300-Level English Courses
Literature
Literature, Pre-1700
EN 332–001 SIXTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE TR 12:30-1:45 McElroy
This course introduces students to much poetry and some prose of the English Renaissance, a period of remarkable creative energy and dramatic cultural change. The course begins with the Italian writings of Petrarch and Castiglione to frame our understanding of the cultural and intellectual ideas that made their way to England in the early part of the sixteenth century. Our work can then be divided roughly into three main sections—Tudor poetry, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and the Elizabethan sonnet tradition—with shorter segments on Sidney’s Defense of Poesy, the pastoral, female monarchy, broadside culture, and Thomas Harman’s survey of criminal culture. Formal analysis of language and structure will guide our study; you will learn to read closely and carefully and will be asked to consider how Renaissance poets respond to one another and to their literary predecessors, both native and classical. And we will also address questions about the relationship of literature and art to the social and political worlds from which it emerges. We will consider, for example, the impact of the printing press, the Protestant Reformation, and the consolidation of the English state. Much of your reading this semester will be challenging, but I hope you will discover the pleasures of the Tudor and Elizabethan taste for intricacy, pattern, and playfulness in art and poetry.
EN 333-001 SHAKESPEARE TR 12:30-1:45 Tavares
Shakespeare in Community
Designed for majors in English, Secondary Education, Theatre, and Creative Writing, this course offers an introduction to the study of English Renaissance theatre, including its print, performance, and after-lives. Particular attention will be paid to scansion, the printed book, and playhouses. Reading across genres, the course closely attends to who these plays envision as audiences, how they construct models of community, and the communities of skilled labor that produced them. Through three scaffolded essays, students explore how the plays define community, interrogate what is held in common, and index the ways in which we divide and withhold, share and collaborate.
EN 334-001 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE MWF 11:00-11:50 Ainsworth
The Sonnet
Do you expect to write in your future work? To compete with large language models, you will need to master the English language in ways which they cannot. One of the best ways to achieve that mastery involves studying how great writers in English choose their words and assemble their ideas. In this course, we will study great writers of the seventeenth century, and we will specifically study how they choose and deploy words within one of the most restrictive of poetic forms: the sonnet. Fourteen lines of poetry, with around 140 syllables for the entire poem, will translate into an expansive world of expression; you will learn how and why great poets break the strict rules of the sonnet, and nurture the sort of judgment, precision, and beauty of expression that will continue to escape LLMs so long as they rely upon the law of averages to generate their texts. Authors will include John Donne, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Aemilia Lanyer, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Lady Mary Wroth.
Literature, 1700-1900
EN 344-001 MAJOR AUTHORS 1660-1900 TR 11:00-12:15 Crawford
Thoreau and Friends
In EN 344 we will dive into the world of major 19th-century American authors, focusing primarily on Henry David Thoreau. Additionally, we will read other iconic authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Texts will range from poems and essays to Thoreau’s masterpiece Walden. Readings will be designed for the busy college student and work may include in-class reflections, and a research essay due near the end of the semester. While our texts will be focused on these major authors in the context of 19th century America, we will also explore their connections and continuing relevance to contemporary America.
EN 347-001 ENGLISH LITERATURE DURING THE ENLIGHTENMENT MWF 12-12:50 Weiss
The Enlightenment—an intellectual movement of the eighteenth century—dramatically changed how Western Europeans and colonists in North America understood nature, society, psychology, and the meaning of citizenship. Through a multi-genre survey, this course examines how these new developments were expressed, promulgated, and questioned in British literature of the period. Covering a variety of genres by a diverse selection of authors, the course is divided into smaller units on philosophy and science, nationalism, colonial expansion and slavery, feeling and the imagination, and gender.
EN 348-001 ROMANTIC LITERATURE TR 12:30-1:45 Tedeschi
This course provides a survey of literature written in Britain during the Romantic period (roughly 1789-1832), a period distinguished for intense political turmoil, rapid social change, and radical literary experimentation. We will read literature in several genres, including poetry, the novel, and nonfiction prose; study many of the period’s most influential authors, including Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Mary and Percy Shelley, Keats, and De Quincey; and learn about the social, political, and intellectual history of the Romantic period in Britain.
