Courses and Schedules

Undergraduate Writing Courses

ENGL 1100: First-Year Writing

Integrates critical readings, writing, and thinking skills and studies actual writing practices. Sequenced reading and writing assignments build cumulatively to more complex assignments. Includes formal and informal writing, drafting, and revising, editing for correctness, synthesizing source material, and documenting sources accurately. Fulfills 3 hours of the General Education requirement for Communicating Skills. Does not count toward the major in English.

ENGL 1110: First-Year Writing for International Students

Designed for any student whose first language is not English. Integrates critical readings, writing, and thinking skills and studies actual writing practices. Sequenced reading and writing assignments build cumulatively to more complex assignments. Includes formal and informal writing, drafting and revising, editing for correctness, synthesizing source material, and documenting sources accurately. Special attention given to verb tenses, idioms, articles, and syntax. Does not count toward the major in English. Substitute for English 1100 in all university requirements: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 credit hours) and 56 credit hours. Acquaints students with the basic methods of literary criticism and trains them in explicating particular texts and writing about literature. Introduces students to basic research and MLA documentation. Counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 2180: Introduction to News Writing (Cross-listed with COMM 2380-001)

This course focuses on developing stories and news writing; staff of The Current and other student publications are encouraged to enroll.

ENGL 2188: Public Relations Writing (Cross-listed with COMM 2180)

Prerequisites: COMM 1150 or ENGL 1100 or MEDIA ST 2180. This course is an introduction to the process of planning, producing, and evaluating messages in public relations. It examines various forms of contemporary public relations writing, with special emphasis on preparation of messages  for different media and audiences, setting long-range and short-term goals and objectives, and identifying appropriate message channels. Same as COMM 2180.

ENGL 3090: Turning the Kaleidoscope: Reading (Now)

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours) and 56 credit hours. In ENGL 3090: Reading (Now) students will refract the central question: How do we read NOW? Through reading poems, short stories, film, music, and more, students will become acquainted with a range of interpretive frames common in literary and cultural studies today.

ENGL 3100: Junior-Level Writing

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 credit hours) and 48 credit hours. This course enhances analytical, communicative, persuasive, and explanatory capabilities in contemporary  American English. It emphasizes academic reading, writing, research, and documentation. It fulfills the university’s junior-level writing requirement and counts towards the Writing Certificate.

ENGL 3120: Business Writing

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours) and 48 credit hours. This course further develops the experienced writer’s style and analytical capabilities to the level of sophistication necessary for business and professional settings. Writing assignments may include business correspondence, reports, resumes, proposals, analyses, presentations, marketing, promotional, and multi-modal materials, discussion postings and blogs, articles for in-house publications, and research and documentation. The course fulfills the University’s junior level writing requirement and may not be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.

ENGL 3130: Technical Writing

Prerequisite: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours). The major elements of industrial technical writing. Writing assignments include technical definitions, abstracts and summaries, mechanism descriptions, instructions, process analyses, technical reports and proposals. Emphasis is placed on clarity, conciseness, organization, format, style, and tone. The course includes an introduction to research methods and documentation. All readings are selected from industrial material. Fulfills the university’s requirement for a junior-level course in communicative skills, subject to the approval of the student’s major department. Course counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 3160: Writing in the Sciences

Prerequisite: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours). Designed to teach students how to write effectively in the sciences. Writing assignments include short reports, proposals and a major project. Students are encouraged to select projects that will reflect work in a science course which may include a research or analytical report, a formal proposal or a procedure/instruction manual. Emphasis is placed on clarity, conciseness, organization, format, style, and tone. The course will include an introduction to research methods and documentation. Fulfills the university’s requirement for a junior-level course in communicative skills, subject to the approval of the student’s major department. Counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 4160: Theories of Writing

Undergraduate cognate section; see ENGL 5840.

ENGL 4890: Writing Internship

Prerequisites: ENGL 3100 or its equivalent as judged by the instructor. Course limited to students who are completing certificates in writing. May be taken concurrently with the final course in the certificate sequence. Students work in a supervised internship to complete professional writing assignments. Consent required.

ENGL 4892: Independent Writing Project

Prerequisites: ENGL 3100 or equivalent as judged by instructor. Course limited to students who are completing their certificates in writing. May be taken concurrently with the final course in the certificate sequence. Students work individually with an instructor to complete an extensive creative writing or critical analysis writing project. This course is available on a limited basis only with the approval of the Coordinator and faculty sponsor. Special consent form is required.

Undergraduate Language Studies Courses

ENGL 2110: Information Literacy

Introduces students to the main components of information literacy, including digital, web, and media literacies as well as library databases. Students will work with both digital and print materials to find, to evaluate, and to synthesize information while developing the critical thinking skills of questioning and reasoning. Frequent writing and multimedia assignments will provide practice in using various technologies to assemble and to share information. Fulfills UMSL’s General Education requirement for a course in information literacy.

