Department of English

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

Spring 2023

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	6101	10419	M W F 7	NRN 1001	Survey of American Literature	TBD
AML 2070	M102	23563	M W F 4	MAT 0118	Survey of American Literature	TBD
AML 2410	9132	19482	T 5-6/ R 6	MAT 0118	Issues in American Literature and Culture: Gender Norms and Nonconformity	Karen Libby
CRW 1101	1633	12142	W 9-11	MAT 0004	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1101	6730	12143	R 9-11	TUR 1101	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1101	6752	12144	F 6-8	TUR 2306	Beginning Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 1301	16E1	12146	W 9-11	AND 0019	Beginning Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	0121	12148	W 9-11	MAT 002	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	1337	12170	F 6-8	TUR 2305	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2100	7005	12171	R 9-11	NRN 1001	Fiction Writing	TBD
CRW 2300	1645	12173	W 9-11	MAT 0012	Poetry Writing	TBD
CRW 2300	5311	12174	F 6-8	TUR 2346	Poetry Writing	TBD
ENC 1136	9122	19443	M W F 8	WEIL 408E	Multimodal Writing/ Digital Literacy	TBD
ENC 1145	35G2	12725	M W F 8	TUR 2350	Writing About Retellings of Blue Beard	Lindsey Scott
ENC 1145	35G3	12726	M W F 6	MAT 0007	Writing About Myth, Media, and Memory	Chandler Mordecai
ENC 1145	35G4	12727	T 7 / R 7-8	MAT 0004/NRN 1001	Writing About Science Fiction: Social Norms and Anxieties	Emily Hunsaker
ENC 1145	35G8	12728	M W F 8	MAT 0118	Writing About Algorithms	Kevin Artiga
ENC 2210	1GS6	29029	M W F 6	MAT 0118	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	1GS7	29032	M W F 3	MAT 0118	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	34F7	12729	T 2-3 / R 3	MAT 0118	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	34GD	12752	T 8-9 / R 9	FLI 0115/TUR 2303	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	34GE	12753	M W F 7	MAT 00018	Technical Writing	TBD
ENC 2210	35F2	12754	UFO	Online	Technical Writing	TBD
ENG 1131	1786	12656	M W F 6 / M 9-11	WEIL 408A	Writing Through Media: World War II and Media	Bryce Patton
ENG 2300	1793	12659	M W F 3/ M 9-11	TUR 2334/TUR2322	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	4784	12661	M W F 5/ W E1-E3	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	7308	12676	M W F 7/ W E1-E3	TUR 2334	Film Analysis	TBD
ENG 2300	S205	26333	T 5-6 / R 6 / R 9-11	TUR 233/ROL 0115	Film Analysis	TBD
ENL 2012	9135	19487	MWF 4	TUR B310	Survey of English Literature, Medieval-1750	TBD
ENL 2022	1215	12496	T 7/ R 7-8	MAT 0118	Survey of English Literature, 1750-Present	TBD
LIT 2000	17B9	13691	M W F 3	MAT 0113	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2000	17CB	13692	M W F 6	MAT 0005	Introduction to Literature	TBD
LIT 2110	M181	24191	T 4 / R 4-5	TUR B310	World Literature, Ancient to Renaissance	TBD
LIT 2120	05DA	13714	M W F 7	TUR B310	World Literature, 17th Century to Modern	TBD

Course Descriptions

AML 2410

Issues in American Literature and Culture: Gender Norms and Nonconformity
Karen Libby

This class will interrogate the ways that femininity and masculinity have been created, reflected, and challenged in American literature. Through works of literature, we will explore how norms of masculinity and femininity are experienced by people of various genders. In analyzing the readings for the course, we will consider guiding questions such as: Why have we decided which traits and behaviors are masculine and which are feminine? How have gender roles developed in a uniquely American context? How are gender roles taught? What happens to people who will not or cannot adopt the expected traits of their assigned gender? We will also explore the development of counter-cultural communities that resist binary gender norms. This class will give emphasis to queer and trans expressions of gender and discuss how sexuality, gender expression, and gender identity connect.

In this class, we will, much like the texts at hand, blend explorations of masculinity and femininity by theme. Possible texts include Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker (1962), Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits (1989), Herbert Ross’ film Steel Magnolias (1989), Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993), and Maia Kobabe’s comic Gender Queer: A Memoir (2019), among others. Course assignments will consist of class discussion preparation, short response papers, a creative project, and an analytical research paper that connects a chosen text to wider social, historical, and cultural systems. Students will develop close reading and analysis skills in this alongside a framework for understanding how literature interacts with the culture that it emerges from.

This class is open to all students, regardless of prior knowledge of gender and queer studies. We will open the semester by building a foundation of knowledge on gender and gender roles to ensure that each student is able to interrogate the literature and theories at hand.

ENC 1145

Writing About Retellings of Blue Beard
Lindsey Scott

A blend of coming-of-age and spine-tingling horror, the tale of Blue Beard and his wives is an old one, older even than the French folk tale familiar to modern readers. Even now, the story persists in popular culture through classics of gothic literature and current Young Adult fiction alike. Through the exploration of this recurring narrative, our course will examine the ways that women from different eras and their fictional heroines navigate common structures of patriarchal power and violence, dynamics of solidarity and competition between women, and their own agency. We will also look closely at how race, class, and gender intersect to influence the characters’ experiences and inform the authors’ approaches to the story.

Our class will consider versions of the story through various forms and encounter a range of genres and literary traditions. Texts will include gothic novels such as Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre as well as Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s more recent Mexican Gothic. We will delve into short fiction from Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Nalo Hopkinson’s Skin Folk. We will also explore visual media texts such as Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods and Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Rebecca (1940).

