF 5/ M 9-11	TUR 2334/ TUR 2322	Film Analysis	Mandy Moore
ENG 2300	6015	12910	MWF 6/ M E1-E3	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	Vincent Wing
ENG 2300	7308	12911	MWF 7/ T E1-E3	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	Tyler Klatt
ENG 2300	7373	12912	MWF 8/ R E1-E3	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	Nicholas Orlando
ENG 2300	S205	30348	T4/ R 4-5/ W 9-11	TUR 2322	Film Analysis	Bryce Patton
ENL 2012	9135	20362	MWF 4	MAEB 0238	Survey of English Literature, Medieval-1750	Claire Karnap
ENL 2022	1215	12711	T 7/ R 7-8	TUR 2349/ CSE E121	Survey of English Literature, 1750-Present	Maxine Donnelly
ENL 2022	9133	20359	T 5-6/ R 6	BLK 0415/ NEB 0202	Survey of English Literature, 1750-Present	Suvendu Ghatak
LIT 2000	17B9	14019	MWF 3	MAT 0118	Introduction to Literature	Corinne Matthews
LIT 2000	17CB	14020	MWF 6	MAT 0118	Introduction to Literature	Brianna Anderson
LIT 2000	17CD	14021	MWF 7	MAT 0051	Introduction to Literature	Mosunmola Adeojo
LIT 2000	9134	20360	T 8-9/ R 9	MAT 0051	Introduction to Literature	Elizabeth Nichols
LIT 2110	M181	27467	T 4/ R 4-5	TUR 2346	World Literature, Ancient to Renaissance	Brandon Murakami
LIT 2120	05DA	14042	MWF 8	MAT 0009	World Literature, 17th Century to Modern	Cristovao Nwachukwu

Course Descriptions

AML 2410

Special Topics in American Literature: History and the Self in American Fiction
Ryan Kerr

The goal of this class will be to understand how we conceive of different historical events as well as how novelists portray the past in post-WWII American fiction. Some of the questions this course will engage with include: How can a work of fiction accurately capture the past? Can an author’s depiction of their own current moment be an important historical document? In what way is the novel useful in understanding actual historical events? What narrative techniques are most useful in enhancing our conception of the past? How can a representation of the past help us reflect on our current moment or our impending future? In this class, we will examine how American authors handle the issue of historical trauma and the way fiction can play a role in collective healing processes for the oppressed.

Texts we will read in this class include E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl,” Susan Sontag’s “The Way We Live Now,” Don DeLillo’s “Still-Life,” and David Foster Wallace’s “The Awakening of My Interest in Advanced Tax.” There will be a wide variety of different novelistic techniques examined over the course of the semester, and we will identify similarities and differences in terms of the authors’ choices when representing the past. Attention will be paid to the way specific historical events or periods demand a particular kind of novelistic representation. Course assignments will include discussion posts, written personal reflections, and two analytical term papers. Students will also be required to lead the class discussion once during the semester.

AML 2410

Special Topics in American Literature: Asians in America
Deepthi Siriwardena

With the Coronavirus pandemic, socio-cultural attention has turned to the Asian diasporic community living in the United States. As recent events have demonstrated, this attention is often pejorative and can swiftly transform into aggressive and violent forms. However, Asians have a long history in America. Yet, much that is known about them is rife with stereotypes and generalizations. In this course, we will explore the nexus between the Asian American history and history of the United States as we learn about how the Asians came to be in America. Considering a variety of texts of diverse genres spanning from 20th to 21st centuries, we will explore concepts such as “the oriental”, “model minority”, “immigrant”, “alien”, “refugee” associated with the Asian American community as we consider how Asian Americans navigate issues relating to these identities, citizenship, and belonging. Moreover, as a community whose presence in the U.S is continually questioned, the recording, preserving and engagement with Asian American history is of great importance. Thus, we will engage with Asian American history by supplementing our texts with materials from digital archives that will provide further socio-cultural context to our discussions as we continue to explore what it means to be Asian American.

In reading diverse works by Asian American writers, we will engage with some questions such as these: who are the Asian Americans? how do Asian American authors represent the United States? What sort of histories do they represent and in what manner? What do they tell us about their “origins” and “homelands”? What sort of identities and communities do these writers find constraining and liberating? In addition, the course will provide students ample opportunities to develop multiple skills including academic writing skills, public writing skills, archival research skills and digital literacy skills.

