Interim
EN 311-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN LIT MTWRF 9:00 – 12:00 Hodo
Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Horror in Print and on the Screen
Each year thousands of movie goers flock to theaters to catch the latest horror flick. In 2017, horror films racked up more than $1.1 billion dollars at the box office (Pesce). Each year the shelves of book sellers see a flood of new zombie, vampire, etc. books and Stephen King, alone, has sold over 350 million copies of his books. But the question is why? Why is the horror genre so popular? Why do we like to be afraid? Are these stories merely meant to terrify us or is there something deeper to be gleaned from them? In this course we will read and view works of the horror greats to see what sort of cultural commentary can be pulled from these texts. Texts will include: R.L. Stein’s The Babysitter, March’s The Bad Seed, McDowell’s The Elementals and short stories from the likes of Poe, Lovecraft, Matheson, Oates, King and Chambers. Possible film/tv show viewings include: Halloween, Cabin in the Woods, and The Walking Dead.
EN 344-001 MAJOR AUTHORS 1660-1900 MTWRF 10:00-1:00 Novak
Oscar Wilde
In our culture, Oscar Wilde has come to stand for so many (sometimes contradictory) things: An icon of homosexuality and of gay martyrdom; of Irish identity; of modernity; of the aesthete; or even of literature itself. Wilde’s life and his position as a cultural icon so often dominates our understanding of his texts that it is sometimes hard to remember him as a writer. This class will offer a survey of Wilde’s writing (plays, poems, fiction, and non-fiction essays) as well as critical, biographical, and theoretical work on Wilde, in order to ask how Wilde himself defines the terms by which he is most often understood—identity and desire, body and text, performance and essence. We will also look at other writers of the 1880s and 90s to contextualize Wilde within a larger British fin-de-siècle culture.
EN 400-001 SENIOR SEMINAR MTWRF 10:00-1:00 Deutsch
The Queer Art of Queer Writing
LGBTQ+ American Art and Literature from the late nineteenth century until today Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all offer a striking combination of text and imagery that provide new means to represent American identities based upon once taboo or transgressive personas, habits, desires, and practices. In a very real and concrete way, the influence of queer literature on queer art and figuration has a long, diversely American history, one that stretches across race, religion, region, and socio-political re-imaginings of a multitude of Americas. This course will explore the interrelationships that exist in primarily US cultural circumstances, at home and abroad, amid painting, sculpture, drawing, and literature that stretches from the late-nineteenth century until the technological advances of the 21st century, including art viewed online. We’ll consider literature by Walt Whitman, Djuna Barnes, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, and Jewel Gomez, among others; and art by Thomas Eakins, Richard Bruce Nugent, Bernice Bing, Salman Toor, Agnes Martin, and Kehinde Wiley, to name a few. Students need not have any art background, as we’ll explore writing about art and images together. Students will also have an opportunity to learn how to research and to write about contemporary artists whom they may discover on their own via current social media platforms. The instructor can waive most pre-requisites upon consultation with students.
Full Summer Term
EN 308-910/920 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING Online H Staples
Odeacious Writing
In this class, we will read and write odeaciously. That is, we will pay tribute, celebrate, revel in our writing across genres to peoples, places, and things. We will consider how a pair of socks or a lithium script or an old tampon might be worthy of odeification, how satire might be considered odeacious, how the pursuit of odeacity is political and has the power to shape the world. Texts may include Barn 8 by Deb Unferth; Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, by adrienne maree brown; Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer; Odes to Common Things by Pablo Neruda, Odes by Sharon Olds, and Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman. Writers are welcome to write odeaciously in any genre. Pablo Neruda describes lemons as “a cup yellow with miracles…the diminutive fire of a planet.” If life gives you lemons, make lemon odes.
EN 400-360 SENIOR SEMINAR S 9:00-5:00 Jolly
The Development of American Literature to 1860
This course, The Development of American Literature to 1860, is a study of literature produced in what became the United States from its beginnings to 1860. Along with literary influences, social, economic, religious, and political influences leading to literature that is distinctively and definitively American will be examined.
Term I
EN 303-050 POETRY WRITING MTWRF 2:00-3:45 Bingham
Study of basic principles of writing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic forms. Class will largely consist of workshopping your own work as well as that of your peers.
EN 319-050 TECHNICAL WRITING MTWRF 2:00-3:45 McGee
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.
EN 329-050 DIRECTED STUDIES TBA TBA
Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.
EN 408-050 ADV CREATIVE WRITING MTWRF 10:00-11:45 Estes
Freedom & Practice (multi-genre)
Robert Frost defined the most basic need of his work as a writer like this: All I would keep for myself is the freedom of my material ”the condition of body and mind now and then to summons aptly from the vast chaos of all I have lived through”. One could do worse! This course has no grand theme or project beyond writing, unless it is it to get behind the writing to the writer, to first principles, to exploring and practicing the mental, spiritual, physical, and temporal skills needed to live a sustainable creative life. The objectives will be to know yourself better, to learn how to gain permissions for all the artistic and personal freedoms you can, to write what you want how you want for as long as your life will allow you, and to consider in as many ways as our time allows the way of writing and the way of the writer. In the midst of that education, you will propose and work on an independent project of your design.
EN 429-050 DIRECTED READINGS TBA TBA
Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.
Term II
EN 319-100 TECHNICAL WRITING MTWRF 10:00-11:45 Buck
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 329-100 DIRECTED STUDIES TBA TBA
Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.
EN 429-100 DIRECTED READINGS TBA TBA
Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.