Interim 2016 | Summer 2016 | Fall 2016 | Spring 2017

Interim 2016

EN 311-001 LITERATURE: SPECIAL TOPICS

MTWRF 12:00-3:00
Barton

Discworld: Terry Pratchett’s Universe of Witches, Wizards, and Little Blue Men: This course will examine the universe as Terry Pratchett reconstructed it in the Discworld series of fantasy novels. In this long, non-sequential series, the recurring characters and twisting plots may mirror the complexities of the modern world. And so, we will engage the stories with an eye toward how they reflect or reshape such complexities via the lens of sci-fi fantasy and humor. We will read and discuss a selection of texts from the Discworld series, perhaps including Wyrd Sisters, Night Watch, Monstrous Regiment, and Thud, as well as view selected movies, such as The Colour of Magic, The Hogfather, and Going Postal. Students will react to readings in informal written responses, classroom discussion, and two analytic essays.

EN 311-002 / IT 380-001 SPECIAL TOPICS

MTWR 12:00-3:45
Godorecci

Machiavelli and Sherlock Holmes: A Meeting of Minds: This Special Topics course will focus on Machiavelli’s most famous work, The Prince, and a selection of readings from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, paying particular attention to each man’s method of analysis of history and of the world around him. A self-declared student of “current experience and things past,” Machiavelli finds a theoretical and intellectual soulmate in Sherlock Holmes, a man of exceptional observational acumen and great skill at problem-solving. In-class viewing of selected episodes from the BBC series “Sherlock” will complement course readings and offer students a thought-provoking interpretation of Holmes’ famous method in action.

EN 400-001 / EN 500-001 SPECIAL TOPICS

MTWRF 9:00-12:00
Beidler

Masterpiece Theater: A study of classic American texts and their Hollywood movie adaptations, with emphasis on examining, in paired discussions, popular forms expressing a relationship between contemporary social attitudes and the popular-culture marketplace. Midterm and final exams will test knowledge of key texts, characters, and terms. Out-of-class assignments will include two short critical papers. Prerequisite(s): Twenty-four hours toward the English major.

Summer 2016

Summer I

EN 205-050 ENGLISH LIT I

MTWRF 10:00-11:45
Burke

A survey of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to 1800, including, for example, work by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 206 ENGLISH LIT II

A survey of English literature from 1800 to the present, including, for example, work by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, Eliot and Yeats. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times.

EN 209 AMERICAN LIT I

Staff

Survey of American literature from its beginnings to 1865, including, for example, work by Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, and Whitman. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times.

EN 210-050 AMERICAN LIT II

MTWRF 10:00-11:45
McWaters

Survey of American literature from 1865 to the present, including, for example, work by Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Faulkner and Morrison. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 249-050 AFRICAN-AMERICANLITERATURE

MTWRF 2:00-3:45
Love

Survey of African-American literature from its earliest expressions to the present. In order to identify the aesthetics of the African-American literary tradition, the course material includes spirituals, slave narratives, poetry, drama, autobiography, fiction, and nonfiction. Prerequisites: EN 101 and EN 102 (or EN 103).

EN 303-050 POETRY TOUR

MTWRF 12:00-1:45pm
Barton

Introductory workshop in poetry writing. May be repeated for credit. Enrollment is limited to 15. Prerequisite: EN 200

EN 309-050 ADV EXPOSITORY WRITING

MTWRF 12:00-1:45pm
Buck

English 309, an advanced writing workshop, aims to help student writers who want additional expository writing instruction after English 101 and 102. Class members will analyze their writing strengths and weaknesses, set goals for improving their writing and work on practical writing assignments depending partly on their majors or fields of interest. Students will study and practice advanced techniques of effective expository prose, including explanation, logic and persuasion, analysis, evaluation, and stylistic sophistication.

EN 311 / 362 / 433 SPECIAL TOPICS: IRELAND

McNaughton

Topics vary from semester to semester and may include courses offered by other departments.

EN 311-802 SPECIAL TOPICS: NEW ZEALAND

Reyes

Race in Science Fiction: From the success of movies such as Avengers and the Twilight series to the appeal of television shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, the science fiction and fantasy genres are experiencing a revival and resurgence across multiple media platforms. And with this new level of popularity, the genres are facing a new level of scrutiny, and much of this scrutiny relates to how the genres—often rooted in western and colonial ideas of heroism and xenophobia—have adapted to reflect or resist the diversity of the 21st century. In this course, we will study the representation of minority characters in modern science fiction and fantasy and discuss how these genres—which can accept flying dragons and planet-sized spaceships—can serve as both a positive example and cautionary tale when dealing with diversity issues in the media. The goals of this course will be achieved through class discussion, student presentations, and writing assignments.

EN 319-050 TECHNICALWRITING

MTWRF 10:00-11:45
Dayton

This course will introduce you to the principles and practices of technical writing, including audience analysis, organization and planning, document design and style. We will cover ethical and legal responsibilities in technical communication, the effects of visual rhetoric, and editing techniques. Special emphasis will be placed on instruction sets, usability testing, report writing, proposal writing, and collaborative work. Prerequisites: EN 101 and EN 102 (or equivalent) and junior standing.

EN 329 DIRECTED READING

TBA
Manora

Prerequisites: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies. Application available at english.ua.edu/undergrad/courses.

EN 333-050 SHAKESPEARE

TWR 2:00 PM-4:45
O’Dair

Bad Shakespeare: There’s badly written and then there’s bad for you. This course asks whether some of Shakespeare’s plays are bad for you. Or whether their adaptations are bad for you. And whether either or both should be put out to pasture. Although the number of recent adaptations would seem to beg the questions, we shall ask them anyway by examining four of Shakespeare’s plays, which may include *Othello*, *Macbeth*, *The Tempest*, *The Merchant of Venice*, *Much Ado About Nothing*, *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*, *Twelfth Night*, and *The Taming of the Shrew*—and at least two contemporary film or television adaptations of each play. How do contemporary writers, directors, and actors rehabilitate the source play’s sexism or racism? To what lengths do they go to do so? Why? Are they successful? Or do they make new what is bad about the source play? Do they make the source play seem sophisticated? Smart? Adaptations may include Gil Junger’s *10 Things I Hate About You*; Gary Hardwick’s *Deliver Us From Eva*; Joss Whedon’s *Much Ado About Nothing*; Paul Mazursky’s *Tempest*; Julie Taymor’s *The Tempest*; Fred Wilcox’s *Forbidden Planet*; Tim Blake Nelson’s *O*; and Andy Fickman’s *She’s the Man*. Films will be shown in class.

EN 371-050 TRAGEDY

MTWRF 2:00-3:45
Burke

We will begin this course with a consideration of the classical idea of tragedy. Oedipus Tyrannos by Sophocles will serve as our chief example from classical times. We will next move to the English Renaissance where we will consider, first, Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, then Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1588), and finally Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1601). From there we will move to 19th -century America and examine the idea of tragedy in Herman Melville’s Bill Budd, Sailor (1890; 1924) and finish with the idea of tragedy in the American South that is embodied in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Students will be asked to write two short critical papers, one on the Renaissance idea of tragedy, the other on the American idea. They should also expect regular reading quizzes, and a final exam. This course satisfies the requirement for a 300-level course in literature before 1660. If it is necessary that a student take this course for 400-level credit, she or he should take immediate steps to consult with the instructor (jjburke@ua.edu) to see if this can be done.

EN 408-800 ADV CREATIVE WRITING

Study Abroad: New Zealand
Reyes

Travel & Culture Writing: One of the biggest dilemmas when traveling is how to be a tourist without look like a tourist. For a travel writer, in particular, the biggest dilemma is how to experience an event as it is and then formulate that event back in to a cohesive travel article in a sincere and unique way. How does one, a foreigner, visit another land, get into adventures, stories, and expeditions, and then articulate that experience in the form of writing? How does one know when to take mental notes, formulate ideas, stories while simultaneously experiencing something and whilst also being aware that one has a story on one’s hands? In this class we will attempt to answer these questions and more as we delve into contemporary culture and travel writing. We’ll use our time in New Zealand as a backdrop for considering ourselves as critics and writers of a “local elsewhere” that needs more than mere exploration—that needs our full immersion, into the place and into ourselves. We’ll read Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel to prepare for a cultural immersion that’s as much about the baggage we bring into the experience as the things we drive; we’ll explore essays from the Best American Travel Writing series and look at various ways travel writing can be framed and presented; and then we’ll look at how Lonely Planet sets up travel writing in both Lonely Planet: New Zealand and Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All.

EN 429-050 DIRECTED READINGS

TBA
Manora

Prerequisites: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

Summer II

EN 205 ENGLISH LIT I

STAFF

A survey of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to 1800, including, for example, work by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times.

EN 206-100 ENGLISH LIT II

MTWRF 10:00-11:45
Klocksiem

A survey of English literature from 1800 to the present, including, for example, work by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, Eliot and Yeats. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 209 AMERICAN LIT I

STAFF

Survey of American literature from its beginnings to 1865, including, for example, work by Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, and Whitman. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times.

