300-Level English Courses
Literature, Pre-1700
EN 333-001 SHAKESPEARE MW 3:00-4:15 Tavares
Shakespeare in Community
Designed for intermediate English majors, 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 issues of community in terms of nation, identity (gender, race, class), and the work of performance. 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 333-002 SHAKESPEARE TR 9:30-10:45 Loper
This course offers an introduction to Shakespeare’s plays and poems. We will examine how Shakespeare adapted sources for his audiences and how others have adapted Shakespeare. Why is Shakespeare so entrenched in the literary canon, and how do people make him relevant across cultures and genres?
EN 333-003 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.
Literature, 1700-1900
EN 340-001 AMERICAN FICTION TO 1900 MWF 10:00-10:50 Pusch
Love and Identity in Early American Novels
In this survey class, students will read a variety of early American literature, with an emphasis on longer fiction. Students will study the ways in which the various genres — Gothic, Sentimental, Romance, Transcendental, Slave Narrative, Realist — explore the nature of romantic love and personal identity in the 19th Century. Authors include but aren’t limited to Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Catherine Sedgwick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Jacobs, Louisa May Alcott, John William DeForest.
EN 348-001 ROMANTIC LITERATURE TR 12:30-1:45 Tedeschi
This course provides a survey of literature written during the British Romantic period (roughly 1789-1832), a period marked by intense political turmoil, rapid social change, and an evolving literary field. The course considers literature in several genres, including poetry, the novel, and nonfiction prose; examines many of the period’s most influential authors, including Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, and Keats; and introduces the social, political, and intellectual history of the Romantic period.
EN 349-001 VICTORIAN LITERATURE MWF 11:00-11:50 Martel
We are Victorians. The very air we breathe bears the residue of coal first burned during the industrial revolution. The democratic institutions now seen as under duress were constituted in the nineteenth century. Our lives depend on global networks forged during the “Age of Empire.” The racial-, class-, and gender-hierarchies shaping everyone’s existence solidified throughout the nineteenth century. Yet, we remain Victorians in other, less despairing ways. Like the Victorians, we eagerly consume fictional media week-by-week. Our most popular genres — realism, domestic romance, gothic, science fiction, fantasy — developed their now-recognizable forms across the nineteenth century. Our confidence in writing’s ability to change the world, for better or worse, echoes the Victorians’ faith in the power of the printed word. This class surveys the intersections between these two modes of being Victorian. Studying a wide range of genres and authors from across the Anglophone world, we will ask how literature provides ways of living in and changing a world marked by global processes whose spatial and temporal scales exceed our individual perspectives. Readings will include works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Seacole, Toru Dutt, E Pauline Johnson, and others.
Literature, Post-1900
EN 350-001 / AAST 350-001 TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT MW 4:30-5:45 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, Postmodern, and Afrofuturist 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 may include Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Claudia Rankine, and Rivers Solomon. Requirements include active and engaged presence and participation, critical reader responses, one 4-5 page paper, and a final paper.
EN 366-001 TWENTIETH-CENTURY POETRY TR 11:00-12:15 Love
Throughout this course, we will read a range of distinguished American and British poets of the last hundred years, including W.B. Yeats, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Seamus Heaney. We will learn skills to improve and appreciate our reading of poetry with our attention on forms, techniques, and historical and cultural contexts. From our close readings and discussion, we will further our understanding of the significance of poetry in the English language in the twentieth and early twenty-first century.
EN 396-001 RESEARCH & WRITING SEMINAR TR 9:30-10:45 Novak
This is a course on research skills and methods in literary studies. 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 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
Creative Writing
EN 301-001 through 007 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 301-003 FICTION WRITING TR 9:30-10:45 Davis-Abel
In this workshop-based course, we will explore the different avenues of fiction including (but not limited to!) world building, character development, voice, plot, and tension. We will read a variety of short stories, a novel, and other nontraditional forms of fictional storytelling including audiostories. Students will be required to give weekly feedback to their peers as well as submit their own work twice to receive feedback. By the end of the semester, it is the goal of each student to have a polished short story, excerpt, or audiostory they are proud of and which demonstrates their ever-continuing growth of craft
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.