Literature, Post-1900
EN 350-001 / AAST 350-001 TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT TR 3:30-4:45 Steverson
Art or Propaganda?: The New Negro Movement and African American Literary Expression
In The Crisis’s 1926 symposium, several critics and artists responded to W.E.B. Du Bois’s question, How should the Negro be portrayed in art? Published over seven issues, both Black and White writers such as Carl Van Vechten, H.L. Mencken, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, among others debated the role art and literature should play in politics. That same year, The Nation published an exchange between George Schuyler and Langston Hughes over the definition of what exactly, if anything, is meant by “Negro Art.” Both debates, surrounding the purpose and audience of African American literature form the basis of this course. Many Black authors of the 1920s and 1930s embraced the idea of what Alain Locke called the “New Negro” (1925), a more self-aware, assertive, complex self that sought to contest the caricatures of the “Old Negro” as an inferior race. This quest to reconstruct a public image therefore sparked lively debates about how this new “self” should be represented in art and literature. The concept of the “New Negro,” as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Gene Jarrett (2007) assert “implies a tension between political and artistic concerns.” This course surveys African American literary works produced from 1920s to 1940s to explore the tensions between art and politics. Several questions will guide our journey, including: What is the role of art in the fight for political and social equality for African Americans? How does the tension between political and artistic matters affect artists’ creative freedom? What is/was African American literature? What is the duty of art and artists in relation to political and social equality? How can (if it can) art help improve the daily lives of African Americans? What forms of art are most politically effective?
EN 361-001 TOPICS IN AMERICAN LIT 1945-PRESENT TR 2-3:15 White
Do you remember how fun it is to read fiction? Yes? Great—we are going to read a lot of the best of it from the last half century. No? Even better—you are going to remember and/or develop a passion for it. Either way this course will introduce you to a few of the major books, writers, and ideas that have defined American (and American-adjacent) fiction since the second world war.
EN 373-001 WOMEN IN LITERATURE MWF 2:00-2:55 Palmer
In this course, we will read texts by nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first century British and North American writers that belong, in some sense, to “women’s popular genres,” including sentimentalism, realism, and romance. Over the course of the semester, we will try to better understand the ways these texts treat women as producers, consumers, and subjects as well as the way each text’s genre categorization(s) might affect the way we read it. We will return to the following questions in our discussions: What do these readings suggest about the female experience at various moments in history? To what extent do class, race, and gender shape the narratives? What kinds of relationships do these authors have to material culture and to consumer culture, a realm popularly (if problematically) associated with many women’s popular genres? Finally, we will consider the utility and implications of recognizing distinct “women’s popular genres,” asking if applying these categories mistakenly magnifies differences or if erasing such categories might elide important distinctions.
Creative Writing
EN 301-001 through 006 FICTION WRITING 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.
EN 303-001-003 POETRY WRITING 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.
EN 303-004 POETRY WRITING TR 2-3:15 Pirkle
This course is an intermediate level creative writing course which will be run as a lecture/discussion course before midterm and as a writing workshop after midterm. Students will be introduced to both basic and complex poetic terminology, they will be asked to read and discuss the work of numerous poets, they will become familiar with different basic forms of poetry, and they will write and revise their own poems.
EN 305-001 CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING MW 2-3:15 Brorby
Study of the basic principles of writing creative nonfiction. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of forms of the genre.
EN 305-002 CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING MW 3:00-4:15 Davis-Abel
How do we define reality? What is true for one person may not be true for another, and science shows that the way we perceive and remember things is as individualized as our fingerprints. How then do we as writers distinguish what is real – and thus nonfiction – and what is invented? This fine arts, seminar course will aim to answer this question by establishing an understanding of what is and isn’t nonfiction writing. In order to achieve this, we will read works by successful nonfiction authors, we will practice craft through writing prompts and guided discussions, and each student will pursue individual research into one avenue of nonfiction writing that excites them.
EN 305-003 CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING TR 2-3:15 Parker
Study of the basic principles of writing creative nonfiction. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of forms of the genre.
EN 307-001 SPECIAL TOPICS APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING MW 10:30-11:45 Davis-Abel
Writing for Mass Markets and #Booktok
Enemies to Lovers. Dark Academia. Shadow Daddies. All these terms have recently gone viral on social media sites, launching books like Fourth Wing and ACOTAR into the public canon. But why? What makes these books so popular to so many people? In this creative writing course, we’ll explore the world of viral book sensations, from #BookTok to #BookStagram to the depths of GoodReads challenges. Students will dive into the tropes and narrative structures that resonate with mass audiences, studying what makes certain books go viral. We’ll examine the role of social media in book promotion, engagement strategies, and how these platforms shape reader expectations and industry trends. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of modern genre writing and practical skills to craft stories that have the potential to capture the attention of a digital-savvy, mass-market audiences.
