300-Level English Courses
Literature, Pre-1700
EN 333-001 SHAKESPEARE MWF 12:00-12:50 Whitver
An introduction to Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Elizabethan customs, politics, history, and philosophies are examined in relation to his works.
EN 333-002 SHAKESPEARE MW 3:00-4:15 Reaves
This course will survey representative works of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is a particularly rich area of study, concerning drama, poetry, history, and culture. We will examine Shakespeare’s works in the context of Renaissance culture as well as how his work remains relevant in the modern day. Mostly, we will focus on the texts themselves—on the pleasure they provide as popular works, on the scholarly opportunities they create, on the complexities of the craftsmanship at work. This means we will hone our analytical skills and refine our understanding of poetic devices at work on the page and stage. We will also examine the literature as performative texts and consider the challenges of production, both for Shakespeare’s contemporaries and our own.
EN 333-003 SHAKESPEARE TR 11:00-12:15 McElroy
An introduction to Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Elizabethan customs, politics, history, and philosophies are examined in relation to his works.
EN 335-001 MILTON MWF 11:00-11:50 Ainsworth
An introduction to Milton’s English poetry and its many complexities. Anchored by an intensive investigation of Paradise Lost, Milton’s great epic, this class will address the technical and theoretical aspects of Milton’s writing as well as discussing the underpinnings of its meaning. We’ll master together some of the best and most intimidating poetry ever written. This semester’s class will consider the role of fathers in Milton’s works. We will concentrate on specific characters like Adam and even the original father, God, but we will also take into account relationships between these figures and other characters, with reference to past course topics (like “Milton’s Eve” and “Milton and Gender”). We will also discuss Milton’s own father and the ways in which 17th century fathers were expected to behave. How is Milton either reimagining fatherhood, or critiquing it, and what effect does the presentation of fathers have on everyone else, especially within a fundamentally patriarchal faith like Christianity? We will read Milton’s greatest works, including Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. We’ll also be the beneficiaries of The Edifice Project, which I will explain on the first day and also describe in some detail at the end of the syllabus. In effect, this class is designed to take your thinking and ideas seriously outside the bounds of this single semester. For some of you, your work will be preserved for use in future EN 335 classes, just as the work of the last class on Milton, Milton and Gender (and the previous classes’ topics) will come into play this semester. Over time, groups of EN 335 students can together construct a larger understanding of Milton through collective effort and investigation of specific aspects or questions in Milton’s work. Students from the previous class will pay us a visit over the course of the semester to talk about Milton with you.
Literature, 1700-1900
EN 340-001 AMERICAN LIT TO 1900 TR 9:30-10:45 Bilwakesh
Origins of the American Con Man
This is a survey of American Literature to 1900, with a loose focus on the development of a compelling American type: the con man. They make us define and refine our notions of sincerity, originality, value, and danger, and they offer ciphers and slangs that have made American language distinctive. They’re not all “men,” but they are, too. And their loose identities offer a field of work upon which to try modern critical methods. Writers may include Charles Chestnutt, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Constance Rourke, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Thomas Morton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Martin Delany, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman. Contexts include blackface minstrelsy, itinerant peddlers and preachers, and American stagecraft. We will exceed the bounds of the nineteenth century in order to see the legacy of some of these characters.
EN 347-001 ENGLISH LIT DURING ENLIGHTENMENT TR 2:00-3:15 Weiss
The Enlightenment, which lasted from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, was an intellectual movement that dramatically changed how Western Europeans understood nature, society, and the internal workings of the individual. 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.
Pre-requisites: 12 hours in English including 6 hours at the 200 level.
EN 349-001 VICTORIAN LITERATURE MWF 10:00-10:50 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 first laid down 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.