ENGL 2400: Rhetorical Ways with Words

We will spend the semester studying different definitions of and approaches to “rhetorical ways with words.” Though rarely will we find ourselves focusing on words alone, which might be the first way we want to re-define rhetoric for this course and ourselves: rhetoric is about words, yes, but also so much more.

ENGL 2810: Traditional Grammar

An introduction to the terms and concepts of English grammar, beginning with functions of the noun and forms of the verb in simple sentences, moving to more complex structures such as subordinate clauses, and ending with the application of this material to issues the social construction of “Standard English.”

Undergraduate Literature and Cultural Studies Courses

ENGL 1800: Reading Life

This course is a low-key introduction to close reading, broadly conceived, in the Humanities. Texts may include poems both lyric and narrative, song lyrics and music, short stories, short essays, journalism, television and film, reviews of TV/Film/Music, religious scripture, or visual art. Can be counted as an ENGL elective. 

ENGL 2360-001: Hey, Have You Read: The Wire, at Twenty

This course will explore in great detail HBO’s landmark television serial The Wire (2002-08). Set in Baltimore, Maryland, The Wire examined institutional dysfunction, race, and inequality in the American City. Each season focused on an additional institution, starting with the illegal drug trade, and law enforcement (Season I), and proceeding with the ports and the stevedores’ union (II), local government (III), public schools (IV), and the local media (V). Baltimore faces many similar challenges to those prevalent in metropolitan Saint Louis, Missouri, and a major goal of the course is to apply what we can learn from The Wire to Saint Louis. In years since The Wire, the show garnered significant scholarly attention, some of which we will read. Topics covered vary widely but include race/ethnicity, gender, language variation (dialect), urbanism, education, habitus and social inequality, music in The Wire, artistic allusion in The Wire, and others.

ENGL 2360-002: Hey, Have You Read: The Novels of Jane Austen

This course introduces students to the novels of Jane Austen – including Northanger Abbey, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, Pride & Prejudice, and Persuasion – as both literary works and as windows into the social world of her time. We will study them, in other words, for their structure, language, and genre as well as for their commentary on the manners, ideals, literary tastes, and above all the misdeeds of her society. Assignments will include student presentations and occasional quizzes. We’ll also view and discuss some of the modern cinematic adaptations of Austen’s novels.

ENGL 3310: English Literature Before 1790

Prerequisite: ENGL 1100 or equivalent. This course is designed to provide a greatest-hits tour of a thousand years of English Literature, from c. 700 – c.1700: love, war, tragedy, romance, epics and mock-epics, Anglo-Saxons and Renaissance courtiers, fairies and angels and monsters, and lots and lots of iambic pentameter. Number five will shock you!

ENGL 3510: World Literature Before 1650: Monsters, Immortals, & Outlaws

Prerequisite: ENGL 1100. This course tracks monsters, immortals, and outlaws that surface in selected works from deep antiquity to the cusp of modernity. We will reassemble cuneiform fragments from ancient Sumer, brave the wine-dark Aegean, parse the perturbations of power with a Roman poet banished to the Black Sea, descend into hell with a Florentine poet, and surface on the Korean peninsula with a magical outlaw. As we explore these baffling literary worlds, we will consider how these works both reflect and refract the cultures from which they emerge—and speak to us with a haunting relevance.

ENGL 3720: American Literature After 1865

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent. This course examines dramatic upheavals in society that have engendered continuous innovation in American literature since 1865. It will look closely at a variety of individual authors motivated by these artistic, cultural, political, and psychological disturbances; we will also pay close attention to specific literary movements, from Naturalism to Transrealism, energized by these societal changes. This course fulfills the American Literature requirement for the major.

ENGL 4380: Shakespeare: Comedies and Histories

Prerequisites: ENGL 3100 or equivalent or consent of instructor. This course explores several of Shakespeare’s Comedies and Histories. Our discussions will explore the conventions of these genres and situate plays such as A Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, and Richard II in their historical, cultural, and literary contexts. Assignments focus on the language and structure of the plays and aim to develop students’ close reading skills. We will also read Shakespeare’s sonnets and may bring modern film adaptations to bear on our study.

ENGL 4910: Performance, Narrative, and the Law: The Codification of Inequality in the U.S.

Undergraduate cognate section; see ENGL 5650.

ENGL 4925: The Short Story in World Literature

In this course, we will trace the development of the short story with a primary focus on work published in the last century. Reading from an anthology and from individual collections written by contemporary masters of the genre, we will traverse the globe as we seek to develop a deep understanding of this important genre. The focus of the course is the short story as it is written by writers across the Globe, both in English and in translation.