EN 210 AMERICAN LIT II

STAFF

Survey of American literature from 1865 to the present, including, for example, work by Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Faulkner and Morrison. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times

EN 215/216 HONORS BRITISH LIT II

Deutsch/Halli

Study Abroad: Oxford Honors section of EN 205/206.

EN 309-100 ADVANCED EXPOSITORY WRITING

MTWRF 10:00-11:45
Popova

English 309, an advanced writing workshop, aims to help student writers who want additional expository writing instruction after English 101 and 102. Class members will analyze their writing strengths and weaknesses, set goals for improving their writing and work on practical writing assignments depending partly on their majors or fields of interest. Students will study and practice advanced techniques of effective expository prose, including explanation, logic and persuasion, analysis, evaluation, and stylistic sophistication.

EN 311-801 SPECIAL TOPICS

Crank
Study Abroad-Oxford: Topics vary from semester to semester and may include courses offered by other departments.

EN 319-100 TECHNICAL WRITING

MTWRF 10:00-11:45
Robinson

Focuses on principles and practices of technical writing, including audience analysis, organization and planning, information design and style, usability testing, and collaborative writing. Special emphasis will be placed on composing instructions, various kinds of reporting such as investigative and feasibility studies, document design for technical presentations, proposals and collaborative composition. Prerequisites: EN 101 and EN 102 (or equivalent) and junior standing.

EN 329-100 DIRECTED STUDIES
TBA

Manora
Prerequisites: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

EN 333-100 SHAKESPEARE

MTWRF 2:00-3:45
Burke

Since William Shakespeare’s died 400 years ago, in April of 1616, at or around the age 52, 2016 will be a year of many commemorations. Our course this summer will be one of them. We will be examining why Shakespeare occupies his place at the center of what is described as the literary canon in English. We will begin with a consideration of Shakespeare’s accomplishments as a poet, both narrative and lyric. We will then move on to his accomplishments in the drama, examining what he did in four categories: comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. Students can expect regular reading quizzes, two papers, and a final examination. The texts for the course will be The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays and Sonnets, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et alii and an inexpensive paperback edition of Shakespeare’s two long narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.

EN 408-100 ADV CREATIVE WRITING

MTWRF 2:00-3:45
Reyes

Novella – the LONG Short Story: The LONG short story — this novella workshop begins with the premise that all short stories beg to show more character, more setting, more happening. We will take this idea and extend it into a fiction that uses the concision of a short story and the malleable definition of a novel to craft a novella with larger, richer illustrations. As such, no draft will go unused, no prose piece unconnected. Every workshop will focus on development and continuity. We will write to explore more character and more story to construct a long-form prose manuscript more complete than its individual pieces.

EN 422-800 ADV STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Crank

Study Abroad-Oxford: Designed for advanced English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues in American literature.

EN 429-100 DIRECTED STUDIES

TBA
Manora

Prerequisites: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

Full Summer

EN 205 ENGLISH LIT I

Staff

A survey of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to 1800, including, for example, work by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times.

EN 206 ENGLISH LIT II

Staff

A survey of English literature from 1800 to the present, including, for example, work by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, Eliot and Yeats. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times.

EN 209 AMERICAN LIT I

Staff

Survey of American literature from its beginnings to 1865, including, for example, work by Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, and Whitman. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) Please refer to the Summer Schedule for available sections and times.

EN 210 AMERICAN LIT II

Staff

Survey of American literature from 1865 to the present, including, for example, work by Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Faulkner and Morrison. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 429-150 DIRECTED READINGS

TBA
Manora

Prerequisites: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

EN 430-150 ENGLISH INTERNSHIP

TBA
Manora

An on- or off-campus training position in which students use the skills they have gained as English majors and enhance their employment opportunities after graduation. Interns work approximately 10 hours a week, holding responsible positions with, among others, Alabama Heritage, Alabama Alumni Magazine, and the Tuscaloosa Public Defender’s Office. Applications for the English Internship should be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English. Prerequisites: English major, 3.00 grade point average, and second-semester junior or senior standing in the semester in which the internship is held. EN 430 does not count towards the 400-level major electives.

EN 430-151 ENGLISH INTERNSHIP

TBA
Manora

An on- or off-campus training position in which students use the skills they have gained as English majors and enhance their employment opportunities after graduation. Interns work approximately 10 hours a week, holding responsible positions with, among others, Alabama Heritage, Alabama Alumni Magazine, and the Tuscaloosa Public Defender’s Office. Applications for the English Internship should be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English. Prerequisites: English major, 3.00 grade point average, and second-semester junior or senior standing in the semester in which the internship is held. EN 430 does not count towards the 400-level major electives.

FALL 2016

EN 200 INTRO TO CREATIVE WRITING

STAFF

Study of topics that apply across genres of creative writing and an introduction to genre-specific principles. Assigned reading, writing exercises, and other forms of creative experimentation will develop confidence in analyzing, constructing and discussing poems, stories and other forms of imaginative expression. This course is a required prerequisite to all other creative writing classes. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104) NOTE: You may not take 200 & 300-level creative writing courses at the same time.

EN 201 HOW ENGLISH WORKS

STAFF

This course will introduce students to the wide-ranging discipline of linguistics that incorporates aspects of both the humanities and the social sciences. Students will explore the elements from which languages are composed, examine differences across languages, and see how linguistic data and methods are brought to bear on real-world issues in the realms of psychology, literary studies, sociology, education, and the judicial system. Language will be presented as a constantly changing phenomenon that is embedded in culture and steeped in ideology. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 205 ENGLISH LIT I

STAFF

A survey of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to 1800, including, for example, work by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 206 ENGLISH LIT II

STAFF

A survey of English literature from 1800 to the present, including, for example, work by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, Eliot and Yeats. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 207 WORLD LIT I

STAFF

Survey of World Literature from the Classical Period to the Renaissance. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 208 WORLD LIT II

STAFF

Survey of World Literature from the Enlightenment to the Modern Period. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 209 AMERICAN LIT I

STAFF

Survey of American literature from its beginnings to 1865, including, for example, work by Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, and Whitman. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 210 AMERICAN LIT II

STAFF

Survey of American literature from 1865 to the present, including, for example, work by Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Faulkner and Morrison. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 216 HONORS ENGLISH LIT II

STAFF

Honors section of EN 206. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 220 HONORS AMERICAN LIT II

STAFF

Honors section of EN 210. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 249 AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT

STAFF

This course is designed as an introductory survey of texts and discourses within the African American literary tradition. As we explore critical works within this tradition, from slavery through the contemporary period, we will frame our close textual readings and literary analyses within the context of critical movements in social, cultural, and literary history. Refer to the schedule for available sections and times. Prerequisites: EN 101 and 102 (or 103 or 104)

EN 300-001 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES

TR 12:30-1:45
Wilson

This course is designed to introduce both English majors, and others who wish to enhance their reading, writing, and analytical skills, to the tools, techniques, and tactics involved in detailed literary study. Our focus in the course will be on developing keen close reading skills, experimenting with these on a wide range of poetry, prose, and drama in order to become fluent in the techniques and vocabularies of in-depth literary analysis. We will read in detail rather than at length, and we will use written assignments from the semester to create our own annotated literary anthology by the end of the course.

EN 300-002 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES

TR 2:00-3:15
Bilwakesh

An introduction for English majors to the methods employed in the discipline of English. Students will be exposed to the fundamental issues of critical reading, interpretation, and writing, especially to the use of critical methods in the study of primary texts. Readings will include a selection of texts in the traditional categories of poetry, drama, and prose, as well as the genre of the critical essay. There may also be investigations into other genres and media.

EN 301-001 / 002 / 003 / 004 PROSE TOUR

STAFF

Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies. Required of all creative writing minors. Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).

EN 303-001 / 002 / 003 / 004 POETRY TOUR

STAFF

Close study of basic principles for composing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic styles. Required of all creative writing minors. Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).

EN 309-001 ADVANCED EXPOSITORY WRITING

TR 12:30-1:45
Dayton

In this course you will develop your expository writing skills by making connections between academic and professional writing, between your work as a student in a specific discipline and the work you plan to do later on in your professional life. We will focus on stylistic, rhetorical, and discipline-specific aspects of writing. You will carry out a research project that asks you to identify an important public issue in your field, and research, analyze, and respond to the debate. You will also study Joe Glaser’s book on the principles of good style and learn how to apply those principles to your own writing.

EN 310-002 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING

TR 11:00-12:15
Buck

Writing Across Media: How often do you stop to think about the medium in which you are communicating? How does a specific medium change the way you write? What does it mean to “read” an image? How does our use of technology shape the way we communicate? What theories inform our relationships with media? In this class, we will explore the intersections between various media: print, film, images, sound, social media, etc. We will develop an approach for understanding and composing multimedia products while attempting to identify (and challenge) the implicit conventions of media. Along the way, we will consider the ways writing (as an object and as a practice) is shaped by these multimedia interactions from both theoretical and practical perspectives. By integrating practical activities with broader theoretical issues, we will work on developing effective strategies for designing multimedia presentations, and through this class, you will create image, audio, remix, and interactive projects.