EN 307-002 SPECIAL TOPICS IN APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Dugat
Al Dente: Writing Food and Place
Together, we will explore the relationship between food, place and the written word, considering how medium influences the stories we tell about the things we eat. Students will apply this exploration by taking part in the entire editorial process of Al Dente, bringing to life the third issue of UA’s online literary journal of food and place. Students will drive the conception, design, selection, publication and outreach related to the issue, learning practical editorial skills in the process. No specialized experience is required.
EN 307-003 SPECIAL TOPICS APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING TR 3:30-4:45 Albano
Literary Editing & Publishing
This course will examine the origins, evolution, and the present-day landscape of literary journals and small presses, with a special emphasis on print culture, and learning the fundamentals of the editing process, from the acquisition and revision of work through its proofreading and publishing. As part of this process, we will discuss and implement strategies for publishing our own work covering the entire submission process, from identifying suitable journals to writing professional cover letters. As a culminating project we will produce an online edition of the seventeenth issue of Call Me [Brackets]—the literary journal started in Fall 2018. This will involve selecting a new theme and aesthetic, and introduce, in addition to the aforementioned skills, the basics of layout and web design, while considering essential post-publishing efforts such as distribution and marketing.
EN 307-004 SPECIAL TOPICS APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING MW 3-4:15 3:30-4:45 Cheshire
Red Rook Publishing Lab
Red Rook publishing lab is an experiential course in professional publishing associated with Red Rook Press, UA’s own undergraduate publishing lab. Over the course of the semester, you will work collaboratively to design, edit, publish, and promote a short anthology of student writing. Through the process, you will gain the skills and experience necessary to translate a raw manuscript into a professional, perfect-bound book, complete with a, ISBN number and your name in the masthead!
EN 308-001 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING MW 2:00-3:15 Brady
Documentary and Ritual Poetics
Have you ever carried beans in your pocket and whispered your secrets, however small, to them? Or slept with a crystal under your pillow? Or have you baked yourself a birthday cake and fed it to a river?
In Documentary and Ritual Poetics, we’ll examine ritual and exercise both in writing and practice. We will explore sound, the somatic, and location with a focus on process over product.
In CA Conrad’s Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness, they document rituals of their own creation through notetaking and respond to their rituals in poems. In this course we will perform CA Conrad’s rituals and create rituals of our own to respond to in poems or lyric essays. Poetry will move off the page, out of the classroom, away from the confines of campus. Poetry will be present and documentary.
We will read works by CA Conrad, Caroline Bergvall, C.D. Wright, Claudia Rankine, Cecilia Vicuña, Anaïs Duplan, Dodie Bellamy, Anne Boyer, TC Tolbert, and others
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EN 308-002 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Albano
Crime Fiction
Crime writing is one of the most popular, widely read genres in fiction. In this course, we will explore crime fiction in its many guises—suspense, detective fiction (both Golden Age and postmodern), and psychological thrillers. We will examine the “rules” for crafting mysteries, how to apply them in our own writing, and how to subvert them. We will read Walter Mosley, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, among many others, and workshop stories of our own invention. Join us, as we wind our way down dark alleys, past London flats, and to stately country manors where seemingly nothing could go wrong.
EN 308-003 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING TR 3:30-4:45 Girardeau
Poetic Instruments
Looking for a more mellifluous effect in your poems? In this class, we’ll explore the trove of sound devices at our disposal—rhyme, alliteration, meter, and more—and write in poetic forms that showcase our music-making. Whether writing sonnets or studying “sprung rhythm,” it should feel like practicing on your favorite instrument. Expect regular reading and writing assignments, as well as workshops, throughout the semester.
EN 308-00? FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING ? Marker
Science Fiction
In this course, we will explore the genre expectations and craft considerations for science fiction short stories. We will spend time focusing, of course, on world-building, and also character development, plot development, how to craft an effective scene, and how to make sentence-level writing do more work for the worlds you build. We will also look at the works of contemporary science fiction writers like Adrienne Maree Brown, Charles Yu, and Nalo Hopkinson.
Linguistics
EN 320-001 INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS TR 12:30-1:45 STAFF
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 ESSENTIAL GRAMMAR TR 9:30-10:45 STAFF
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. This course is a prerequisite for EN 423, EN 424, EN 425, EN 466.
Methodology
EN 300-001 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES MWF 11:00-11:50 Blount
This introductory course is instructive for anyone interested in literary analysis. Students will learn how to employ disciplinary methods for in-depth literary study, while becoming familiar with the vocabulary, techniques, and discourse associated with literary analysis. They will also gain exposure to a range of critical and theoretical approaches to primary texts, enriching and refining their skills in critical reading, writing, and analysis. Students will practice close reading techniques throughout the semester. They will also develop familiarity with major literary movements. The course will be divided into genre units that include poetry, drama, short fiction, and the novel. Our novel for the semester will be Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Assignments will include two essays, midterm and final exams, one group project and presentation, and daily grade assignments such as in-class written responses and/or quizzes.
