ENGL and ENED Course Descriptions

Explore a variety of literary forms and styles in this introductory study of literature. Students will learn about both form and meaning by learning about the history, methods, and aesthetics embedded in the study of the written word. The course will be broken down into three units, fiction, drama, and poetry with further exploration of sub-genres including song lyrics, television and film scripts and screenplays, biographical writing, podcasts, and more. In addition to reading and experiencing exemplary works in each genre, students will also create works within each genre allowing them to experience first-hand, the process of writing and composing literature.

This course will orient students to the significance of critical reading and different genres of writing in public, professional, creative, and academic careers. Students will analyze a range of print and non-print texts and media from different genres. They will also get experience writing in a variety of different genres. Students will exercise and refine interpretive methods, critical strategies, and writing practices as they also explore and prepare for the varied career opportunities for English and Professional Writing majors.

World Literature I surveys literary masterpieces from the Ancient period to the Renaissance, focusing on texts outside the traditional canons of American and British Literature. Particular attention will be given to those texts and authors that have had the greatest impact on our literary world.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course features the intensive reading of selected masterpieces of world literature which reflect the evolution of human thought, to develop in the student the power of discrimination and the habit of evaluating. Either semester may be taken independently.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course draws upon texts of the British Isles from the earliest known writing through the present and includes a variety of genres. In this wide-ranging course, students will read (or otherwise experience) a focused selection of British literature that explores the connections and innovations of the literature that continues to shape the world.

Prerequisites: COMP100

This course surveys the fundamentals and conventions of English grammar and syntax. Topics include lexical categories, phrase structure, clause structure, modification, subordination, punctuation, and language acquisition. Additional attention is given to matters of style in order to sharpen students' prose. This course is recommended for those pursuing degrees in English, Professional Writing, Elementary Education, and English Secondary Education although open to any student wishing a deeper understanding of English grammar.

Prerequisites: COMP100

Poetry is among the most fundamental human activities. From our most distant origins all the way down to the present day, from landmark occasions to our daily lives, people sing, pray, protest, aspire, love, and grieve in verse. This course engages these traditions by studying poems old and new to illustrate the traditions and aesthetic theories of the art. It is writing­ intensive, galvanizing skills in analysis, interpretation, research, and critical writing; therefore, it meets General Education requirements for category A4.

Prerequisites: COMP100

"We have always found the Irish to be a bit odd. They refuse to be English." These words uttered by Winston Churchill point to the tenacious character of Irish culture to be forcibly unique despite the impact of colonialism and conflict. Such an identity is fiercely present in a centuries-old body of Irish literature that appeals to a reader's sense of history, humor, revolution, and romance. From ancient Celtic mysticism to medieval folklore, political nationalism to 1:5lobal revolution, contemporary thrillers to gothic horror, ever-present humor to bleak tragedy, the Irish literary tradition canvasses all genres and forms in a way that is uniquely Irish. This course will offer students an opportunity to experience all of this in an effort to truly understand what it means to be Irish.

Prerequisites: COMP100

Uncanny fantasy stories, slasher movies, and heavy metal mt1sic are just a few examples of the unpopular culture the course considers. Beginning with the weird fictions of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, we'll read, watch, and listen through the twentieth century, unearthing significant movements and texts in unpopular culture, in America and elsewhere, and socio-political responses to these weird fictions. Through close analysis of fiction, films, and other media, students examine the parameters of aesthetic taste, good and bad, and consider the social at1d cultural work that underground, alternative, and sub-sub genre texts do. Throughout we will consider why and how so many of those texts have proven so surprisingly popular, so strangely pleasurable, and oddly important.

A genre approach to film study designed to introduce the general student to basic concepts in film criticism, aesthetics and history.

Prerequisites: COMP100

This course uses an Ecocritical approach to representative works in American literature that contemplate nature and reflect on humans’ relationship to the natural world. This course is suitable for both majors and non-majors.

