ENGL 147
Writing Across Disciplines
MW 12:45 to 2:00 Qiu
In this course, students will develop their genre knowledge and metacognitive skills to prepare for the advanced writing, reading, and research tasks required in upper-level writing and disciplinary courses across the university. Through individual and group inquiry, students will analyze and discuss the conventions of academic genres to understand the textual and linguistic features and disciplinary expectations of each form of writing. Then, students will apply these generic conventions through the production and revision of writing within each genre. Throughout the semester, students will engage in workshops and discussions that foster skills in the areas of seminar participation, collaboration, rhetorical awareness, and critical thinking. This course is specifically designed for non-native speakers of English, but native speakers may take the course with the approval of the instructor. Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
ENGL 180
Writing Tutorial
TBA Schaffer
English 180 is a one-credit writing tutorial class designed to develop students’ expository writing skills through weekly scheduled conferences with a Writing Resource Center Instructor. Goals are to produce clear, well-organized, and mechanically acceptable prose, and to demonstrate learned writing skills throughout the term. Course content is highly individualized based on both the instructor’s initial assessment of the student’s writing and the student’s particular concerns. All students must produce a minimum of 12 pages of finished writing for each credit for which they are enrolled, and complete other assignments as designed by the instructor to assist in meeting course goals.
ENGL 200
Literature in English
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Ericson
This course introduces students to the reading of literature in the English language. Through close attention to the practice of reading, students are invited to consider some of the characteristic forms and functions imaginative literature has taken, together with some of the changes that have taken place in what and how readers read.
Most stories require a degree of coincidence, artifice, or fantasy to succeed. A statue turns into a living woman; an aristocrat interested in revolution is introduced to a Bolshevik at the opera; a painting ages in place of the man who sat for it. Sometimes we allow the blatant lie; other times, we find ourselves saying “that wouldn’t happen.” When and why do we feel an obligation to suspend our disbelief? From the ambiguous realism of Shakespeare’s romances to the blatant fabulism of Borges, literature is always somewhere between fact and fiction—and that neither/nor position often brings out what’s most daring, innovative, and evocative in a text. Moving through the major genres of literature as we go chronologically from the English Renaissance to the brink of the 21st century, this version of ENGL 200 examines the conflicted relationship between fact, fiction, and wonder. Writers will include Marlowe, Shakespeare, Swift, Baldwin, Austen, and Hurston, among others.
This course counts toward the Communication-Intensive (CI) Seminar portion of the Written, Oral, and Multimodal Communication GER.
ENGL 203-100
Introduction to Creative Writing
MW 3:20 to 4:35 Schaer
A course exploring basic issues and techniques of writing narrative prose and verse through exercises, analysis, and experiment. For students who wish to try their abilities across a spectrum of genres.
ENGL 203-101
Introduction to Creative Writing
MW 4:50 to 6:05 Schaer
A course exploring basic issues and techniques of writing narrative prose and verse through exercises, analysis, and experiment. For students who wish to try their abilities across a spectrum of genres.
ENGL 203-102
Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Ring
How do poets and fiction writers shape sounds and sentences, character and scene, tone and image, to make sense of the world? To rage against or delight in its nonsense? To confront or inhabit the complexities of pain, grief, joy, beauty? How does creative writing help us to make meaning, and what makes meaning meaningful? This course will engage such questions as it introduces you to the theory and practice of writing poetry and fiction. Guiding our exploration will be readings on poetics, or the philosophy behind literary techniques. We will also engage in close reading of select poems and short stories to learn what we like and don’t like and why, and we will habituate reading “opportunistically”—that is, deconstructing how certain stylistic features do what they do so that you can employ these strategies in your own writing. You will be expected to write 4 poems and 2 fiction pieces in response to select prompts. Other assignments include keeping a journal, completing in-class writing and revision exercises, writing responses to a poem and short story from our readings, and compiling a final portfolio. This course prioritizes the revision process; you will be expected to complete revised drafts of your work, guided by feedback from your peers and instructor. This course will ultimately challenge you to read in new ways, take risks with your writing technique, and press into the grit of the creative writing process.