EN 310-004 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING/SLASH PINE PRESS

TR 11:00-12:15
Oliu

Students in the Slash Pine internship will design and publish poetry chapbooks and plan innovative arts and literary events. Students will document and write about these experiences, as well as produce reviews of chapbooks to be published on our website. Students will work together on all projects, taking ownership of the process, and using all their skills and talents to ensure the success of their projects. The work is intensive and demanding but also brings the reward of having conceived, designed, and executed projects that live in the real world — books that are marketed and sold, and community arts events that include people outside the university. Registration in the Slash Pine internship is by permission only. Contact Brian Oliu, Director of Slash Pine Press, for information and permission: beoliu@ua.edu

EN 311-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE

MW 3:00-4:15
McNaughton

European Modernism: We tend to think of modernism as the well-known writing from British, Irish, and American authors: Eliot, Pound, Woolf, Joyce, Beckett, and H.D., say. In this course, we will trace out earlier strands of European modernism: in the French poetry of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud; in the scurrilous Viennese essays of Karl Kraus; in Robert Musil’s masterful ironies; in the dangerous vigor of Italian futurism; and in the syntactical whimsy of Robert Walser.

EN-319-001 / 002 / 003 / 004 / 005 TECHNICAL WRITING

STAFF

Focuses on principles and practices of technical writing, including audience analysis, organization and planning, information design and style, usability testing, and collaborative writing. Special emphasis will be placed on composing instructions, various kinds of reporting such as investigative and feasibility studies, document design for technical presentations, proposals and collaborative composition. Prerequisites: EN 101 and EN 102 (or equivalent) and junior standing.

EN 320-001 INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

TR 9:30-10:45
Popova

Introduction to the study of language, including subjects such as language acquisition, variation, and origins. The system of sounds, syntax, and meaning are illustrated in English and other languages.

EN 320-002 INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

TR 11:00-12:15
Popova

Introduction to the study of language, including subjects such as language acquisition, variation, and origins. The system of sounds, syntax, and meaning are illustrated in English and other languages.

EN 321-001 LINGUISTIC APPROACHES TO GRAMMAR

TR 2:00-3:15
Popova

A study of English grammar integrating principles from linguistic theory with structural approaches to grammar. The course includes a focus on the expectations of grammatical usage in different contexts and an understanding of how to apply this knowledge in a pedagogical setting.

EN 329-001 / 002 DIRECTED STUDIES

STAFF

Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

EN 330-001 Chaucer and Medieval Literature

MWF 10:00-10:50
Cook

Examines works of the Old and Middle English Periods, the formative years of British literature. Works from pre-conquest England may include Beowulf, Bede’s History of the English Church, and poems from the Exeter and Vercelli manuscripts. The major works from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Canterbury Tales.

EN 333-001 Shakespeare

TR 3:30-4:45
Whitver

Introduction to Shakespeare’s plays. Various aspects of Elizabethan life and customs; philosophy and politics; history and psychology are also examined as they relate to the drama.

EN 333-002 Shakespeare

TR 12:30-1:45
McElroy

This course offers a broad introduction to the study of Shakespeare. We will read seven plays, drawn from each dramatic genre, plus some poetry, as well as contextual material intended to give you a sense of the culture in which Shakespeare lived and wrote. Our critical tasks will be varied. We will attend closely to Shakespeare’s language, to engage with its occasional difficulty and to take pleasure in its complexity. We will frequently ask ourselves how and for what purposes Shakespeare adapts and challenges his cultural and literary heritage. And we will return to important themes and matters of form. For example, many of the plays in this course rely thematically and dramatically on the use of “green worlds”—those physical and psychological spaces removed from the main or “normative” action of the plays. The resulting contrasts often encourage us to imagine alternatives to the social and political structures that govern his and our worlds; I hope we will feel provoked and challenged by the ethical questions raised by Shakespeare’s plays.

EN 334-001 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

TR 9:30-10:45
Perdue

A cross-genre survey of literature in English from 1603 to 1660. Authors may include John Donne, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, John Webster, Lady Mary Wroth, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, and Andrew Marvell.

EN 340-001 AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1900

TR 8:00-9:15
Beidler

American Poetry 1607-1865L A study of the role and function of the poet in the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Early National eras. Figures include Sandys, Bradstreet, Wigglesworth, Taylor, Cooke, Wheatley, Barlow, Freneau, Bryant, Longfellow, Sigourney, Whitman, Dickinson.

EN 343-001 BRITISH FICTION TO 1900

MWF 12:00-12:50
Burke

This course will be focusing on how novels represent the tensions and struggles between and individual and his or her society. Among other things, we will be paying attention to the role gender plays in those tensions and struggles and how that affects the way we understand and interpret our canonical novels. We will be paying special attention to how female authors represent men and to how, as a matter of contrast, male authors represent women. To that end, we will be reading and discussing six novels, each of which throws a different light on our overall concerns. We will start our course with an examination of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). We will next consider Jane Austen’s “First Impressions (1797) which became Pride and Prejudice (1813)). We will then turn to Sir Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering (1815) and then to Wuthering Heights (1848) by Emily Bronte. We will finish our course with Middlemarch (1872- 74) by Marian Evans who published under the pen name George Eliot and end with Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895). Students can expect there to be regular reading quizzes, two papers to be written out of a class, and a final exam to be written in class.

EN 348-001 BRITISH ROMANTIC LITERATURE

MW 3:00-4:15
Tedeschi

This course provides a survey of literature written during the British Romantic period (roughly 1789- 1832), a time of intense debate and turmoil over issues such as the rights of man and woman, the French Revolution, and the reform of Parliament. The survey includes an overview of work in several genres, including poetry, the novel, and nonfiction prose; introduces many of the period’s most influential authors, including Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, and Keats; and provides an introduction to the authors’ social, political, and intellectual contexts. Among the recurring themes of the period will be the authors’ political views, relations to the reading public, and conceptions of man’s relation to nature.

EN 350-001 / AAST 350-001 TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT

MW 3:00-4:15
Manora

20th/21st Century African American Women’s Literature: This course is a multi-genre study of works by African American women writers in the 20th and 21st Centuries. As we move through the century, from Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance through the Black Arts Movement to the Contemporary and Postmodern periods, we will focus on issues related to narrative, gender, race, class, and subjectivity, while also considering these works within the context of critical discourses in social, cultural, and literary history. Authors will include Larsen, Hurston, Morrison, Walker, and Naylor. Requirements include active and engaged presence and participation, regular critical responses, one 4-5 page paper, and a final paper.

EN 361-001 TOPICS IN AMERICAN LIT, 1945 TO PRESENT

TR 3:30-4:45
Cardon

Cross-Cultural Encounters: A survey of major literary figures, critical movements, historical events, and significant texts since the Second World War in the U.S. Since its roots in the Colonial period, before it was even a nation, the U.S. has evolved from the meeting and intersecting of different cultural groups – encounters often characterized by hostility and oppression. Since World War II, American literature has grown increasingly multicultural, giving voice to various participants in these cross-cultural encounters. In this special topics course, we will read novels by authors including Philip Roth, Alice Walker, and Sherman Alexie, among others. These novels explore the tensions, injustices, and occasional triumphs arising from historical moments that brought different ethnic, racial, national, and LGBT groups together over the past 70 years.

EN 366-001 TWENTIETH-CENTURY POETRY

TR 9:30-10:45
H. White

A survey of major authors and trends in modern poetry in America, Britain, and the anglophone world, as poetry in English became an international phenomenon. Attention will be paid to modernist and postmodernist poetry movements, American regionalisms, war poetry, and the poetry of neo-colonial experiences.

EN 367-001 POST-COLONIAL WRITING IN ENGLISH

TR 9:30-10:45
Yoon

Postcolonial Conditions: This course will explore the crisis of consciousness in postcolonial literature from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. We will engage with the many representations of this condition—from the nomadic and exilic to the supernatural and strange. As such the postcolonial condition will emerge through tropes linked to space (the nation and the journey) and psychology (neurosis and sickness). We will ask how literature articulates this condition through styles ranging from the anthropological and medical, to existential and lyric. Important questions include: What are the links between education, colonialism, and madness? Between the supernatural and politics? Between literature and history? And finally, how is the postcolonial condition, in fact, the modern condition? This course is also designed to introduce students to the digital humanities as a supplement to traditional humanities scholarship. We will compile close reading blog posts and digital encyclopedia entries, as well as complete a multi-media presentation in preparation for a final seminar paper. By the end of the course you will be able to harness basic digital technologies to formulate complex arguments and critically think.

EN 371-001 TRAGEDY

TR 12:30-1:45
Deutsch

A cross-genre survey of tragic literature that may begin with the classical tragedians and proceed through the present. This course, like tragedy itself, will focus on the individual confronting the larger forces of society, god, or fate. Applying the concept of tragedy to fiction and poetry as well as to drama, this course will consider changing conceptions of the tragic and the tragic hero.