Prerequisites: COMP100

This course examines the ways in which American sports are represented in late twentieth- and twenty-first century works of literature, film, and television, as well as on websites, blogs, podcasts, and social media platforms. Students will be introduced to a variety of aesthetic forms and styles as they appear in fiction, poetry, and drama and study the ways in which they are deployed in both literary and non-literary texts about sports in the US. They will write critically and creatively about sports, their representation, and their place in contemporary American history and culture

Prerequisites: COMP100

This course examines the ghost story as a literary genre from its earliest appearances in myth and legend through contemporary times, including local ghost lore of the Kutztown area. This haunting genre includes oral histories, horror films, short stories, and contemporary novels.

Prerequisites: COMP100

This course explores the special relationship shared by Jazz and Literature. The course will put the literature about jazz culture into conversation with jazz music, jazz film, jazz dance, jazz theater, and other jazz arts.

Prerequisites: COMP100

As a relatively new field of literary studies, gay and lesbian literature represents a wide, creative and challenging oeuvre. Novels, poetry, and drama written by/and/or about LGBTQ+ people will be examined in connection with identity and gender politics. Including social movements, camp, feminist and queer theory, and the influence of the AIDS epidemic.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100

Contemporary African Novel will introduce students to a broad sampling of novels written originally in English or translated into English, from Amos Tutuola’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954) to the present.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Contemporary African Poetry and Drama will introduce students to a broad sampling of poetry and drama from Africa, written in English or in English translation.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Students will analyze literature and music written and performed by African Americans from the eighteenth century to now. Students will read works in different literary and musical genres by Black Americans, including poetry, prose, slave narrative and fiction. This also includes corresponding history that encourages the literary production and movements in and by Black Americans.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course gives student an opportunity to consider the similarities and distinctions in form and style between literary texts and films. They do so by examining adaptations of literary works and their source material. Students will also consider the artistic choices made in the work of adaptation and their resulting discourses about the cultures. Critical approaches relevant to literature and film provide the student with additional areas of study.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course examines the history of Gothic literature from the late-eighteenth cen­tury Gothic romance to southern American Gothic fiction and the recent Gothic revival. Representative works, their distinguishing features, their recurrent themes and motifs, their social, psychological, and rhetorical implications are also examined.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

This class explores the various mediums of comics, including comic strips, comic books, graphic novels and even web comics. Students will investigate historical and contemporary, independent and mainstream, and American and international comics. Students will develop a vocabulary for examining the specific features of the medium. They will also examine how authors and artists have deployed those features in a range of different contexts.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

Why do we still care about fairy tales? What makes them so popular and so relatable to our modern lives? To answer these questions, this course examines classic fairy tales, from their earliest oral and written roots to current representations and transformations. It explores the origins of fairy tales and traces their continual evolution in response to their cultural settings. Students will study a number of individual tales in-depth, read fairy tales and poetry by contemporary authors, and views films that both depict traditional tales and re-interpret them.

Myths, legends, epics, ballads, keens, fairy tales, folklore, poetry, plays, fiction, satire. Cliffs, dolmens, battlefields, passage tombs, ruined monasteries, ring forts, round towers, manor houses, cathedrals, colleges, modern cites. Rich in both great literature and spectacular landscape, Ireland reverberates in the world's imagination. Designed as a study-abroad exploration of Ireland, this course maps the relationship between the Irish landscape and its literature. Ireland boasts one of the world's richest and most influential literary traditions. Reading both classical and modern Irish literature provides opportunities for students to survey elements of its vital and at times troubled social and cultural history. Site visits buttress readings, illustrating the resonances of the landscape in the literature. This course meets General Education, Literature Minor, and English Major requirements.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

