Instructor: John Marsh

Instructor: David Durian

Instructor: Stan Kranc

Learn about the Old Ways… and the New; As we explore the literature and storytelling that gives meaning to both ancient and modern Pagan/Heathen traditions. From Slavic Byliny to Norse Sagas to Greek Mythos to Roman Legends and beyond, we will explore these narratives to better understand their use as religious documents and as tales full of meaning. You will start on a journey that will take you through the history of Paganism/Heathenism, ancient and modern, many of the important sources of these traditions, engage with modern views on ancient myths, tackle the portrayal of tales in popular culture, and examine the meaning-making power of these narratives with a religious and literary lens. Students who embark on this adventure will be expected to read, watch, and listen to the sources, participate in class discussion, write some reflective papers and journals, and participate in a final project.

General Education: Humanities (GH)

Instructor: David Loewenstein

Open to all students. This Shakespeare course will focus on a selection of his greatest plays and sonnets with an emphasis on the ways these works explore love, politics, and war.  We’ll consider how Shakespeare examines these major issues from multiple perspectives by reading plays from four different literary categories that he experimented with and sometimes creatively blended: comedies, history plays, tragedies, and romances.  Plays studied will include the following works: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, 1 Henry IV, Henry V, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest, as well as a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets (complex short poems often exploring the turmoil of human sexuality). We will also enrich our close reading of Shakespeare’s plays by watching and evaluating some excellent film and stage productions of them. Our study of Shakespeare’s works will enable us to consider his development and creativity as the outstanding dramatist in our language.  As we proceed, we’ll consider what makes Shakespeare’s works such probing representations of human love and sexuality, the human imagination, gender relations, politics, power, war, nationhood, evil, prejudice, friendship, forgiveness, and human frailty, among other notable issues.  One aim of this course is to demonstrate that rich literature—exemplified by Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets—engages imaginatively and complexly with central issues in human life and culture, prompting us to think about them in deeper and multifaceted ways.

Writing assignments will include a short essay, a longer paper that includes more research, and two tests. For this honors course we’ll use the following text: The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays and The Sonnets, general editor Stephen Greenblatt, 3^rd edition (Norton, 2016).

International Cultures (IL)

General Education: Humanities (GH)

Instructor: Christian Haines

General Education: Humanities (GH)

Instructor: Verna Kale

English 133 is an introduction to American literature from the turn of the 19th century through World War II. This time period coincides with a literary movement known as “Modernism.” The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel of the “roaring twenties,” turns 100 years old in 2025, so is Modernism even still modern? In our study of the fiction, creative nonfiction, short stories, poetry, and cinema of this era we can’t possibly be comprehensive, but we can be reflective. In addition to performing close reading and analysis of key texts of this period, we will consider cultural influences, publication history, and the continued significance of these works in our own tumultuous present. Regular attendance, daily reading assignments, and active participation are required components for success in this readings- and discussion-based class.

General Education: Humanities (GH)

United States Cultures (US)

Instructor: Matt Tierney

This course combines literary and cultural studies with labor and management studies. Focusing on the role of genre in the presentation and transformation of workers’ expression and organization, we’ll read everything from science fiction novels and documentary poetry to memoirs, critical theory, history, and other kinds of nonfiction. We consider topics like union organizing, domestic labor and care work, industrial and postindustrial labor, remote work and gigwork, racism and sexism on the job, the purported dignity of hard work, and the right to be lazy. Grading is based on class participation and on 3-4 short writing assignments.

General Education: Humanities (GH)

General Education: Social and Behavioral Scien (GS)

General Education – Integrative: Interdomain

Instructor: Hester Blum

Instructor: Steele Nowlin

This course studies “medievalism,” a term used to describe the act of looking back to an “idea” of the Middle Ages for inspiration or subject matter. Our class will explore examples of medievalism in literature, art, and culture, working to understand what so many creative thinkers in later time periods have found so captivating about the Middle Ages. Why have the Middle Ages been such a fruitful imaginative source for writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, scholars, and thinkers? How does engaging with an idea of the Middle Ages allow artists to comment on their own time? What makes something “medieval,” anyway? We’ll approach questions like these by looking at a variety of “medieval” works and cultural phenomena, including works produced in the Middle Ages and works produced in later times, up to the present day. We’ll study works of literature and art–stories and paintings, for example–but also other kinds of creative productions: things like maps, manuscripts, movies, games, musical compositions, and public exhibitions. We’ll explore how ideas of “the medieval” changed over time and how the term “medieval” even now has a variety of competing meanings and connotations. To help with our exploration, we’ll also read scholarship that explores the “medieval” in literature, art, and culture, and we’ll explore creating some “medieval” works of our own. Our class meetings will center on lively discussion, and classwork is likely to include shorter written assignments throughout the semester, creative assignments and activities, and a culminating project that blends creative and analytic approaches to the idea of the “medieval.”

