Department of English

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

Fall 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	0211	10282	M W F 3	MAT 0113	Survey of American Literature	TBD
AML 2070	03A5	10283	M W F 8	FLI 0119	Survey of American Literature	TBD
AML 2070	1625	10344	T 8-9/ R 9	WEIL 0238/ FLI 0101	Survey of American Literature	TBD
AML 2070	5613	10345	T 2-3/ R 3	TUR 2346/ AND 0032	Survey of American Literature	TBD
AML 2410	1629	10346	M W F 7	MAEB 0229	Issues Am Lit and Cult: Writing the West: Imagining the Settler Colonial Environment from the 13 Colonies to Today	Elizabeth Nichols
AML 2410	3698	10347	T 4/ R 4-5	MAT 0015/ MAT 0251	Issues Am Lit and Cult: African American Poetry and Transformation	Lupita Eyde-Tucker
AML 2410	8060	22375	M W F 8	DAU 0342	Issues Am Lit and Cult: The American War Novel after World War II	John Mark Robison
AML 2410	8974	10348	T 5-6/ R 6	MCCA G 186/ FLI 0119	Issues Am Lit and Cult: Mistaken for Nowhere: Rural America and What it Means for All of Us	William Carpenter
CRW 1101	0218	12111	M 9-11	AND 0032	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1101	1648	12112	T 9-11	MAT 0010	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1101	1649	12113	M 9-11	WEIM 1076	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1101	1650	12114	W 9-11	MAT 0014	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1101	1879	12115	T 9-11	MAT 0009	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1301	1651	12138	T 9-11	AND 0032	Beginning Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 1301	1653	12140	R 9-11	AND 0021	Beginning Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 1301	398E	12141	R 9-11	ARCH 0215	Beginning Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 1301	7622	12142	T 9-11	TUR 2346	Beginning Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	1656	12143	M 6-8	MAT 005	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	2333	12144	M 9-11	TUR B310	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	2500	12145	F 6-8	FAB 0103	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	37B0	12160	T 9-11	LIT 0235	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	8058	12161	W 9-11	AND 0032	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2300	1658	12162	T 9-11	TUR 2342	Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 2300	37B8	12163	F 6-8	PSY 0129	Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 2300 (H)	9002	24356	R 9-11	WEIM 1076	Honors Poetry Writing	TBD
ENC 1136	010F	27000	T 5-6/ R 6	WEIL 408A	Multimodal Writing/ Digital Literacy	TBD
ENC 1136	045A	18716	M W F 8	WEIL 0408E	Multimodal Writing/ Digital Literacy	TBD
ENC 1136	9006	24532	M W F 5	ARCH 0116	Multimodal Writing/ Digital Literacy	TBD
ENC 1145	3309	12820	M W F 5	MAT 0115	Topics in Composition: Writing About Trees	Lucas Rodewald
ENC 1145	3312	12821	M W F 4	MAT 0113	Topics in Composition: Writing About Superheroes	John Logan Schell
ENC 1145	3318	12822	M W F 5	MAT 0113	Topics in Composition: Writing About Contagion	Kaylee Lamb
ENC 1145	3337	12823	M W F 3	MAT 0115	Topics in Composition: Writing About Banned Books	Fi Stewart-Taylor
ENC 2210	12A0	12824	UFO	Online	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	4B48	12826	T 8-9/ R 9	TUR 2333/ MCCB 1108	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	4B50	12845	M W F 2	LIT 0223	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	5072	19711	M W F 8	ARCH 0215	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	9150	19907	T 2-3/ R 3	MAT 0007/ MAE 0229	Technical Writing	TBD
ENG 1131	1363	12657	M W F 3/ M 9-11	ARCH 0116/ ARCH 0116	Writing Through Media: Oppression and Exploitation in True Crime Stories	Kimberly Williams
ENG 1131	1802	12675	M W F 3/ W 9-11	WEIL 408A/ ARCH 0116	Writing Through Media: “Think of the Children!”: Youth Resistance and Student Activism in Literature and Media	Nicole Green
ENG 1131	18C3	12676	T 4/ R 4-5/ T 9-11	WEIL 408A/WEIL 408A/WEIL 408A	Writing Through Media: My Family, My Community: Where Do I belong?	Cristovao Nwachukwu
ENG 1131	1983	12677	M W F 6/ R 10-E1	WEIL 408D/WEIL 408D	Writing Through Media: Time, Space and Science Fiction	Amanda Rose
ENG 2300	1807	12678	M W F 3/ M 9-11	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	1809	12679	M W F 4/ W 9-11	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	4C45	12680	M W F 6/ M 9-11	TUR 2334/ TUR 2332	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	7485	12681	M W F 8/ W E1-E3	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	8015	21079	T 4/ R 4-5/ T E1-E3	TUR 2334/ TUR 2334/ ROL 0115	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	8641	12523	T 5-6/ R 6/ R E1-E3	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	TBD
ENL 2012	1827	12603	T 8-9/ R 9	MAT 0006/ MAT 002	Survey of English Literature, Medieval-1750	TBD
ENL 2022	1830	12604	T 2-3/ R 3	LIT 0125/ TUR 2346	Survey of English Literature, 1750-Present	TBD
ENL 2022	8049	12605	T 5-6/ R 6	BLK 0315/ LIT 0113	Survey of English Literature, 1750-Present	TBD
LIT 2000	19CC	15283	M W F 5	MCCA 3194	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2000	19CD	15284	T 8-9/ R 9	MAT 0118/ MAT 0151	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2000	1A24	15285	M W F 3	MAT 0118	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2000	1A28	15286	M W F 7	NRN 1001	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2000	1A31	15287	M W F 4	MAT 0251	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2000	1A35	15302	T 2-3/ R 3	WEIM 1094	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2000	1A42	15303	M W F 6	RNK 0215	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2110	4C93	15305	T 2-3/ R 3	MAT 0004/ MAT 0005	World Literature, Ancient to Renaissance	TBD
LIT 2120	03A6	15306	M W F 3	MAT 0117	World Literature, 17th Century to Modern	TBD
LIT 2120	2504	15307	M W F 8	AND 0013	World Literature, 17th Century to Modern	TBD

