ENG/CMP Course Descriptions

Students in CMP 100 examine and practice writing in public and academic contexts. The course focuses on writing processes and provides sustained practice in critical thinking, reading, and writing demanded by academic and public writing. Student writing and student writers are at the center of the class. Assignments challenge students to expand their approaches to revision and to experiment with a wide variety of writer’s techniques. Particular attention is paid to the intersections of audience, purpose, genre, and context. That is, you will consider not only WHAT to write, but also to whom and in what forms. You will also examine the influences that the writer’s and audience’s circumstances can exert on composition. The conventions of writing, which may include diction, grammar, syntax, usage, and structure, are addressed as part of the process of writing, and students may study how these conventions change with context. CMP 100 fulfills the General Education requirement for a 100-level CMP course.

Students in CMP 200 practice research and research writing. Assignments challenge you to revise you work and to experiment with a variety of writer's tools as you put your own voice and perspectives into conversation with those of other writers and thinkers. The course focuses on: the development of research questions; the uses of library databases, the library, and digital resources to find information and perspectives; and writing with research. Particular attention is paid to developing intellectual curiosity, assessing sources' credibility, reading academic work and studies, and practicing ethical attribution and citation. Student writers are at the center of the class. CMP 200 fulfills the General Education requirement for a 200-level CMP course.

This course is designed to develop and intensify the student's aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional response to imaginative literature. This introductory course is designed for students who aren’t majoring or minoring in literature. This is a General Education course and isn’t applicable to the Major in the B.A. in English/General or Professional Writing. It’s also not applicable to the Specialization in the B.S. in Secondary Education/English, or to the Minor in Literature.

This course will orient students to the significance of critical reading and different genres of writing in public, professional, creative, and academic careers. Students will analyze a range of print and non-print texts and media from different genres. They will also get experience writing in a variety of different genres. Students will exercise and refine interpretive methods, critical strategies, and writing practices as they also explore and prepare for the varied career opportunities for English and Professional Writing majors.

World Literature I surveys literary masterpieces from the Ancient period to the Renaissance, focusing on texts outside the traditional canons of American and British Literature. Particular attention will be given to those texts and authors that have had the greatest impact on our literary world.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course features the intensive reading of selected masterpieces of world literature which reflect the evolution of human thought, to develop in the student the power of discrimination and the habit of evaluating. Either semester may be taken independently.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course draws upon texts of the British Isles from the earliest known writing through the present and includes a variety of genres. In this wide-ranging course, students will read (or otherwise experience) a focused selection of British literature that explores the connections and innovations of the literature that continues to shape the world.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course surveys the fundamentals and conventions of English grammar and syntax. Topics include lexical categories, phrase structure, clause structure, modification, subordination, punctuation, and language acquisition. Additional attention is given to matters of style in order to sharpen students' prose. This course is recommended for those pursuing degrees in English, Professional Writing, Elementary Education, and English Secondary Education although open to any student wishing a deeper understanding of English grammar.

Poetry is among the most fundamental human activities. From our most distant origins all the way down to the present day, from landmark occasions to our daily lives, people sing, pray, protest, aspire, love, and grieve in verse. This course engages these traditions by studying poems old and new to illustrate the traditions and aesthetic theories of the art. It is writing­ intensive, galvanizing skills in analysis, interpretation, research, and critical writing; therefore, it meets General Education requirements for category A4.

This course offers a study of the Bible from a secular, literary perspective. The Bible contains an astonishingly rich variety of genres including narrative fiction, history, lyric poetry, wisdom literature, prophecy, parable, apocalyptic writing, and letters. Students in this course will gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of this extremely important and influential part of Western literary heritage.

This course explores Contemporary Native American writers and their storytelling techniques. This course will put the literature of contemporary Native American writers into conversation with other Native meaning makers such as bloggers, journalists, comedians, and musicians, as well as representations of Native peoples in popular culture.

A genre approach to film study designed to introduce the general student to basic concepts in film criticism, aesthetics and history.

This course explores fiction about global catastrophes and the struggle to survive and rebuild civilization following them. This course is aimed at non-majors and fills basic literature requirements.

This course features critical analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of modern science fiction, novels and shorter works.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course focuses on the analysis of representative peace-oriented writings of various cultures from ancient times to the present as evidenced in poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course uses an Ecocritical approach to representative works in American literature that contemplate nature and reflect on humans’ relationship to the natural world. This course is suitable for both majors and non-majors.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course provides students with an introduction to the major genres of folklore, with an emphasis on American folklore. The relationship between folklore and written imaginative literature is explored. Each student is required to engage in one major collection project.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course teaches critical analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of novels and stories of detection. This course is aimed at non-majors and fills basic literature requirements.