EN 349-002 VICTORIAN LITERATURE TR 9:30-10:45 Novak
Gender equality, racial justice, income inequality, religion, or the crisis in the humanities. These could be today’s top stories in your Newsfeed. But the discussion about these issues began back in the Victorian period, and in many ways we are still arguing about these questions on the very terms and values set by Victorian writers. In essays, novels, and poetry Victorian writers debated the position of women in the public sphere (“the Woman Question”), economic inequality and alienated labor (“The Condition of England Question”), English treatment of colonized subjects, evolution, religious skepticism, and the function of literature. Let me stress how important it is to bracket our own notions of how these domains are defined in “our” own culture and for “us.” By taking seriously and literally the way these texts construct these issues, we will often not only see the ways in which these texts challenge our assumptions, but also how they interrogate the very notion of the assumed objectivity, universality, and obviousness of truths that are appropriate for all communities and individuals. Our aim is to analyze the implications of the models and theories presented in these texts, not to impose our own notions of what (for example) identity, desire, and gender should be. In other words, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are interesting not because they remind us of our own world, but precisely because they often offer an alternative vision.
Literature, Post-1900
EN 350-001 TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT TR 12:30-1:45 Bridger Gilmore
Living With the Past: Narratives of Slavery in Contemporary African American Literature
In the last forty years, fictional explorations of the impact of U.S. slavery on the present have represented some of the most culturally and critically impactful works by black writers. Reading novels by writers like Octavia Butler, Gayl Jones, David Bradley, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, and Kaitlin Greenidge and critical accounts of melancholy, trauma, and psychological repair this course seeks to allow students the opportunity to think with such novels about the relationship between the past on the present. Over the course of the semester we will consider how understanding the past might impact our contemporary lives, the limits of what in history is knowable, and why we might invest meaning in certain histories rather than others. Course requirements include active and consistent participation, critical reading responses, and two formal papers.
EN 373-001 WOMEN IN LITERATURE MWF 12:00-12:50 Palmer
In this course, we will read texts by nineteenth-and twentieth-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. Readings may include Jane Austen, Harriet Jacobs, Louisa May Alcott, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, Patricia Highsmith, Toni Morrison, Sally Rooney, Brit Bennett, and Emily Henry.
Creative Writing
EN 301-001 FICTION WRITING MW 3:00-4:15 TBA
Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 301-002 FICTION WRITING TR 9:30-10:45 TBA
Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 301-003 FICTION WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 TBA
Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 301-004 FICTION WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 TBA
Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 301-005 FICTION WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Whalen
Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 301-006 FICTION WRITING TR 3:30-4:45 TBA
Close study of the basic principles for composing creative prose. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of prose strategies.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 303-001 POETRY WRITING TR 9:30 – 10:45 Minicucci
Close study of basic principles for composing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic styles.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 303-002 POETRY WRITING TR 11:00 – 12:15 Estes
Close study of basic principles for composing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic styles.
EN 303-003 POETRY WRITING TR 12:30 – 1:45 TBA
Close study of basic principles for composing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic styles.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 303-004 POETRY WRITING TR 2:00–3:15 Brouwer
Close study of basic principles for composing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic styles.
Prerequisite: EN 200 (This prerequisite is never waived).
EN 305-001 CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING MW 4:30–5:45 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 305-002 CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING TR 9:30-10:45 Riesen
Study of the basic principles of writing creative nonfiction. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of forms of the genre.
EN 305-003 CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING TR 2:00–3:15 TBA
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 3:00–4:15 Davis-Abel
Writing for Audio
This course provides students with a survey of podcasting concepts and techniques that are used to tell stories in a new digital landscape. We will study the structure of audio storytelling, the genres encompassed in this media, as well as the mechanics of recording and editing, digital delivery techniques, audio equipment, and digital distribution. Over the course of the semester, we will listen to a variety of podcasts, study their structures, speak with experts in the field, train in equipment and software usage, and ultimately, work together to create a series of podcasts about our interests..
EN 307-002 SPECIAL TOPICS APPLIED CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00–12:15 Marker
Zines and 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 3:30–4:45 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 tenth 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 308-001 FORMS OF CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00 – 12:15 Bingham
Special topics in Creative Writing. Focus may be on poetry, fiction, nonfiction or a combination. Students produce imaginative writing and read related texts. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours.