ENGL 205
Media Literacy
Understanding and Engaging with Media
TTh 6:00 to 7:15 Polverine
This course will explore the complex role of media in society, its influence, and how to critically engage with all the media content we absorb each day. Students will learn to differentiate between reputable and questionable sources, evaluate media messages, and develop skills to become both informed consumers and responsible producers of media content
ENGL 217A/WRIT 210
Business and Professional Writing
MW 4:50 to 6:05 Reader
TTh 8:30 to 9:45 Wu
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Wu
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Robisch
TTh 4:00 to 5:15 Robisch
TTh 1:00 to 2:15 Wu
The ability to communicate effectively is a powerful skill, one with real and significant consequences. This is particularly true in the 21st-century workplace, where we use words and images to address needs, solve problems, persuade audiences, and even arrange the details of our professional and personal lives. Communication requirements and expectations are constantly changing, whether we work in small business, large companies, non-profit organizations, research labs, or hospitals. As such, we need to be adaptable writers and readers of all kinds of documents — from print to digital. This course offers students an introduction to professional communication in theory and practice. We will pay special attention to audience analysis, persuasive techniques in written and oral communication, document design strategies, and ethical communication practices. Recommended preparation: Passing grade in an Academic Inquiry Seminar or SAGES First Seminar. Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
ENGL 217B/WRIT 211
Writing for the Health Professions
MW 12:45 to 2:00 Larson
MW 9:30 to 10:20 Sattler
MW 10:35 to 11:25 Druffel
TTh 8:30 to 9:45 Codita
TTh 1:00 to 2:15 Codita
MWF 11:40 to 12:30 Sattler
TTh 2:30 to 3:45 Daniel
This course offers practice and training in the professional and technical writing skills common to health professions (e.g., medicine, nursing, dentistry). Attention will be paid to the writing processes of drafting, revising, and editing. Typical assignments include: letters, resumes, personal essays, professional communication genres (e.g., email, reports, patient charts, and histories), and scholarly genres (e.g., abstracts, articles, and reviews). Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
ENGL 250-100
Responsible AI: Cultivating a Just and Sustainable Socio-technical Future through Data Citizenship
TBA Beal
An introduction to the key issues that inform ethically responsible design, deployment, and use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with particular focus on the impact of data practices. From generative language models to video surveillance and identity detection to facial recognition, AI is becoming more and more embedded in our everyday lives. These AI technologies are increasingly built on our data, whether we are aware of it or not. In this praxis-oriented course, we will explore how data is fundamental to the development of AI technologies and develop practices for increased awareness of and participation in this data ecosystem. As we interrogate AI systems in everyday life through hands-on engagement with AI tools and their data pipelines, we will begin to construct a data citizenship model that can help us reclaim the power of collective responsibility in order to build a more just and sustainable socio-technical future. Students will focus their individual and group projects on questions and issues directly related to the subject area of the offering they are enrolled in. Offered as COGS 250, ENGL 250, HUMN 250, MUGN 250, PHIL 250 and RLGN 250.
ENGL 250-110
Responsible AI: Cultivating a Just and Sustainable Socio-technical Future through Data Citizenship
W 3:30 to 6:00 Beal
An introduction to the key issues that inform ethically responsible design, deployment, and use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with particular focus on the impact of data practices. From generative language models to video surveillance and identity detection to facial recognition, AI is becoming more and more embedded in our everyday lives. These AI technologies are increasingly built on our data, whether we are aware of it or not. In this praxis-oriented course, we will explore how data is fundamental to the development of AI technologies and develop practices for increased awareness of and participation in this data ecosystem. As we interrogate AI systems in everyday life through hands-on engagement with AI tools and their data pipelines, we will begin to construct a data citizenship model that can help us reclaim the power of collective responsibility in order to build a more just and sustainable socio-technical future. Students will focus their individual and group projects on questions and issues directly related to the subject area of the offering they are enrolled in. Offered as COGS 250, ENGL 250, HUMN 250, MUGN 250, PHIL 250 and RLGN 250.
ENGL 257A-100
Reading Fiction
Stories & Storytellers
MWF 11:40 to 12:30 Bowers
This course will trace the development of fiction from its mythic origins to the contemporary novel. Our reading will include ancient myth, the Victorian novel, classic American works, science fiction and fantasy, and much more. Reading these works will allow us to ask questions about how stories are told and explore how genre and form can impact fiction. Our work will focus on the practice of close reading and analysis of texts in order to understand their meaning, and situate their context in relation to other texts in the course and beyond.