Course Descriptions

AML 2410

Survey of American Literature: Writing the West: Imagining the Settler Colonial Environment from the 13 Colonies to Today
Elizabeth Nichols

As extractive practices continue to dominate the American relationship with the natural world in the age of climate change, this course seeks to situate these practices within the United States’ broader history of settler-colonization, or the means through which the US state and nation seized its land from Indigenous peoples. To do so, the course is guided by two central questions: what stories has America told about its landscape over time, and how have these stories contributed to the contemporary settler-colonial relationship with that landscape today? While recent environmental literature has rightly spotlighted man’s relationship with nature as a storytelling element worthy of our attention, reading this element through the critical and historical lens of settler-colonialism provides a larger narrative of land, ownership, and violence that is crucial for considering ecological crises today.

For a topic that is, by its nature, interdisciplinary, the materials for this course seek to engage with texts on science, history, and archaeology in addition to a survey of literature in its myriad forms, including non-fiction, popular fiction, and digital media. The course will move chronologically through America’s westward expansion, beginning with settler-colonial mythologies of pre-Colombian landscape, as seen in William M. Denevan’s “The Pristine Myth” and selections of Charles C. Mann’s 1491. Later texts will also comprise selections of John Smith’s A True Relation, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, John Wesley Powell’s The Exploration of the Canyons of the Colorado, and the video game The Oregon Trail, along with visual works by such artists as Thomas Moran and Ansel Adams.

Through these texts, among others, students will practice identifying and tracing American settler-colonial rhetoric in the imagined western landscape, working toward critical engagement with vital, contemporary environmentally-focused literature today. In order to practice these skills, assessment for this course will take the form of four, 300-500 word short responses to select readings across the semester, a presentation on a local ecological site that is accompanied by a 1-2 page reflection on the movement in conversation with course material, and a final 4-5 page paper analyzing 1-2 texts from the course reading list.

AML 2410

Survey of American Literature: African American Poetry and Transformation
Lupita Eyde-Tucker

In this course, we will read works of African American poets and examine their influence on American literature. An inextricable part of American literature, African American poetry stands as a witness to the joys, struggles, triumphs, and injustices of Black people throughout US history. In this course we will immerse ourselves in this canon, and examine how African American poets emerged in light of the following topics: Work, War, The City, Resistance, The Family, Love and Sex, and The Environment.