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 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 398-001 CREATIVE WRITING INTENSIVE TR 9:30-10:45 Champagne
Required of students wishing to write an English Honors thesis in Creative Writing. This course is a required for students wishing to write an English Honors creative writing thesis in a subsequent semester. Students should enroll in this course no later than spring of their junior year. Admission to the course is competitive: students should apply to the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program director prior to pre-registration. Additional seats may be open by application to students who have completed at least two creative writing courses. Students will study sustained creative projects such as poetry chapbooks, novellas, story or essay collections, and other long-form works, and plan and begin their own substantial creative writing projects. The course will also include professionalization in the field of creative writing, covering topics such as how to approach publishing and editing, how to submit creative writing for publication, how to apply to graduate school, how to prepare for careers in writing, and how to identify and connect to resources in the field. During the course, students will develop a proposal for their EN 498 project that includes a reading list, project description, and process description.
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 Poole
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 TR 9:30-10:45 Cardon
You’ve perhaps read The Great Gatsby, but how would you teach it? Why, do you think, is it so important that nearly every high school requires its students to read it? What do we do with famous works of literature? Why does literature even matter in the “real world”? EN 300 is designed primarily for English majors, but also for anyone interested in literary analysis. By the end of the semester, students will ––Employ methods employed in our discipline for in-depth literary study; ––Enrich their skills in critical reading, writing, and analysis; ––Apply a range of critical and theoretical approaches to primary texts; ––Practice the vocabulary, techniques, and research methods associated with literary analysis; ––Close read texts in the form of papers and other assignments; ––Identify which critical approaches fit their interests and the nuances of a particular text; and ––Recognize how canonical literature has historically marginalized certain voices while privileging others, and work to interpret readings with a more nuanced, multifaceted perspective. To become more adept at reading and interpreting literary texts, students will begin the course by revisiting a canonical work of literature (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby) and learning about different methods for approaching, analyzing, and writing. From there, students will learn to apply these critical methods to other genres, including poetry, drama, and other texts and media.
Rhetoric and Composition
EN 309-001 ADVANCED EXPOSITORY WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 Dziuba
This course will help you to develop your expository writing skills by challenging you to conduct original research and to synthesize a variety of sources. You will practice both academic and public genres, focusing on how to communicate your research in these different rhetorical situations.
EN 313-001 WRITING ACROSS MEDIA MWF 2:00 – 2:50 Coryell
How often do you stop to think about the medium in which you are communicating? How does a specific medium change the way you write? What does it mean to “read” an image? How does our use of technology shape the way we communicate? What theories inform our relationships with media? In this class, we will explore the intersections between various media: print, film, images, sound, social media, etc. We will develop an approach for understanding and composing multimedia products while attempting to identify (and challenge) the implicit conventions of media. Along the way, we will consider the ways writing (as an object and as a practice) is shaped by these multimedia interactions from both theoretical and practical perspectives. By integrating practical activities with broader theoretical issues, we will work on developing effective strategies for designing multimedia presentations, and through this class, you will create image, audio, remix, and interactive projects.
EN 317-001 WRITING CENTER PRACTICUM TR 11:00 – 12:15 Dayton
This practicum course will introduce you to the principles and practice of writing center work through a combination of reading, reflection, and real-world practice. In the first eight weeks, you will reflect on your own writing practices and read introductory articles on various aspects of composing. In the second eight weeks, you will do three hours of supervised consulting per week, and meet once a week in class to discuss your experiences and reflect on what you are learning. This course is required for undergraduates who wish to work in the Writing Center; students who pass with an A or a B, and with excellent attendance, are eligible to work for pay in future semesters.
*Admission to English 317 is by permission only. Apply at: https://writingcenter.ua.edu/jobs/
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. 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. 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.
Prerequisites: EN 101 and EN 102 (or equivalent) and junior standing.
Special Topics in Writing or Literature
EN 310-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING MW 3:00 – 4:15 Riesen
Topics vary from semester to semester; examples are legal writing, writing about the social sciences and reading and writing in cyberspace.
EN 310-002 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING MWF 12:00 – 12:50 Pucker
Murder and Mayhem: True Crime Podcasting as Advanced Composition
Introduces genre theory as a means of analysis and examines true crime podcasts as a form of composition and popular literature. Engages in critical awareness of genre and of research methods. Students will have an opportunity to study true crime and will create their own crime podcast.