ENGL 257A-101
Reading Fiction
TTh 5:30 to 6:45 Kidd
This course introduces students to prose narrative forms in English by exploring their intersecting histories and their contemporary developments. As we read these texts in their historical and social contexts, we will pay particular attention to the ways in which prose fiction represents gender, class, sexuality, ability, nationality, race, and indigeneity. Our work will require careful reading, critical thinking, and scholarly, argument-based writing (including revision), as we appreciate the diversity of fiction’s forms and features. We will introduce and develop the key terms, concepts and practice of literary studies. The specific focus of the course may vary. Recommended preparation: Academic Inquiry Seminar or SAGES First Seminar. Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
ENGL 257A-102
Reading Fiction
Tell Me a Story:
The Theory and Craft of Narrative
TTh 4:00 to 5:15 Orlock
Two questions:
What do Hamlet, the Star Wars series, Green Knight, the novels of Jane Austen, and the films
of Spike Lee have in common?
Why do we care about – and become enmeshed in – the lives of these characters?
One answer:
Great storytelling.
Objectives & Method:
The course will delve into the specific elements of narrative: how they function – and differ
– in the genres of screenwriting, short fiction, poetry, and playwriting.
The class format will be a hybrid between a discussion-based seminar and a writers’ workshop.
Selected texts will present a historical perspective on the elements of narrative structure, ranging from Aristotle through the theories influencing story structure in contemporary literature, drama, and film. Our discussion/ analysis will help the reader/ viewer pull into focus why a play/ film/ short story works. Or doesn’t work.
The class will then move into workshop mode with narrative theory extended into practicum writing exercises for short plays & screenplays.
ENGL 257B-100
Reading Poetry
Eyes on the Prize: African American Poetry
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Elliott
In this course, we will read poems by acclaimed African American writers who have won Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and commendations from the Library of Congress. And we will examine book reviews, articles, and interviews that illuminate popular and critical responses to these authors and their work. The class is designed to teach students how different poems function: through close reading, careful attention to poems’ formal properties, and lots of writing prompts and exercises to help students develop their writing and their creativity more generally. Hard work is required; love of the genre and confidence in one’s ability to understand it is not (as the former U.S. Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, admitted in an interview, “growing up, I didn’t think I could understand poetry, I didn’t think that it had any relevance to my life”).
ENGL 257B-101
Reading Poetry
Literary Arcadias
MW 3:20 to 4:35 Iammarino
This course will help you to read and enjoy poetry by introducing you to the history of poetic forms in English. We’ll pay close attention to the enchanting details of poetic expression, as well as to the cultivation of individual styles and to the place of poetry in a world defined by global movements of many kinds. Our work will require careful reading, critical thinking, and scholarly, argument-based writing (including revision), as we appreciate the diversity of forms and features of poetry in English. We will introduce and develop the key terms, concepts and practice of literary studies by turning to poems for our test-cases; examples may include the sestina, sonnet and villanelle, ghazal, pantoum, haiku, and open forms. The specific focus of the course may vary. Recommended preparation: Academic Inquiry Seminar or SAGES First Seminar. Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
ENGL 257B-102
Reading Poetry
Form and Freedom
MW 2:15 to 3:o5 Hoeynck
In this course, we will explore the history of versification, form, and genre in English and American poems. While paying close attention to the mechanics of poetic expression, we will also examine individual styles, collective movements, and the social situation of poetry in a world defined by global movements and struggles. The course will involve careful reading, critical thinking, and scholarly, argument-based writing (including revision), as we investigate the diversity of forms and features of poetry in English. We will introduce and develop the key terms, concepts, and practices of literary studies by turning to poems for our test-cases; the class will be structured in a discussion-based seminar format designed to promote the examination of poetry’s relationship to history and consciousness, versification, tropes, stanzaic form, free verse, as well as formal genres like the elegy, villanelle, or ballad. Recommended preparation: Academic Inquiry Seminar or SAGES First Seminar.