EN 396-001 RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR TR 9:30-10:45 Novak
This is a course of use to all students interested in learning how to conduct academic research. While the course is a pre-requisite for the honors thesis, EN 396 will prepare all students in the course for upper-level work in English and for research-based careers. In this course, students will learn to find, evaluate, and integrate secondary sources into literary critical work; students will learn to construct an annotated bibliography from their research; students will learn how to frame a critical debate and structure an argument; students will learn to develop an original idea for a thesis or longer paper; and students will learn how to write a research prospectus or proposal. This semester, will we use a set of short texts (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Importance of Being Earnest) as the basis and foundation on which to apply lessons and assignments on research skills and methods. The course will be divided into sections, focusing on different kinds of sources and approaches to research, familiarizing you with the thesis project, and practicing skills like annotated bibliographies, and research proposals. While much of the course will focus on our key texts, your final project will be to propose a research project on the subject of your choice. This course can be used as an elective for the Digital, Public, and Professional Writing Minor. It also satisfies the Major requirement for Rhetoric and Composition, Linguistics, Methodology, or Writing. It can be used as a 300-level elective for the English Major or Minor. And, it fulfils the Experiential Learning Core requirement.
Rhetoric and Composition
EN 313-001 WRITING ACROSS MEDIA MWF 10:00-10:50 Eubanks
Advanced writing course exploring composition with images, sound, video, and other media while considering theoretical perspectives on rhetorical concepts such as authorship, audience, process, revision, and design.
EN 313-002 WRITING ACROSS MEDIA TR 9:30-10:45 Salvatore
Advanced writing course exploring composition with images, sound, video, and other media while considering theoretical perspectives on rhetorical concepts such as authorship, audience, process, revision, and design.
EN 319-001 through 008 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. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
EN 380-001 LEGAL WRITING MW 4:30-5:45 January
This course will examine the various ways writing is involved in the legal profession. Subjects may include but are not limited to written legal claims, written materials required during stages of litigation, and how to construct other forms of legal argumentation in writing. The course will include significant writing analysis, grammar reviews, and legal writing exercises. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. Student writing will be graded and commented upon and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs other course requirements.
EN 380-320 LEGAL WRITING TR 5:00-6:15 Hargett
This course will examine the various ways writing is involved in the legal profession. Subjects may include but are not limited to written legal claims, written materials required during stages of litigation, and how to construct other forms of legal argumentation in writing. The course will include significant writing analysis, grammar reviews, and legal writing exercises. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. Student writing will be graded and commented upon and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs other course requirements.
EN 381-001 SCIENCE WRITING MW 12:00-1:15 Veronie
Students in this course will study the mechanics of data-rich scientific writing for academic journals, gaining important fluency in the structures, organization, and grammar of scientific articles, abstracts, and reviews. Additionally, students will learn science writing as a subgenre of nonfiction writing that seeks to communicate challenging, complex, and nuanced facts and ideas in clear, engaging prose. Students will compare the writing of scientist scholars such as excerpts from Siddhartha Mukerjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene: An Intimate History, Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled, and Oliver Sacks’s personal essays with that of journalists such as Robert Macfarlane to identify key differences that distinguish the science writing of scientist scholars from other science writers. Students will write reflections and flash pieces of science writing that challenge them to see and articulate themselves as science writers. Additionally, students will research and write a literature review and analyze scientific articles to establish the expectations of academic scientific audiences. Finally, students will engage in multimodal projects such as blogs, podcasts, and video presentations that make complex science topics accessible and enjoyable to a broad, lay public. This course will culminate in a multi-modal e-Portfolio assignment that will showcase student accomplishments. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and metacognitive reflection. Student writing will be graded and commented upon and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs other course requirements. All evaluation criteria for writing assignments will be made clear to students when writing assignments are first given, not when writing assignments are returned.
EN 381-002 SCIENCE WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Riesen
This course will study a subgenre of nonfiction writing that seeks to communicate challenging, complex, and nuanced facts and ideas in clear, engaging prose. While learning to evaluate and synthesize the claims of scientists and intellectuals across various domains, students will produce data-rich essays and articles aimed at being accessible and enjoyable to a broad, lay public. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. Student writing will be graded and commented upon and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs other course requirements.