 

AML 2410

Special Topics in American Literature: Appalachia
Laken Brooks

The Appalachian Mountains have stood tall for far longer than the United States became its own country. This mountain chain is around one billion years old, and it’s among the oldest geographic landmarks in the world. So when we think about American history, we can look to the Appalachian Mountains as a storyteller. The Appalachian Mountains have witnessed the migration of indigenous people into North America, the arrival and colonization from Europeans, and the extinction of creatures like dinosaurs and cougars.

In this course, we will take our own literary tour up the Appalachian Trail. In four units, we — like many Appalachian Trail hikers — will start our journey by reading authors from the Appalachian Southern states of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. In unit two, we’ll move to coal country and read literature from Virginia and West Virginia. Our third unit will transport us to the American Mid-Atlantic states of New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. As we complete our literary tour up the Appalachian Trail, we’ll conclude our course with unit four by reading authors from the New England states of Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.

We will explore two primary questions: 1) How can we chart changes in culture and environment as we compare texts from different regions on the Appalachian Trail? 2) What stories can the Appalachian Trail teach us about what it means to “be American?”

As students read these texts written about and from the Appalachian Mountains, they’ll also have the opportunity to participate in skill-check learning labs where students can learn the physical and digital skills that they’d need to know if they were actually hiking the trail. We’ll explore diverse kinds of storytelling including thick-mapping, geo-caching, blogging, podcasting, foraging, identifying wildlife, and more.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: Raised by Monsters
Lillian Martinez

From Where to Wild Things Are to The Giving Tree, picture books feature non-human creatures teaching and nurturing children’s bodies and minds. Whether as rambunctious beasts or sentient, selfless trees, the monstrous plays a crucial role in acting as conduits for our development from childhood to adulthood. Framed differently, we have a history of being raised by monsters. What do our contemporary monstrous parents look like, and what might they reveal about us, who they raise?

In our course, we consider imagetexts including comics, graphic novels, animation, manga, and video games to address how the monstrous creates spaces for self-expression, agency, and emotional upheaval. We will explore monsters as mentors, family, and conduits respectively, honing in on what we can learn from them and challenging the stereotypical idea that these stigmatized bodies function solely as tools of horror. The language of visual rhetoric and literary theory will aid in our critical analyses of our monstrous benefactors, giving students fundamental skills in comic, animation, and video game studies useful for addressing future monstrous interventions in oft-encountered popular culture. Assignments will include discussion posts/responses, close readings, an oral presentation on an outside monster text, two shorter essays on assigned texts, and a critical analysis paper.

Texts under consideration include Pokémon (1996), A Monster Calls (2011), My Favorite Thing is Monsters (2017), The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel (2008), The Magic Fish (2020), The Girl From the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún (2019), When I Arrived at the Castle (2019), Natsume’s Book of Friends (2005), The Iron Giant (1999), Princess Mononoke (1999), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), A Night in the Woods (2017), and Before Your Eyes (2021). Students are not required to have previous experience with comic, game, or monster studies for this course.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: The “Despicable” Millennials – The Culture and Literature of an Underrated Generation
Burcu Kuheylan

As of 2019, Millennials — people born between 1981 and 1996 — took over from Baby Boomers the indiscriminate honor of being the most populous generation in the U.S. Still, a new superlative applied to their demographic group did little to ease their annoyance for being type-cast for the same unflattering role: for Millennials are generally, if not universally, despised by their elders for being lazy, spoiled, cynical, irresponsible, unprepared for and aloof to the realities of the world. In Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision, a father even yells at his millennial son to not “make a career out of your childhood, or you’ll never adapt yourself to any other” (110). This all-too-common complaint even popularized, in the American idiom, the use of an obscure verb, “adulting,” which Millennials apparently excel failing in. Their now-epic fame for whining, lethargy, and inability to meet social expectations — from doing laundry to holding a job or getting married — has been immortalized in book titles like “There, There,” “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” and “Can’t Even,” which already entered the literary canon of a generation passionately disliked.