EN 303-003 POETRY TOUR TR 2:00-3:15 Brouwer
Study of basic principles of writing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic forms. This is a poetry writing course, and the majority of our time will be spent discussing the poems you write. However, on the theory that lively reading may aid and abet the production of lively writing, we will also read and discuss poetry and criticism by others. In summary, it’s going to be fun.
EN 305-001 through 002 CREATIVE NONFICTION 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.
EN 307-001 SPECIAL TOPICS APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING MW 3:00 – 4:15 Albano
Literary Editing and 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 ninth 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 307-002 SPECIAL TOPICS APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING MW 4:30 – 5:45 Marker
Zines & Experimental Publishing
In this course, we will learn about the history of zines and experimental publishing. We’ll also play around with different methods of putting together, and maybe even distributing, zines of our own.
EN 307-003 SPECIAL TOPICS APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING TR 2:00 – 3:15 Davis-Abel
Podcasting
In this seminar and workshop-style course, we will be exploring the world of podcasting. We will discuss the form from a variety of perspectives: where the form started, who dominates it now, where it is headed, how it shapes the narrative form, how marketable the form has become, and – of course – how to make one. We will listen to a variety of podcasts across a spectrum of genres, identities, and style and ultimately, students will work together (or in pairs) to create their own podcast by the end of the semester.
EN 308-001 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING TR 9:30 – 10:45 Bingham
EN 308: Fantasy & Science Fiction
What connects The Hobbit to Harry Potter? What separates Star Trek from Star Wars? Is a dystopian novel a science fiction novel? Is Percy Jackson fantasy? In this course, we’ll attempt to answer questions like these, in a semester-long quest to understand these genres as readers and writers. In both discussion-based classes and traditional workshops, we will explore the features, ambitions, and purposes of storytelling in science fiction and fantasy.
EN 308-002 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00 – 12:15 Champagne
Oral Storytelling
The oral storytelling tradition dates back as far as the inception of humanity. While the fundamental elements of what makes a good story may not change much over time, our mediums for telling them have. In this class, students will explore techniques for telling a great story, both on the page and aloud, across various genres. We will listen to podcasts and recorded readings of creative work to analyze and emulate styles of pacing, voice, scene setting, and many other aspects of great stories
EN 308-003 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING TR 12:30 – 1:45 Pirkle
Writing Voice
In this class students will examine how voice is established not only in a single work but over the course of a collection or group of poems and short pieces of writing. The class will be run as both a seminar and workshop, with the underlying question for the semester being: How does a writer’s voice work on a page versus out loud? As a class, we will read a contemporary collection of poetry and study how the writer sustains his or her voice throughout the book, then compare it to audio and video recordings of the poet reading their work. Writing assignments will encourage the student to play with voice to discover their own voice as writers. At the end of the semester, students will submit a final portfolio of original work that consists of a unified, distinct voice.
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 321-001 LINGUISTIC APPROACHES TO GRAMMAR TR 12:30-1:45 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. This course is a prerequisite for EN 423, EN 424, EN 425, EN 466.
Methodology
EN 300-001 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES MWF 12:00-12:50 Greene
An introduction to the methods of English literary criticism. Students will learn and practice the disciplines of various critical schools, with special attention devoted to the application of critical methods for the study of primary texts. Readings will include works of literary criticism and theory, as well as works of poetry, drama, and prose.
Rhetoric and Composition
EN 309-001 ADVANCED EXPOSITORY WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 TBA
This advanced writing workshop offers expository writing experience beyond EN 101 and 102. Students will use an inquiry-based model to explore their deepest obsessions. Written work will include exploratory, descriptive, informative, and analytical essays.
EN 313-001 WRITING ACROSS MEDIA MWF 2:00 – 2:50 Coryell
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. Composition projects include working with memes, podcast, video, and multimodal composing.
EN 319-001 through 006 TECHNICAL WRITING STAFF
This class will focus 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. These concepts highlight the relationship between content (having something to say) and expression (saying something a certain way). ENG 319 emphasizes three themes: (1) understanding implications of technical writing, (2) recognizing contextualized writing and technology practices, and (3) developing strategies to improve our writing skills. 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.