EN 381-003 SCIENCE WRITING MW 3:00-4:15 Veronie
Students in this course will study the mechanics of data-rich scientific writing for academic journals, gaining important fluency in the structures, organization, and grammar of scientific articles, abstracts, and reviews. Additionally, students will learn science writing as a subgenre of nonfiction writing that seeks to communicate challenging, complex, and nuanced facts and ideas in clear, engaging prose. Students will compare the writing of scientist scholars such as excerpts from Siddhartha Mukerjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene: An Intimate History, Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled, and Oliver Sacks’s personal essays with that of journalists such as Robert Macfarlane to identify key differences that distinguish the science writing of scientist scholars from other science writers. Students will write reflections and flash pieces of science writing that challenge them to see and articulate themselves as science writers. Additionally, students will research and write a literature review and analyze scientific articles to establish the expectations of academic scientific audiences. Finally, students will engage in multimodal projects such as blogs, podcasts, and video presentations that make complex science topics accessible and enjoyable to a broad, lay public. This course will culminate in a multi-modal e-Portfolio assignment that will showcase student accomplishments. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and metacognitive reflection. Student writing will be graded and commented upon and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs other course requirements. All evaluation criteria for writing assignments will be made clear to students when writing assignments are first given, not when writing assignments are returned.
EN 382-001 BUSINESS WRITING MWF 10:00-10:50 Walters
This course develops the interdisciplinary writing and rhetorical skills necessary to create compelling content and effective strategic communications useful in any type of workplace, whether corporate, nonprofit, or entrepreneurial. Students will learn best-practice and collaborative approaches to an array of situations encountered in the course of doing business—from data-rich analysis to storytelling that moves—tailored to engage both general and industry-specific audiences. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
EN 383-001 BOOK & PRINT DESIGN TR 2-3:15 Smith
This course explores the history and aesthetics of print design, applied specifically to the techniques and practices of book publishing. Utilizing industry standard software, students will gain facility and experience with every step of the publishing process, from copyediting to layout to production and distribution, as well as learn about current industry challenges and trends.
EN 384-001 GRANT WRITING MW 12:00-1:15 Marker
Explore the grant writing process from researching granting agencies, through writing a grant proposal, to managing grants and grant reporting. Through hands-on, experiential learning, understand how to evaluate granting opportunities and tell meaningful stories about the needs of organizations and individuals. Acquire the skills needed to help organizations and individuals create a streamlined grant funding program for projects and programming, with emphasis on best practices.
Special Topics in Writing or Literature
EN 310-002 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Marker
Copyediting
This course covers the role and ethics of a copyeditor, the editorial process, strategies for editing, and the use of common reference books and resources to guide changes for accuracy and consistency. Through their work on the undergraduate publication, Space, students will learn to identify varying levels of editorial depth (light, medium, heavy); how to create style sheets and why they are important; and effective strategies for communicating professionally and clearly with authors via queries and comments.
Directed Courses
EN 329-001 through 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.
400-Level English Courses
Advanced Studies in Literature
EN 411-001 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV COMPTV/MULTICUTL LIT MW 10:30-11:45 Wittman
Philosophy and the Literature of Moods
Philosophy and the Literature of Moods “Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets as sanity does.” —Virginia Woolf, Letters
“Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic, and some to such an extent that they are infected by the diseases arising from black bile?” –Aristotle, Problemata
In this course, we will look at philosophy and literature from a variety of traditions and eras, in order to understand the generative nature of “moods,” shorthand here for what we now call mental illness. We will not be retroactively “diagnosing” the writers that we read with the latest DSM V diagnostic manual but rather trying to understand their pleas and analysis from a more meta-level. Philosophy (is it not also literature?) will help us here just as literature (is it not also philosophy?) will anchor us in the bleak midwinter. Indeed, we will read about some of the darkest nights of the literary soul. We will not romanticize mental illness, but we will not shut our ears when our literary and philosophical precursors do just that. There are five assignments in this class: reading (this will be reasonable), a class presentation, two short papers and a final research paper of 12 pages. Literary and philosophical material will be sourced from among the following: Emil Cioran, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Knut Hamson, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Binswanger, Michael Ondaatje, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Mann, Arthur Schopenhauer, Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Michel Foucault, Sylvia Plath, Jean Rhys, the Brontë sisters, Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Trakl, Hermann Hesse, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This course is a W writing course and requires a total of twenty pages of writing. I make use of a rubric for grading and will share it with you on the first day of class. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. The course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. Student writing will be graded and commented and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other course assignments. Your short midterm paper will be graded before midterm.