General Education: Arts (GA)

General Education: Humanities (GH)

General Education – Integrative: Interdomain

Instructor: Marcy North

Looking back at the first recorded women writers in Britain, this course traces their innovations, authorial agency, protofeminism, and resistance to misogyny. The texts cover a period from the twelfth century to the eighteenth. Students will read fairy tales, mystical visions, life-writing, defenses of women, poems, plays, and early prose fiction. Students will be encouraged to ask how early women defined themselves, how they navigated the restrictions their cultures placed on women, and why they chose the kinds of writing they did. Discussion topics will include literary craft, early domestic and public culture, tradition and challenges to tradition, authorship complexities like anonymity, character development, women’s reliance on and manipulation of religious topics, and autobiographical elements of literature. There will be opportunities to explore early examples of cross-dressing, the gender ambiguity of anonymous texts, same-sex attraction, and the intersections of gender, race, and class in early Britain. Students will participate in class discussion and complete small in-assignments, in-class group work, and Canvas discussion forums. Assignments will also include short quizzes and two short papers. Early women writers often prove a delightful surprise to modern readers.

General Education: Humanities (GH)

International Cultures (IL)

United States Cultures (US)

Instructor: Jeffrey Nealon

Instructor: Claire Bourne

This course covers key works of British literature written and published in the medieval period through to the end of the eighteenth century. We will approach the poems, plays, and prose texts on the syllabus by paying close attention to the ways that these works reflect the material culture of their time and how their authors and makers leveraged textual technologies (whether the pen or the printing press or both) to make important points about contemporary English culture, politics, religion, and/or social issues. Some of their arguments captured by these texts still resonate in the present—we will discuss this, too. The reading list may include writing by anonymous, Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe, Margaret Cavendish, John Milton, Hester Pulter, Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Mary Astell, Eliza Haywood, Horace Walpole, and Phillis Wheatley. The course will include visits to the Eberly Family Special Collections Library to view rare copies of the works we read as well as other object related to the stories captured therein. Coursework may include in-class writing assignments, intermittent reading quizzes, and a creative final project.

General Education: Humanities (GH)

International Cultures (IL)

Instructor: Sean Goudie

Instructor: Brian Lennon

Suitable for students in any area, from the liberal arts and communications to IT, computer science, engineering, and business, who are interested in cultural approaches to digital technologies. Covers fundamentals of the digital representation of linguistic, visual, and other cultural data; considers the difference between language and code; surveys the history of creative and expressive computing; explores examples of algorithmic culture; and concludes by reflecting on the limits of the digital, in the question of what computers can’t do. Many materials are web-based; others are in book form. Assignments include blog posts and a final project including creative options. No exams. If you are an ENGL major, this course counts toward the Professional and Media Writing concentration.

Professional and Media Writing Concentration

Instructor: Michael Anesko

General Education: Humanities (GH)

United States Cultures (US)

Instructor: Andrew Erlandson

Instructor: John Marsh

General Education: Humanities (GH)

Instructor: Garrett Sullivan

Medieval through Sixteenth Century, Sixteenth Century through Eighteenth, and Century Time, or Twentieth Century to the Present Time Period 

Literary and Cultural Studies Concentration

Fulfills Diversity Requirement

Instructor: Christopher Castiglia

This course will examine queer life as depicted in a variety of nineteenth-century genres, including horror (Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Turn of the Screw), Romance (The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance), Sentimental Literature (Ethel’s Love Life), poetry (Leaves of Grass, The Ballad of Reading Gaol), drama (The Importance of Being Earnest), love letters (between Emily and Susan Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed), and short fiction by authors such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, and Bret Harte. We will discuss concepts such as “romantic friendship,” the rhetoric of passion, queer utopianism, queer obsession, criminality and queerness, the psychology of the closet and the formation of sexual subcultural, gender nonconformity, and queer aesthetics. Students can expect to write 3 5-7 page papers, including one leading to an exhibition in the library.