Placing fiction written by Millennials at its center, the course will examine, along with the veracity of the claims made for Millennials, the root causes of their generational condition, which A.H. Petersen diagnosed as “burnout.” An exploration of the peculiar idiom, habits, and lifestyles of Millennials, as well as contemporary essays, articles, and short video-clips about them, will reveal rarely told stories about Millennials. Specifically, we will learn how their resignation is a side-effect of the neoliberal regime they were born into, which has radically diminished their prospects for living in a habitable planet and for a secure future, free from want, need, and anxiety. While our nonfiction readings will place Millennials’ personal, social, and economic challenges against this historical context, fiction will offer us a wide range of scenarios – realist and fantastic alike – reflecting the hopes and struggles of Millennials, and of the generations that follow them, for an alternative future. The course will also familiarize students with the social and political activism of the 2010s — the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Gezi, and the ongoing #MeToo and #BLM movements — where Millennials have played crucial roles.

Readings for the course include – besides Tommy Orange’s There, There (2018), Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), and A.H. Petersen’s Can’t Even (2020) – Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism (2009), Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You (2014), Ling Ma’s Severance (2018), Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (2020), and short stories by Karen Russell, Danielle Evans, Kristen Roupenian, and Camille Bordas. Assignments for the course include six 300-word responses to bi-weekly CANVAS discussion questions (1,800 words), three reading reports of 500 words each (1,500); one textual analysis essay of 1,300 words, and one comparative analysis essay of 1,400 words. This course grants credit for the GenEd 6,000 writing requirement.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition:  The Art of Breaking Rules
Mitchell Galloway

What are the rules of poetry, prose, and criticism? Must a work of poetry be in verse? Can a novel or a work of criticism also be a work of poetry? In this course we will seek answers to these questions.

Throughout the semester we will read works that break the rules of their form. We will read prose poetry, novels in verse, poetic novels, and poetic criticism. We will try to gain an understanding of how and why these works break with their traditional form, while also writing our own untraditional criticism.

Assignments will include an in-class presentation, weekly reading responses, and a creative final project in which you will argue for a new way of writing criticism. Authors may include the following: Donald Barthelme, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, T.S. Eliot, William Gass, Henry Green, Franz Kafka, Michael Martone, Michael Ondaatje, Ezra Pound, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Ruefle, David Shields, Gertrude Stein, Charles Simic, Robert Walser, Joe Wenderoth, Diane Williams, Joy Williams.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: Writing About the (Visual) Rhetoric of American Advertising
Alexander Slotkin

Words are events, and if a picture is worth a thousand words we might only imagine how persuasive advertising can be. After all, advertisements permeate almost every square inch of our (visual and digital) lives and shape how we see the world. We all know for example that we “Save Money” and “Live Better” shopping at Walmart, and that Athletes “Just Do It” with Nike. And we propose to our partners with diamonds—one of the most common minerals on Earth—because of a highly organized campaign headed by the slogan, “A Diamond Is Forever.” Just what are major American advertisements doing? How do words and images work together to rhetorically turn readers into consumers? This writing and rhetoric course will explore these questions and more as we learn key concepts of effective writing.

We will be reading various texts throughout this course that aim to demystify rhetoric, writing, and, of course, advertising. Each unit of the course will focus on different ways of reading advertisements as well as different (visual) elements of American advertising. In so doing, we will be placing recurrent themes into conversation with one another while also growing our understanding of what makes writing effective. Unit one focuses on persuasive language and the way advertisers use rhetoric to move us into action. Building on these discussions of rhetoric and writing, we then begin exploring how American advertisements use genre conventions to frame sex and gender in unit two. The course turns its attention in unit three to studying how writing invokes diverse audiences, with a particular focus on how advertisers have (re)defined the “American.” And finally, we will wrap up the course with a final look at modern social media advertising, collapsing previous discussions of rhetoric, writing, genre, and audience.

Texts for this class may include excerpts from the following books: Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising by Juliann Sivulka, No Logo by Naomi Klein, Writing About Writing: A College Reader by Douglas P. Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, and A Rhetoric of Motives by Kenneth Burke. Other texts may include advertisements (new and old, printed and digital), scholarly articles, and miscellaneous readings from reliable sources like the Smithsonian.