The world holds certain expectations for what we are able - and unable - to do, given the individual features of our bodies and minds. Writers across the globe have confronted these societal expectations by creating characters whose minds and bodies don't conform to the rules or norms that society places on them. In this course, we will read literary representations of people with cognitive, sensory, and physical impairments, and discuss what these representations reveal about cultural values and norms.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

This course examines powerful female figures, including goddesses, queens, and warriors, in mythical and literary texts and interprets their symbolic and cultural significance through the lenses of archetypal, mythological, and feminist literary criticism.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

This course considers friendship, one of the most important elements of human experience, and examines how it is represented in cultural texts. Primarily literary works, but also works of film, television, video, and social media. Readings that have been important in the history of friendship, ranging from classical Greek, Roman, British and American texts. These will provide background for understanding the ideas about friendship that we have inherited.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

This course examines the social, cultural, and artistic relationships between literature and rock music. Course materials include works of literature that engage with or seek to represent rock music. Materials also include rock music that addresses, comments on, or is influenced by literary history and culture. The course explores the notion that rock music should be taken as seriously as literature. It also explores the notion that techniques of literary interpretation can be applied to rock’s intensities, pleasures and complexities. Readings will rock, listening will be loud.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

Take a linguistic tour through the history of the English language. Learn the origins of our eclectic English spelling, listen to the language of Anglo-Saxon warrior kings, and read ancient illuminated manuscripts dotted with runic letters. This course focuses on the origins and development of the English language, tracing linguistic changes from its Indo-European roots through to today, including the modern emergence of World Englishes. We will focus on cultural and historical developments that influenced Old and Middle English and give particular attention to literary texts from these periods. Throughout this course, students will gain familiarity with basic concepts and terminology of linguistics and engage in the process of research writing.

Prerequisites:  COMP 100 

This course examines the work of Jane Austen in her multiple roles as the pioneering woman novelist of two centuries ago. It also examines the major canonical novelist she became recognized as in the twentieth century. And finally, the living presence in contemporary culture that she remains. Approaches will include historicist, feminist, and multimedia.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

In this course students will play, analyze, and write their own interactive narrative games. The literary nature of video console, computer, boardgame, and roleplaying games will be the focus of this course with particular emphasis on short form avant-garde games that challenge the genre. We’ll discuss the ways that narrative games transform the reader into a player with an active role in story creation, how games might be understood as literature, and the tropes that these games often rely upon. Playing and discussing games is one major part of the course activities, but writing will be equally important as the main method of responding to and creating interactive games.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

American modernism is the study of various cultural responses to rapid social changes. These social changes were brought on by innovations in technology that caused sharp changes to the global economy.This course explores interdisciplinary research methods based on the interplay between literature, popular culture (including art, film and music,). It also employs the events that shaped early twentieth-century Americans' sense that they were now inhabiting a changed world. Crucially, the course will explore diverse voices reflecting a variety of responses to modernity.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course will include the study of several classic literary works commonly read by high school students but will focus more intensively on the study of modern and contemporary works written for adolescents.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

In this course, students will use concepts from contemporary psychology to analyze literary works from a variety of genres. Approaching literature through psychology can add greatly to our understanding of literary creation and consumption, and it can teach us about social dynamics and human motivations. This course will consider how authors create their identities, how literary works change our ways of thinking, and how the exchange between literature and psychology increases our understanding of human nature.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course examines representative contemporary fiction–both American and international–from 1990 to now, highlighting the development of contemporary fiction. It also includes the use of traditional and new literary approaches and the strategies of representation in contemporary fiction. The course explores the themes and motifs found in contemporary fiction and the historical and cultural contexts of these works.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

The American Autobiography treats a broad spectrum of 18th to 20th-century autobiographies which are characterized by a great diversity in technique, theme, and authorial background.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course explores the poetry and drama of Black Americans. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley and William Wells Brown as precursors of the Black literary tradition. And ending with, as the focal point, contemporary poets and dramatists.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course explores the prose writings of Black American novelists and essayists, beginning with the slave narratives as prototypes and ending with, as the focal point, the latest contemporary novels.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