Prerequisites: EN 101 and EN 102 (or equivalent) and junior standing.
Special Topics in Writing or Literature
EN 310-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING MWF 11:00-11:50 Bedsole
Topics vary from semester to semester; examples are legal writing, writing about the social sciences and reading and writing in cyberspace. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours.
EN 310-002 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Presnall
Mindful Writing
In this class, we approach communication as an ecology within which human and non-human actors affect each other. If I speak to a rock and don’t get a response, does that mean it doesn’t affect me, direct my movement? Does it invoke me? Does my cat? If my cat leaves a dead mouse on the step and I interpret it as a gift, have I missed a chance at communication? Rather than starting from a known purpose and thesis and advancing an argument, this class begins by questioning what we know, using extrahuman relations to promote new thoughts and modes of expression. Posthuman theoretical readings complement our discussion of literary essays. We will also integrate the contemplative practice of meditation with journal writing to promote creativity, controlled attention, and meta-cognitive awareness. Students will apply concepts developed through reading and discussion to analysis of literary and cultural texts, develop their own narrative-nonfiction writing projects, and present on their process to the class.
EN 310-321 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING TR 5:00-6:15 Millsaps
Legal Writing
In this class, we will examine the various ways writing is involved in a law suit — from the time a client first meets with a lawyer through all stages of trial preparation, trial, and appeals of the outcome. We will use a very realistic scenario derived from the instructor’s 20+ years of experience as a trial attorney. You will discover that very different styles of writing that are needed at different stages and for different audiences, and you will be introduced to the strategical thinking that goes into the art of litigating. This class will benefit students who anticipate being the next great trial attorney, and students who would prefer to use their writing skills to represent clients behind the scenes.
EN 311-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE TR 2:00-3:15 Roberts
Boiling Point: Literature for Uncertain Times
This course surveys a variety of “fallout” literature. In particular, it examines literary representations of social turmoil spawned from political unrest, racial and class tensions, gender divisions, and Independent Network Charismatic (INC) religiosity, as they are all depicted in the context of fallout from natural and/or man-made disasters. In the class, students analyze how the social tensions depicted in the post-apocalyptic worlds of each text spawn from various foundations that comprise the pre-apocalyptic social fabric (economic structures, religious institutions, political ideologies, etc.), investigating the extent to which such structures either rendered the fallout or evolved as responses to it (or both, or neither). The class explores multiple genres of fallout literature—realism, zombie horror, sci-fi, existential fiction—and across different media—the novel, short story, graphic novel, television, film, and even a brief look at video games. Overall, this class will help students explore that endlessly elusive notion of identity in the contexts of individualism and community, recognizing in these fictions speculative illustrations of worlds that arise from actual and all-too-real social conditions.
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 400-001 SENIOR SEMINAR S 9:00-5:00 Jolly
American Literature in the Industrial Age
A study of American Literature and the influence of the Industrial Age on the literary marketplace. The works of Twain, Howells, James, and Sinclair among others will be examined.
EN 411-001 ADV STUDIES COMPARATIVE/MULTICULTURAL LIT TR 8:00-9:15 Wittman
World Literature
In this course, we will read six critically acclaimed novels from around the world and investigate how literature arrives on the global stage. This course is run as a literary prize-granting 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 six 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 422-001 ADV STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE MW 3:00-4:15 Manora
American Modernisms
The term “American Modernism” traditionally refers to a period of both literary innovation and profound ideological disruption. As the American scene underwent a sea change during the decades from 1914 to 1945, Anglo American and African-American/Harlem Renaissance writers captured American Modernism’s dialectic of contradictions, its “apocalyptic sense of crisis and belief in a new beginning.” Through literary analyses and work with recent criticism, we will consider the relationships between order, disorder, place, and identity – notions and constructions of race, class, gender, and “self” – that concerned these writers, while also exploring the historical, social, cultural, and ideological discourses that informed their works. Requirements include active and engaged participation, critical responses, one 4-5 page paper, and a final paper.
EN 422-002 ADV STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE MW 3:00-4:15 Deutsch
What is Tragedy?