Additionally, we will explore the complicated relationship African American poets have had with European poetic traditions and forms. The word poem comes from the Greek word poiesis. Poiesis means “to make” in ancient Greek and has roots in both literature and philosophy. Poiesis is a transformative action, to bring forth, to turn a thing into something else, figuratively speaking. How have African American poets used poetry to transform, and what are they transforming for themselves, the reader, and by extension, American literature?

To explore these questions, we will use Kevin Young’s anthology, “African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song” as the historical framework of poets and their work, from Phyllis Wheatley’s “To a Young African Painter,” to Nas’. “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.” Additionally, we will read six collections ranging from Pulitzer Prize-winners Tyehimba Jess, Patricia Smith, Gregory Pardlo, Rita Dove, and National Book Award finalists Claudia Rankine and Ross Gay. Students will meet writing requirements with a combination of nine 250-word close reading discussion board posts, three 750-word critical response essays, and one 1,500-word final literary analysis essay.

AML 2410

Survey of American Literature: The American War Novel after World War II
John Mark Robison

The war novel is a form as old as the novel itself, but this type of novel undergoes drastic changes after the historical experience of World War II. This course will take a look at a collection of American war novels from this period to consider these changes in style and subject matter and to discover what those changes might tell us about both American history and American literature. Questions this course will address include: To what extent can a work of fiction accurately convey the lived experience of war? In what ways is the novel as a form useful for this particular task? How does the historical specificity of a war change the techniques a novelist uses to represent it? How do such representations change over time? What role does the veteran as a character archetype play in contemporary American literature? How does the war novel intersect with and influence forms of genre fiction like science fiction and the western?

We will begin the class with Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, two war novels from earlier periods of American history, which will give us points of comparison for the later novels. These later novels may include Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Word for World is Forest, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer.

Course assignments will include reading quizzes and short reading responses. The midterm paper will ask students to compare one of the two novels from before WWII with one of the later novels. The final paper will present a longer textual analysis of another novel from the reading list.

AML 2410

Survey of American Literature: Mistaken for Nowhere: Rural America and What it Means for All of Us
Will Carpenter

Rural communities today are often looked upon as vestiges of a bygone era, as backwards or unnecessary, as places where nothing is happening. More often, they are simply overlooked. Many rural communities are in jeopardy due to a multitude of interrelated factors. The opioid crisis has ravaged rural areas at a rate disproportionate to the that of cities and suburbs, and some rural communities have little to no access to adequate medical care, educational resources, and other necessities. Corporate farming, brain-drain, and a variety of contributing factors have inflicted widespread poverty, while urban and suburban sprawl have displaced or consumed rural communities. Many rural spaces also harbor severe bigotry, and their responses to the neglect they have perceived at the hands of city-dwelling Americans have often proven reactionary and disconcerting, demonstrating, as well, that rural America still wields formidable sociopolitical power.

In this course, we will study works of American literature concerning and originating from rural areas, in order to look intently at these places and the people who live in them. We will also attempt to challenge the somewhat dismissive ways of looking with which many regard rurality, to discover other ways of thinking about rural spaces. More specifically, this course will use rural literature to explore how the social, political, economic, and ecological systems at work in rural America impact not only those in the countryside, but those in cities and suburbs across the nation. It will examine unique and vital communities that contribute to the texture and character of America today. It will investigate troubled and foundational histories. While they will aim to offer insight into rural folks’ lived experiences—glimpses into small towns and out-of-the-way counties—such readings of rural literature may also provide a telling cross-section of American happenings, and perhaps even a focal point for some international conversations.

Course readings may include works of creative nonfiction such as Raised Up Down Yonder: Growing Up Black in Rural Alabama by Angela McMillan Howell, and Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance; poems by Todd Boss, Erika Meitner, B.H. Fairchild, and others; novels by the likes of James Dickey; and various works by Wendell Berry, likely including The Unsettling of America, as well as a movie about Berry, titled Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry. These readings may be supplemented by op-eds and articles, as well as music videos and other films.

The course will take shape as a semi-continuous discussion guided by the readings. Writing assignments will include targeted close-readings, one essay focusing on a single source, one essay focused on synthesizing material from several sources, and various discussion posts.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: Writing About Trees
Lucas Rodewald

There are over 150 different species of trees on this campus. Some are hundreds of years old, pre-dating many of the buildings we pass through and by each day. Their ubiquity makes them easy to ignore, yet we are quickly coming to realize that we do so at our own peril.