ENGL 270
Introduction to Gender Studies
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Howe
This course introduces women and men students to the methods and concepts of gender studies and feminist theory. An interdisciplinary course, it covers approaches used in literary criticism, history, philosophy, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, film studies, cultural studies, art history, and religion. It is the required introductory course for students taking the women’s and gender studies major. Offered as ENGL 270, HSTY 270, PHIL 270, RLGN 270, SOCI 201, and WGST 201.
ENGL 280
Politics of Beauty in Literature
MW 4:50 to 6:05 p.m. Jewell
Does having a tattoo hurt your chances of receiving your dream job? Why is it so important to have a good hair day? Does wearing lipstick make you frivolous? These are some questions taken up by the authors we are reading in this course, and the answers require a complex consideration of one’s social positions in terms of gender, race, social class, sexual identity, age, and ability. In this Communication-Intensive (CI) course, we will examine how authors engage such politics of beauty and appearance in their works. We will read the works of poets, novelists, cultural critics, philosophers, and filmmakers who call attention to the specifically-political nature of body size, hair, skin color, and modes of dress, among other issues. Our ultimate goal is to locate and analyze the complex power relations constructing past and present beauty standards. In addition to counting as a CI course, this course also counts as a Human Diversity & Commonality course. Recommended preparation: Academic Inquiry Seminar (AIQS) or SAGES First Seminar.
ENGL 301/401
Linguistic Analysis
TTh 1:00 to 2:15 Demeter
This course offers introductory analysis of modern English from various theoretical perspectives (e.g., structural, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and cognitive linguistic).
In particular, the course provides an introduction to theoretical concepts and methods of linguistics, such as morphology, phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and dialects, as well as writing systems and the nature and form of grammar. It is designed for any student with interest in language or its use; no prior linguistic background is assumed.
This course provides humanities and social science students with training in the description and explanation of important technical aspects of language. This course also provides students of communication disorders with a basic foundation in language science, crucial information to understanding language acquisition.
ENGL 302
Literature after 1800
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Pinkerton
This course follows the development of British literature from 1800 to the present. We will explore masterpieces of the Romantic, Victorian, Modernist, and Postcolonial periods, and traverse the genres of lyric poetry, the realistic novel, dark comedy, and horror. Written work includes two short papers and informal response papers.
ENGL 303/303C
Intermediate Fiction Workshop
Idiots & Assholes
Writing Unlikable Narration
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Beilin
Not all literature (or other media) is built to be relatable or even—gasp—kind. Characters, or even non-fiction speakers, can fluster us with their buffoonery, grumpiness, poor decision-making skills, deep imperfections, or pure jerk-dom, as well as their rage and desire to irritate or interrupt the flow of society. In this creative writing workshop we’ll investigate unlikable narration in both fiction and non-fiction prose and we’ll develop our own pieces that dare to be full of thorns, misfits, scoundrels, and just plain assholes. We’ll circle concepts in writing such as redemptive arcs, repetition, The Fool, satire, and irony to further expand our notions of who we want to write, how, and for what purpose.
ENGL 306
Creative Nonfiction Workshop
MW 12:45 to 2:00 Mauk
In this class, we will explore the genre of creative nonfiction — the literature of fact. Students will study the art of the essay, the memoir, and the magazine story, alongside unclassifiable and hybrid forms of literature. We will hold writing workshops where we share and discuss our work in a supportive environment, supplemented by exercises and critical discussions on elements of craft including structure, setting, character, and style. Authors we’ll read include Jamaica Kincaid, John McPhee, Jorge Luis Borges, Natalie Ginzburg, Joe Brainard, Joan Didion, Rivka Galchen, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Elif Batuman, Zadie Smith, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Svetlana Alexievich, among many others. All readings are provided by the instructor.
ENGL 307/307C
Feature/Magazine Writing
MW 3:20 to 4:35 Mauk
This class will focus on techniques for writing true, reported stories. We will continue developing the concepts and practices of introductory journalism, with emphasis on feature writing for magazines (print and online), story structure, fact-checking, reporting techniques and freelancing.