What counts as tragedy in America? How has our society dealt with large-scale catastrophes of a political, religious, idealistic, or organic nature? By giving up? By forging on? What makes a specifically American tragic hero or heroine? What is the relationship between tragedy and comedy? These are some of the issues we’ll examine as we look at how an individual or a small group confronts the hostile forces of gods, fates, or even simply social conventions. After briefly examining the classical dramatic tradition, we’ll swiftly move on to tragedies in the American tradition. For this, we’ll take a look at plays, novels, and some poems that have shaped the American tragic landscape and apply the concept of tragedy to modern American literary traditions. For help, we’ll turn to influential definitions and theories of tragedy, particularly those of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Miller.
EN 433-001 ADV STUDIES IN BRITISH LITERATURE TR 9:30-10:45 Wittman
Modernism and Madness
In this course we will look at modernist literature (1900-1945) from the American, English, Caribbean, and European traditions, in order to understand the generative nature of “madness.” Why were so many writers ill? What is the relationship between madness and creativity? How, as the manic-depressive Woolf suggests, are mental health episodes generative? Why is madness romanticized? What is the cachet of madness? We will not be retroactively “diagnosing” the writers that we read, but rather trying to understand them from a more meta-level, plunging into their gains and losses as they negotiate mental health challenges of all kinds: psychosis, depression, bipolar disorder, and more. Although madness will be our primary concern, we will devote considerable time to other related issues that come up in the books we read (race, class, nation, fascism, gender identity, and more) and understand why we read them as modernist texts. Writers under discussion include Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Emil Cioran, Nella Larsen, and Sarah Kane.
EN 444-001 ADV STUDIES LIT CRITICISM & THEORY TR 2:00-3:15 Purvis
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity asserts that there is only one way to be, which is straight; and there is only one way to be straight. Whether we identify as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, pan-/poly-/bi-/asexual, or otherwise (queer), we have something to gain from an interrogation of the workings of heteronormativity, where all people are assigned a sex at birth (from a set of two choices) and are expected to perform one of two established sets of “complementary” gender roles, which are thought to be based on their presumed “nature.” The perfect alignment of sex, gender, and sexuality is impossible for anyone. Yet sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism circulate widely in the realms of sexuality and gender and compromise and threaten everyone (though of course some are more compromised and threatened than others). Through the study of the contributions of early sex-radical feminists, such as Gayle Rubin and Pat Califia, as well as a host of contemporary feminist, queer, QOC, trans, and intersex theorists, this course takes Michael Warner’s definition of “queer”—“resistance to regimes of the normal”—as the starting point for an examination of “straight sex,” or the “many heterosexualities” of which Christine Overall and Lynne Segal speak. We investigate the limits of hetero-/homo and gender binaries as well as the workings of hetero-and homo-normativity, sex-positive practices and politics, and the potential of queer futures. This course assesses the “surprisingly short history of heterosexuality” (Hanne Blank) and the “tragedy of heterosexuality” (Jane Ward), tracing the establishment of a category, “straight,” as well as its “constitutive outside.” It analyzes both the fear of queer and the need for queer politics in a time where many normative subjects continue to ignore and reify their privilege through entrenched practices and politics, and the disenfranchised are courted by inclusion and assimilationist agendas and politics. The assortment of authors in this course (from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary locations) highlight the ways in which sexual regimes intersect with those of gender, race, and class oppression, exposing the workings of normative sexual discourses, which reward straight, white, cis-, upper and middle-class persons with disproportionate levels of privilege and power. Through this study of key feminist and queer theory texts, as well as additional interdisciplinary texts on the subject, students will develop advanced undergraduate research skills and gain a substantial foundation for further study, including graduate work in this area. Note: 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 at the 200-level & 6 at the 300-level)
EN 477-001 ADV STUDIES IN LITERARY GENRES TR 2:00-3:15 Cardon
Dystopian Literature
In times of political and social turbulence, we dream of ideal worlds or utopias. “Utopia,” etymologically, means “no place,” in itself a statement about the feasibility of a perfect world. In contrast, authors have long been dreaming up dystopias, worlds in which people suffer because of governments, economies, religions, technologies, and environmental catastrophes gone haywire. Many students are familiar with classic dystopias like Brave New World and young adult dystopias like Hunger Games. These novels offer a glimpse of collective anxieties about the future––about a time when people become too desensitized, too autocratic, or too dependent on technology. In this class, we will begin with a couple of the classic dystopias but quickly move into less familiar dystopian territory: Harlem Renaissance satire, Afrofuturism, and Cyberpunk, to name a few. Select authors include George Orwell, George Schuyler, Octavia Butler, and N.K. Jemisin, among others.