Nineteenth Century Time Period

Literary and Cultural Studies Concentration

Writing Across the Curriculum course

Instructor: Julia Kasdorf

Have you have learned some things about writing poems in the prerequisite workshop course, English 213: Introduction to Poetry Writing? Take this course if you want to continue developing your craft. Expect to practice the skills and vocabulary common to practicing poets, while also reading and writing in new directions. As part of a community of learners, you will create a serious conversation about craft and content in response to the poems you read and write. You can expect to write a new poem each week, respond to assigned weekly readings, give written and oral critiques of peers’ writing, attend public readings, and memorize poems. Assessment based on participation, completion, and quality of a final portfolio.

Creative Writing Concentration

Instructor: Stephen Fonash

English 418 is designed to give you practice writing within situations similar to those you may encounter as a member of your chosen technical community. You will gain practice writing to both expert and non-expert audiences, and you will write within a variety of common genres. Throughout the course, we will discuss how writing functions within technical communities and identify strategies you can use to make your writing effective and professionally responsible. Approaching technical writing as a problem-solving opportunity will feature prominently in the course. Each project will engage in a planning and review process with an emphasis on users and design.

Professional and Media Writing Concentration

Instructor: Paul Kellermann

Instructor Tina Chen

Instructor: Brian Lennon

Suitable for students in any area, from the liberal arts and communications to IT, computer science, engineering, and business, who are interested in literary approaches to digital media. Covers early examples of computer-generated literature, time-based or streaming electronic or digital literature, and new media poetry as an extension of print literature; includes a focus on the literary and cultural history of password authentication and the importance of randomness in expressive and creative computing; and examines depictions of new media as literary experience and cultures of new media in contemporary speculative fiction. Many materials are web-based; others are in book form. Assignments include blog posts plus a final project including creative options. No exams. If you are an ENGL major, this course satisfies the 20th century or later period requirement and counts toward the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration.

Instructor: Carla Mulford

Fictional works were the heart of American reading during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an era marked by American nation-making, civil war, and federal reconstruction. The novels up for this class include a central preoccupation with the status of women in American social and political life. Indeed, this course might be called Liberty’s Daughters, but that would be an ironic title, because we will attend to whether women actually had free choice over their lives in this historical era. We will likely read, in chronological order, the following novels: William Hill Brown, The Power of Sympathy (1789); Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (1797); Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850); Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall (1854); Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Iola Leroy (1892); and Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899). This is a hard-copy book course. Written assignments include three papers (about 4 to 5 pages each). Active engagement, including class participation, matters (and counts) in this class. This course meets the nineteenth-century requirement for English majors.

Nineteenth Century Time Period

Literary and Media Studies Concentration

Fulfills Diversity Requirement

Instructor: Michael Anesko

Instructor: Marcy North

In ENGL 443, English Renaissance, we will focus on the poetry and prose of the 16th and 17th centuries, with attention to popular literature, controversy literature, verse fashions, and prose fictions. There will be units on jest literature, fictions of the craft classes, stories of martyrs and religious controversy, utopias and romances, sonnets and satires. The authors might include Sir Thomas More and his daughter Margaret Roper; sonneteers such as Sir Thomas Wyatt, Ann Lock, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, and Mary Wroth; prose by writers such as Francis Bacon and Margaret Cavendish; early fiction writers such as Thomas Deloney, and anonymous authors who were part of the antifeminist controversy in the 17th century. Students will be expected to contribute to class discussion. Assignments include in-class work, Canvas forum posts, short quizzes, and two papers.

Medieval through Sixteenth Century or Sixteenth Century through Eighteenth Century Time Period

Literary and Cultural Studies Concentration

Instructor: David Loewenstein

Instructors: Karrieann Soto Vega

Perhaps you have heard prevalent descriptions of political communication through accusations of “dangerous rhetoric” or the common false equivalence of rhetoric as disingenuous speech: “that’s just rhetoric.” But what exactly is rhetoric? This course tackles that question by surveying different understandings of rhetoric from antiquity to today. Simple dictionary definitions would categorize rhetoric as “the art of persuasive speaking or writing” (Oxford), typically from the Greco-Roman tradition. However, more contemporary conceptions expand this definition to include diverse cultural traditions, goals, and communication strategies. Considering different temporal and spatial locations of rhetorical traditions, via academic readings and new media examples, you will be expected to engage in rhetorical analysis of cultural dynamics in this socio-political moment and cast new directions for rhetorical efforts in the future.