ENGL 325/325C/425
Shakespeare’s Comedies and Romances
MW 3:20 to 4:35 Vinter
In this course we’ll read a selection of Shakespeare’s comedies and romances. These texts span the entirety of Shakespeare’s career, and in part we’ll be using them to understand the development of his drama and his shifting place within the renaissance theater and wider social sphere. What made Shakespeare so successful in his own time? What differences emerge as we move from early comedies such as The Taming of the Shrew to middle period problem plays such as Measure for Measure and late romances such as The Winter’s Tale? How do the plays respond to changing artistic fashions and performance conventions, as well as to different social, political and economic conditions? In particular, how is Shakespeare reflecting, commenting on or contesting common renaissance understandings of drama and language, gender roles and sexual identities, ethnic and religious differences, and trade and financial speculation? But we’ll also be thinking about what it means to be reading and watching Shakespeare today, in part by looking at more recent reception and adaptations of some of his plays. What explains the continued attraction of Shakespeare? What is gained and what is lost when we treat him as our contemporary?
Requirements for 325 include regular participation in the classroom and on Canvas, two 5-7 page papers and a final project. This class fulfills pre-1800 distribution requirement for the English major.
Students registering for ENGL 325C—the Capstone version of this class—will be required to develop and complete a Capstone research project in the wider field of study covered by the course. This Capstone project will have an approximate length of 25pp. and will also include a public presentation of the project. This Capstone research project will fulfill the formal writing requirements for 325.
Students registering for ENGL 425 — the Graduate version of this class — will have additional readings and meetings with the instructor. They will be required to develop a research project of approximately 25pp., that will fulfill the formal writing requirements for the class. This class fulfills the pre-1800 distribution requirement for the MA.
ENGL 329/429
English Literature, 1780-1837
Jane Austen
TTh 11:30 to 12:45 Clune
Jane Austen is the greatest English novelist, with an enduring influence on literary and popular culture comparable only to Shakespeare’s. In this course we will read all the major novels, exploring the uniquely flexible and elegant instrument of her style, her innovative development of free indirect discourse, the dark comic wit that D.W. Harding called “regulated hatred,” and her handling of the marriage plot. Written work includes one short and one longer paper along with informal response papers.
ENGL 357A/457A
Topics in Fiction Writing
Writing Medical Narratives
Medicine & the Creative Writer
TTh 1:00 to 2:15 Beilin
In this course we will read and write prose pieces that represent three different experiences with the “medical industrial complex” (a term that forefronts the for-profit reality of our medical system): The Patient, The Caregiver, The Doctor. Narrative Medicine (and/or the Medical Humanities) is a field of study and work that acknowledges storytelling (narrative, literature) as a site for social transformation. Creative narratives become a source for information, knowledge sharing, recourse, and vital expression. Contemporary writers like Samantha Irby, Lynne Tillman, and Ottessa Moshfegh have taken up this call, in a lineage with writers like Gillian Rose, Rebecca Brown, Shusaku Endo, and Jean-Domonique Bauby who scrupulously and artfully wrote about medical systems in past decades and/or centuries—we’ll also watch a contemporary film that does extraordinary work in narrativizing chronic illness and its intersections with the MIC.
We will read (and view) through some of this lineage, at each moment taking time to contribute our own narratives—our own observations of the industrial complex we each, in our own way, engage with, rely on, perhaps work in, or are studying to become a working member of, and are in turns needful and doubtful of. Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
ENGL 357B
Topics in Poetry Writing
Form and Flexibility
MW 12:45 to 2:00 Schaer
Read and write poetry with the aim of becoming influenced by other writers’ styles, formal techniques, and thoughts on poetry writing. This course will explore the politics and practice of poetry writing as it pertains to a particular aspect of craft, literary movement, or contemporary element of literary production. Creative writing practice and reading practice advance together: in this class, we’ll read as writers and write as readers. Expect to work on several of your own pieces throughout the semester and to be in a position to share your work with the group.