This course offers a literary analysis of works which employ sports as a metaphor for the human condition, its social behavior, and the roles of men and women within it. The authors represented include Robert Coover, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Rita Mae Brown, John Updike, Harry Crews, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, David Mamet, and Samuel Beckett.

Prerequisites:Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course examines the ghost story as a literary genre from its earliest manifestations in myth and legend through contemporary times, including local ghost lore of the Kutztown area.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course introduces students to popular novels best categorized as thrillers. Thrillers feature heart-gripping suspense and heroic people struggling to survive and often save lives or even the world. Students will read and discuss representative novels from such sub-genres as psychological thrillers, supernatural thrillers, spy thrillers, and military thrillers. Some may be current, while others may be of historical interest. Students may also be asked to watch and discuss films that are categorized as thrillers. This course is particularly for non-majors who need to fulfill a general education humanities requirement.

This course explores the special relationship shared by Jazz and Literature. The course will put the literature about jazz culture into conversation with jazz music, jazz film, jazz dance, jazz theater, and other jazz arts.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

The course examines the small town, its attitudes and inhabitants in novels, poetry and drama. Focus is on American writing, but some world classics will also be studied.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

As a relatively new field of literary studies, gay and lesbian literature represents a wide, creative and challenging oeuvre. Novels, poetry, and drama written by/and/or about LGBTQ+ people will be examined in connection with identity and gender politics. Including social movements, camp, feminist and queer theory, and the influence of the AIDS epidemic.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

Contemporary African Novel will introduce students to a broad sampling of novels written originally in English or translated into English, from Amos Tutuola’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954) to the present.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivale

Contemporary African Poetry and Drama will introduce students to a broad sampling of poetry and drama from Africa, written in English or in English translation.

Prerequisites: ENG 23 or its equivalent

Students will analyze literature and music written and performed by African Americans from the eighteenth century to now. Students will read works in different literary and musical genres by Black Americans, including poetry, prose, slave narrative and fiction. This also includes corresponding history that encourages the literary production and movements in and by Black Americans.

Prerequisites: ENG 23 or ENG 25

Inspired by Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, this course will study some of the works read in secret by Nafisi and her students. These works, banned by authorities in Iran as "corrupt," include some of the masterworks by Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Emily Bronte, and Jane Austen. The class will apply multiple lenses to the works: those of traditional Western critics and those of Dr. Nafisi and her students. This course may be used in general education.

This course gives student an opportunity to consider the similarities and distinctions in form and style between literary texts and films. They do so by examining adaptations of literary works and their source material.

Students will also consider the artistic choices made in the work of adaptation and their resulting discourses about the cultures. Critical approaches relevant to literature and film provide the student with additional areas of study.

Prerequisites: ENG 23 or its equivalent

This course examines the history of Gothic literature from the late-eighteenth cen­tury Gothic romance to southern American Gothic fiction and the recent Gothic revival. Representative works, their distinguishing features, their recurrent themes and motifs, their social, psychological, and rhetorical implications are also examined.

Prerequisites:  CMP 100 or its equivalent

This class explores the various mediums of comics, including comic strips, comic books, graphic novels and even web comics. Students will investigate historical and contemporary, independent and mainstream, and American and international comics. Students will develop a vocabulary for examining the specific features of the medium. They will also examine how authors and artists have deployed those features in a range of different contexts.

Why do we still care about fairy tales? What makes them so popular and so relatable to our modern lives? To answer these questions, this course examines classic fairy tales, from their earliest oral and written roots to current representations and transformations. It explores the origins of fairy tales and traces their continual evolution in response to their cultural settings. Students will study a number of individual tales in-depth, read fairy tales and poetry by contemporary authors, and views films that both depict traditional tales and re-interpret them.

Myths, legends, epics, ballads, keens, fairy tales, folklore, poetry, plays, fiction, satire. Cliffs, dolmens, battlefields, passage tombs, ruined monasteries, ring forts, round towers, manor houses, cathedrals, colleges, modern cites. Rich in both great literature and spectacular landscape, Ireland reverberates in the world's imagination. Designed as a study-abroad exploration of Ireland, this course maps the relationship between the Irish landscape and its literature. Ireland boasts one of the world's richest and most influential literary traditions. Reading both classical and modern Irish literature provides opportunities for students to survey elements of its vital and at times troubled social and cultural history. Site visits buttress readings, illustrating the resonances of the landscape in the literature. This course meets General Education, Literature Minor, and English Major requirements.

This course will explore themes within works of science fiction.