African Diasporic Literature will introduce students to literature written originally in French, Spanish and Portuguese. Works were translated into English and written by people of African descent. Authors were geographically located in places like Argentina, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela and more. These places constitute the African Diaspora and are where people tracing their descent to Africa reside. This course will be useful for students in English, Secondary Education, Modern Language, Women’s Studies and General Education.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course studies the documentary film genre, its history and the theories of representation that have informed its different modes. Students will analyze the genre’s purpose from multiple perspectives, including that of the filmmaker, the film subject and the viewer. In conjunction with documentary film history, students will read theories that detail the production and analysis of the documentary genre. This course is suitable for both English majors and non-majors.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

An in-depth study of outstanding Twentieth-Century literary works of Latin American writers. The survey will include representative works from the major literary genres: novel, essay, short story, drama and poetry.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Literacy isn't learned – it’s lived. While we may associate it primarily with school, literacy saturates our work and 'social lives.' Furthermore, an educational focus on text-based literacies is complicated by social media, remix practices, and new technologies.

"Reading" and "writing," then, need to be understood in light of our shifting culture: technologically, socially, economically and politically. Students will challenge literacy myths and measures while exploring their own lived literacies.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course is an in-depth study in English translation of some outstanding works in German literature. It is devoted to German writers from Lessing to E.T.A. Hoffmann. Its sequel, ENG/GER 254, is a continuation of ENG/GER 253 and treats outstanding writers from Realism through the 20th century. Either semester may be taken independently.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course is an in-depth study in English translation of some outstanding works in German literature from Realism through the 20th century. It is a continuation of GER 253. Either semester may be taken independently.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Navigating media, from social platforms, to corporate sites, to news outlets, has never been more challenging. While having more information at our fingertips than ever before can be a boon, it comes with obstacles: a deluge of data, bad actors sharing falsehoods, AI fakes, and partisan public conversations. At the same time, research indicates that people are reading longer, complex texts with less frequency. This course is meant to help, providing practice in close reading, fact-checking, and critical consideration of online texts. Students will choose topics of public interest, investigate how they are represented online, and research the facts at their foundation.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course investigates German cultural and historical impulses as told through 20th and 21st century German film. Students survey films from selected periods, and discuss predominant themes as well as aspects of film technique that support critical interpretations.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Research may begin in the library, but it doesn't need to end in the databases or among the shelves. In this course, students will conduct first-person research using ethnography, case study, oral history, or interview. Moving beyond the basics of using search engines, you will deepen your information literacy, navigating digital spaces and assessing their integrity. Finally, you will experiment with digital genres in which to draft and share your work beyond the classroom. This course is an elective in the English major.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course focuses on development of the short story as a distinct literary type traced by means of wide reading and close analysis.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course investigates the complex relationship that women have with violence. Students look at written and visual texts that depict women as both victims/survivors and perpetrators of violence. This allows students to discuss women in violent movements and the change in gender ideology and political climates. This course analyzes women’s relationship to violence, how it’s constructed and whether or not women are “naturally” non-violent. While this course doesn’t condone the use of violence, it studies ways women use violent tactics to resist oppression. It also shows how women enact revenge to find their voice in society.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

While the spoken and written word have long been studied for their rhetorical intent and success, this study has been conducted primarily through a male lens. As such, women’s contributions to rhetoric throughout history, like so many other aspects of women’s experience, have yet to be fully explored. Women, Writing, and Rhetoric seeks to expand the study of rhetoric with a multi-layered consideration of how rhetoric has been informed by, and informs, a female consciousness. This is an elective course for English majors and Women’s Studies minors.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

The focus of this course is modern and contemporary literature by women around the world. Students will read selected fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and examine these works primarily, but not exclusively, from the perspectives of Feminist Critical Theory.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course is offered as a study aboard option in London. American Modernists in London provide the opportunity to delve into a significant moment in literary history.