Students will practice critical reading, writing, and thinking skills through two directed reflections and one 750-to-1000-word close-reading essay. Additionally, students will build argumentative and creative writing skills through three creative assignments designed to allow us to engage with the texts “outside the box” as well as work toward a final 3-to-4-page analysis of one or more of the texts we will have covered.

ENC 1145

Writing About Myth, Media, and Memory
Chandler Mordecai

Revisions of myths often change or enhance our understanding of them. Today, as old myths converge with new media, it becomes important to investigate how, why, and for whom these myths have been altered. This course will read various mythic retellings by women writers and examine how they create new narratives through feminist revisionist mythmaking. Questions driving this class include how women writers subvert or reinforce gender roles and norms, how retellings change our memory of myths, and how multimedia transforms or complicates mythic characters. Students will gain an understanding of the creation, circulation, and revision of popular myths. They will be exposed to multiple multimodal mediums and the relationships between texts and media. And they will develop strategies for close reading and critical analysis.

Texts will include Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad, Rita Dove’s Mother Love, and Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. We will explore noncanonical authors and revisions, including Madeline Miller’s Circe, Rachel Smythe’s Webtoon and now graphic novel Lore Olympus Volume 1, Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins and Jackson Pearce’s Sisters Red.   

In addition to close readings, critical responses, and a critical analysis research paper, students will participate in one panel discussion with 2-3 peers. Each panel will be assigned a different multimodal mythic revision and panelists will give an overview and analysis of the mythic retelling. Students will also create and present their own multimodal mythic retelling through a medium of their choice and include an Artist’s Statement for their final project.

From The Odyssey to Red Riding Hood, mythic stories, their original landscapes, and plots have often been revised and retold for new purposes. In the current digital age, myths have migrated into new media, such as video, podcasts, Instagram and TikTok.

ENC 1145

Writing About Science Fiction: Social Norms and Anxieties
Emily Hunsaker

This course examines works of science fiction, a genre of speculative fiction that imagines technological advances, especially ones that dramatically change human life. Such works often leverage contemporary anxieties, showcasing common fears about technology getting out of hand and changing humanity for the worse. These anxieties often rope together technology and human nature, depicting unbridled human corruption enabled by technological advancement. Given the past two centuries of rapid technological progress, these features of the genre offer contemporary readers peeks into the collective anxieties of past decades. But science fiction also lets us analyze the anxieties of our own time, helping us understand what we might fear about ourselves and society.

Texts for this course may include Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818), Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950), episodes of The Twilight Zone (the TV show that ran 1959-63), The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972), Story of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (2002), Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2011), and We Went Back (PC game, 2020).

In addition to keeping up with the reading, work for this course will include discussion posts, short responses to texts, and two analysis papers of around 2000 words each. Students will submit over 6000 words in this class to meet the University Writing Requirement.

ENC 1145

Writing About Algorithms
Kevin Artiga

In recent years, the term algorithm has evolved from describing a set of instructions—a calculation used to solve a problem or perform a computation—into something more sinister: a process of political, economic, and/or psychological manipulation. Consequently, this course will approach algorithms as both a computational and a sociocultural technology.

We will start by placing algorithms in a lineage with other technologies such as writing, the printing press, photography, and the internet. And we will examine how modern algorithms developed from early philosophical and biological breakthroughs—for instance, the role played by early work on biological neural circuits in brains toward developing artificial neural networks.

We will then explore the roles algorithms play in contemporary sociocultural environments. We will analyze how algorithms create/mediate culture, how algorithms persuade, and how algorithms function as a tool for a variety of interest groups, including law enforcement, private companies, and grassroots movements.

Potential readings include selected chapters from the following: Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Nobel, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, Twitter and Tear Gas by Zeynep Tufekci, What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn, The Undersea Network by Nicole Starosielski, Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 by Orit Halpern, and Algorithmic Regulation by Karen Yeung and Martin Lodge. We will also explore software/digital projects, like DALL-E by OpenAI, to question how images, information, and art are procedurally generated by algorithms.

The coursework will likely include two traditional papers, short writing assignments, and a multimodal project (video, podcast, programming project, etc.) that will deal with the core themes and ideas explored in class.

ENG 1131

Writing through Media: World War II and Media
Bryce Patton

The central goal of this course is to use popular culture as a unique tool to help students expand their understanding of the World War II. If one wants to better understand modern American culture and politics, they must begin by looking back into history. The Second World War fundamentally changed global culture in the middle of the 20^th century and we still feel the repercussions of the conflict in our contemporary politics and art. In this course, students will explore the historical conflict through its representation in various films, television series, graphic novels, and video games. This course will ask students to analyze the relationship between war, history, trauma, memory, and the role played by popular culture in creating and deconstructing that complex relationship. Throughout the semester, we will watch a combination of documentaries, fiction films, and television mini-series that feature representations of the conflict and read several graphic novel memoirs that reflect on the repercussions of the War. During the semester, we will watch films and read texts from various countries (including, but not limited to, England, Japan, France, Italy, Russia, Belarus, Germany, and the United States) which were released between 1941 and 2019. By analyzing representations of World War II in popular culture through a global perspective, students will explore the various ways different cultures responded to the conflict throughout their media.

One does not need any background in World War II history to be successful in this course. The first several weeks of the class will serve as an introduction to the history of the War as we read a short book on the conflict and watch several historical documentaries. The assignments in this course will include: weekly response to the each week’s screening or reading, a midterm exam, and a final project consisting of a presentation on a piece of popular culture whose central theme is related to World War II.