This course considers friendship, one of the most important elements of human experience, and examines how it is represented in cultural texts. Primarily literary works, but also works of film, television, video, and social media. Readings that have been important in the history of friendship, ranging from classical Greek, Roman, British and American texts. These will provide background for understanding the ideas about friendship that we have inherited.

This course examines the social, cultural, and artistic relationships between literature and rock music. Course materials include works of literature that engage with or seek to represent rock music. Materials also include rock music that addresses, comments on, or is influenced by literary history and culture.

The course explores the notion that rock music should be taken as seriously as literature. It also explores the notion that techniques of literary interpretation can be applied to rock’s intensities, pleasures and complexities. Readings will rock, listening will be loud.

Take a linguistic tour through the history of the English language. Learn the origins of our eclectic English spelling, listen to the language of Anglo-Saxon warrior kings, and read ancient illuminated manuscripts dotted with runic letters. This course focuses on the origins and development of the English language, tracing linguistic changes from its Indo-European roots through to today, including the modern emergence of World Englishes. We will focus on cultural and historical developments that influenced Old and Middle English and give particular attention to literary texts from these periods. Throughout this course, students will gain familiarity with basic concepts and terminology of linguistics and engage in the process of research writing.

This course examines the work of Jane Austen in her multiple roles as the pioneering woman novelist of two centuries ago. It also examines the major canonical novelist she became recognized as in the twentieth century. And finally, the living presence in contemporary culture that she remains. Approaches will include historicist, feminist, and multimedia.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course surveys the fundamentals and conventions of English grammar and syntax. Topics include lexical categories, phrase structure, clause structure, modification, subordination, punctuation, and language acquisition. Additional attention is given to stylistic concerns in order to sharpen students’ prose. This course is recommended for those pursuing degrees in Professional Writing, English, Elementary Education, and Secondary Education/English. Although, it is open to any student wanting a deeper understanding of English grammar.

In this course students will play, analyze, and write their own interactive narrative games. The literary nature of video console, computer, boardgame, and roleplaying games will be the focus of this course with particular emphasis on short form avant-garde games that challenge the genre. We’ll discuss the ways that narrative games transform the reader into a player with an active role in story creation, how games might be understood as literature, and the tropes that these games often rely upon. Playing and discussing games is one major part of the course activities, but writing will be equally important as the main method of responding to and creating interactive games.

American modernism is the study of various cultural responses to rapid social changes. These social changes were brought on by innovations in technology that caused sharp changes to the global economy.

This course explores interdisciplinary research methods based on the interplay between literature, popular culture (including art, film and music,). It also employs the events that shaped early twentieth-century Americans' sense that they were now inhabiting a changed world. Crucially, the course will explore diverse voices reflecting a variety of responses to modernity.

This course will include the study of several classic literary works commonly read by high school students but will focus more intensively on the study of modern and contemporary works written for adolescents.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

In this course, students will use concepts from contemporary psychology to analyze literary works from a variety of genres. Approaching literature through psychology can add greatly to our understanding of literary creation and consumption, and it can teach us about social dynamics and human motivations. This course will consider how authors create their identities, how literary works change our ways of thinking, and how the exchange between literature and psychology increases our understanding of human nature.

This course invites students to examine and practice writing as an essential tool for exploring, questioning, and creating knowledge in academic, professional and public spaces. Through advanced study in genre conventions, rhetorical tools, grammatical choices and style, students will be better prepared to analyze and respond to academic, professional or public writing tasks. Students will practice sustained research, close reading, deep revision and reflection on writing processes.

This course examines representative contemporary fiction–both American and international–from 1990 to now, highlighting the development of contemporary fiction. It also includes the use of traditional and new literary approaches and the strategies of representation in contemporary fiction.

The course explores the themes and motifs found in contemporary fiction and the historical and cultural contexts of these works.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course is an introduction to selected literary writings by 20th century Asian-American, Native American, and Latino authors, with a critical survey of major themes as well as narrative techniques and strategies.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

The American Autobiography treats a broad spectrum of 18th to 20th-century autobiographies which are characterized by a great diversity in technique, theme, and authorial background.

This course explores the poetry and drama of Black Americans. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley and William Wells Brown as precursors of the Black literary tradition. And ending with, as the focal point, contemporary poets and dramatists.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course explores the prose writings of Black American novelists and essayists, beginning with the slave narratives as prototypes and ending with, as the focal point, the latest contemporary novels.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

African Diasporic Literature will introduce students to literature written originally in French, Spanish and Portuguese. Works were translated into English and written by people of African descent. Authors were geographically located in places like Argentina, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela and more. These places constitute the African Diaspora and are where people tracing their descent to Africa reside. This course will be useful for students in English, Secondary Education, Modern Language, Women’s Studies and General Education.