EN 310-320 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING TR 5:00 – 6:15 Millsaps
Legal Writing
This course 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. You will discover that different styles of writing are needed at different stages and for different audiences, and you will be introduced to the strategic thinking that goes into the art of litigating. This class will benefit students who anticipate being the next great trial attorney, students who would prefer to use their writing skills to represent clients behind the scenes, and students who simply want to develop a better understanding of legal analysis.
EN 311-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE TR 11:00 – 12:15 A Roberts
Boiling Point: Literature for Uncertain Times
This course will explore multiple genres of fallout literature (such as realism, zombie horror, sci-fi, and existential fiction) across different forms of media (the novel, short story, graphic novel, television, and film). We will examine how these genres represent and critique social turmoil or “fallout” that spawns from political unrest, racial and class tensions, gender divisions, and Independent Network Charismatic (INC) religiosity. We will question how the social tensions depicted in the postapocalyptic worlds of each text spawn from various foundations that comprise the pre-apocalyptic social fabric (economic structures, religious institutions, political ideologies, environmental neglect, etc.), investigating the extent to which such structures either rendered the fallout or evolved as responses to it or both (or neither). Some texts read will be “Parable of the Sower” (Octavia E. Butler), ‘”Blindness” (José Saramago), “Zone One” (Colson Whitehead), “The Walking Dead” (Robert Kirkman), and “Oryx and Crake” (Margaret Atwood).
Directed Courses
EN 329-001 through 004 DIRECTED STUDIES STAFF
Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies.
400-Level English Courses
Advanced Studies in Literature
EN 400/EN 500 SENIOR SEMINAR S 9:00-5:00 Jolly
The Bible as Literature
This course is a systematic general introduction to the literary forms of the Bible. Emphasis will be placed on recent and respected impartial literary, linguistic, anthropological, sociological, and theological scholarship. Requirements include critical and thoughtful oral participation and critical responses and a paper to be presented orally to the class on the day the topic is discussed.
NOTE: Before coming to the first class, students should have read Genesis.
EN 411-001 ADV COMPARATIVE/MULTICULTURAL LIT TR 11:00-12:15 Bilwakesh
Literature of South Asia
This survey begins with a study of literature’s greatest epic, the Mahabharata, and critical discussions of translation, authorship, and accretion. We survey the linguistic and formal diversity of lyrical poetry, with readings translated from Bengali, Urdu, Tamil, Portuguese, and Hindi. We stay focused on our material, but keep in mind the question of how this study may instigate creative production and contribute to our study of other literatures. From the long history of English in India, we read three twentieth-century novels, along with a tortured children’s book and colonial ephemera. Required Texts include Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses; Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things; Rudyard Kipling, Kim; Helen Bannerman, The Little Black Sambo. Essays, criticism, fiction, drama, and poetry by Aga Shahid Ali, Chandidas, Luis de Camões, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ghalib, Thomas Macaulay, George Orwell, A.K. Ramanujan, Kabir, Arun Kolatkar, Mirabai, Zadie Smith, Rabindranath Tagore, Sara Suleri. Contexts include visual arts, Pakistani and Indian popular and parallel cinema.
EN 411-002 ADV STUDIES COMP/MULTICULTURAL LIT TR 12:30-1:45 White
What is Story For?
In this class we will think about storytelling: why we do it, and what we get from it. We will look at ancient theories and practices of story-making, and modern ones. Along the way we will think about different genres of storymaking: myth, fiction, drama, and different species of poem, from lyric to elegy. Authors we will read include Plato, Aristotle, Milton, Shakespeare, Lynda Barry, Gloria Naylor, W.H. Auden, and many others.