EN 488-001 ADV STUDIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT TR 11:00-12:15 Trout
African American Military Experience in Literature and Culture
Although African Americans have served with distinction in every major war ever fought by the United States, the story of their relationship with the US military is one of ongoing resistance to racist constructions of citizenship and masculinity. In short, from the American Revolution onward, black Americans have had to fight for their place on the battlefield. This course will explore the depiction of African American military experience in literature, visual art, and film, and it will focus on the time period from the Civil War to the American war in Vietnam. Our texts will include Susie King Taylor’s *Reminiscences of My Life in Camp,* the first-hand account of a Civil War nurse; Victor Daly’s *Not Only War,* the only novel written by a black American combatant in the First World War; Charles Fuller’s *A Soldier’s Play,* a wartime murder mystery filled with racial tension; Chester Himes’s *If He Hollers Let Him Go,* a portrait of African American experience on the home front of World War II; Toni Morrison’s Home, the story of a black Korean War veteran’s return to the American South; and John A. Williams’s *Captain Blackman, *a postmodern war novel that features time travel. We will also read the work of poets ranging from James Weldon Johnson to Gwendolyn Brooks and discuss several films, including Edward Zwick’s *Glory* and Spike Lee’s *Da 5 Bloods.* Students will complete daily entries in a reading journal, take two examinations, and submit two 5-6 page papers. Hopefully, we will also be able to go on two field trips–one to Tuskegee Alabama, where the famous Tuskegee Airmen trained, and one to Blakeley State Park on Mobile Bay, where one of the largest deployments of African American troops occurred during the Civil War.
Advanced Studies in Writing
EN 455-001 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 Buck
Podcasting: Writing + Audio Production
This writing course emphasizes multimodal composition and focuses on the fundamentals of writing, recording, and editing audio for podcasting. We will explore scholarship in sound studies and rhetoric as well as podcasts of different genres. This course will include an introduction to audio recording and editing equipment, and students will produce at least three distinct podcasts over the course of the semester, including an audio essay and an interview.
EN 455-003 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Gardiner
Designed for advanced English majors, this special topics course focuses on the process of writing, with a special emphasis on multimodal composition and experiential learning opportunities. Students will research, analyze, and write, documenting and visualizing historical and cultural landscapes of the Great Depression and the place of their own family history within those landscapes. Students will read short pieces by Zora Neale Hurston, Sarah Broom, Harry Crews, Rick Bragg, Isabel Wilkerson, and others, while doing family research using Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com, other Web and library databases, and interviews. Student writing will be showcased on the course “Dirt Poor” Web site. Course work includes composing in traditional, oral, and digital formats.
Creative Writing
EN 408-001 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING W 2:00-4:30 Wells
Advanced Fiction Workshop
This class is devoted to the reading, craft analysis, and writing of short fiction. Writers will produce original fictions of their own invention and design, and, building on the workshopping skills they’ve developed in previous creative writing courses, will read the work of their peers and provide oral and written feedback. The course will help equip writers with the critical chops necessary to anatomize stories with rigorous generosity. The published fiction we’ll discuss will be in a variety of modes, from the realist to the fabulist to the speculative, and a variety of aesthetics, from plainstyle to maximalism to idiosyncratically stylized impersonations. But it is the fiction students write that will make up the course’s primary text.