This course examines the literature, publishing history and rise of 19th-century British working-class fiction from 1800-1860. This includes working-class autobiographies, the Newgate novel and the penny dreadful.

The latter two novels are the literary representatives of the Victorian working-class culture. They were the only affordable literature available for the emerging literate of Victorian England. This literature of the streets grew so popular, it became the publishing phenomenon of the early 19th century.

Now, it’s experiencing an academic resurgence with contemporary interest in Victorian popular culture.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course studies the documentary film genre, its history and the theories of representation that have informed its different modes. Students will analyze the genre’s purpose from multiple perspectives, including that of the filmmaker, the film subject and the viewer. In conjunction with documentary film history, students will read theories that detail the production and analysis of the documentary genre. This course is suitable for both English majors and non-majors.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course will examine linguistics and the various facets of the English language.

An in-depth study of outstanding Twentieth-Century literary works of Latin American writers. The survey will include representative works from the major literary genres: novel, essay, short story, drama and poetry.

Literacy isn't learned – it’s lived. While we may associate it primarily with school, literacy saturates our work and 'social lives.' Furthermore, an educational focus on text-based literacies is complicated by social media, remix practices, and new technologies.

"Reading" and "writing," then, need to be understood in light of our shifting culture: technologically, socially, economically and politically. Students will challenge literacy myths and measures while exploring their own lived literacies.

This course is an in-depth study in English translation of some outstanding works in German literature. It is devoted to German writers from Lessing to E.T.A. Hoffmann. Its sequel, ENG/GER 254, is a continuation of ENG/GER 253 and treats outstanding writers from Realism through the 20th century. Either semester may be taken independently.

This course is an in-depth study in English translation of some outstanding works in German literature from Realism through the 20th century. It is a continuation of GER 253. Either semester may be taken independently.

This course entails an in-depth study in English translation of selected masterpieces of Russian literature. This course deals with Russian literature from Pushkin through Tolstoy.

This course entails an in-depth study in English translation of selected masterpieces of Russian literature. This course deals with Chekhov, continues through Tolstaia and includes a survey of modern Russian poetry.

This course entails an in-depth study of works from French literature selected for their humanistic character, their artistic quality and their present vitality. Primary emphasis is the appreciation of the innovative approach of each author to the universal themes of love and death, Man and Nature, Man's relation to God, war and peace, freedom and bondage. This survey will include representative works from the major literary genres: novel, essay, short story, drama and poetry (in English). The first semester (I) deals with French literature until 1800.

This course entails an in-depth study of works from French literature selected for their humanistic character, their artistic quality and their present vitality. Primary emphasis is the appreciation of the innovative approach of each author to the universal themes of love and death, Man and Nature, Man's relation to God, war and peace, freedom and bondage. This survey will include representative works from the major literary genres: novel, essay, short story, drama and poetry (in English). The second semester (II) deals with French literature until 1800 to the contemporary period.

This course provides undergraduate students an introduction to the history, traditions, issues, problems, and debates of Composition and Rhetoric Studies. Despite its long history and growing influence in academia, many students of English are unfamiliar with the depth and breadth of the field of Composition and Rhetoric. It is the goal of this course to familiarize undergraduate students with the historical development of Composition and Rhetoric Studies and the shape of the field today. This course will include inquiry into the major theoretical, professional and disciplinary issues and challenges of the field. The course also provides an introduction to research methods and resources in Composition and Rhetoric, as well as experience writing academically in and about Comp/Rhet Studies.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course provides advanced study of research and research writing in humanities, informing students’ work across disciplines, professions, and contexts.

Moving beyond the basics of using search engines, students will develop information literacy as they navigate databases and web spaces. They will closely read academic studies from across disciplines and interpret visual representations of data.

Students will conduct first-person research, such as ethnography, case study, oral history, interview, or survey. Students will draft, revise, and present their original research. This course is an elective in the English major.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course focuses on development of the short story as a distinct literary type traced by means of wide reading and close analysis.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course investigates the complex relationship that women have with violence. Students look at written and visual texts that depict women as both victims/survivors and perpetrators of violence. This allows students to discuss women in violent movements and the change in gender ideology and political climates. This course analyzes women’s relationship to violence, how it’s constructed and whether or not women are “naturally” non-violent. While this course doesn’t condone the use of violence, it studies ways women use violent tactics to resist oppression. It also shows how women enact revenge to find their voice in society.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

The course will examine the literary and political flowering of late 16th century England. The focus of the investigation will be the role of the Renaissance queen in bringing about England’s “Golden Age.”