EN 408-001 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 8:00-9:15
Champagne

Special topics in imaginative writing. Focus may be on poetry, fiction, nonfiction or a combination. Students produce imaginative writing and read related texts.

EN 408-002 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

MWF 10:00-10:50
Reyes

Adaptation Screenwriting: The class will investigate the elements of storytelling that find success both in the form of words on a page and upon transformation into images for the big screen. We will attack these questions in three sections: reading and analysis of an adapted novel, individual prose manuscript, and an adaptation of that original work. Each of these sections revolves around the notions of story, art, and the creative and imaginative experience. Students are asked to not only create original fiction works but reflect upon the elements in the writing of others that promote creative thought and imagination across mediums—and then turn each other’s manuscripts into a feature length film. Texts include World War Z and The Hollywood Standard.

EN 408-003 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

MWF 2:00-2:50
Barton

Written Memory: “In ‘Directive’ Frost suggests that our destiny as a people may lie in the difficult action of historical recovery — and that the source of wholeness is in memory. Here the past is presented as a mysterious spiritual reality: attainable not through the spectacle of re-creation but through a journey” –Robert Pinsky, “Poetry and American Memory” This course will include poetry and prose that explores memory—that of both the writer and of collective society. The interest is in part to reflect on ways society has changed and, particularly, the ways it has not changed. Writers explore cultural history through concrete family relics, particularly in the southern and coastal regions, so some of the poets we cover are from those areas. In workshop, students will write works that explore these ideas. Special attention will be paid to concrete imagery. Authors covered will include Dorothy Allison, Seamus Heaney, Lewis Nordan, Joan Didion, Stephen Dunn, and others. Students will submit weekly close-reading responses for analytical development. Students will also work on their own short fiction or poetry and submit to workshop critique, as well as submit a final portfolio that shows a developing voice and thoughtful critique. Finally, students will present an author we have not covered during the semester, one who he/she feels is appropriate to the course thematically or stylistically. Assessment will be done via graded reader responses, workshop participation and feedback, and graded portfolios.

EN 408-004 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

MW 3:00-4:15
Wyatt

This is a special topics course in imaginative writing that will focus exclusively on Young Adult Literature. In this class, we will read and explore a number of texts that fall into the category of YA Lit. We will investigate the nature of this genre meant for the minds of people who are going through a highly critical time in their life. Students will look at poetry, short-fiction, and a novel directed at young adults. Students will explore the popular stories of fantasy but also examine more serious issues targeted at teens. Finally, students will be prompted to write poems and short pieces (fiction and non-fiction) with young adults in mind.

EN 408-005 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 2:00-3:15
Smith

The Prophetic Gaze: We will immerse ourselves in powerful literatures of witness; we will grapple with an understanding of the prophetic gaze and its myriad tunings and lenses; we will delve deeply into considerations of human suffering and systemic oppression. Northrop Frye noted that William Blake possessed the prophetic gaze: the power to see the difference between moral cowardice and moral higher ground. Our Virgil-like guides for this trek through evil and endurance will include, but not be limited to, CD Wright, James Agee, Claudia Rankine, and Muriel Rukeyser. Stressing a hybridized creative technique, students will generate a semesterlong prophetic gaze creative writing project.

EN 408-006 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 11:00-12:15
Estes

[Ghost Beckons]: The Wyrd Writer: Artists and writers are by instinct drawn to nature’s mysteries, driven by a desire to encounter and understand the hidden substructure of reality in pursuit of spiritual and scientific wisdom. They have used their work to explore and expand as well as obscure occult knowledge, be it religious or esoteric, prophetic or divinatory, ritual or magical. Guided by the figure of the ghost, in this course we will pursue both an historical and experiential understanding of metaphysical gnosis, and examine for models ways in which poets, mystics, and philosophers from antiquity to the present have employed the ethereal and otherworldly as both subject and symbol, topic and trope, including ways in which intertextuality, genre-blurring, collage, and erasure create for a reader spaces which we might call “haunted.” It’s hoped you’ll try out different modes and approaches while undertaking your own research, but we’ll draw inspiration from course readings and activities while thinking about how to conjure atmosphere visually and textually while representing the immaterial world in conversation with the material. Sources will range from Heraclitus and Plato to Swedenborg and Jung. We’ll study a range of arcane traditions across cultures and look at divinatory systems from the Tarot and astrology to the I Ching and Yeats’ A Vision; explore magical and visionary literatures and experiment with dadaist and spiritualist composition techniques. We’ll look at poetry, essays, and fiction from James Merrill, Anne Carson, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ezra Pound, Alice Notley, Daniel Clowes, and others. The course will include a local overnight expedition with a team of Tuscaloosa-based paranormal investigators (yes, ghost hunters).

EN 408-007 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING T

R 3:30-4:45
P. White

Odd Annotations: In this course we will consider and experiment with a text’s relationship to marginal notes, annotations, footnotes, and artifactual inclusions. Students will imaginatively annotate an existing text by a famous author; in addition, students will produce texts designed to be annotated by another, texts including author-produced footnotes, texts with artifacts to be included and/or texts inside three-dimensional structures, and a digital text with hyperlinks and faux-fan commentary. Readings will include Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Abrams’ S., Eliot’s The Waste Land, Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts, and Danielewski’s House of Leaves.

EN 408-008 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

T 2:00-4:30
Oliu

The Art of the Game: Our world is dominated by games: we watch reality television shows where contestants compete for the love of the bachelorette, we go to football games to cheer on our favorite team, we relax by playing XBOX, and we attempt to align our day-to-day tasks as if it were a game of some sort in order to get through what is in front of us. The literary world, after shying away from the culture of play has begun to embrace games as art: Joyce Carol Oates’ essays on watching boxing matches with her father, Junot Diaz’s hero in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, John McPhee’s Search for Marvin Gardens, Major Jackson’s Hoops, and Jason Rohrer’s Sleep is Death all acknowledge the way that sport and games matter in our lives, and not just as a way to spend time. Consider this a course in the art of the game—a course where we will study the art of strategy as well as see how one’s connections to games can awake something within us. This class is a course in contemporary literature, approached from a creative writer’s perspective. In order to learn a form, you must read widely in that form, to get a sense for at least some of its various possibilities. You will be reading quite a bit of challenging work, essays, stories, & poems that work in ways with which you may not be familiar. You will also write work that challenges your own preconceptions of literature.

EN 411-003 ADV STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE/MULTICULTURAL LIT

TR 2:00-3:15
Yoon

Addicts, Hustlers and Exiles in World Literature: This seminar explores the trope of colonialism and its aftereffects in world literature. In addition to readings in postcolonial and diasporic literatures, texts will come from such diverse traditions as British Romanticism, French symbolism, and even Qing dynasty China. Specifically, this course will examine the trope’s relationship to the planet—both the resources within it and the journeys across it. We will explore how the obsession with colonial commodities (opium, sugar and other natural resources) has produced literary figures such as the addict and the hustler. Furthermore, we will trace social ramifications of colonialism through representations of the journey and the figure of the exile. This course is also designed to introduce students to the digital humanities as a supplement to traditional humanities scholarship. We will compile close reading blog posts and digital encyclopedia entries, as well as complete a multi-media presentation in preparation for a final seminar paper. By the end of the course you will be able to harness basic digital technologies to formulate complex arguments and critically think.

EN 411-004 ADV STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE/MULTICULTURAL LIT

MW 3-4:15
Pionke

Representing the Raj: Although the proverbial jewel in England’s imperial crown, the supplier of two of England’s favored imports—tea and opium—and the destination for a majority of England’s overseas troops and social servants, India remained largely unknown in any factual sense to most of England’s Victorian public. Imaginatively, rhetorically, and literarily, however, India had a potent place in England, one made all the more prominent, prolific, confusing (and, occasionally, disturbingly prescient) by the mid-century rebellion of a significant portion of the northern subcontinent. This seminar will devote itself to a portion of the vast amount of written material concerned with representing India to English readers throughout the Victorian period. Among the texts under our collective purview will be Philip Meadows Taylor’s Confessions of a Thug (1839), Charles Dickens’s and Wilkie Collins’s “The Perils of Certain English Prisoners” (1857), Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888).

EN 422-001 ADV STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

TR 9:30-10:45
Beidler

In Search of the Great American Novel: An exploration of the cultural idea of The Great American Novel and a reading of works claimed to be representative of the form. Texts include Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Melville, Moby-Dick; Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; James, Portrait of a Lady; Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Cather, My Antonia; Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; and Ellison, Invisible Man.

EN 422-002 ADV STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

TR 2:00-3:15
P. White

The Apocalypse: In this course we will investigate the notion of “apocalypse” both as a cultural phenomenon and as a literary device. We will begin with the Revelation of St. John, then jump forward to more contemporary manifestations of our ongoing fascination with the end times. We will address the question of Mayan prophecy, the CDC’s use of zombie lore to promote health preparedness, and the various forms of “the end” our culture depends on for producing a sense of threat and/or comfort. Our texts will examine the threat of industrialization, the breakdown of civilization, the unintended consequence, the valorization of the fragment, the mutant redeemer, zombies, the nuclear blast, the landscape of Texas, football, cannibalism, ash and fire, and the promise and horror of New York City. Readings include texts by Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy, Colson Whitehead, and Karen Russell, among others.