EN 422-001 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV STUDIES AMERICAN LIT TR 3:30-4:45 White
Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop: The Most Important Friendship in American Poetry
In 1975 the great American poet Elizabeth Bishop answered a fan letter about how to become a poet. She said “Read a lot of poetry—all the time—and not just 2 or 3 poems each, in anthologies—read ALL of somebody. Then read his or her life, and letters, and so on. Then see what happens.” In this course we will take her advice by reading a big chunk of the work of the modernist Marianne Moore (1887-1972) and Bishop herself (1911-1979). Each poet was a central figure in her day and continues to influence contemporary poetry. Extraordinarily, they were also close friends, discussing their poems and poetry in general in their many letters. We will read some of those letters, along with their prose, and their peers’ essays about them. No one is required to become a poet by the end of the course, and no previous experience with poetry is necessary, but we will end by knowing two foundational American poets inside and out.
EN 422-002 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV STUDIES AMERICAN LIT MW 4:30-5:45 Manora
Marriage, Madness, or Death: 20th/21st Century American Women’s* Fiction
“If the main character is a girl, make sure she’s married by the end. Or dead. Either way.” In literature (as in life?), women’s stories have conventionally ended in one of three ways: Marriage, Madness, or Death. In this seminar, we’ll explore the ways that American women/femme authors have written within and/or outside of the lines by engaging issues of identity and subjectivity, interrogating the social and cultural scripts that have shaped and circumscribed women’s lives, and crafting characters who illuminate the resulting boundaries and borders through their compliance or deconstruct them through their transgressive noncompliance. Beginning with works of American Modernism & the Harlem Renaissance, we will move through mid and late 20th century into the 21st century, focusing on issues related to narrative, identity, and subjectivity, as well as intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, while also considering these works within the context of critical discourses in social, cultural, and literary history. Writers may include Djuana Barnes, Willa Cather, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Toni Morrison. Requirements include engaged presence and participation during seminar discussions, brief reader responses, one 4-5 page paper, and a final paper.
EN 433-001 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV STUDIES BRIT LIT TR 2:00-3:15 Novak
Mars Attacks–Invasion, Empire, and Late 19th Century Brit Lit
Even as writers like H. Rider Haggard depicted the penetration of heroic British explorers into dangerous (and often gothic) colonial spaces, late nineteenth-century writers also expressed anxieties about reverse colonization and invasion. Most famously, a text like H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds imagines England at short end of the (interplanetary) colonial project. A number of other late-Victorian texts imagine an invasion of England as a return of the colonial oppressed from the ‘East,’ as in Dracula, The Beetle, or She. In other texts, the threat comes from forces even closer to home, like The Invisible Man or the ghostly relatives of “A Beleaguered City.” Still others like Jekyll and Hyde or Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Parasite” depict the body and mind as the site of invasion and usurpation from within and without. We will be exploring how these invasion narratives construct and trouble national, gender, bodily, and racial boundaries and hierarchies. Our reading will consist of a wide range of texts, from Victorian prose, poetry, and fiction to twentieth and twenty-first century literary criticism and theory.
EN 433-002 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV STUDIES IN BRITISH LIT MW 3:00-4:15 McNaughton
20th and 21st Century British and Irish Poetry
This seminar in Irish and British poetry has three sections: modernist poetry, mid-century reactions to modernism, and contemporary Irish poetry. The course is guided by the idea that a little formalism takes you away from history, but that a lot brings you back to it. So we will perform detailed close readings, keeping in mind how formal developments in poetry mark political conflict, social critique, and historical change. We begin with major writers, principally among them Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith, and Seamus Heaney. Then we turn to contemporary Irish poets. Students will work individually on a complete collection of recently-published poetry, select poems for the class to read, and write a publishable book review. Previously, students have been drawn to collections by Paula Meehan, Tom French, Kerry Hardie, Harry Clifton, Leontia Flynn, Ciaran Carson, Sinead Morrissey, and others. We will add collections from recent younger writers besides, Stephen Sexton, Mary O’Malley, Jessica Traynor, Lorcán Black, Emma Must, Keith Payne, Dylan Brennan, among others. Aside from reviews, the professor expects a number of essays, an exam, and a presentation. All are welcome.