EN 408-002 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING MW 3:00-4:15 Coryell
Novel Workshop (two-semester sequence)
This is part one of a two semester course designed with the goal of completing a draft of a novel. In this class we will deconstruct the novel-writing process, and move from brainstorming ideas all the way to workshopping books-in-progress. No matter the genre you’re looking to write, you’ll find this course an invaluable aid to developing a new or existing project. Workshops will occur throughout the semester and novel sections will be turned in regularly. The goal of this course is not to write a perfect, complete text, but rather to learn how to forgive yourself for bad sentences and to do a lot of writing. By the end of the first semester, the goal is to have a partial novel draft completed with a full draft completed by the end of the second semester. We will also talk briefly about the novel publication process.
EN 408-003 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING MW 4:30-5:45 Albano
Crime Fiction(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 work from Walter Mosley, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, P.D. James, 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 408-005 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 9:30-10:45 Pirkle
The Ode Less Travelled (Poetry)
This poetry-writing course will offer a contemporary approach to writing in traditional poetic forms, including odes, ballads, sonnets, and elegies. In “The Ode Less Travelled” the students and professor will slow down and study why certain forms have persisted even as cultures have shifted, as well as how these forms differ from each other. Students will read numerous examples of each form, and discuss how they work, then students will write their own formal poems and workshop them. The semester will culminate with each student devising and executing a creative project in which they adapt one of their formal poems into a different genre of art, such as a flipbook, painting, song cycle, or short film.
EN 408-007 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 Bingham
Heroes & Their Journeys
Beginning from Joseph Campbell’s concept of “The Monomyth,” this course will explore 20th and 21st century ideas of storytelling. As readers and writers, we’ll test our collective, so-called “secrets” of storytelling, with a special focus on tales of the fantastic, the adventurous, and the heroic. Writing workshops begin in the second half of the semester, offering students a chance to receive feedback on their stories or novel chapters.
EN 408-008 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 E Parker
Literary Journalism
During the emergence of “The New Journalism” in the 1960s and ‘70s, with writers such as Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and University of Alabama alumnus Gay Talese, straight nonfiction reportage began adopting the techniques of fiction—dialogue, scene-setting, intimate personal details, the use of interior monologue, metaphorical depth, etc.—and abandoned the sterile objective perspective of “newsworthy subjects” in favor of turning the lens toward less traditional subjects, even the journalists themselves, and a new genre of immersion writing evolved. We will look at the evolution of this trend from the 1960s and earlier, following it to the contemporary explosion of immersion-project literature in books, magazines, podcasts, blogs, and documentaries. As writers, we will immerse ourselves in our own communities and lives to find subjects and produce essays and possibly podcasts and mini documentaries. We will be what Gay Talese calls “nonfiction writer[s] pursuing the literature of reality.”
EN 408-011 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Ariail
Reimagining the Medieval (multi-genre)
Writers and artists love to reimagine the medieval in several genres, from high fantasy to gritty realist films set in the Middle Ages, like The Last Duel and The Lion in Winter. In this course, we will examine selections from Old English heroic epics, Norse sagas, Arthurian legends, and more; we will think about creative and counterintuitive ways to transform these primary texts into vibrant stories of our own.
EN 408-012 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 3:30-4:45 Whalen
Flash Fiction
A course dedicated to the study, and practice, of micro and flash fiction. We’ll read and discuss a wide variety of short-short stories, ranging from one-sentence to 1000 words in length. Students will learn to cut to the quick and utilize minimalist techniques to craft fiction that delivers big in a small package. There will be weekly writing prompts, and several opportunities to share original micro/flash fiction in “workshop” to receive peer and instructor feedback.
EN 408-013/JCM 442-001 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING T 2:00-4:30 Bragg
Long-form Articles
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 non-fiction 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 MODERN ENGLISH GRAMMAR TR 12:30-1:45 Poole
This advanced grammar course examines the structure and usage of English, 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 functional grammar. Through readings, 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.
Composition and Rhetoric
EN 432-001 COMP/RHET: APPROACHES & METHODS TR 2:00-3:15 TBA
This course is designed to introduce students to rhetoric and composition as a field of study. We will look broadly at theory, methodology, and practice, focusing on topics including (but not limited to): approaches to teaching writing, an overview of rhetoric and its relationship to writing instruction, and discussion of professional issues in English Studies (such as the role of the humanities, the purpose of the English major, and the rise of digital humanities).
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.