Lower-Division Elective
Lower-division Elective courses allow students to choose (or “elect”) courses or faculty specific to their own developing interests, enabling them thereby to shape their own educational experience. Major II students can also use one lower-division elective to fulfill the Writing Requirement with ENG 209 The Craft of the Sentence.
12328
People respond to movies in different ways, and there are many reasons for this. We have all stood in the lobby of a theater and heard conflicting opinions from people who have just seen the same film. Some loved it, some hated it, some found it just OK. Perhaps we've thought, "What do they know... (read more)
12329
Public Speaking as a Liberal Art gives students a foundation in the classical principles of rhetoric and teaches application of these arts to contemporary contexts. Students will have multiple opportunities to practice engaged public speaking and learn to craft effective arguments on self-... (read more)
12332
This course will survey the history of stories about the creation of artificial humans, while thinking about conventions of the genre, its particular uses and adaptations, and how it intersects with other genres. We’ll look at the desires expressed by this genre: most of all, the desire to... (read more)
12335
What role can literature play in exposing environmentally harmful modes of thinking, being, and acting, while dramatizing appealing alternatives? How are environmental issues connected to social hierarchies such as race, class, sexuality and disability and to histories of settler colonialism?... (read more)
12336
In this course we will study fiction, essays, and poetry by African American authors. We attend to the historical, political, and literary contexts of each of our readings. We will investigate whether there are specific formal and thematic elements that define an African American literary... (read more)
12339
What happens when digital tools and literature meet? What can the “digital turn” in literary studies help us to understand about language, aesthetics, truth, fiction, media, and digital literacy? English 250 is an introductory course to Digital Humanities, or DH—a field that investigates the... (read more)
12340
This course explores the fundamentals of film and media aesthetics, including narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. By learning how to analyze film and utilize proper cinematic language, students will begin to critically understand film as an art form and a product of... (read more)
12341
This course explores the fundamentals of film and media aesthetics, including narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. By learning how to analyze film and utilize proper cinematic language, students will begin to critically understand film as an art form and a product of... (read more)
12342
This class provides an introduction to the history and art of comics and to the methodologies of the academic discipline of Comics Studies. Students will be exposed to a range of different comic-art forms (including newspaper strips, collections of serialized comic books, and free-standing... (read more)
12343
This course provides an introduction to the analysis of comics and graphic narratives in terms of their poetics, genres, forms, history, and the academic discipline of Comics Studies. Our multifaceted examination will balance close reading with in-depth research and analysis of the development... (read more)
16505
Explores the relationship between folklore and popular culture; examines a diversity of approaches to the analysis of "common culture" including urban legends, comics, cultural performances, youth culture, Internet folklore, street art, and other forms of expression as these relate to various... (read more)
17034
Testimonio is a form of lifewriting whose narrator is a “real” protagonist, or witness, of the events he/she recounts. Although lifewriting can be located in several different literary categories, one of the defining features of a testimonio, as (re)defined in the 1960’s and 1970’s, is its overt... (read more)
17035
In this introduction to medieval literature we will consider the ways various authors explore questions about love, obedience, and the unknowable. We will read a variety of medieval genres, including instructions on how to behave during a love affair, Arthurian romances about Lancelot, an... (read more)
17036
This course is an introductory survey where we will begin to identify and define the distinct fields of Chicanx and Latinx literature. In addition to considering how history and politics shape these robust fields, we will also critically examine the ways in which texts and media continue to... (read more)
17176
English 107: Reinterpreting Ancient World Literature for Modern Times
In this survey course we will be exploring the oral literary traditions from three ancient and early medieval cultures: Greece, India, and the Middle East. We will examine each of our assigned texts through three... (read more)
17390
This course explores the fundamentals of film and media aesthetics, including narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. By learning how to analyze film and utilize proper cinematic language, students will begin to critically understand film as an art form and a product of... (read more)
17948
According to Cherokee scholar, musician, and storyteller Thomas King, “The truth about stories is, that’s all we are” (2). Of course, then, at times people are dependent on who is telling their stories. Since time immemorial, Native American peoples have been telling their own stories, of... (read more)
17962
Poetry is a word today often deployed in praise of what is not poetry; meanwhile, poetry itself is largely ignored or disparaged. It is curious, too, that a surprising number of people in the English-speaking world continue to write and appreciate poetry, even as its public role has... (read more)
18032
ENG 240 introduces students to essential texts and concepts in disability studies and applies them to American history, popular culture, and literature, with a focus on racial diversity and learning directly from people who experience a wide spectrum of bodymind variabilities. Disability is not... (read more)
32030
In ENG 104, we will explore texts that articulate the connections between the textual body and the human body it seeks to represent. We will pay special attention to themes of joy, resilience, and beauty as they relate to embodiment. To consider how these texts navigate race, gender, embodiment... (read more)