At the turn of the 20th century, London was seen as the capital of modern world culture. This attracted America’s most significant writers: Henry James, Mark Twain, Jack London, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. Students will read works written by these writers while living in London. They will even visit and explore the places these writers frequented.

The class will map the influence of turn-of-the-century London on the development of American identity at a pivotal historical moment.

This course satisfies electives in the English major as well as General Education Humanities and LAS electives.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course will examine the genre of Victorian popular novels known as Sensation Fiction. These novels thrilled and horrified the Victorian middle class readers with tales of sinister conspiracies, bigamy, murder, sexual scandals, and madness. Students will study the cultural role and unusual narrative forms of this subversive and pleasurably horrifying popular literature.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Students will learn how to collect, analyze, and derive insights from social media information. Students will also learn how to craft effective technical reports based on information generated from social media analysis. Students will examine and report effective strategies for creating social media content.

This course helps students become better at producing their own social media content, which is needed in today’s world. Students will develop skills in using both freely available and industry-standard digital social media analytics tools.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course examines the nineteenth-century fascination with bizarre phenomena such as mesmerism, séances, and weird science of all kinds. Students will read British and American literary and theoretical texts that engage with contemporary scientific, pseudoscientific, and spiritualist theories and practices, including evolution, phrenology, and mediumship.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course offers a study of popular media texts, especially, but not exclusively, film, television, and new media, through a variety of theoretical lenses. Students will gain an understanding of foundational media theories while also examining more contemporary critical approaches to popular media texts.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course provides undergraduate students an introduction to selected Native American Women Writers across several genres. Students will experience a variety of writings which move across traditional boundaries (such as nonfiction, poetry, fiction, theory, activist, and so on). The course also provides students an opportunity to consider Indigenous Feminism in theory and practice. Students will consider issues of gender, identity, cross-cultural understanding, individuality and community by intellectually engaging with the texts and performances of Native American women. This class may also include the opportunity for digital storytelling, blogging, interviewing, and community engagement.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Punk is recognized as a musical phenomenon, which emerged in the mid-l 970s as an anarchic, sometimes satiric, always disruptive force. This course broadens that concept, engaging a series of cultural moments from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. These moments are crucial in understanding punk's appearance and elaboration in the United States.

The course will examine a number of artifacts that articulated and incorporated punk's style and energy. This includes records and reviews, but also prose fiction, film, visual arts, graphic narrative and theoretical discourse.

This course includes artists like Lester Bangs, Samuel R. Delany, Patti Smith, Kathy Acker, X, Linda Hutcheon and Fredric Jameson.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course explores poetry, neoclassical literary criticism, and drama from 1660 to 1780 with consideration of central issues and prevailing attitudes reflected therein. This course also places emphasis on major writers.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course provides an overview of the leading currents, issues, and debates in feminist literary theory, including gendered voice, difference vs. equality feminism, essentialism, and queer theory. Students will read theoretical and literary selections from nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first century feminists.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Students will study a selection of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. Selections include The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and more. The course also examines the social, historical and literary landscape of this time. Students will utilize recordings, movies and "live" and TV productions.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This class explores Shakespeare's later plays including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, the Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Students will learn the social, historical and literary background to help them understand and appreciate the work. The course also includes recordings, movies and several "live" acts and TV productions.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course focuses on honing the analysis and production of contemporary digital texts. Specifically, the course examines emerging areas within Rhetoric and Composition. Students will learn how vital visual rhetoric, digital writing and multimodal style are in cultivating methods of analysis and production. Students will familiarize themselves with issues surrounding the creation, revision and deployment of digital texts. Students will understand the rhetoric involved in arranging words, images, sounds, spaces, fonts, etc...to create modern texts and arguments.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

