School of Humanities
School of Humanities
As a required course for English Education students at the undergraduate level, this
course seeks to help students understand the concepts and methods used in today’s
diverse English classrooms by means of a placement in a local school. English 491
is designed to give students the most exposure to the expectations required of teacher
candidates before the actual student teaching semester.
ENG 203
World Literature
M/W 8:00 - 9:15 AM
Dr. Jameela Lares
This course is intended to acquaint you with significant figures and works of world
literature, beginning with early lyric poetry in China and The Epic of Gilgamesh in
Mesopotamia and moving through time and space to the modern age. We will focus how
literature is constructed, how it describes the human experience, and how we can talk
about its interrelationships with time, place, culture, and other contexts. Texts:
The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Shorter Fourth Edition, 2 vols., and the handy Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, 4th edition, ed. Chris Baldick.
ENG 221
Fiction Writing I
T/TH 1:00 - 2:15 PM
Instructor: TBA
In this class, you will write your own original fiction. Class sessions will be organized
around craft topics, which will include assigned outside readings and writing exercises.
You will also write one short story or novel chapter. Craft topics will include: character,
dialogue, setting, structure, style, revision, and more.
ENG 222/322/422
Poetry Writing
M/W 2:30 – 3:45 PM
Dr. Michael Aderibigbe
English 222/322/422 will encourage you to write and workshop your own poems. You will
explore many forms and themes. In addition, you will read and discuss poems by writers
across different generations. You will also participate in several other writing activities.
This class is open to poets of all levels.
ENG 223
Creative Writing I: Mixed Genre
T/TH 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Instructor: TBA
In this course, you will write your own original fiction and poetry. Class sessions
will be organized around craft topics, which will include assigned readings and writing
exercises. We’ll begin with fiction. Craft topics will include: character, dialogue,
setting, structure, revision, and more. For poetry, craft topics will include: the
line, sound, imagery, and more.
Short stories and poems to be distributed in class
ENG 314: Genre and Popular Fictions
Worlds Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Encountering the Other
T/TH 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Luis Iglesias
Whether imagining traveling through space or time (or both), science fiction writing
frequently takes readers to worlds elsewhere, imagining possibilities remote but scientifically
plausible in its quests to come face to face with the Other. Along the way, SyFy novels
explore and interrogate our reality through the lens of imaginative and speculative
fiction. Indeed, the novels we will read and the worlds they create not only reveal
and inquire into issues of race, class, and gender, which are true to our current
understanding of the world we live in; but also these works envision new possibilities
as well as sound dire warnings. To paraphrase: throughout the semester we will “explore
strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go” to worlds
elsewhere to better understand our own.
Among our readings:
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
Dawn (Xenogensis, I), Octavia Butler
Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor
ENG 321/421
Fiction Writing II/Fiction Writing III
Dr. Olivia Clare Friedman
T/TH 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM
In this class, you will write your own original fiction and workshop one another’s
fiction. In addition to honing your craft, you will be working on your workshop skills.
Craft topics will include: character, dialogue, setting, structure, style, revision,
and more. You may turn in either short stories or novel chapters.
Recommended Text:
Writing Fiction, 10th Edition, Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Ned Stuckey-French
Short stories and novel excerpts to be distributed in class
ENG 335
Tutoring Writing
T/TH 4:00 – 5:15 PM
Dr. Joseph Cheatle
This course is intended to introduce you to key theories and approaches of peer tutoring,
such as facilitating growth mindsets, responding to diverse audiences, scaffolding
tasks, navigating ethical dilemmas, and tutoring in online environments. While peer
tutoring exists in many collaborative learning contexts, we will focus in particular
on the theory and praxis of tutoring in university writing centers. We will explore
topics such as linguistic diversity, process-based pedagogies, writing across the
curriculum, and new media tutoring as they relate to the work of peer writing tutors.
Each topic will be contextualized with writing center scholarship so that you can
develop a conceptual foundation for facilitating effective collaborative learning.
We will engage in reflective practice to prepare you to apply your knowledge in future
opportunities as a tutor, teacher, mentor, or learning advocate in writing center,
speaking center, learning center, or other collaborative learning spaces.
ENG 340
Analysis of Literature
M/W 9:30 – 10:45 AM
Dr. Eric Tribunella
ENG 340 is designed to introduce or review the methods of research in literary studies,
the conventions of scholarly conversations about literary works, the critical approaches
to literary analysis, and the components and mechanics of literary-critical essays.
In this section, we will study several foundational critical approaches to literature
and read a small selection of literary works on which to practice analysis, such as
Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now and Marcus Sedgwick’s Midwinterblood.