EN 444-001/WS 430-001 CC: ADV STDY LITERARY CRIT/THEORY TR 2:00-3:15 Purvis
Heteronormativity and Film
This course combines in-class film screenings and film analysis with feminist and queer film theory in an examination of heteronormativity through film. A mix of classic and contemporary films and texts portray and critically examine constructs such as heterosexism, gender essentialism, “compulsory heterosexuality,” “the straight mind,” “the heterosexual matrix,” and “the way we never were”—key concepts and conceptual frameworks in critical heterosexuality studies. Films include The Stepford Wives, Don’t Worry Darling, Teeth, But I’m a Cheerleader, My Life in Pink, Barbie, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Paris is Burning, The Times of Harvey Milk, and more. This course provides a solid background in feminist and queer film criticism and theory, visual literacy skills, and knowledge of a range of issues connected to heteronormativity in the U.S. from the Cold War to the present. Theorists include: Laura Mulvey, bell hooks, Barbara Creed, José Esteban Muñoz, and others. Key texts include: Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, Love the Sin, Prescription for Heterosexuality, I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage, and The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, among others. Texts and authors in this course analyze the manner in which many ignore and reify their privilege through entrenched practices and politics; they highlight the ways in which sexual regimes intersect with those of gender, race, and class oppression and expose the workings of normative sexual discourses, which reward straight, white, cis-, and middle- and upper-class persons with disproportionate levels of privilege and power; and they propose avenues for change. Students develop advanced undergraduate research skills and gain a substantial foundation for further study, including graduate work in this area. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. (Prerequisites: Women’s Studies: WS 200: “Introduction to Women’s Studies” or equivalent; English: 18 hours of English study, including 6 credits at the 200-level & 6 credits at the 300-level)
Advanced Studies in Writing
EN 455-001 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV STUDIES IN WRITING W 2:00-4:30 Fitzsimmons
Advanced Grant-writing
Are you searching for funding to support your research? Are you interested in grant-writing as a potential part of your career, or searching for ways to develop additional marketable skills related to your English degree? Come learn how to navigate the complicated world of academic and federal research grants! Whether you are hoping to fund your own research or use your skills as an English major to apply for funding on behalf of a future employer, this course will teach you the ins and outs of securing funding for research and creative activities.
This course focuses on the strategies, skills, and practices required for successful academic grant-writing. Students will learn how funding for academic research and creative activities works, how to appropriately research and select grants to support their research, how to communicate with grants officers, and how to prepare and submit grant applications to real funders. By the end of the course, students will be capable of using major grant databases (Candid, Pivot), navigating major types of funders (federal, foundation, private), and completing the various parts of a standard grant application (abstracts, overviews, summaries of work, significance of research, budgets, etc.).
As there are several types of grants available for scholarly work, students will select and complete grant or fellowship applications which best suit their interests and goals. While the specific parameters of these grants may vary, undergraduate students can generally expect to complete one small grant or fellowship application on their own and one medium or large application collaboratively. Graduate students can generally expect to individually complete at least one small-or medium grant or fellowship application and one large grant application (or equivalent) over the course of the semester.
EN 455-002 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV STUDIES IN WRITING TR 9:30-10:45 Presnall
This course examines two cultural forms, essay and assembly. We will trace the essay from Michel de Montaigne’s invention through major writers such as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Annie Dillard, Toni Morrison, Lia Purpura, and Zadie Smith to see how each author narrates self and imagines possibilities for conscious agency in the world. Then, using Kyle Parry’s A Theory of Assembly: From Museums to Memes, we will explore the nonlinear gathering of materials in the emergent form, assembly, which relies on patterns, whole relations, analogy, visual logic, arrays, sequences, constellations, repetition, remixing, and accumulation. Does assembly, like essay, enable a sense of self and world? What kinds of conscious agency do specific assemblies make possible? Students will journal as a process of reflection and inquiry, apply concepts developed through reading and discussion to the analysis of cultural texts, and develop their own research and writing projects.
EN 455-003 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV STUDIES IN WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 Buck
Writing with Robots
This section of EN455 considers the relationship between AI and writing. Since the release of ChatGPT, assistive writing technologies have been a topic of interest and concern within universities and beyond. We will take a longer historical view of AI and writing, exploring academic scholarship on the topic as well as other texts written about and sometimes by AI tools. How do we write about – or with – robots? What role do predictive language tools have in our future personal and professional lives? How might they affect how we write and think of ourselves as writers? In this class, we’ll create both written essays and digital projects to explore the role of AI in our writing lives. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course.
Creative Writing
EN 408-002 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV CREATIVE WRITING TR 9:30-10:45 Guthrie
Advanced Poetry Workshop
In this course, students will study an array of contemporary poetry and be challenged to experiment with new forms and styles, while building a supportive community of fellow writers.
EN 408-003 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV CREATIVE WRITING MW 2:00-3:15 Beatty
Novel-Shaped Objects
First in a two-semester sequence. In this workshop, students will begin or expand on a book-length fiction manuscript [any subject(s), any style(s), any genre(s)]. We will pile up pages; find models to follow, adapt, or oppose; revise; hold each other accountable; commiserate; snack; swap craft books; and co-exist in art. The heart of the class is workshopping material from manuscripts-in-progress.