What is a word? And what, for that matter, are questions? Learn what we mean by meaning in this exploration of the nature of language. Using a descriptive approach, we will discover the building blocks of language including the structure of speech sounds, words, and sentences. Beyond this, we will touch upon techniques in applied linguistics and semantics. In doing so, we will analyze everyday assumptions about the "correct" way of speaking and discuss the legitimacy of World Englishes.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This is a course in which students participate in critical analysis and interpretation of an international selection of classic works. These works include literature from Greek drama to modern absurdist stories that create the theme of crime and punishment.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course investigates the crucial role that story plays in creating impactful campaigns within new and emerging media environments. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which the story continues to be one of the most important rhetorical tools in community and social movements seeking change. Readings will draw from a wide range of disciplines including rhetoric, literacy studies, marketing, public relations, communication studies, social media theory, cognitive psychology, and social movement studies.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course provides an in-depth study of literature from the Romantic period (1780s­-1830s), including poetry, novels, and essays. Encompassing themes as diverse as political revolution, sublime nature, and individual rebellion, Romanticism represents a significant departure from previous literary periods and a significant influence on subsequent literary movements.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Introduction to Afro-Caribbean Literature students will study various genres and authors from West Indian countries. Works range in location from Cuba, Haiti, Martinique, Jamaica and Trinidad. Students will also examine writing style, content significance and thematic representation. They will study the critical, socio-political, cultural, and historical motivations that influence the authors’ texts.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course is devoted to analyzing American poetry from the period known as the “long 1960’s.” This time incapsulates the Cold War’s impacts from the 50’s through the 70’s, when the Vietnam War and Watergate hearings concluded. Authors associated with numerous schools and movements, including the Beats, confessional poets, New York School, language poets and Black Arts. Students will closely analyze a variety of works, including free verse and traditional poems. They will also examine significant poets and discuss theories and appropriations in pop culture. Students will read and consider social, political and aesthetic contexts during this turbulent time in American culture.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Representative poetic works will be studied in order to perceive the manner in which the major Victorians both reflect and transcend their age. Students will analyze the poetry of Tennyson, Arnold, Browning, Barrett Browning, and other Victorian poets in relation to the cultural and historical context of the Victorian age.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course features the study of representative prose works in the novel and the essay.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

The connection between rhetoric and democracy is an old one dating back to the origins of both concepts in Western traditions. Simply put rhetoric the skilled use of argument and persuasive discourse and democracy were seen as ways to replace violence as the primary means of governing and maintaining social order. However, the connections between democracy and rhetoric may not be immediately apparent indeed the two may appear to be in opposition in contemporary society. This course argues that the intimate connections between rhetoric and democracy are critical to retain and reclaim for the health of democratic society and culture. In the era of globalization and digital media these connections are even more important. A healthy democracy requires citizen advocates who are skilled in the analysis of public discourse as well as in the production of persuasive texts.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

The early 21st century has exploded with the development, repurposing and critical use of new media by political activists. This course explores the various complex ways in which activists have made use of and rewritten what counts as media. It also explores who counts as an authorized writer and what counts as writing. The course will investigate examples of activist campaigns and emergent theories of literacy. Students will learn the role of literacy training for the development of activists and how this opposes early education schooling.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Contemporary Drama examines works in English of the last 20 years. The course includes original plays written in English and translations of plays from other languages into English. It also includes new interpretations of revived works.

The course discusses themes and subjects in plays relevant to contemporary life. This entails the portrayal of politics, business, treatment of the individual and family, philosophy, religion, sexuality, gender, ethnicity and race.

The course will also note developments in and illustrations of dramatic theories.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course will discuss the historical development of Adolescent/Children's Literature. Mainly focusing on the rising popularity of contemporary Young Adolescent Literature (YA), which gained relevancy in the past few decades.

In addition to recent texts of YA literature, it will also include the canonical texts that these recent texts are based on. This will be done by grouping contemporary texts and canonical texts by theme. Themes such as dystopia/utopia, coming of age, gender studies, mythology, the American dream, and racial issues.