EN 423-001 / EN 523-001 HISTORY OF ENGLISH

TR 11:00-12:15
Davies

This course traces the evolution of the English language from its Indo-European roots to its contemporary forms as a basis for understanding English grammar, pronunciation, and spelling and as a background for studying English literature. The course examines the development of English from two perspectives: its outer history (i.e., the sociohistorical, cultural, and political forces that have helped shape the language) and its inner history (the phonological, grammatical, and lexical changes that comprise that have taken place). In addition, it looks at some general principles of language change and relates them to specific developments in English. By the end of the course you should understand why the English language is the way it is and where many nonstandard features of English come from. Prerequisite(s): EN 320 or EN 321 or ANT 210 or ANT 401 or ANT 450 or FR 361 or IT 361 or SP 361.

EN 424-001/EN 524-001 STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH

TR 12:30-1:45
Liu

English Structure and Usage: This advanced grammar course examines the structure and usage of the English language, including morphology (word formation/structure), syntax (the patterns of sentences), and discourse (the context in which utterances are patterned and made meaningful). We will review both traditional and contemporary approaches to English grammar, such as cognitive grammar, construction grammar, lexico-grammar, pattern grammar, and systemic functional grammar. Through reading, research projects, and discussion, students will attain a solid understanding of the English language’s structure and usage. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course.

EN 429-001 / 002 DIRECTED READINGS

STAFF

Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

EN 430-001 / 002 / 003 ENGLISH INTERNSHIP

STAFF

An on- or off-campus training position in which students use the skills they have gained as English majors and enhance their employment opportunities after graduation. Interns work approximately 10 hours a week, holding responsible positions with, among others, Alabama Heritage, Alabama Alumni Magazine, and the Tuscaloosa Public Defender’s Office. Apply to the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of English. Please see the departmental website for the application form and further details.

EN 433-001 ADV STUDIES IN BRITISH LITERATURE

MW 4:30-5:45
McNaughton

We will conduct detailed readings of poems by twentieth-century British and Irish writers, principally among them, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith, and Seamus Heaney. The course will have three principle sections—modernist poetry, mid-century reactions to modernism, and contemporary Irish poetry. Students will be encouraged to consider the relationships among formal developments in poetry and historical and political contexts. The professor expects a number of essays, a book review, an exam, and a presentation.

EN 444-002 ADV STUDIES LIT CRITICISM & THEORY

TR 2:00-3:15
Crank

“Queer South(s)”: This course has two primary goals: 1) to introduce students to the problems, paradigms, and key concepts of “queer theory” (especially as it concerns literary analysis); 2) to explore queerness as it relates to visions of the “South,” broadly defined. We will look at multiple texts (literary, cultural, filmic) to consider the way in which “queerness” is used as a framing device for southern identity and authenticity. We will be especially interested in the intersection of “plantation sexuality” and queerness, including sites of queer expression for tomboys, transgression, interracial taboos, effeminacy, and class performance.

EN 455-001 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING

TR 11:00-12:15
Robinson

Freedom? An Exploration of the Rhetorics of African American Social Movements: This course will explore primary texts within the African American tradition that are unequivocally rhetorical in that they seek to influence American culture, ideologies, laws, policies, individuals, and society, with African American life and culture in view and are situated within particular social movements: Abolition, Suffrage, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and Black Lives Matter. Along with the traditional focus on works of non-fiction within rhetorical studies, we will also explore creative and imaginative texts that are educative, didactic, argumentative, and/or persuasive in nature. This class is linked to the larger College of Arts and Sciences Initiative, which will include an exploration of a variety of artifacts in the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art and the curated show “Freedom?.”

EN 455-002 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING

TR 2:00-3:15
Cardon

Discourses of Food: Growing, Cooking, Consuming: Students will read, discuss, and analyze a series of texts about food. Most of these texts will be found in the reader, Food Matters; however, we will also read Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential as well as additional assigned readings (pertaining to food or to writing/rhetoric). The course will be divided into the following rhetorical units: 1) What should we consider “food”? 2) What is the purpose of food? 3) What factors (cultural, regional, personal, etc.) determine what we eat? 4) What does it mean to eat ethically? 5) What is the future of food? 6) How has the relationship between food and consumer changed in recent years? Our writing assignments and final project, as well as our class discussions, will engage these questions as they relate to our assigned readings and our own experiences of food. This course has an experiential learning component, so it is especially recommended for those who enjoy cooking.

EN 466-001/EN 500-001 ADV STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS

W 2:00-4:30
STAFF

Designed for English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues in linguistics.

EN 477-001 ADV STUDIES IN LITERARY GENRE

TR 12:30-1:45
Ulmer

Studies in Genre: The Epic: Homer, Virgil, and Dante: We will read The Iliad and The Odyssey (Fagles trans.), consider Virgil’s reception of Homer in The Aeneid (Fagles trans.) and then Dante’s reception of Virgil in The Inferno—and we will also read selections from The Purgatorio and The Paradiso (all Mandelbaum trans.). Reading quizzes, a Homer paper, a Virgil paper, and a take-home essay Final on Dante.

EN 499-001 / 002 / 003 / 004 / 005 / 006 / 007 / 008 / 009 / 010 / 011 HONORS THESIS

STAFF

The Honors Thesis in English course is an individualized, directed readings class that culminates in a 30- 50 pp. thesis. It is the final required course for the Honors in English program. Each student enrolled will work individually with a faculty mentor. Prerequisite: EN 399

SPRING 2017

EN 333-001 SHAKESPEARE

TR 12:30-1:45
Burke

We will be examining why Shakespeare occupies his place at the center of the literary canon. We will begin with Shakespeare’s accomplishments as a poet, both narrative and lyric. We will then move on to his accomplishments in the drama, examining what he did in four categories: comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. Students can expect there to be regular reading quizzes, two papers, and a final examination. The texts for the course will be The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays and Sonnets, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al and an inexpensive paperback edition of Shakespeare’s narrative poems, “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece.”

EN 335-001 MILTON

MWF 11:00-11:50
Ainsworth

Milton and Women: “The Edifice Project” An introduction to Milton’s English poetry and its many complexities. Anchored by an intensive investigation of Paradise Lost, Milton’s great epic, this class will address the technical and theoretical aspects of Milton’s writing as well as discussing the underpinnings of its meaning. We’ll master together some of the best and most intimidating poetry ever written. We’ll also be the beneficiaries of The Edifice Project, which I will explain on the first day and also describe in some detail at the end of the syllabus. In effect, this class is designed to take your thinking and ideas seriously outside the bounds of this single semester. For some of you, your work will be preserved for use in future EN 335 classes, just as the work of the last class on Milton, Milton and Reason (and the previous classes’ topics) will come into play this semester. Over time, groups of EN 335 students can together construct a larger understanding of Milton through collective effort and investigation of specific aspects or questions in Milton’s work. I expect someone from the previous class will pay us a visit over the course of the semester to talk about Milton with you. Our course topic this year, Milton and Women, will focus our attention on the character of Eve in Paradise Lost. Was she made inferior to Adam? Did she fall because she was flawed? We’ll begin by learning about Milton as a writer and how to read his work, as well as looking a bit at his Divorce Tracts and the ways they influenced our modern conception of marriage and relationships. We’ll then concentrate on the characters of Eve and Dalila in Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. In addition, we’ll think about how Jesus behaves in Paradise Regained and whether that behavior aligns him more with Eve than with Adam.

Literature, 1700-1900

EN 344-001 MAJOR AUTHORS, 1660-1900

TR 12:30-1:45
Ulmer

Keats in Context: The career of the Romantic poet John Keats lasted less than a decade, with the poet dying before his twenty-sixth birthday and too ill to write during his last year and a half: and yet in that brief span he managed to produce the much-admired poems that assured his major status in the English tradition: the great Odes, The Eve of St. Agnes, “La Belle Dame,” The Fall of Hyperion, and others. In this class, a case study of genius, we will reconstruct the intertwined stories of his life and career. We’ll read most of Keats’s poetry in dialogue with contemporaneous works—by Haydon, Hunt, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Reynolds, P. B. Shelley and others—that prompted and shaped it. The letters and some Keats criticism will also be assigned. One class text—the Norton Critical Keats (ed. Jeffrey Cox)—and other readings assigned in electronic format. The workload will probably consist of reading quizzes, final exam, and two essays: the first a short exercise and the second a lengthier research paper.