32033
Though the slave narrative genre reached its peak in the mid-19th century, this mode of autobiography has a history that stretches from the 1700s to the present across numerous oceans, islands, and continents. We will take seriously the historical origins of the slave narrative, while also... (read more)
32036
In this course you’ll learn the language of grammar: the technical terms and the conceptual principles needed to describe the grammatical structure of sentences. You’ll learn sentence diagramming in order to help see the patterns behind grammatical concepts, and you’ll learn to better apply... (read more)
32038
appreciation for the power of environmental literature to contribute to the move toward a more ethical In order to address the current climate and environmental crises, it is important to look at not just technological and scientific solutions, but at the ways in which cultural productions can... (read more)
32040
This course is a survey of writings by African American authors. We will study fiction, essays, and poetry in their historical, political, and literary contexts from the late-eighteenth century to the present. We will investigate whether there are specific formal and thematic elements that... (read more)
32041
This introductory course explores the forms, cultural resonances, aesthetics, and political exigency of Latinx literatures in the United States. From the Chicano Civil Rights Movement to current debates on citizenship, this course examines how Latinx literature from the 20th and 21st centuries... (read more)
32042
In 1968, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American literature. Momaday's award signaled for many the “arrival” of Native authors to the American literary scene and ushered in an unprecedented era of Native literary production widely... (read more)
32043
This course explores the fundamentals of film and media aesthetics, including narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. By learning how to analyze film and utilize proper cinematic language, students will begin to critically understand film as an art form and a product of... (read more)
32044
This course provides an introduction to the analysis of comics and graphic narratives in terms of their poetics, genres, forms, history, and the academic discipline of Comics Studies. Our multifaceted examination will balance close reading with in-depth research and analysis of the development... (read more)
32268
Introduces the study of beliefs about the supernatural by examining diverse approaches to the description and analysis of belief traditions and religious cultures. Topics include apparitions, apocalyptic cults, magic, zombies, possession states, and supernatural assault. A&L, IC, ENGL,... (read more)
35694
ENG 104 introduces you to fiction and its formal elements by reading, discussing, and writing about short stories and one short novel. To highlight the imaginative work of fiction, we will focus in this course on speculative fiction, including science fiction, weird fiction, and fantasy. Each... (read more)
35697
This course will ground our ongoing experience of the COVID-19 crisis in the literature of plague and pandemic stretching back four centuries. We will begin with contemporary fiction by Carmen Maria Machado (“Inventory”), Ling Ma (Severance), and Emily St John Mandell (Station... (read more)
35698
This course is an introduction to the genre of comedy. It surveys examples of comedy across a long historical range—from classical Greece to contemporary America—and a breadth of media forms, including drama, novel, film, and stand-up. Among other questions, we’ll ask: why is comedy so difficult... (read more)
36119
Liars, Fools, and Con Artists. In this class, we will read misleading, deceptive stories and untrustworthy narrators. When you can’t trust the narrator, what should you focus on? What do untrustworthy narrators and deceptive stories reveal about the nature of reading, writing, and interpretation... (read more)
36589
People respond to movies in different ways, and there are many reasons for this. We have all stood in the lobby of a theater and heard conflicting opinions from people who have just seen the same film. Some loved it, some hated it, some found it just OK. Perhaps we've thought, "What do they know... (read more)
36722
Instructor: Lowthorp, L.
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36833
We will engage with a rich tradition of Black-centered essay writing articulating how Blackness shapes (and shapes our understanding of) existence in an anti-Black world. Kelley, Du Bois, and Gordon lead us to the inherent contradictions in Institutions of thought and thought, itself. Sharpe,... (read more)
37005
This course provides a framework for thinking critically about illness, medical access, and the concept of health using humanities methodologies. Students will examine questions of structural inequities in medical outcomes and experiences based on gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status,... (read more)
37156
Students in ENG 207 read and discuss Shakespeare's earlier work. Specific topics for discussion may include Shakespeare’s representations of friendship, gender, sexuality and desire, familial and political conflict, consciousness, emotion, history, ethics, power, and authorship itself,... (read more)
22039
Theme: Disability in Modern Fiction
Instrucror: A. Steele
ENG 104 introduces you to prose narrative and its formal elements by reading, discussing, and writing about works of modern literature. To help us better recognize these formal elements, we will pay specific attention to the... (read more)
22042
ENG 105 is an introduction to drama—literature written for performance or with the conventions of performance in mind. In this course you will read, discuss, and analyze a diverse selection of influential plays by English and American writers, in addition to works in translation. The texts we... (read more)
22043
People respond to movies in different ways, and there are many reasons for this. We have all stood in the lobby of a theater and heard conflicting opinions from people who have just seen the same film. Some loved it, some hated it, some found it just OK. Perhaps we've thought, "What do they know... (read more)