Studies include the application of literary theory in a high school setting and strategies for teaching literature to struggling readers.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course is an in-depth study of Melville and Whitman as creative forces in the shaping of American poetry and prose. Consideration is given to the cultural background from which their works derive.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course will focus on an analysis of Regionalism, Realism, and Naturalism in American literature between 1865 and 1910. Special attention will be paid to the works of Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, and New England Regional writers.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

A comprehensive study of world drama from its beginnings to the late 19th century.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

The evolution of the world novel traced from its beginnings to World War I.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course is designed to explore the underlying structures of film as a communications medium and as an art form. This course will include both foreign and American films.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course focuses on understanding historical and contemporary rhetorical conceptions of style in order to foster more sophisticated invention, analysis, and production of 21st-century compositions. Specifically, the course examines the idea of style from its ancient understandings rooted in orality up to modern iterations rooted in multimodal composition and digital writing.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

In this course, students will investigate the intersections of feminist film theory and cinematic representations of gender as both subject and object. Gender equality, identity, fluidity, and freedom have been foregrounded in contemporary political and social conversations and accordingly in cultural products such as film. The course will examine the political, social, economic, and cultural implications of gender representations within the narrative, documentary and avant-garde traditions of feminist and anti-feminist film practices and theory. Special attention will be paid to marginalized and underrepresented communities to highlight conversations about human rights, civil rights, and equality.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

British and Irish poetry, drama, and prose fiction since 1965 are analyzed in form and content with special attention given to the relationship of literary techniques, and cultural, historical, and theoretical context.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

J.R.R. Tolkien has been called “the Author of the 20th Century.” And C.S. Lewis is likewise one of the best-known names among literary and academic figures of the last 100 years. This course explains why two marginalized Oxford professors now appear as dominant literary figures for their generation and succeeding ones.

The main concentration will be on the works of Tolkien and Lewis and their impact on 20th and 21st century fiction. Students will also explore the circumstances of their lives, friendship with each other and the group known as the Inklings.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Reading and analysis of selected plays from the time of Ibsen to the present, thus providing a comprehensive view of the best dramatic literature of the Modern American, British, and European theatre since 1870. Recordings, television productions, and stage performances are incorporated whenever possible.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Representative poetry published since 1870 in England and America as the basis for a study of forms, aspects, and tendencies in contemporary verse, with particular reference to poetry as a criticism of modern life.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

World War One, empires on the brink, and explosive developments in art, technology, and human consciousness: Modernism and modernist literature sought to respond to all of these factors, and many more. The course will examine fiction of the modernist avant-gardes, the high modernism of the interwar years, and other literary movements, like Surrealism, the Lost Generation, and the Harlem Renaissance. Novels from the United States and the United Kingdom provide the primary array of texts; given the importance of global social phenomena during the period, novels from other regions may be considered.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

What is the postmodern?  When did it begin-and is it over? Is it an artistic movement or a socio-cultural condition? And why do people get so agitated whenever its name is spoken? To answer these questions, the course examines representative postmodern literature and arts across a variety of media and genres.

The course focuses on texts produced in the late 20th century in America, with the occasional foray to continental Europe. Primary texts include novels, rock music, theory, films, comics and visual arts. Students will also analyze some texts that incorporate all of the above.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

The course provides focus on a particular figure, period, or topic in language, literature, and/or rhetoric. Students may register for the course for up to six total semester hours of credit; students may not repeatedly register for a specific iteration of the course.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

A course for students who wish to study the work of a particular literary figure or a special topic in language, literature, or communications in depth. Students may register for this course more than once, up to a maximum of six semester hours of credit, so long as they do not repeat the same topic.