EN 347-001 ENGLISH LIT DURING THE ENLIGHTENMENT

TR 11:00-12:15
Weiss

Many of the ideas that structure modern society had their origin in the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that lasted through much of the eighteenth century. Our own ideas about democracy, education, human psychology, secularism, science, economics, and gender, for example, all had their beginnings in the Enlightenment. As a consequence of the intellectual ferment, the eighteenth century was a period of profound change in Great Britain, as new developments in philosophical thought seeped into intellectual culture and prompted fundamental shifts in how people understood themselves and the social world. In order to access these shifts, the course is divided into four thematic parts: Science and Philosophy; Global Expansion, Political Theory, and Slavery; Faith, Feeling, and the Imagination; and Women and Society. Working with novels, poems, short stories, plays, and essays, students will examine the ways in which the intellectual and ideological transformations of the Enlightenment were explored and explained through literature.

EN 349-001 VICTORIAN LITERATURE

TR 9:30-10:45
Tedeschi

This course provides a survey of some of the major fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writing of the Victorian period. We will study works by some of the period’s most influential authors, including Carlyle, Tennyson, Arnold, the Brownings, the Rossettis, Clough, Dickens, and Wilde. The course will consider the interrelations between Victorian concerns with industrialization, the advance of science, the place of art in society, and religious doubt.

Literature, Post-1900

EN 350-001 / AAST 350-001TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT

MW 3:00-4:15
Manora

20th & 21st Century African American Women’s Literature: This course is a multi-genre study of works by African American women writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. As we move through the tradition, from Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance through the Black Arts Movement to the Contemporary and Postmodern periods, we will focus on issues related to narrative, identity, and subjectivity, as well as the intersections of race, class, and gender, while also considering these works within the context of critical discourses in social, cultural, and literary history. Authors will include Larsen, Hurston, Morrison, Walker, and Naylor. Requirements include active and engaged presence and participation, regular reader responses, one 4-5 page paper, a midterm, and a final paper.

EN 364-001 MODERN DRAMA

MW 3:00-4:15
Deutsch

This course offers an introduction to the major North American and European plays from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the first half of the course we will cover the major European traditions of realism, naturalism, absurdism, and the avant-garde, including plays banned or revised, with or without the playwright’s consent, due to their alleged indecency and threats to the social order. In the second half of the course we will delve more closely into how American dramatists re-imagined and broke free from these European traditions. Throughout the semester, we will investigate how modern and contemporary playwrights re-imagine the world around them, taking into account aesthetics, politics, and daily life in a comedic or tragic fashion. Through filmed productions of the works we read, we will also examine the differences between drama as literature and as a performance.

EN 365-001 MODERN AMERICAN FICTION

TR 4:15-4:30
Bilwakesh

A survey of American fiction—novels and short stories—written in the twentieth century. Authors may include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, N. Scott Momaday, and Leslie Marmon Silko.

Creative Writing

EN 301-001 through 004 PROSE TOUR

STAFF

Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies. Required of all creative writing minors. Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).

EN 303-001 through 004 POETRY TOUR

STAFF

Close study of basic principles for composing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic styles. Required of all creative writing minors. Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).

Linguistics

EN 320-001 INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

TR 9:30-10:45
Popova

Introduction to the study of language, including subjects such as language acquisition, variation, and origins. The system of sounds, syntax, and meaning are illustrated in English and other languages.

EN 320-002 INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

TR 11:00-12:15
Popova

Introduction to the study of language, including subjects such as language acquisition, variation, and origins. The system of sounds, syntax, and meaning are illustrated in English and other languages.

EN 321-001 LINGUISTIC APPROACHES TO GRAMMAR

TR 9:30-10:45
Worden

A study of English grammar integrating principles from linguistic theory with structural approaches to grammar. The course includes a focus on the expectations of grammatical usage in different contexts and an understanding of how to apply this knowledge in a pedagogical setting.

Methodology

EN 300-001 / 002 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES

STAFF

An introduction for English majors to the methods employed in the discipline of English. Students will be exposed to the fundamental issues of critical reading, interpretation, and writing, especially to the use of critical methods in the study of primary texts. Readings will include a selection of texts in the traditional categories of poetry, drama, and prose, as well as the genre of the critical essay. There may also be investigations into other genres and media. Rhetoric and Composition

EN 309-001 ADVANCED EXPOSITORY WRITING

TR 11:00-12:15
McKnight

English 309, an advanced writing workshop, aims to help student writers who want additional expository writing instruction after English 101 and 102. Class members will analyze their writing strengths and weaknesses, set goals for improving their writing and work on practical writing assignments depending partly on their majors or fields of interest. Students will study and practice advanced techniques of effective expository prose, including explanation, logic and persuasion, analysis, evaluation, and stylistic sophistication.

EN 317-001 WRITING CENTER PRACTICUM

TR 11:00-12:15
Dayton

This course will introduce you to the principles and practices of Writing Center work. The course is structured as a practicum, in which you will do some reading and reflecting on composition theory, and do hands-on work in the Center, including observations and consultations. In the first eight weeks of the semester we will focus on preparing you to work in the Center; you will conduct writing consultations in the second eight weeks. You can expect to read and reflect on issues related to the study and teaching of writing, to analyze your own literacy experiences, and to develop a range of strategies to help you work effectively with diverse students and texts. This course is required for students who wish to work for pay in the Writing Center. By permission only– to apply for the writing center practicum, go to http://writingcenter.ua.edu or e-mail adayton@ua.edu.

EN 319-001 through 006 TECHNICAL WRITING

STAFF

Focuses on principles and practices of technical writing, including audience analysis, organization and planning, information design and style, usability testing, and collaborative writing. Special emphasis will be placed on composing instructions, various kinds of reporting such as investigative and feasibility studies, document design for technical presentations, proposals and collaborative composition. Prerequisites: EN 101 and EN 102 (or equivalent) and junior standing.

Special Topics in Writing or Literature

EN 310-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING

MW 3:00-4:15
Tekobbe

Writing in the Professional Environment: English 310, section 001 is a special topics course focused on writing in the professional environment. It is designed for advanced students interested in developing their professional written communication skills. This course prepares students to compose and present work in modes, both verbal and visual, expected in professional environments including letters, memos, resumes, business plans, visual analysis and production, and verbal skills including interviewing and presentations. Students will also practice composing processes, research relevant professional questions and practice professional problem-solving in written communications. As an integral part of these activities, we will examine the rhetorical nature of professional discourse in addressing diverse audiences, sometimes with multiple purposes.

EN 310-002 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING

TR 2:00-3:15
Buck

How often do you stop to think about the medium in which you are communicating? How does a specific medium change the way you write? What does it mean to “read” an image? How does our use of technology shape the way we communicate? What theories inform our relationships with media? In this class, we will explore the intersections between various media: print, film, images, sound, social media, etc. We will develop an approach for understanding and composing multimedia products while attempting to identify (and challenge) the implicit conventions of media. Along the way, we will consider the ways writing (as an object and as a practice) is shaped by these multimedia interactions from both theoretical and practical perspectives. By integrating practical activities with broader theoretical issues, we will work on developing effective strategies for designing multimedia presentations, and through this class, you will create image, audio, remix, and interactive projects.

Directed Courses

EN 329-001 through 004 DIRECTED STUDIES

STAFF

Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

EN 399-001 HONORS SEMINAR IN ENGLISH

M 3:00-5:30
Harris

Modern Monsters and Monstrosities: This course will focus on creations of the monstrous, such as vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, zombies, and other more-than-human beings, but it will also consider monstrosity in quieter as well as non-human ways. What happens, for example, when a man assumes godlike status and goes on a killing spree? What happens when mothers kill their children to remove them from lives of poverty? And what happens when the monstrous comes in the form of Mother Nature, as in the case of Hurricane Katrina? When the monster is unthinking, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable, what human responses can even remotely combat it? Monsters and monstrosity, then, can be actions, attitudes, transformations, natural, and supernatural. In all cases, however, what creates the monstrous is paradoxically attractive and repulsive. In examining such portrayals and occurrences in contemporary African American literature and contemporary American culture, this course will provide opportunities for students to explore the definitional and philosophical nature of monstrosity, the appeals that it holds across genres, and its meanings in contemporary society. Students will have the opportunity to approach the topic with visual media as well as through written texts. They will have opportunities to conduct primary research in connection with the historical/news events and secondary research with the literary texts. They can examine newspaper archives, such as those related to the Oklahoma City bombings or Ferguson, Missouri or Hurricane Katrina, and they will be able to weigh evidence in controversial issues, such as in the trial of Timothy McVeigh. They can examine first-person narrative accounts of Katrina, or conduct correspondence or interviews with actors and actresses involved in movies such as Underworld or television shows such as “The Walking Dead.” They can conduct surveys of their peers in efforts to understand the current appeal of the monstrous in film, television, and other venues. Creative options also exist, as students might make films or write screenplays or fictional works that engage the subject of monsters and monstrosities. There will be two shorter research projects (6-8 pages each) and a long course project of perhaps twenty pages. If students should elect creative/visual options, then page lengths would be adjusted accordingly. Each student will be expected to lead a seminar session and to make a final oral presentation to the class. Possible texts and subjects: Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed; Genetic Engineering/Cloning; Mat Johnson, Dark Rain; Marilyn Nelson, Fortune’s Bones; Oklahoma City bombings; Ferguson, Missouri; New York, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Charleston, South Carolina; Phyllis Alesia Perry, Stigmata; Suzan-Lori Parks, Fucking A and In the Blood; the Twilight series; Natasha Trethewey, Beyond Katrina; Underworld; “The Walking Dead”; Jerry W. Ward, Jr., The Katrina Papers: A Journal of Trauma and Recovery; Richard Wright, The Outsider. Note: Enrollment preference will be given to English Majors. Prerequisites: EN 215 and EN 216 (or EN 219 or EN 220)

Advanced Studies in Literature

EN 411-001 ADV STUDIES COMPARATIVE/MULTICULTURAL LIT

TR 12:30-1:45
Wittman

In this course, we will read seven critically acclaimed novels from around the world and investigate how literature arrives on the global stage. This course is run as a literary prizegranting committee loosely based on the Nobel Prize committee. Every student is a committee member. In this course, it is the students themselves who come up with their own evaluative criteria. Throughout the semester we will then debate—in class and anonymously—the merits of the seven novels. On the first day of class, students discuss what foreign language books they have read; on the last day, they debate and decide which of the novels should win the prize. This year we have the unique opportunity to spend classroom time with one of the award-winning writers.