Assignments will include short discussion posts and presentations, a rhetorical analysis, a genre analysis, an audience analysis, and a creative writing project.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: Addiction and Drug Use in American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture
Elijah Drzata

The theme of addiction is something that we experience every day. It is increasingly rare to turn on the radio or open a social media app and not come across the glamorization of drug use. Literature, on the other hand, tends to tell the more painful stories behind the smoke rings and trippy aesthetics—the story of addiction. In this class, we will analyze drug use and addiction through various cultural productions, including literature, film, music, and social media. The main question this course seeks to answer is, “What is the difference between addiction and drug use and how do various forms of media determine this difference for us?” In other words, “How do various (non)literary texts draw the line between addiction and drug use?” We will also analyze how various representations of drug use and addiction have impacted American society from the 20^th century to the present day.

Readings will include James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” William S. Burrough’s Junky, Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries (as well as the film adaptation), A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown, Exit Here. by Jason Meyers, and more. Students may be asked to bring their own choices of music to analyze during class discussions. We will also analyze commercials and TV shows that portray addiction and drug use. On a weekly basis, we will read scholarly research on representations of addiction and drug use to help contextualize assigned materials, such as excerpts from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

Additionally, we will apply an intersectional lens in our pursuit of analyzing addiction and drug use in texts. In other words, how do race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and/or disability complicate and/or shed light on our baseline discussions about addiction and drug use?

Class sessions will be composed of freewriting, group activities, and discussions on assigned materials. Major assignments include a mid-term essay on 1-2 of the assigned materials and a final project. The final project will be a presentation on a literary or non-literary text whose main theme is addiction/drug use. For this project, you will use the tools and methods learned throughout class to dissect your chosen text by discussing the deeper meaning and wider implications. Other assignments will include weekly response papers. While some assignments will help students develop traditional writing skills, other assignments will challenge students to practice methods of “storying” by including personal experiences and feelings in narrative form in order to question preconceived ideas about what qualifies as academic writing.

Ultimately, this course aims to help students question and analyze something that has become very normal due to its presence in our everyday lives.

Important note: This course is not an anti-drug campaign, though this course will also not glamorize the use of drugs. We will simply take the role of observers and students are not permitted to discourage or encourage the use of drugs.

Content warning for detailed and graphic drug use, blood, sexual abuse, and trauma.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: First-Generation Americans’ Literature of Belonging
Ivette Rodriguez

This course will focus on contemporary literature by first-generation American authors to explore national belonging in the context of relating to two or more national cultures.  To that end, we will discuss and write about texts that feature characters who navigate between mainstream American culture and the cultures of their parents’ homelands. Assimilation, resistance, loss, and access are some of the central questions we will discuss. For instance, does reaching material success require sacrificing ties to one’s heritage culture? Can one belong to a cultural group without speaking its language? Can a first generation American ever feel fully “at home” in their country of birth or their parents’?

To address these framing questions, we will discuss pieces from such short story collections as Roxane Gay’s Ayiti and Jennine Cruset Capo’s How to Leave Hialeah, as well as longer texts like Junot Dias’s novel, The Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. Digital media such as podcasts and blogs will also form part of class discussions, as they have become important vehicles for first generation Americans to explore their cross-cultural identities.

Students will be expected to participate in both in-class and online conversations. They will produce two analytical and one research paper, as well as a final digital project. These assignments are intended to help students develop their ability to analyze complex texts, exchange varying viewpoints with others, and support arguments in writing and other media. By the end of the course, students who receive a C or higher would have satisfied 6,000 words of the University’s General Education writing requirement.

ENG 1131

Writing Through Media: Is the Book Truly Better than the Movie? Introduction to Film Adaptation
Felipe Gonzales-Silva

The Great Gatsby, The Shining, Gone Girl, and Rosemary’s Baby are among the countless films to have been dismissed with that familiar phrase: “The book was better.” In this vein, blogs and other websites customarily compile lists of disappointing film adaptations. These lists often simplify the adaptation process and refuse to consider the peculiarities of literature, cinema, and other arts. This course will take a closer look at films adapted from other sources, asking what film adaptations are, whether they “owe” anything to their original texts, and what it means to be faithful and unfaithful to a source.

This course will engage with film history, adaptation studies, and a wide array of examples from early to modern cinema to challenge preconceived notions about movie adaptations. It offers an introductory/panoramic history unit to survey cinema’s fight to overcome its subordinate status among other art forms and engages with some foundational theories of film adaptation. Students will study movies by directors and screenwriters from Japan, the United Kingdom, Senegal, Iran, Colombia, and the Czech Republic, adapted from short stories, poems, plays, paintings, comics, video games, and even a Twitter thread.tudents will also take the first steps in writing and planning their own film adaptations.