Prerequisites: COMP 100  and permission of the instructor and department chairperson

This course covers selected literary texts by nineteenth-century British and American women writers. It also focuses upon gender-specific conflicts and changing perceptions about the nature, roles, and rights of women during this important era in the history of literature by women.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course considers the connection between an author's life and their literary works. Students will read biography, autobiography, and historical accounts alongside one author's literary texts. Students will have the opportunity to deeply explore the extraordinary life of one author and discover how history and life circumstances illuminate their literature. This course is offered on a rotating basis with different authors. It may be taken twice to be used towards the 300-level requirement within the English major and minor programs.

Prerequisites: COMP 100

Past authors have included Oscar Wilde (Fall 2026).

This course examines the major critical and theoretical texts of western civilization. Along with the major modern critical approaches to the study, interpretation, and evaluation of literature. And applies such theory to literary works from primarily western writers.

This course also explores a number of questions and issues that are central to literary studies.

• Namely, what is literature?
• What is the function of literature?
• Is it an aesthetic object that embodies universal truths?
• Or is it a socially constructed text that participates in the cultural discourses and power relations that create it?
• How do we analyze and evaluate literature in terms of what it represents? What is the role of the literary critic?
• Are there correct and incorrect ways to read literature?
• What is the relationship between writers, readers, society, and literature?
• What do our individual understandings of literature say about each of us as writers, readers, teachers, and literary scholars?

Prerequisites: COMP 100

This course gives students the tools they need to transition from undergraduate academic study to the professional application of skills. It will show students how to apply for internships and identify and work towards specific post-graduation goals. Students will learn about internship and professional opportunities for English and Professional Writing majors.

Students will create resumes and cover letters and effective social media profiles. They will also develop a professional website and network with professionals. Students will be required to update the professional website during the internship to include work done during this experience.

This course is required for undergraduate English/ Professional Writing majors and should be taken prior to your internship.

Prerequisites: COMP 100 and at least one 300-level ENGL course

The Professional Writing/English internship is an opportunity for supervised, practical work experience in professional contexts. The skills attendant to English Studies are valued and can be developed throughout the internship.

Internships should be secured by students under the advisement and coordination of English Department faculty, following ENG/WRI 380 Professionalization Seminar.

The internship will extend the student's academic studies into the workplace. This can include Editing, Journalism, Publishing, Public Relations, Social Media, Research, Campaign Organization, Communications, or Marketing. This internship may be taken for three, six or nine credits.

Prerequisites: COMP 100 and ENGL 380

This course acts as Honors students’ independent study/thesis.

This course features supplementary research conducted by an Honors student in an upper-division (or 300 or 400 level) course in which the student is enrolled. The research is related to a topic in the course, but in addition to the standard requirements of the course, the research should exhibit advanced inquiry or investigation into the topic. The Honors student earns 1, 2, or 3 credits in addition to credits for the course itself. The number of additional credits depends on the amount and intensity of the supplementary research. Each department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has a specific course number which uses the departmental prefix, but all courses will use a common number (398). The course title will read “Honors Supplementary Research” and will have a variable credit value from 1 to 3 credits, e.g. ENG 398 Honors Supplementary Research.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course studies the histories of rhetoric as well as contemporary intersections and applications across multiple disciplines. This can include media, pop culture, sciences, feminisms and gender studies. It can also include composition studies, literary theories, literacies, global issues, pedagogy, arts, and political discourse. The writing assignments allow students to examine issues in more depth and explore alternative rhetorical stances and situations.

This course is designed to aid future and current teachers, tutors, and professors in navigating the challenges of teaching writing in the 21st century. Students will develop their own teaching philosophies, grounded in the study of composition theory and pedagogy. Whether teaching writing at the elementary, secondary, or post-secondary level, students will be well-informed of the challenges and possibilities of developing literacies and equipped to create their own writing assignments in the classroom. As a 400-level course, both undergraduates and graduate students may take this class.

This course focuses on the understanding of the various forms, their development and proliferation, along with instruction in newer methods of teaching literature at the high school level.