While the spoken and written word have long been studied for their rhetorical intent and success, this study has been conducted primarily through a male lens. As such, women’s contributions to rhetoric throughout history, like so many other aspects of women’s experience, have yet to be fully explored. Women, Writing, and Rhetoric seeks to expand the study of rhetoric with a multi-layered consideration of how rhetoric has been informed by, and informs, a female consciousness. This is an elective course for English majors and Women’s Studies minors.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course emphasizes the archetypal images found in portrayals of women from Greek mythology to the present.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course covers selected literary texts by nineteenth-century British and American women writers. It also focuses on gender-specific conflicts and changing perceptions about the nature, roles, and rights of women during this important era in the history of literature by women.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

The focus of this course is modern and contemporary literature by women around the world. Students will read selected fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and examine these works primarily, but not exclusively, from the perspectives of Feminist Critical Theory.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course explores some of the major U.S. and Canadian women writers from approximately 1880 to the present. Taking a multi-genre and multi-critical approach, students will study the important contributions U.S. and Canadian women authors have made and are making to modern and contemporary literature. This course is suitable for both majors and non-majors.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course is offered as a study aboard option in London. American Modernists in London provide the opportunity to delve into a significant moment in literary history.

At the turn of the 20th century, London was seen as the capital of modern world culture. This attracted America’s most significant writers: Henry James, Mark Twain, Jack London, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. Students will read works written by these writers while living in London. They will even visit and explore the places these writers frequented.

The class will map the influence of turn-of-the-century London on the development of American identity at a pivotal historical moment.

This course satisfies electives in the English major as well as General Education Humanities and LAS electives.

This course will examine the genre of Victorian popular novels known as Sensation Fiction. These novels thrilled and horrified the Victorian middle class readers with tales of sinister conspiracies, bigamy, murder, sexual scandals, and madness. Students will study the cultural role and unusual narrative forms of this subversive and pleasurably horrifying popular literature.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

Students will learn how to collect, analyze, and derive insights from social media information. Students will also learn how to craft effective technical reports based on information generated from social media analysis. Students will examine and report effective strategies for creating social media content.

This course helps students become better at producing their own social media content, which is needed in today’s world. Students will develop skills in using both freely available and industry-standard digital social media analytics tools.

This course examines the nineteenth-century fascination with bizarre phenomena such as mesmerism, séances, and weird science of all kinds. Students will read British and American literary and theoretical texts that engage with contemporary scientific, pseudoscientific, and spiritualist theories and practices, including evolution, phrenology, and mediumship.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course offers a study of popular media texts, especially, but not exclusively, film, television, and new media, through a variety of theoretical lenses. Students will gain an understanding of foundational media theories while also examining more contemporary critical approaches to popular media texts.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course will explore some of the literature of the Middle Ages (ca. 500-1500) in translation. Readings will be drawn from the Anglo-Saxon period, the era of English and French romance, and the Middle English period. Students will read in a number of genres, including epic, romance, fabliau, saga, and allegorical. Special focus will be given to Chaucer.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course provides undergraduate students an introduction to selected Native American Women Writers across several genres. Students will experience a variety of writings which move across traditional boundaries (such as nonfiction, poetry, fiction, theory, activist, and so on). The course also provides students an opportunity to consider Indigenous Feminism in theory and practice. Students will consider issues of gender, identity, cross-cultural understanding, individuality and community by intellectually engaging with the texts and performances of Native American women.
This class may also include the opportunity for digital storytelling, blogging, interviewing, and community engagement.

The best and/or most representative dramatic works of the Golden Age of English drama (exclusive of those by Shakespeare) are read, discussed, and evaluated. Dramatists receiving paramount consideration include Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Marston, Heywood, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Tourneur, Middleton, Massinger, and Ford.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

The writings of Browne, Burton, Donne, Marvell, Bunyan, and Milton studied within the framework of English life from 1600 to 1675.

Punk is recognized as a musical phenomenon, which emerged in the mid-l 970s as an anarchic, sometimes satiric, always disruptive force. This course broadens that concept, engaging a series of cultural moments from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. These moments are crucial in understanding punk's appearance and elaboration in the United States.

The course will examine a number of artifacts that articulated and incorporated punk's style and energy. This includes records and reviews, but also prose fiction, film, visual arts, graphic narrative and theoretical discourse.

This course includes artists like Lester Bangs, Samuel R. Delany, Patti Smith, Kathy Acker, X, Linda Hutcheon and Fredric Jameson.

This course explores poetry, neoclassical literary criticism, and drama from 1660 to 1780 with consideration of central issues and prevailing attitudes reflected therein. This course also places emphasis on major writers.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course addresses English literature of the eighteenth century. Focus is primarily on, but not limited to, prose, especially the novel.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course provides an overview of the leading currents, issues, and debates in feminist literary theory, including gendered voice, difference vs. equality feminism, essentialism, and queer theory. Students will read theoretical and literary selections from nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first century feminists.