Medieval through Sixteenth Century and Twentieth Century to the Present Time Periods

Rhetoric and Writing Concentration

International Cultures (IL)

Instructor: Carla Mulford

Prose fiction in Britain became popular around the same time that Britain experienced dominance in the transatlantic trade in human beings. Given that prose fiction experienced a rise in readerly interest during an era of empire-building and enslavement, it is worthwhile for us to consider the potential intersections between enslavement (a form of perpetual imprisonment) and the emplotment of novels (usually, the imprisonment of women) appearing before and during the time of Jane Austen. We will examine a chronological selection of novels against this backdrop of the erasure of liberty and the consequent rise (for the dominant group), in Britain, of both capital and leisure. Readings will include: Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740); Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest (1791); (anonymous), A Woman of Colour (1808); and Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814). Written work includes three papers (4 to 5 pages each) and quizzes on each novel. Active engagement, including class participation, matters (and counts) in this class. This course meets the sixteenth through eighteenth century requirement for English majors.

Sixteenth Century through Eighteenth Century Time Period

Literary and Cultural Studies Concentration

Instructor: Steele Nowlin

In this Honors seminar, we’ll dive into the work of Geoffrey Chaucer (still famous today as the author of The Canterbury Tales) and his friend and fellow poet John Gower (who may not enjoy the same name recognition these days, but who was a fascinating, prolific, and influential writer in his own time). We’ll place Chaucer’s and Gower’s work side by side and in its broader literary and cultural context, thinking about how these writers engaged, adapted, and reimagined a wide variety of source material and ideas, including the work of other writers (both of Latin antiquity and more recent European writers); historical and chronicle narrative (both “real” and “legendary” history); the “current events” of their own tumultuous days (including war, social uprisings, and the deposing of the king); vexed ethical and political questions (and the power dynamics inherent in those questions); and aspects of “everyday” human experience (like social relationships, emotional experience, and the construction of identity) which especially fascinated both writers. Because Chaucer and Gower also read each other’s poetry, we’ll look too at how they reimagined each other’s work and sometimes took similar poetic material in very different directions. We’ll read a wide variety of forms and genres in which they wrote, including dream vision, romance, chronicle, saint’s life, lyric, exemplary narrative, and tale collection. We’ll spend some time at the start of the semester familiarizing ourselves with the Middle English in which they wrote. (This is great fun, and no prior experience with Middle English is required or expected!) Over the course of the semester, we’ll read and discuss modern scholarship about these writers as well. The core of our class will be our daily, lively discussions of these poets and their reimaginings. Students can expect to complete shorter writing assignments, some Middle English reading and “translation” activities early on, and a substantial final project that we will build toward incrementally over the course of the semester.

Medieval through Sixteenth Century Time Period

Literary and Cultural Studies Concentration

Writing Across the Curriculum course

Instructor: Sean Goudie

The achievement of writers and artists from formerly colonized areas in the world represents arguably the most significant facet of literary production during the last half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. The selections of St. Lucian poet, playwright, and essayist Derek Walcott and Trinidadian novelist V. S. Naipaul as recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 and 2001 respectively aptly emblematizes the importance of that achievement. In this course, we will consider literature produced by the formerly colonized—artists and works now frequently termed “postcolonial”—from one of these areas: the Caribbean. We shall focus especially on the Caribbean novel in its Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone manifestations but we will also treat poems, plays, songs, paintings, and other forms of literary and cultural production. (All course readings will be in English.) As we proceed, we will concern ourselves with the formal virtuosity and thematic nuances that characterize richly diverse Caribbean postcolonial literary traditions. A central preoccupation of the course will be to identify the ways in which colonial and postcolonial realities shape the contours and central issues of Caribbean writing, issues such as cultural and linguistic syncretism, gender and ethnic relations, and race and resistance.

Twentieth Century to the Present Time Period

Literary and Cultural Studies Concentration

Writing Across the Curriculum course

Instructor: Karrieann Soto Vega

In this course we will explore theories of social movement rhetoric as they pertain to historical and contemporary events of social protest. Where do they begin? What are their goals? What available means do social movements utilize? What composition practices emerge? How do rhetorical theories shape how we understand social movements and activism? What about culture? We will take an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to study how social movements begin, function, and interact with larger social forces. Besides student presentations of academic readings, course discussions will also attend to distinct modalities of expression in specific case studies.

Writing Across the Curriculum course

Instructor: Leslie Robertson Mateer

This course investigates the activities of and career opportunities for professional and media writers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in this area is projected to grow 11% from 2016 to 2026, faster than the average for all occupations, which is 7%. But what, exactly, do professional and media writers do? How do they approach their work? What do they need to know? Why? We will address these questions and others by investigating the intellectual terrain of the field, situating the field in theoretical and practical terms, reviewing field approaches, and developing field knowledge. We will pay special attention to digital literacies and contexts and to how information technologies shape the work landscape of professional and media writers.

Writing Across the Curriculum course

Instructor: Toby Thompson

Writing Across the Curriculum course