EN 408-004 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 Kidd
Fairy Tale Adaptations
In this multi-genre class, we’ll explore why fairy tales remain such a rich part of contemporary storytelling. We’ll read both original versions and adaptations and write our own adaptations of various fairy tales. Students will have the option of writing fiction, poetry, nonfiction, or even plays in this class. Let’s see what kind of strange and delightful work fairy tales can inspire us to produce!
EN 408-005 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 Bingham
Novel Writing: Fantasy & Science Fiction
Part one in a two-semester sequence dedicated to drafting and workshopping a novel. This section of EN 408 is dedicated to novels in the genres of Fantasy and Science Fiction (and their subgenres). We’ll talk tropes of these genres and their creative possibilities. We’ll chat about writing—how hard and wonderful it is. You’ll enjoy a supportive writing group of fellow Fantasy and SF enthusiasts. And, of course, you’ll write. A lot. You will produce a partial novel draft by the end of the first semester and a completed rough draft by the end of the second semester.
EN 408-006 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV CREATIVE WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 Pirkle
Obsessive Forms
This poetry-writing course will be a deep dive into the poetic forms that are most closely linked with obsession because of the required repetition: villanelle, sestina, pantoum, ghazal, and rondeau, which are often forms that are lumped together and quickly glossed over in EN 303. In EN 408 “Obsessive Forms,” the students and professor will slow down and really study how those forms serve obsessive subject matter, as well as how the forms differ from each other.
EN 408-007 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV CREATIVE WRITING TR 3:30-4:14 Shaw
The Prose Poem
What is a prose poem? Is it a poem? Is it even really a form? And what separates it from flash fiction or lyric nonfiction? The prose poem and its adherents and critics have offered varying and contradictory answers to these questions since Charles Baudelaire’s Petits Poëmes en Prose was published over 150 years ago. In this course, we will study the techniques of prose poems from late 19th, 20th, and 21st century writers, and consider theoretical questions around form itself. A form that breaks form. A poem that is and is not. We will start to consider these boundaries of genre and from and consider the possibilities of hybridity. We will also learn to write, discuss, and workshop our own prose poems while considering what poetic tools remain or are reborn as poetry’s lineation and reinvention of time is met by prose’s temporal rush.
EN 408-008/JCM 442-001/JCM 542-001 CAPSTONE COURSE: ADV CREATIVE WRITING T 2:00-4:30 Bragg
Specialized Magazine Writing
This course is designed to help students understand writing and editing of long-form articles for publication in print and online depth magazines. Students will learn advanced narrative nonfiction writing techniques and how to gather information for longer feature stories. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
Linguistics
EN 424-001/EN 524-001 CAPSTONE COURSE: MODERN ENGLISH GRAMMAR TR 12:30-1:45 Poole
An intensive investigation of the structures in the English language, including phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. A desirable prerequisite for this course is EN 320 or EN 321.
EN 425-001/EN 525-001 GLOBAL ENGLISHES M 2:00-4:30 Selvi
This course introduces students to the varieties of English and the implications of these varieties for using, learning, and teaching English in various socio-educational contexts. The course also examines the linguistic, social, and political impact of the global spread of English around the world, and where, when, why, and how new forms of English have emerged. It places specific emphasis on the set of implications for English teachers and learners in a superdiverse world.
Composition and Rhetoric
EN 432-001/EN 532-001 CAPSTONE CRS: COMP-RHET: APPROACHES AND METHODS TR 11:00-12:15 Dziuba
Provides an overview of the field of composition studies: teaching writing, history of the discipline, and discussion of professional issues in rhetoric and composition. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
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 ENGLISH INTERNSHIP Blount
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 associate director of undergraduate studies in the Department of English. Please see the departmental website for the application form and further details.
EN 498-001 CC: SENIOR THESIS: CREATIVE TBD Dugat
This course culminates in each writer’s completion of a long-form creative work: a poetry chapbook, novella, essay collection, short story collection, extended creative non-fiction piece, or other similar project. To get there, writers will maintain disciplined creative schedules, meet individually and in small groups, and offer one another regular feedback, all while forming a supportive writing community. Writers will also look beyond the completion of their projects to possibilities for publication, and opportunities to sustain their practices in practical ways relevant to their individual paths. A student who completes this course with a grade of A or A- and who meets GPA requirements will be awarded Departmental Honors with a creative emphasis.
Prerequisite(s): Grade of B or higher in EN 398 and approved research proposal
EN 499-001 HONORS THESIS TBD Weiss
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 396.