A workshop, offered only in summer sessions, designed to supplement courses in Shakespeare with reference to the staging and performance of Shakespeare's plays. The course is based on reading and examining selected plays through the use of videotapes, films, and available staged performances at summer theatres.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalen

Students will study a selection of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. Selections include The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and more. The course also examines the social, historical and literary landscape of this time. Students will utilize recordings, movies and "live" and TV productions.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This class explores Shakespeare's later plays including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, the Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Students will learn the social, historical and literary background to help them understand and appreciate the work. The course also includes recordings, movies and several "live" acts and TV productions.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course focuses on honing the analysis and production of contemporary digital texts. Specifically, the course examines emerging areas within Rhetoric and Composition. Students will learn how vital visual rhetoric, digital writing and multimodal style are in cultivating methods of analysis and production. Students will familiarize themselves with issues surrounding the creation, revision and deployment of digital texts. Students will understand the rhetoric involved in arranging words, images, sounds, spaces, fonts, etc...to create modern texts and arguments.

A comprehensive study of the grammar of American English: its sound system, its morphological system, and its syntax from the structural and generative-transformational standpoints.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

Cooperative investigation of the relationships between literature and rhetoric. Selected works of major literary figures will be examined with reference to their persuasive power and their ability to produce attitude change.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent’

This course examines the history of Gothic literature from the late eighteenth-century Gothic romance to southern American Gothic fiction and the recent Gothic revival. Representative works, their distinguishing features, their recurrent themes and motifs, their social, psychological and rhetorical implications are also examined.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This is a course in which students participate in critical analysis and interpretation of an international selection of classic works. These works include literature from Greek drama to modern absurdist stories that create the theme of crime and punishment.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course investigates the crucial role that story plays in creating impactful campaigns within new and emerging media environments. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which the story continues to be one of the most important rhetorical tools in community and social movements seeking change. Readings will draw from a wide range of disciplines including rhetoric, literacy studies, marketing, public relations, communication studies, social media theory, cognitive psychology, and social movement studies.

This course explores the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and their contemporaries in the light of social background, biography, and critical doctrine.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

Introduction to Afro-Caribbean Literature students will study various genres and authors from West Indian countries. Works range in location from Cuba, Haiti, Martinique, Jamaica and Trinidad. Students will also examine writing style, content significance and thematic representation. They will study the critical, socio-political, cultural, and historical motivations that influence the authors’ texts.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course is devoted to analyzing American poetry from the period known as the “long 1960’s.” This time incapsulates the Cold War’s impacts from the 50’s through the 70’s, when the Vietnam War and Watergate hearings concluded. Authors associated with numerous schools and movements, including the Beats, confessional poets, New York School, language poets and Black Arts. Students will closely analyze a variety of works, including free verse and traditional poems. They will also examine significant poets and discuss theories and appropriations in pop culture. Students will read and consider social, political and aesthetic contexts during this turbulent time in American culture.

The major Victorian poets, Browning, Tennyson, and Arnold, are studied in detail, and certain minor poets are examined.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course features the study of representative prose works in the novel and the essay.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

The connection between rhetoric and democracy is an old one dating back to the origins of both concepts in Western traditions. Simply put rhetoric the skilled use of argument and persuasive discourse and democracy were seen as ways to replace violence as the primary means of governing and maintaining social order. However, the connections between democracy and rhetoric may not be immediately apparent indeed the two may appear to be in opposition in contemporary society. This course argues that the intimate connections between rhetoric and democracy are critical to retain and reclaim for the health of democratic society and culture. In the era of globalization and digital media these connections are even more important. A healthy democracy requires citizen advocates who are skilled in the analysis of public discourse as well as in the production of persuasive texts.

The early 21st century has exploded with the development, repurposing and critical use of new media by political activists. This course explores the various complex ways in which activists have made use of and rewritten what counts as media. It also explores who counts as an authorized writer and what counts as writing. The course will investigate examples of activist campaigns and emergent theories of literacy. Students will learn the role of literacy training for the development of activists and how this opposes early education schooling.

Contemporary Drama examines works in English of the last 20 years. The course includes original plays written in English and translations of plays from other languages into English. It also includes new interpretations of revived works.

The course discusses themes and subjects in plays relevant to contemporary life. This entails the portrayal of politics, business, treatment of the individual and family, philosophy, religion, sexuality, gender, ethnicity and race.

The course will also note developments in and illustrations of dramatic theories.