The symbolic and literal importance of trees runs across time and culture. They have played monumental roles in religion, medicine, agriculture, architecture, biodiversity, art, and the overall evolution of human society. Increasingly, as the effects of climate change become more prominent and widely-felt, their significance has been accompanied by an urgent undertone of precarity. From apocalyptic images of forests burning in the recent Australian wildfires to jarring before-and-after stills of Amazon deforestation, trees act as a rallying metaphor for contemporary environmentalism at large: “Save the trees…save the Earth!” Beyond their ecological importance, trees have an overlooked power and wisdom to which writers across disciplines have been drawing our attention. As best-selling author Robin Wall Kimmerer claims, trees teach us acts of “restoration” for ourselves and the other beings around us. We need only look and listen.

This course is a trek into contemporary writing on and about trees: their material and physical properties, their cultural and historic significance, and their impact as an environmental image or symbol. Spanning a variety of genres—scientific writing, fiction, narrative essays, poetry, children’s literature, and film—we will explore the following questions:

• How have humans translated the physical structures of trees into readable, figurative structures with our own meanings and connotations?
• How do our perceptions of a species—trees, plants, animals—shape how we relate to them?
• To what extent have the symbolic representations of trees changed over time, and how do trees figure differently for people of varying heritages or cultures?
• How does contemporary tree literature help us reckon with themes of loss and resilience in the face of escalating global climate change?

Possible texts include The Overstory by Richard Powers, The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors by David George Haskill, and Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard, as well as excerpts from a wide range of authors, filmmakers, and thinkers, such as David Allen Sibley, Rebecca Hey, Jean Giono, Terrence Malick, and Peter Wohlleben.

Like our reading list’s variety, the course’s major assignments will let you write for a range of purposes and audiences: scientific field notes and physical descriptions on campus trees and plants, a public-facing annotation assignment aimed at illuminating the campus body about its local trees and their significance, several short critical or creative response papers to major texts of study, and a larger project that weaves multiple disciplines—scientific research, history, literary analysis, and narrative writing—together.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: Writing About Superheroes
John Logan Schell

Superheroes are everywhere nowadays, but the voice of the superhero in American comics is difficult to pin down accurately. Popular American superheroes like Captain America, Superman, and others often find themselves claimed by a range of groups and positions. Both the political right, and left, for example, have used superheroes to represent their worldviews, attempting to state definitively that a particular hero is on or has always been on “their” side. For example, Green Arrow is often portrayed as a leftist, while the Punisher has become a mascot of sorts for the right. Clearly, the ideological ownership of our contemporary myths is highly contested ground, leading to an important question, “what is the true voice of the American superhero?”

The approach to this course will be grounded in theories specifically tailored to comics. As Frederick Aldama states, “we need to take our pleasure in the study of comics on their own terms” and not merely as a subset of literary or pop-culture studies. We will analyze, discuss, and write about what makes superheroes unique in the American comics medium, what defines them and how they have consequently defined American culture. Readings will include specific issues that feature superheroes from DC, Marvel, and independent publishers. Guiding our exploration will be formalist scholarship including McCloud, Harvey, Groenstein and others, who will be placed into conversation with scholarship pertaining to superheroes, such as Coogan, Klock, and Fawaz. The goal of these readings will be to develop how the superhero identity is created through the connective tissue of the comics medium.

The work of the course will likely include weekly responses to assigned readings, one close reading of a text, an annotated bibliography, and one major research paper.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: Writing About Contagion
Kaylee Lamb

Only one form of contagion travels faster than a virus. And that’s fear. —Dan Brown

What does it mean to live in a society rife with “contagion?” How do our fears, whether responding to something real or imagined, influence our understanding of “contagion?” How do we define “social contagion” and what are its implications? These are just a few of the questions we will be considering throughout our semester.

In today’s day and age, the word “contagion” has more social and political meaning then ever before as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it remains imperative to understand how our conceptions of contagion have evolved over time, which can be seen through historical moments like the Black Death, the AIDS crisis, the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, and COVID-19. Yet our understanding of contagion can also be seen through forms of pop culture, as illustrated with the rise in zombie and post-apocalypse films/books and our society’s usage of the common phrase “going viral.” The goals of this course are to explore our own conceptions of contagion and unveil it as a deeply social phenomenon.