EN 411-002 ADV STUDIES COMPARATIVE/MULTICULTURAL LIT

TR 11:00-12:15
Iheka

Writing in Death of a Discipline, Gayatri Spivak critiques the predominance of European literature in the field of Comparative Literature and insists on paying much needed attention to the literatures from the Global South in order to rejuvenate the field. This course heeds Spivak’s suggestion by focusing on the study of literary productions from formerly colonized spaces as comparative cultural artifacts. Reading texts from Africa and the Caribbean, we will ask how writers intervene in the socio-political and cultural events in their societies and consider what formal qualities attend the representations of those issues. We will read the works of writers such as Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Adichie, Jamaica Kincaid, and Samuel Selvon. Issues to be considered include colonialism, neocolonialism, migration, racism, ethnicity, gender dynamics, and globalization. We will also engage secondary/critical materials on Comparative Literature and the latest manifestations in World Literature and Global Literature, alongside scholarship on the narratives under investigation. In-class discussions of the narratives will be supplemented with papers and presentations to achieve the course objectives.

EN 422-001 ADV STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

MW 3:00-4:15
Crank

South of Horror: It’s not surprising that the South is routinely read as the original site of American terror—its dogged history, contemporary politics, enduring religiosity, and shocking violence (both physical and discursive) are well documented. But how do these real articulations of horror connect with a southern imaginary, in which fantasies of supernatural specters, haunted landscapes, vampiric visions, and zombie wars routinely present as regionalized meditations on a supremely divided nation? How do we theorize an aesthetic of horror in southern texts, and what kind of cultural/historical conclusions can we draw from depictions of the South as dark outland in cultural texts, such as film, television, and popular culture? Using a variety of theorists—including Kristeva, Lacan, and Clover for horror; Harris, CrossTurner, and Duck for southern studies—we will attempt to answer some of these questions during the run of our course. Possible texts include: Deliverance, Dickey; The Violent Bear It Away—O’Connor; A Visitation of Spirits—Kenan; Child of God—McCarthy; The Walking Dead—Kirkman.

EN 433-001 ADV STUDIES IN BRITISH LITERATURE

MW 3:00-4:15
McNaughton

James Joyce Seminar: In this advanced seminar, we will read Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but we will focus most of our attention on James Joyce’s master novel Ulysses. Frequently topping lists of the twentieth century’s most important books and undoubtedly one of the most influential novels ever written, Ulysses nevertheless is difficult, a novel that rewards careful reading and dedication. The seminar format, therefore, is the perfect way to enjoy this book: a group of committed students—all with a careful eye to aesthetic pleasure, social critique, and historical context—together will open up this astonishing book. The professor expects engaged discussion, a series of essays on Joyce’s work, and a final exam.

EN 444-001 / WS 410-001 ADV STUDIES LIT CRITICISM & THEORY

TR 2:00-3:15
Purvis

Contributors to Carol Vance’s revolutionary 1984 anthology, Pleasure and Danger, include notable scholars and activists Gayle Rubin, Hortense Spillers, Amber Hollibaugh, and others who participated in the notorious Barnard conference, “The Scholar and the Feminist IX: Towards a Politics of Sexuality” in 1982—the purported catalyst of the ensuing “sex wars.” Concerned that feminist treatments of sexuality were limited to a critique of pornography, rape culture, and other forms of violence against women, contributors attempted to complicate the primary issues of BDSM, butch-femme relationships, pornography, and sex work. This groundbreaking text, along with the recent special issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society: “Pleasure and Danger: Sexual Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-First Century” (Autumn 2016), provide the bookends of this course, which explores the provocative and divisive debates surrounding sexuality that instigated decades of passionate feminist controversy. The course examines the terms of feminist inquiry and how they have changed, along with the persistent tendency to situate issues of sexuality in terms of either pleasure or danger, with more of a focus on danger, including rape and sexual assault, and little attention to the positive dimensions of sexuality. This course breaks with the ubiquitous pleasure/danger binary as it traces the main issues in Pleasure and Danger to the present and probes visions of sexual justice that emerge from recent investigations by scholars and activists, such as Lisa Duggan, Jane Gerhard, Dean Spade, Angela Jones, and others. Through the study of Women’s Studies, feminist theory, and queer and trans theory texts, students will learn about issues of sexuality, then and now; develop a working concept of sexual justice; practice advanced undergraduate research skills; and gain a substantial foundation for further study, including graduate work in this area. Prerequisites: 12 hours of English study.

EN 444-002 / AMS 430-001 ADV STUDIES LIT CRITICISM & THEORY

TR 12:30-1:45
Howard

Narrating Nuclear Disasters: If you’ve heard of Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, but are unfamiliar with Palomares, you might wonder why. All appear in Time’s top-ten list of the world’s “worst nuclear disasters.” Palomares moreover has been called the worst nuclear weapons accident in history. So why do so few people outside Spain know about it? Contextualized with reference to the broad twentieth-century history of nuclear power, warfare, secrecy, and narrative—from pre-Hiroshima discoveries to post-Cold-War preparedness—this class attempts to answer this question of cultural amnesia and many related ones. Our case study is framed within and complemented by extended analyses of pioneering physicist Marie Skłodowska Curie, the “Radium Girls,” the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japanese civilian populations, atomic-age black humour, Iron Curtain diplomacy, WMD real and imagined, corporate energy production, and anti-nuclear activism. With particular attention to form, this interdisciplinary module examines the great variety of ways in which writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians have narrated nuclear disaster, human annihilation, and individual mortality, as well as imperial aggression, slow violence, environmental racism, and the gendered and sexualized rhetorics of nuclear proliferation and contamination. Given this thematic and generic array, we will view one film and read one short book each week. The latter comprise works of poetry, politics, philosophy, reportage, ethnography, and literary fiction, along with a memoir and photo- essays, including works in translation. Films range from rockumentary to animation, documentary to features, made in Greece, Japan, Spain, UK and US. In tandem, each week’s film and reading may suggest close affinities, strong contrasts, and/or troubling juxtapositions.

EN 477-001 ADV STUDIES IN LITERARY GENRE

MW 4:30-5:45
Deutsch

In this course we will focus on British satires from the twentieth century. We will examine how satirists use various forms of humor to critique and to subvert conventions pertaining to religion, war, politics, the British class system, the education system, the government, and morality. To get to the heart of these satires, we will also look into elements of British history and culture. Along the way, we will investigate how satire works differently in drama, novels, and poetry and in literary contexts more generally.

EN 488-001 ADV STUDIES IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT

TR 2:00-3:15
C. Smith

Love, Intimacy and Interracial Contact in Early African American Literature: In many ways, African American literature owes its genesis to the phenomenon of New World cross- cultural interactions that occurred among Native Americans, black Africans, and Europeans. These cultures met, fought, loved, and in other ways negotiated to forge early American landscapes. In this course, then, we will examine representations of interracial contact as depicted in early African American literature. Specifically, we will read the literature for moments of intimacy and sentimental expression. We will ask ourselves how and why love mattered in the early Americas. And how did bonds of affection – and disaffection – fuel early African American literature. The class complements the theme of the English Department’s spring symposium “Black/White Intimacies: Reimagining History, the South, and the Western Hemisphere” to be held April 21 and 22. Assignments include a final seminar paper (or its equivalent) and participation in the department symposium. Readings include the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass’s slave narrative, and the novels of William Wells Brown, Harriet Wilson, and Charles Chesnutt.