EN 422-001 ADV STUDIES IN AMERICAN LIT MW 4:30-5:45 Trout
American Literary Naturalism, 1895-1940
Inspired by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century science and social theory, works of literary Naturalism place their characters in a deterministic universe where they have no real control over their lives. Pitiless, faceless forces–such as heredity, race, gender, and economics–dictate everything. Thus, Naturalism, a European export (founded by the French novelist Emile Zola), squares off against a number of cherished American ideas, including the attainment of the so-called American dream through hard work and virtue, and typically offers a subversive assessment of fundamental American values and beliefs. This course will offer a sampling of major works by American Naturalists, including Jack London, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, Theodor Dreiser, Kate Chopin, Frank Norris, and Richard Wright. Students should be prepared to read. Naturalists tended to write big books, and among the whoppers we’ll tackle are Norris’s The Octopus, Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, and Wright’s Native Son. However, we’ll also examine some classic naturalistic short stories and novellas; I’ll arrange the class schedule so that the longer works are manageable. Assignments will include two examinations, daily reading quizzes, and two 5-6 page papers. As always, a splendid time is guaranteed for all.
EN 422-002 ADV STUDIES IN 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, Nella Larsen, Willa Cather, 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 ADV STUDIES IN BRITISH LIT MW 3:00-4:15 Pionke
Early Children’s Literature
This course will survey the early history of children’s literature in England, concentrating on the period between the appearance of conduct books alongside Classic fables in the sixteenth century and the first “Golden Age” of the 1860s and 1870s (Alice in Wonderland, and much more). In between, we shall rhyme with Mother Goose, combat childhood’s sins with seventeenth-century Puritans and eighteenth-century Sunday School teachers, and revel in imported fairy tales from France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In so far as the literature permits, we shall consider how both boyhood and girlhood are constructed by these foundational experiments in publishing for and about children, many of which continue to exercise considerable influence over the perception and literature of childhood in the twenty-first century.
EN 433-002 ADV STUDIES IN BRITISH LIT TR 12:30-1:45 Cook
The Romance, Medieval and Modern
This course focuses on the origins and development of the romance genre. We will begin with medieval romances and then turn to novels of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The aim of the course is to offer a historical perspective on this form of popular fiction. Medieval course readings will include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and selections from Marie de France’s Lais and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (in modern English translation). Novels and short stories will include John Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and Charles Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars.
EN 477-001 ADV STUDIES LITERARY GENRES TR 11:00-12:15 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.
Advanced Studies in Writing
EN 455-001 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 Presnall
Posthuman Rhetoric and Postapocalyptic Visions
This course uses Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven as a central text to explore critical perspectives on nostalgia, kinship, trauma, survival, and art in the anthropocene. We will read the novel along with critical essays to discuss possibilities for reimagining current contexts—revision as a mode of disruption rather than continuation. We will consider the novel’s conversation with recent postapocalyptic fiction by women, use of Shakespeare and Star Trek, and its adaptation to the screen. Students will create research and writing projects according to their own interests.
EN 455-002 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 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 four distinct audio projects over the course of the semester, including an audio essay and an interview project.
EN 455-003 ADV STUDIES IN WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Presnall
Posthuman Rhetoric and Postapocalyptic Visions
This course uses Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven as a central text to explore critical perspectives on nostalgia, kinship, trauma, survival, and art in the anthropocene. We will read the novel along with critical essays to discuss possibilities for reimagining current contexts—revision as a mode of disruption rather than continuation. We will consider the novel’s conversation with recent postapocalyptic fiction by women, use of Shakespeare and Star Trek, and its adaptation to the screen. Students will create research and writing projects according to their own interests.
Creative Writing
EN 408-001 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING MW 3:00-4:15 Coryell
The Novel (two semester course)
This is part two of a two semester course designed with the goal of completing a draft of a novel. In this class we will workshop portions of the novels-in-progress, talk about the revision, as well as discussion the novel publication process for novels. We will also talk with people working in the fields of publication and agenting to get perspective from the other side. Workshops will occur throughout the semester and novel sections will be turned in regularly. As this is the second semester of the course, the end goal will be to complete or come close to completing a draft of a novel. Students who did not take the first semester of the course are welcome to take the second semester though it’s recommended that they enter the class with a partially completed novel draft. Priority will be given to students who have taken the first semester of the course.
EN 408-002 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING W 10:00-12:30 McSpadden
What Haunts Us (short fiction)
In this fiction workshop we’ll take a look at hauntings of the supernatural and psychological variety. In particular we’ll examine what we need to craft a good ghost story. How the gothic has evolved to address modern concerns. And how to create stories that will haunt the reader well after they’ve read them..