ENG 340
Analysis of Literature
M/W 2:30 – 3:45 PM
Dr. Nicolle Jordan
ENG 345
Introduction to Children’s Literature
M/W 1:00 – 2:15 PM
Dr. Eric Tribunella
Approaching the assigned readings in terms of literary criticism and history, this
course will provide a survey of children’s and young adult literature by examining
key texts, authors, and genres—from seventeenth-century didactic works to classics
of the nineteenth-century Golden Age through contemporary picture books, YA fantasy
and dystopian novels, and children’s graphic fiction. We will study the history of
literature for youth and consider what this history suggests about changing conceptualizations
of childhood and adolescence, and we will practice engaging in the literary analysis
of children’s and young adult literature. We also will identify some of the key conventions
of these texts and discuss how children’s and young adult literature can be used to
think about issues of audience, aesthetics, complexity, gender, race, imperialism,
education, development, and sexuality.
ENG 350
British Literature I
M/W 2:30 - 3:45 PM
Dr. Jameela Lares
A survey of major works of British literature from the beginnings in Old English poetry
and prose through the Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and Renaissance periods and into
the middle of the eighteenth century. We will focus not only on significant authors,
texts, and genres but also on helpful strategies for reading and discussing them.
Texts: Norton Anthology of English Literature, 10th edition, vol. 1 (A, B, C) and Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, 4th edition, ed. Chris Baldick.
ENG 351
British Literature II
T/TH 2:30 – 3:45 PM
Dr. Charles Sumner
This course will examine important figures and movements in modern British literature.
Specifically, we will look at how modern popular and political culture alters traditional
modes of self-perception, and, in turn, why our writers need new formal techniques
to represent these alterations.
ENG 371
Survey of American Literature II
T/TH 11:00AM - 12:15PM
Dr. Kate Cochran
The 300-level ENG survey courses offer students an understanding of literary works
in their historical and cultural contexts. As such, each course introduces students
to a broad spectrum of literature: students will read a diversity of genres, forms,
and writers—both canonical and nontraditional—and they will be introduced to the key
figures, concepts, and movements that define literary periods. In this course, we’ll
be examining some major figures and texts of American literature since 1865. We begin
with one of the most iconic American novels, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and conclude with a newer novel by a celebrated contemporary writer, Jesmyn
Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2007). In between, we’ll be looking at poetry, stories, and plays from some significant
American authors representing a variety of experiences and viewpoints, including Walt
Whitman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Eugene O’Neill, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner,
Maxine Hong Kingston, Junot Diaz, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Natasha Trethewey. Students
will complete daily work, three tests spaced throughout the semester, and two writing
assignments.
Required texts:
Robert Levine, ed, Norton Anthology of American Lit, Shorter 9th ed, Volume II: 1865-Present
Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
ENG 400 / ENG 469:
Studies in British Literature: The Brontë Sisters & Adaptation
T/TH 9:30 – 10:45AM
Dr. Alexandra Valint
The Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—grew up in the tiny village of Haworth
in northern England and wrote masterpieces of Victorian literature, becoming one of
the most famous literary families in English history. Artists have always been drawn
to adapting their nineteenth-century novels—play versions were the earliest adaptations—and
their novels have continued to inspire countless books, as well as films, miniseries,
comics, plays, graphic novels, musicals, ballets, songs, and art in other media.
In this course, we will focus on two classic gothic Brontë novels: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights. The former follows the orphan Jane as she moves from home to school to being a governess
at Thornfield Hall; the latter follows the mysterious Heathcliff, whose arrival in
a remote part of England alters the fates of two families. We will analyze how these
novels engage with the gothic genre and how they engage with Victorian issues of gender,
marriage, race, imperialism, and disability.
We will also study multiple adaptations—from various media—of each novel and consider
what the adaptation keeps, drops, changes, and updates. We will debate what makes
a “good” or “bad” adaptation, and we will try to figure out why artists keep returning
to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights for creative inspiration. We will also create our
own original adaptations!
Throughout the class we will aim to better understand the world the Brontës grew up
in, their lives, and their novels, along with the adaptations their novels have inspired.
A special fee is charged for this course. (See Special Fees listing in Student Expenses
section.) (All labs are subject to a usage fee.)
As a required course for English Education students at the undergraduate level, this
course seeks to help students understand the concepts and methods used in today’s
diverse English classrooms by means of a placement in a local school. English 494
and 495 are designed to give students the most exposure to the expectations required
of teacher candidates before beginning their careers in the field and aligns to most
INTASC, CAEP, and NCTE standards. The goal of this experience is to replicate, as
much as possible, the real world of teaching. Under supervision of a mentor teacher,
teacher candidates will have opportunities to implement