ENGL 363H
African American Literature
Harlem Renaissance: Art and Justice
Th 2:30 to 3:45 Elliott
This class focuses on the creative boom between 1919-1940 known as the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro movement. It was a time when complex representations of African Americans started to infiltrate a popular culture previously dominated by racist stereotypes. During this period of intense American cultural nationalism, people from all walks of life were confronted with art that asked them to think in new ways about the meanings of race and justice. At this time, the arts were widely seen as key tools in the fight for African American civil rights. But many artists rebelled against the expectation that political concerns should trump their aesthetic autonomy. Some period artists wrote about a unified New Negro consciousness; others focused on differences in gender, sexuality, social class, region, and national origins and affiliations, and explored the ways that the increasing complexity of Black life in the U.S. troubled African American group solidarity. In this seminar, we will read, view, think, write, and talk about a diverse selection of Harlem Renaissance literature and visual art. In the process, we will identify key themes, controversies, and creative connections that characterized this unique era. This is a hybrid class. (This class meets in person once a week (on Thursdays). Students are expected to listen to the weekly podcasts (which take the place of traditional lectures) and participate in related online asynchronous discussions and activities on Canvas.)
ENGL 367/467
Introduction to Film
TTh 1:00 to 2:15 Spadoni
An introduction to the art of film. Each week we’ll take an aspect of film form (editing, cinematography, sound, and so on) and ask how filmmakers work with it to elicit effects. Most weeks, students will watch a film on their own that the class will discuss in light of the week’s focus. Films will include masterworks of the silent era, foreign films, Hollywood studio-era classics, and more recent cinema.
Undergrads (ENGL 367) take one scheduled quiz, occasional unscheduled ones, and a midterm and final exam, and they write two essays (5-6 and 8-10 pages). Grad students (ENGL 467) satisfy the same requirements, but their final essay is an extended research project, in connection with which they submit a partial draft and other related assignments.
Engl 367 has no prerequisites and welcomes first-year students.
ENGL 368/368C/468
Topics in Film
Science Fiction Films
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Spadoni
We explore the iconography and major themes of science fiction cinema, from alien creatures to space and time travel to futuristic cities to robots. We’ll ask how the genre invites us to reflect on the nature of the human subject and its encounters with science and society. In what ways is the film medium well suited for storytelling in a science-fiction vein? How do films, even ones set in the distant future and on faraway worlds, reflect the values and concerns of the times and places in which they’re made? We’ll screen classic works of the genre and more recent films. This course has a required one-time evening screening. See SIS for details.
Undergrads registered for ENGL 368 write two essays (5-6 and 8-10 pages), take part in a group presentation, and take occasional quizzes (lowest is dropped). Capstone (Engl 368C) and Grad students (ENGL 468) satisfy the same requirements as ENGL 368 students, but their final essay is an extended research project, in connection with which they submit a partial draft and other related documents.
Engl 368 has no prerequisites and welcomes first year students. Grad and capstone students are advised to contact the instructor before registering.
English 372/372C/472
Studies in the Novel
Great American Novels
TTh 1:00 to 2:15 p.m. Clune
In this course we will read masterpieces of American fiction. We will explore how American writers transformed the novel in giving artistic shape to the promise and evil of America. Works include Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Written work includes one short paper, one longer paper, and several brief response papers.
ENGL 373/ENGL 473/WGST 374
American Women’s Poetry
MW 3:20 to 4:35 Jewell
This communication-intensive course surveys American women’s poetry from the seventeenth century to the present. We will read a range of poetry illustrating the roles of women poets in the development of the nation’s literary and social history. We will pay close attention to how women poets use traditional and innovative poetic forms to represent lived experiences and to engage the political realities of their given historical moments. Recommended preparation: Academic Inquiry Seminar (AIQS) or SAGES First Seminar.
ENGL 380
Department Seminar
Modernism and Money
MW 12:45 to 2:00 Jewell
This disciplinary writing seminar examines the ways in which American Modernist writers engage with capitalism in their works. We will begin by reading earlier pre-Modernist writers (Realist, Social Realist) coming to terms with Gilded Age excess and conspicuous consumption, taking local Cleveland contexts into account. We will then focus on how more formally-experimental, modernist writers represent the realities of the rapidly transforming economy and the dramatic rise of consumerism. Literary and other authors include Veblen, Wharton, London, Washington, Carnegie, Stein, Larsen, West, Pound, and Dos Passos. Requirements include active class participation, a close reading paper, an argumentative research paper, and a presentation. Prerequisites for ENGL 380: Successful completion of Academic Inquiry Seminar (AIQS) (or SAGES First Seminar); two Communication-Intensive (CI) courses (or two SAGES University Seminars); ENGL 300; ENGL 302; and ENGL 308.