Prerequisites:Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

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This course will discuss the historical development of Adolescent/Children's Literature. Mainly focusing on the rising popularity of contemporary Young Adolescent Literature (YA), which gained relevancy in the past few decades.

In addition to recent texts of YA literature, it will also include the canonical texts that these recent texts are based on. This will be done by grouping contemporary texts and canonical texts by theme. Themes such as dystopia/utopia, coming of age, gender studies, mythology, the American dream, and racial issues.

Studies include the application of literary theory in a high school setting and strategies for teaching literature to struggling readers.

This course is an in-depth study of Melville and Whitman as creative forces in the shaping of American poetry and prose. Consideration is given to the cultural background from which their works derive.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course will focus on an analysis of Regionalism, Realism, and Naturalism in American literature between 1865 and 1910. Special attention will be paid to the works of Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, and New England Regional writers.

Prerequisites: ENG 23 or its equivalent

A comprehensive study of world drama from its beginnings to the late 19th century.

Prerequisites: ENG 23 or its equivalent

This course provides undergraduates with an introduction to Literacy Studies. Students will learn the foundation of literary practices within historical and current perspectives. They will consider assumptions about literacy as well as its implications in teaching. Students will conduct primary and secondary research, study research methods and consider effects on learning and navigating culture. This course is an elective for English majors with an emphasis on digital literacy.

The evolution of the world novel traced from its beginnings to World War I.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course is designed to explore the underlying structures of film as a communications medium and as an art form. This course will include both foreign and American films.

This course explores a comparative and intertextual analysis of the literary work of Gerard Manley Hopkins as a spiritual autobiography. Students mainly focus on his perspective of the Anglo-Gaelic milieu of the late 19th/early 20th century.

This course focuses on understanding historical and contemporary rhetorical conceptions of style in order to foster more sophisticated invention, analysis, and production of 21st-century compositions. Specifically, the course examines the idea of style from its ancient understandings rooted in orality up to modern iterations rooted in multimodal composition and digital writing

In this course, students will investigate the intersections of feminist film theory and cinematic representations of gender as both subject and object. Gender equality, identity, fluidity, and freedom have been foregrounded in contemporary political and social conversations and accordingly in cultural products such as film. The course will examine the political, social, economic, and cultural implications of gender representations within the narrative, documentary and avant-garde traditions of feminist and anti-feminist film practices and theory. Special attention will be paid to marginalized and underrepresented communities to highlight conversations about human rights, civil rights, and equality.

British and Irish poetry, drama, and prose fiction since 1965 are analyzed in form and content with special attention given to the relationship of literary techniques, and cultural, historical, and theoretical context.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

J.R.R. Tolkien has been called “the Author of the 20th Century.” And C.S. Lewis is likewise one of the best-known names among literary and academic figures of the last 100 years. This course explains why two marginalized Oxford professors now appear as dominant literary figures for their generation and succeeding ones.

The main concentration will be on the works of Tolkien and Lewis and their impact on 20th and 21st century fiction. Students will also explore the circumstances of their lives, friendship with each other and the group known as the Inklings.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

Reading and analysis of selected plays from the time of Ibsen to the present, thus providing a comprehensive view of the best dramatic literature of the Modern American, British, and European theatre since 1870. Recordings, television productions, and stage performances are incorporated whenever possible.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

Representative poetry published since 1870 in England and America as the basis for a study of forms, aspects, and tendencies in contemporary verse, with particular reference to poetry as a criticism of modern life.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

World War One, empires on the brink, and explosive developments in art,
technology, and human consciousness: Modernism and modernist literature sought to respond to all of these factors, and many more. The course will examine fiction of the modernist avant-gardes, the high modernism of the interwar years, and other literary movements, like Surrealism, the Lost Generation, and the Harlem Renaissance.
Novels from the United States and the United Kingdom provide the primary array of texts; given the importance of global social phenomena during the period, novels from other regions may be considered.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

Symbol and theme as used by representative major American poets, dramatists, and novelists of the Twentieth Century.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

What is the postmodern?  When did it begin-and is it over? Is it an artistic movement or a socio-cultural condition? And why do people get so agitated whenever its name is spoken? To answer these questions, the course examines representative postmodern literature and arts across a variety of media and genres.

The course focuses on texts produced in the late 20th century in America, with the occasional foray to continental Europe. Primary texts include novels, rock music, theory, films, comics and visual arts. Students will also analyze some texts that incorporate all of the above.