Some of the original source/film pairs examined as case studies will be Noël Coward’s Still Life and David Lean’s Brief Encounter; Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s “In a Bamboo Grove” and “Rashomon” and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon; Marjane Satrapi’s self-adaptation of Persepolis; Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and Wes Anderson’s animated film; several film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems; and Aziah Wells’s Twitter thread and Janicza Bravo’s Zola. The course will include readings on adaptation studies by Seymour Chatman, Thomas Leitch, and James Naremore and reflections by filmmakers and screenwriters about their adaptation processes.

The assignments will consist of weekly screening posts, two writing pieces applying Chatman’s seminal essay to movie scenes, an adaptation proposal (including concept, methodology, and rationale), and a short adaptation screenplay (including embedded images and sounds referring to key aspects of the adaptation).

ENG 1131

Writing Through Media: The Antihero in Popular Culture
Erika Rothberg

This course will trace the evolution of the antihero in literature, comics, and film, with particular attention to the superhero genre. We will begin with discussions around the nature of heroes, villains, and antiheroes. Initial focus will center upon Hamlet, perhaps one of the earliest antiheroes, for which we will read the No Fear Shakespeare graphic novel adaptation and watch the Laurence Olivier filmed production. We will chart the ways in which cultural moments shaped how the world defined good and evil, using Watchmen to illustrate the changing nature of what it means to be a hero or villain. Students will also engage with texts like Batman: The Long Halloween (graphic novel), Logan (film), Hellboy Vol. 1: Seed of Destruction (graphic novel), and episodes of Breaking Bad (TV) as we seek to understand why we either condemn or praise actions of protagonists and consider what these reactions mean as they relate to the culture in which we live.

Throughout this course, students would be asked to consider (and re-consider) notions of good and evil, and the gray area in between. We will seek to understand that notion that most people don’t fit cleanly within “good” or “evil” boxes, and instead, consider the messiness surrounding human behavior. The assignments in this course will be: four entries to our course blog (300-500 words, or 100 words plus a comic/short video media contribution), two two-to-three page responses papers, and a final project consisting of a three-to-five page paper accompanying a media component: a comic or short film which deals with the concept of antiheroism and morality.

ENG 1131

Writing Through Media: A Sense of Place in Film and New Media
Kevin McKenna

Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.

—Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), 6.

Rising sea levels are prompting many communities to relocate. Pollution and contaminated water are transforming urban neighborhoods into untenable ghost towns. COVID-19’s economic impact is forcing many people to confront homelessness across the globe. While socially and politically we continue to debate the best resolutions to these pressing issues, forcefully dislocated people must consider a different, exigent series of questions. How do I define a home? How do I rebuild my life? Where can I find a sense of belonging? Which elements of our community are worth preserving and which can we transform? Though novel crises spur this line of questioning, exploring ways of constructing place is not new.

In this course, we will turn to moving-image works (cinema, video games, and massive media) to discover expressions of displacement and placemaking related to decolonization, environmentalism, homelessness, racial and gender equality, and space exploration. We will probe the conditions that dispossess individuals and communities, the myriad relationships we establish with built and natural environments, the various practices and rituals that bind self with community, and which structures (legal, architectural, social, etc.) are necessary to society. Cinematic works we will potentially study in the course include: Host (Rob Savage, 2020), Atlantique (Mati Diop, 2019), Blood Quantum (Jeff Barnaby, 2019), The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017), Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014), Climate Refugees (Michael Nash, 2010), Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009), and Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006). Nevertheless, we will also interrogate new media, such as video games—Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives (Owlchemy Labs, 2016) and Pokémon GO (Niantic, 2016)—massive media—the use of LEDs and projection to transform the Empire State Building into mass media—and social media viral videos. Over the course of the semester, we will evaluate the efficacy and difficulty of applying our texts’ approaches to emplacement as a response to current anxieties. In developing such evaluations, our analyses will focus on both representations of placemaking in media as well as moving-image media’s role in forming a sense of identity, community, and belonging.

Assignments for the course will include reading quizzes, discussion posts, 1-2 analytical essays, and a creative multimedia project that illustrates how you define and experience a sense of place. This course satisfies the General Education requirement for (W) and either (C) or (H). Students must meet the 6,000 word writing requirement by the end of the semester.