ENGL 520
Studies in Twentieth Century Literature
The Plays of Samuel Beckett and Their 21st Century Resonance
W 4:25 to 6:55 Orlock
The seminar will focus on Samuel Beckett’s major theatrical works, including the iconic “Waiting for Godot,” “Endgame,” and “Happy Days,” as well as his shorter plays. Our conversation will, engage the intertwined themes and innovative techniques that define Beckett’s unique dramatic vision, and explore how he maintains a mercurial tension between tragedy and comedy: a minimalist, radical approach that pulled his mid-twentieth century audience into what came to be known as the “Theatre of the Absurd.” Beckett – awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 – also proved to be a significant influence on the plays of British dramatist Harold Pinter (Nobel Prize for Literature 2001), and contemporary Black American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (Pulitzer Prize, 2002). Through close reading and critical analysis of these three dramatists – supported by viewing video productions of the plays – we’ll consider their work both as literary texts and as scripts intended for performance on the stage.
ENGL 523
Theory and Practice of Translation
T 2:30 to 5:00 Turner
This graduate seminar provides an introduction to the critical conversations surrounding the challenges and delights of literary translation. We’ll read widely in translation theory, focusing especially on the power dynamics inherent in translating across geopolitical borders, translation in the age of global migration, the embodied situation of the translator, and the legacies of colonialism that underlie many acts of translation. In tandem with readings, students will undertake a creative or critical project of their own choosing—i.e. a literary translation, a creative work that engages translation, or a critical piece of writing about translation.
WRIT 210
Business and Professional Writing
MW 4:50 to 6:05 Reader
TTh 8:30 to 9:45 Wu
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Wu
TTh 10:00 to 11:15 Robisch
TTh 4:00 to 5:15 Robisch
The ability to communicate effectively is a powerful skill, one with real and significant consequences. This is particularly true in the 21st-century workplace, where we use words and images to address needs, solve problems, persuade audiences, and even arrange the details of our professional and personal lives. Communication requirements and expectations are constantly changing, whether we work in small business, large companies, non-profit organizations, research labs, or hospitals. As such, we need to be adaptable writers and readers of all kinds of documents — from print to digital. This course offers students an introduction to professional communication in theory and practice. We will pay special attention to audience analysis, persuasive techniques in written and oral communication, document design strategies, and ethical communication practices. Recommended preparation: Passing grade in an Academic Inquiry Seminar or SAGES First Seminar. Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
WRIT 211
Writing for the Health Professions
MW 12:45 to 2:00 Larson
MW 9:30 to 10:20 Sattler
MW 10:35 to 11:25 Druffel
TTh 8:30 to 9:45 Codita
TTh 1:00 to 2:15 Codita
This course offers practice and training in the professional and technical writing skills common to health professions (e.g., medicine, nursing, dentistry). Attention will be paid to the writing processes of drafting, revising, and editing. Typical assignments include: letters, resumes, personal essays, professional communication genres (e.g., email, reports, patient charts, and histories), and scholarly genres (e.g., abstracts, articles, and reviews). Counts as a Communication Intensive course.
WRIT 212
Legal Writing
TTh 4:00 to 5:15 Schaffer
In this course, we will explore the language of the law. We will study legal documents, cases, and statutes, as well as compose our own memos, briefs, and letters. We will examine the way in which lawyers make arguments and how to analyze them, then create arguments of our own. We will examine the inner workings of the legal system in the United States, and what the legal profession might look like. No prior experience or knowledge is required, and you don’t need to be planning on law school to benefit from this course.
This course counts toward the Communication-Intensive (CI) Seminar portion of the Written, Oral, and Multimodal Communication Unified General Education Outcomes (UGER).
WRIT 345/445
Grant Writing
M 4:50 to 6:05 Redekop
This course will focus on understanding and composing the elements of a funding proposal. Different types of grants will be considered: non-profit organizations, governmental, STEM, Arts, and Humanities. Focus may shift depending on the interests and experience of enrolled students. Students will prepare a polished, submittable funding application to an organization of their choice.
This is a one credit, pass/no pass course.