Advanced Studies in Writing

EN 455-001 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING

TR 2:00-3:15
P. White

Writing the Earth: An examination of our relationship to earth as challenge, foundation, resource, and inspiration. Students will write a lyric essay, a sequence of poems, an academic analysis, and a researched feature article. Readings may include: Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko); The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck); A Crack in the Edge of the World (Simon Winchester); John Henry Days (Colson Whitehead); The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera (Jackson); and The Book of the Dead (Muriel Rukeyser)

EN 455-002 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING

TR 3:30-4:45
Robinson

Freedom?: An Exploration of the Rhetorics of African American Social Movements This course will explore primary texts within the African American tradition that are unequivocally rhetorical in that they seek to influence American culture, ideologies, laws, policies, individuals, and society, with African American life and culture in view and are situated within particular social movements: Abolition, Suffrage, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and Black Lives Matter. Along with the traditional focus on works of non-fiction within rhetorical studies, we will also explore creative and imaginative texts that are educative, didactic, argumentative, and/or persuasive in nature. This class is linked to the larger College of Arts and Sciences Initiative, which will include an exploration of a variety of artifacts in the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art and the curated show “Freedom?.”

Creative Writing

EN 408-001 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

MW 4:30-5:45
E. Parker

Science & Nature Writing (Creative Non-Fiction): Many think of creative non-fiction as predominantly personal writing (memoir), but in this course we are going to focus on a more investigative, fact-based non-fiction rooted in an exploration of the natural world. As author (and UA faculty member) Hali Felt says, “There is an audience in the United States that wishes to be scientifically educated. These people want science information, but need it processed into a form that is easy to understand.” We will examine writers’ attempts to translate the scientific and natural worlds into essays that are accessible to—and enjoyable for—a general readership, while undertaking our own observations and research in preparation to write in this form. You will immerse yourself in scientific literature as well as nature itself, learn to combine and synthesize information and translate data—and the experience of discovery—into storytelling. For models we’ll look to writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Michael Pollan, Marelene Zuk, E.O. Wilson, and the authors in this year’s edition of *Best American Science and Nature Writing.* Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

EN 408-002 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 11:00-12:15
McSpadden

Advanced Fiction Writing: In this class we’ll take a look at the agency of place as it relates to reading and writing short stories. Dorothy Allison says of place, “I grew up among truck drivers and waitresses, and, for me, the place where most stories take place is the place that is no place for most other people. But for me those places are real places, with a population I recognize and can describe, a people I love even if they do not always love me.” This is what she writes. We’ll read a wide selection of short stories set in landscapes both familiar and foreign, and examine how land shapes character, how place drives plot, how place builds people and wears them down, and how place informs desire and facilities change. We’ll not only pay particular attention to the shape of the place, but the language of that place. We will ask of one another what Allison asks of those writers she likes to read: Can you take me somewhere I’ve never been before? Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

EN 408-003 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 2:00-3:15
Staples

Advanced Poetry Writing: Marianne Moore once famously said that poetry has “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” In this course, we will adventure together into our imaginative landscapes, cultivating singular literary creations through conversation with other writers, both living and dead. Texts will include an anthology of contemporary poetry and several related full-length collections by established and emerging writers. #toadilyadvanced Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303.

EN 408-004 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 12:30-1:45
N. Parker

Treasure Hunting (multi-genre, hybrid): Annie Dillard captured the essence of the writer’s vocation when she wrote “I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing.” While one way to write is by thinking deeply behind closed doors, another way is to get out and find a long-abandoned empty pool and see what God, or the people who used to swim there, might have left for you. In this class we will explore the relationship between seeing and writing by going out into the street, finding things lost, abandoned, or ignored, and experimenting with ways of transforming those objects in our work—be it through poetry, prose, or something in-between. In addition to Dillard, we’ll study other visionary writers like John Ashbery, Samuel Beckett, and Vladimir Nabokov to see how the wolf-tooth in the abandoned pool, or the baby blue socks clinging to the sewer grate, can become—with the help of an attuned eye and applied mind—works of art. Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

EN 408-005 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 11:00-12:15
Kidd

Writing Fantasy Literature (fiction): If you like to hang out in, explore, and create fantastical realms of gold (as Keats called Homer’s mythical landscape) this course is for you, whether you enjoy the old-school lands of Faerie that fueled the imagination JRR Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the magic-infused worlds typified by JK Rowling or Lev Grossman, or whether you prefer the more dystopian vision of writers like Neil Gaiman and Veronica Roth. Students will explore ways that speculative elements enter a text, methods of world building, and elements of social, political, and environmental consciousness that find their ways into fantasy writing. The final project will guide students through researching a suitable journal and preparing a submission to that publication. Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

EN 408-006 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

MW 3:00-4:15
Rawlings

***Previously scheduled as Peak TV (screenplay writing), which is now EN 408-320.*** Advanced Creative Non-Fiction Writing: Writing well, like pitching well or drumming well, requires practice; this semester you’ll work at practicing five things: reading, thinking, researching, talking about your work, and revising. These five skills will provide the framework around which this course will be built, a framework that you’ll use to learn more about your writing process. During the first few weeks of class you’ll read and respond to examples of exemplary published nonfiction. The rest of the course will be devoted to workshopping student writing. Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

EN 408-007 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 3:30-4:45
P. White

Exploding Forms (poetry writing/workshop): Students will engage with and explode a number of traditional forms (such as the sestina, the terza rima, and the decima) as well as found poetry and neo-forms invented by the students themselves. The class demands: fearless writing, close attention to conventions (before breaking them), a desire for poetic community, and a willingness to support (through helpful critique) the work of others. Some outside activities likely. Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

EN 408-008 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

TR 12:30-1:45
Oliu

Slash Pine Press (Editing, Book Arts, Event Management): Slash Pine not only offers undergraduates at The University of Alabama an experience of immersion and experiential learning, but provides practical skills in editing, publishing, book design, book arts, and event planning that serve the writing community as a whole. This semester, Slash Pine Interns will create and plan events for the Slash Pine Writers Festival, which will be held over the course of two days at the end of April. Students will also be responsible for the PR of the festival, which includes the designing of posters, marketing the festival through both digital and print forms, as well as documenting the festival for our various social streams. The interns will also assist in the creation of the Slash Pine Writers Anthology, where students will learn the basics of book design, and have a chance to serve as editors for the anthology. Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

EN 408-320 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING

T 5:00-7:30
Estes

***Previously scheduled as Non-Fiction Writing, which is now EN 408-006.***
Peak TV (screenplay writing): With the debut of The Sopranos in 1999, the television landscape changed forever, sparking a renaissance in serialized television drama that over 15 years later is still hitting its stride. From the The Wire to The Americans, from Mad Men to Breaking Bad, from Sherlock to Orange Is The New Black, prestige dramas have set a high bar—both in terms of writing quality and cinematic production values—that has hundreds of original programs chasing after similar critical acclaim and viewer devotion. In this class you will play the showrunner, responsible for conceiving, writing, and planning a new series. We will study the form and business of writing drama for television, and examine in depth the structure and arc of how an entire season is constructed across a number of episodes. You will end this course with the Story Bible of an entire new show in hand as well as a polished and storyboarded pilot episode. This course will require the purchase and use of Final Draft, film industry standard software used for screenwriting and production. Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303

Linguistics

EN 423-001 / EN 523 HISTORY OF ENGLISH

TR 11:00-12:15
Davies

This course is an introduction to the external history of the English language along with the study of the accompanying internal changes in structure. It considers questions such as the following: Why does Southern English have to propose “y’all” for a plural “you”? And while we’re at it, what happened to “thou”? What’s the deal with the subjunctive? How did Scandinavian pronouns (they, their, them) creep into English? Why can’t we ask “Have you not heard?” without sounding weird? Who decided that we can’t say “Ain’t nothin’ like ‘em nowhere” in standardized English? Since 1066 was called “the Norman Conquest,” why aren’t we speaking French instead of English? What’s going on with, like, quotatives, “and he was like….!”? Why can’t everybody open their book? How is English being affected by globalization and the internet? Prerequisite(s): EN 320 or EN 321 or ANT 210 or ANT 401 or ANT 450 or FR 361 or IT 361 or SP 361.

EN 425-001 / EN 525 VARIATION IN AMERICAN ENGLISH

TR 2:00-3:15
Davies

This course is the study of the experience of the English language in America, with particular emphasis on its development and dialects. We’ll explore differences in accent, vocabulary, grammar, and patterns of language use among people from across the United States. We’ll look at how dialect differences developed, reflect on how language is a part of our identity, and consider the consequences of linguistic stereotyping, both positive and negative. Prerequisite(s): EN 320 or EN 321 or ANT 210 or ANT 401 or ANT 450 or FR 361 or IT 361 or SP 361

Directed Courses

EN 429-001 / 002 DIRECTED READINGS

STAFF

Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.

EN 430-001 / 002 / 003 ENGLISH INTERNSHIP

STAFF

An on- or off-campus training position in which students use the skills they have gained as English majors and enhance their employment opportunities after graduation. Interns work approximately 10 hours a week, holding responsible positions with, among others, Alabama Heritage, Alabama Alumni Magazine, and the Tuscaloosa Public Defender’s Office. Apply to the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of English. Please see the departmental website for the application form and further details.

EN 499 HONORS THESIS

STAFF

The Honors Thesis in English course is an individualized, directed readings class that culminates in a 30-50 pp. thesis. It is the final required course for the Honors in English program. Each student enrolled will work individually with a faculty mentor. Prerequisite: EN 399.