As this is a writing course, our goals will be to engage with both texts and film to aid in our understanding of “contagion.” Such works will include: excerpts from Daniel Defoe’s “A Journal of the Plague Year,” I am Legend by Richard Matheson, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Blindness by José Saramago, and Severance by Ling Ma. Alongside these major works, we will do a film analysis of Contagion and engage with 2-3 scholarly research articles.

For this course, students can expect three papers (film analysis, literary analysis, and research paper), one 8–10-minute presentation, and reading quizzes about our primary texts. Throughout the semester, we will engage in seminar-style discussions and groupwork to foster engagement and active learning. Students will be expected to participate in in-class discussions and come to class having read the material beforehand.

ENC 1145

Topics in Composition: Writing About Banned Books
Fi Stewart-Taylor

Probably the first banned book in the United States was Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, which criticized Puritan society. While Morton may have been the first, he is far from the last, and banning books is at least as American a pastime as reading them. From the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, when parent and religious group challenges to books prompted the American Library Association to create “Banned Books Week” to current bans on LGBTQ books and teaching Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools, what can and cannot be said, or more aptly written and read, has been a site of debate, legislation, and social uproar.

In this course, we will read a collection of frequently challenged books, from still canonical texts like Huck Finn to graphic novels like Maus and children’s books like And Tango Makes Three alongside school free speech cases like Bethel V. Fraser and the history of ethnic studies and gender studies programs in the United States public education system, to frame our understanding of the history of free speech and forbidden speech in educational settings. Students will write across a variety of genres, with each student taking responsibility for presenting an introduction to one book, researching the history of challenges to that book, and presenting a concise précis on related ethical issues. Students will also be asked to write weekly response journals, reflecting on pedagogical practices and arguments for and against different representational and educational frameworks for inclusion and exclusion. For their final project, students will pick one banned book not on our course list and write a lesson plan to teach that text. Students will pick a grade level, and explain their choice of text, audience, and teaching methodology.

ENG 1131

Writing Through Media: Oppression and Exploitation in True Crime Stories
Kimberly Williams

Historically, true crime has always been an evocative genre. We are titillated by Hannibal Lector’s juxtaposition of charisma and savagery. We deem Dexter Morgan’s “dark passenger” a slight misgiving because of his vigilante code. We memed The Tiger King and wore Joe Exotic t-shirts. However, even in our pedestrian sharing of true crime obsessions, there remains the critical discussion of intersectionality and systemic oppression. In this multimedia course, we will examine true crime media through a sociopolitical lens. How did racism and homophobia  impact the investigation of Jeffrey Dahmer–a cannibal serial killer who still serves as a muse for cinematic villains? Moreover, what is the history behind the metaphor and Dahmer ‘s crime of “eating the other?” How did third wave feminism influence Ted Bundy’s infamous legacy and his numerous film adaptions? How does misogyny influence court sentencing involving the Stand Your Ground law? How does misogynoir intersect with the “Missing White Woman” syndrome?

We will discuss fictional films like We Need To Talk About Kevin about a school shooter and view documentary series like Lorena about the famous Lorena and John Bobbitt assault.   Course readings include essays from James Baldwin on the Atlanta Child Murders and content concerning the new incel movement from Laura Bates. We will listen to true crime podcasts and discuss survivor-centered vs. offender-centered narratives. Course assignments include essays, interviews, case briefs and more.

ENG 1131

Writing Through Media: “Think of the Children!”: Youth Resistance and Student Activism in Literature and Media
Nicole Green

This course explores how student activism is represented in literature, with a particular emphasis on young adult literature. We will begin by studying the history of actions taken by individuals or student groups that have caused political and social change, including student protests, walkouts, campaigns, and movements. Topics may include internal, institutional affairs such as curriculum, funding, safety, student rights, or broader political issues. We will explore how student activism shows up in YA, media, and how this relates to the self-representations of said activists. The societal perceptions and underestimation of adolescents, as well as the invocation of children as a rhetorical tactic, the role of social media in youth radicalization, and the actual material conditions of youth will be a pivotal focus as well. We will explore literature about and by activists, largely children’s literature, books written by well-known student activists, zines, social media, music lyrics, speeches, and television shows.