The course provides focus on a particular figure, period, or topic in language, literature, and/or rhetoric. Students may register for the course for up to six total semester hours of credit; students may not repeatedly register for a specific iteration of the course.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent and permission of the instructor

A course for students who wish to study the work of a particular literary figure or a special topic in language, literature, or communications in depth. Students may register for this course more than once, up to a maximum of six semester hours of credit, so long as they do not repeat the same topic.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent and permission of the instructor and department chairperson

This course is an introduction to selected rhetorical strategies, techniques and tactics of contemporary Native American peoples in four genres. These genres include creative nonfiction, stand-up comedy, journalism and music.

Students will research how Native American artists, speakers and performers voice their work in the modern intellectual thought and practice. Students will consider issues of identity, cross-cultural understanding, individuality and community. They will learn to recognize and practice accretive thinking, rhetorical sovereignty and argument through imaginative storytelling. This allows students to intellectually engage with the texts and performances of indigenous practitioners.

This class may also include the opportunity for digital storytelling, blogging, interviewing, and community engagement.

This course examines the major critical and theoretical texts of western civilization. Along with the major modern critical approaches to the study, interpretation, and evaluation of literature. And applies such theory to literary works from primarily western writers.

This course also explores a number of questions and issues that are central to literary studies.

• Namely, what is literature?
• What is the function of literature?
• Is it an aesthetic object that embodies universal truths?
• Or is it a socially constructed text that participates in the cultural discourses and power relations that create it?
• How do we analyze and evaluate literature in terms of what it represents? What is the role of the literary critic?
• Are there correct and incorrect ways to read literature?
• What is the relationship between writers, readers, society, and literature?
• What do our individual understandings of literature say about each of us as writers, readers, teachers, and literary scholars?

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent and ENG 100, or permission of the instructor and the department chair

This course gives students the tools they need to transition from undergraduate academic study to the professional application of skills. It will show students how to apply for internships and identify and work towards specific post-graduation goals. Students will learn about internship and professional opportunities for English and Professional Writing majors.

Students will create resumes and cover letters and effective social media profiles. They will also develop a professional website and network with professionals. Students will be required to update the professional website during the internship to include work done during this experience.

This course is required for undergraduate English/ Professional Writing majors and should be taken prior to your internship.

This is a course that uses concepts in Film Theory and Criticism to guide students in the production of a short narrative film. After an intensive study of theoretical and stylistic models found in the work of contemporary and past master filmmakers, students working collaboratively in groups will produce, script, shoot, and edit a short fictional film on digital video. In this course, students will explore how each filmmaker can act as a role model to embody a distinct point of view expressed in the audio-visual language of cinema; students will similarly learn how to embody their own viewpoint through the medium of film.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent, or the permission of the instructor and one of the following courses: ENG 100, 119, 141, 219, 242, 244, 246, 379, WRI 208, 212, 213, 340

The Professional Writing/English internship is an opportunity for supervised, practical work experience in professional contexts. The skills attendant to English Studies are valued and can be developed throughout the internship.

Internships should be secured by students under the advisement and coordination of English Department faculty, following ENG/WRI 380 Professionalization Seminar.

The internship will extend the student's academic studies into the workplace. This can include Editing, Journalism, Publishing, Public Relations, Social Media, Research, Campaign Organization, Communications, or Marketing. This internship may be taken for three, six or nine credits.

This course acts as Honors students’ independent study/thesis.

This course features supplementary research conducted by an Honors student in an upper-division (or 300 or 400 level) course in which the student is enrolled. The research is related to a topic in the course, but in addition to the standard requirements of the course, the research should exhibit advanced inquiry or investigation into the topic. The Honors student earns 1, 2, or 3 credits in addition to credits for the course itself. The number of additional credits depends on the amount and intensity of the supplementary research. Each department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has a specific course number which uses the departmental prefix, but all courses will use a common number (398). The course title will read “Honors Supplementary Research” and will have a variable credit value from 1 to 3 credits, e.g. ENG 398 Honors Supplementary Research.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course studies the histories of rhetoric as well as contemporary intersections and applications across multiple disciplines. This can include media, pop culture, sciences, feminisms and gender studies. It can also include composition studies, literary theories, literacies, global issues, pedagogy, arts, and political discourse. The writing assignments allow students to examine issues in more depth and explore alternative rhetorical stances and situations.

This course is a brief critical survey of British and American drama of the 20th century with primary focus on the work of such major figures as Shaw, O’Neil, O’Casey, Miller, Williams, Albee and Pinter.

Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent

This course will deal in-depth with a specific issue or area in English or a literary figure not covered or only covered briefly in another graduate English course. The course may be taken up to two times (6 credit hours), provided that the selected topic is different.

This course features comparative studies of selected works of Joyce, Lawrence and Woolf. ENG 493 also features analysis of symbol and archetype as structural and thematic devices as well as rhetorical comparison of elements of style.
Prerequisites: Any 100 – level CMP course or equivalent