EN 408-003 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 9:30-10:45 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. In EN 408 “Obsessive Forms,” the students and professor will study how those forms serve obsessive subject matter, as well as how the forms differ from each other. Students will read numerous examples of each form, and discuss how they work, then students will write their own pantoums, villanelles, rondeaus, ghazals, and sestinas, and workshop and revise them. This course could be considered the companion course to Dr. Pirkle’s “The Ode Less Traveled” though students are not expected to have taken that themed 408 class.
EN 408-004 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 Riesen
Special topics in Creative Writing. Focus may be on poetry, fiction, nonfiction or a combination. Students produce imaginative writing and read related texts.
EN 408-005 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 11:00-12:15 Ariail
Reimagining Classical Myth
From Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics to Madeline Miller’s Circe and the animated series Blood of Zeus, writers and artists continue to be fascinated with reimagining classical mythology. In this course, we will read selections from Greco-Roman writers like Euripides, Virgil, and Ovid, as well as contemporary transformations of ancient material, in order to create our own stories and poems inspired by classical texts.
EN 408-006 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 Kidd
Fantasy Writing (short fiction)
If your skies are full of dragons sailing overhead, your forests are crawling with witches and elves, and your oceans are teeming with mermaids and leviathans, this is the course for you. This is also the course for you if you have an eye toward the uncanny and a sense of the unseen and mysterious. We will work exclusively in flash fiction and short story forms and consult recent fantasy publications for example texts. Students will explore ways that speculative elements enter a text, methods of world building, and elements of social, political, and environmental consciousness that find their ways into fantasy writing. We’ll also take a brief look at the world of publishing in fantasy-specific literary journals.
EN 408-007 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 12:30-1:45 Shaw
The Prose Poem (poetry)
What is a prose poem 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 Poèmes en prose was published over 150 years ago. In this course, we’ll use contemporary prose poetry collections, examples from 19th and 20th century writers, and essays on poetics, to come to our own definitions. We will write, discuss, and workshop prose poems while considering what poetic tools remain or are born when poetry’s timelessness is met with prose’s temporality.
EN 408-008 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Ariail
Nature Writing
Nature writing is an incredibly capacious genre, and in this course we will explore how the natural world is rendered in fiction, polemical environmental essays, ecopoetry, and more. Using these models—from Thoreau to Phillip Pullman and Helen Macdonald, from Mary Oliver and Gary Snyder to William Cronon (among many others)—we will craft short stories, essays, and poems that grapple with the wonders and catastrophes of the world around and beyond us.
EN 408-009 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 2:00-3:15 Weiland
Poetry Off the Page (poetry)
This course will study and experiment with poetry influenced by art (ekphrasis) and work that is normally not consumed in the average poetry anthology (such as song lyrics, Chinese painting, calligraphy, and so forth). Students will write and workshop their original poems and are encouraged to dabble in art forms that, while not specifically “poetry” as it is often defined, are close cousins. Students will do a presentation and, at the end of the semester, turn in a portfolio with revised work, a critical essay, and a reflection essay. (Note: There is no art/music/etc. prerequisite for this class, as its main goal is to write poetry.)
EN 408-010 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TR 3:30-4:45 Whalen
Micro/Flash Nonfiction
This course will be run as a micro and flash creative nonfiction workshop. We will read and write very short pieces of nonfiction, primarily memoir and personal essays. If you enjoy reading brief, but powerful, true stories, and want to try your hand at writing them, this is the course for you.
EN 408-011/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.
Prerequisites: EN 200 and EN 301 and EN 303
Linguistics
EN 466-001 ADV STUDIES IN LINGUSTIC TR 12:30-1:45 Worden
In this course, we will examine the scholarship and engage in the practice of teaching English to speakers of other languages in community-based language programs. Topics covered in readings and discussion will include working with students with limited literacy and interrupted formal education, trauma-informed pedagogy, needs analysis, and English for specific purposes. In addition to readings and discussions, this class will incorporate a significant practical component. Students will partner with community-based language classes in the Tuscaloosa area to observe and assist the teachers and will propose and complete projects designed to be implemented in these existing class contexts.
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.