Possible texts for this course are The Landry News by Andrew Clements, Glimmer of Hope by the founders of March for Our Lives, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Greta’s Story: The Schoolgirl Who Went on Strike to Save the Planet beside Greta Thunberg’s speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit, Harlem Grown: How One Big Idea Transformed a Neighborhood, a picture book by Tony Hillery, selections from By Any Means Necessary by the New Youth Activism and Activism in an Era of Education Inequality by Ben Kirshner, the viral “Racist, Sexist Boy” by the Linda Linda, and zines from the Civic Media Center.

Assignments will include mind maps, zine creation, a short thematic analysis, and a final project centered on one of the course themes/materials. The main objectives of the course are to think through how youth culture is represented, and in turn, sold back to adolescents, as well as to identify when and where students have autonomy.

ENG 1131

Writing Through Media: My Family, My Community: Where Do I belong?
Cristovao Nwachukwu

Families and communities play an important role in shaping our personalities and worldviews.  They can represent support systems where we root our sense of belonging, but at times belonging to a family or a community means sacrificing parts of oneself to fit in and find acceptance. The extent to which people are willing to go to be accepted depends on factors such as race, gender, sexuality, and how they affect their family dynamics. Such issues also inform what drives people to form chosen families when blood relations become harmful. These reflections on family, communities, and individuality will guide our study of literature and film that portray how collective experiences mold people’s identities. We will study fiction and nonfiction works from African, Latinx, Asian, and multicultural artists that unearth their family histories and communal kinships to investigate the following questions: How do families/communities define a person? How do different populations conceptualize belonging? How can families/communities be both freeing and stifling to an individual?

Some of the works we will study include the films Encanto (2021) by Charise Castro Smith and Jared Bush, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994) by Ang Lee, Pariah (2011) by Dee Rees, and episodes of the TV series Pose (2018). We will also read short stories by Bolu Babalola, Chinelo Okparanta, Uwem Akpan, the novels Butterfly Burning (2000) by Yvonne Vera, Homegoing (2016) by Yaa Gyasi, and the play The Dilemma of a Ghost (1964) by Ama Ata Aidoo. As for nonfiction, we will discuss A Small Place (1988) by Jamaica Kincaid, the graphic novel La Voz de M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo Vol. 1 (2019) by Henry Barajas, and Psychic Experiences of an Indian Princess: Daughter of Chief Tommyhawk (1920) by Annette Leevier.

Assignments will include weekly posts about the materials, a virtual family tree analyzing how familial bonds shape various identities, reflective journals connecting primary sources with your personal experience, a community map, and a final project in the form of a video essay, a podcast, or an artist composition.

ENG 1131

Writing Through Media: Time, Space and Science Fiction
Amanda Rose

What is it about the science fiction genre that makes it particularly suited for explorations into the relationship between time and space? How does this genre experiment with these concepts and attempt to utilize them as a means for creating alternative understandings of reality? How has science fiction utilized the concepts of time and space as a means for representing specific historical moments throughout history, and how can the genre be seen to apply these concepts in new ways as a means for representing the historical context of today? Finally, why does this narrative form seem to be so adaptive to the changing mediums and technologies of the 20th and 21st century, and how might this relate to the genre’s unique formal and conceptual manipulation of these concepts?

Throughout the semester, we will be reading sf stories (such as J.G. Ballard’s High Rise, Phillip K Dick’s Minority Report, and Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life), we will be watching film adaptations (such as the 2015 adaptation of High Rise, the 2016 adaptation of Minority Report. and the 2016 adaptation of Ted Chiang’s work, Arrival). and we will also be watching a range of sf films (such 12 Monkeys and Edge of Tomorrow), considering science fiction’s evolution as a genre over time, and particularly assessing how sf has experimented with the concepts of time and space in diverse ways as a means for representing reality.

Ultimately, throughout this course, we will seek to better understand how our present-day engagement with the sf genre (its content, form, and use of particular narrative conventions) can be seen to change the meaning or value of time and space, based upon the communicative mediums through which each narrative is being portrayed.

By examining the genre of science fiction through a range of different mediums (short stories, television shows, graphic novels, and films), students will gain a better understanding of how this narrative form can better serve to best reflect the unique conditions of the historical moment, additionally considering how this genre– and its representation through diverse forms– has proven to be uniquely suited for experimentations with temporality and spatiality over time.