ENGL 4950: Opera Literature (Cross-listed with Honors 3010) 

A survey of major works of the operatic stage. A musically, dramatically, and linguistically diverse art form, opera unites multiple humanistic modes and genres, including song, orchestral music, staged drama and verse, and the folklore and literature of various source materials. As such, opera achieves artistic aims unavailable to many other art forms. Stories vary by setting, but romance/sex and generational familial mayhem appear often. Instead of chronologically, we will move topically with a focus on women in opera, covering works composed from the 18C to 2023, mostly complete. Field trips to Winter Opera Saint Louis are planned; possibly Chicago—we’ll discuss together. (And yes, both What’s Opera Doc? and Rabbit of Seville will appear in the course). Workload includes class participation, light readings, viewing/listening to the operas, generally one per week, weekly journal responses, final assignment where you craft your own story.

Undergraduate Creative Writing Courses

ENGL 2020: Introduction to Creative Writing

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent. This course is a creative writing survey and workshop focusing on the study of three genres-short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students learn primary concepts and techniques of craft, including narrative, voice, character, setting, imagery, metaphor, point-of-view. Students will explore literary conventions specific to each genre, as well as universal qualities that make all writing effective for an audience. The course requires three different kinds of writing: original fiction and/or poetry, open-ended exploratory exercises, and a carefully revised portfolio of original work.

ENGL 2040: Fiction Writing Jumpstart: Tales from Beyond

This course provides exercises, discussions, models, and practice for discovering short stories and the many ways to tell them. Students will read published short stories to learn how other writers have worked with point of view, distance, voice, plot, dialogue, setting, and characterization. Students will also write exercises and stories for workshop critique. Students who have taken ENGL 2060 may not take ENGL 2040 for credit. This course fulfills the English core requirement for the Creative Writing area and counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 3040: Lying to Tell a Truth: Writing Fiction

Prerequisite: ENGL 2040 or ENGL 2060 or the equivalent or consent of instructor. This course examines and provides examples of characterization, dialogue, point-of-view, distance, weight, plot, setting, and more. Students will read published short stories, and discuss the idea of writing as discovery and exploration, that writers work out of curiosity and bewilderment and tell lies to arrive at a truth.

ENGL 4130: A Machine Made of Words: Writing Your Best Poems

This course examines in more detail the ways in which poets construct machines from words-that is, the way that the words of a poem provide its verbal, emotional, and intellectual energy. Through the examination and discussion of both contemporary published poetry and the work of students in the class, students will consider the question: how do poems use language to make sense of (or to defamiliarize) the world and our experience of it? The course counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 4895: Editing Litmag

Students in this course create Litmag, the UMSL student literary journal. Students enrolled in this class take on the role of editors for the annual spring publication, learning to implement best practices concerning literary editing/publishing. Students will call for submissions; they will read and select work to be published; and they will produce the journal, dealing with issues like design, format, copyediting, budget, print run, advertising, distribution, and publicity. The course is offered only in the spring and culminates with the publication of Litmag in late April. Prerequisites: ENGL 3100 or equivalent and at least two creative writing courses.

Graduate Courses for the Master of Arts

ENGL 5840: Theories of Writing

This course addresses both Euro-centric and Indigenous perspectives on writing, listening, speaking, and silence. It includes relationship to healing; alternatives to academic discourses; the power of story; and principles of decision-making in indigenous cultures that work very differently from principles of persuasion we learn and teach in school, shaped as these are by settler colonial and European ways of making meaning withlanguage. Join me in these explorations in January! We’ll work through the topics above (and possibly a few more) and consider a number of theoretical frameworks used to conceptualize writing itself, writing instruction, writing course goals, and societal impulses toward writing. Your written work will include informal writing/position papers, an after-class summary, and a few other things (to be decided), like an analysis of your academic discourse or a reflective portfolio. This course is required for the composition emphasis and fulfills the theory area (area five) for the literature emphasis.

ENGL 5250: Medieval English Literature

This course has two goals. First, we will acquaint ourselves with some of the major genres of English literature in the later Middle Ages--dream visions and Arthurian romances, travel literature and miracle tales, allegories and, well, more allegories. The texts date from c. 1350-1500, an era of great accomplishment and considerable variety in English writing and great changes and considerable upheaval in English culture--a period marked by plague, heresy, rebellion, and civil wars. Secondly, we will explore some aspects of medievalism, that is, the ways in which “the middle ages” are received, represented, and put to use in modern culture, politics, literature and film.

The literature of the middle ages has the sometimes baffling quality of seeming simultaneously foreign and familiar, since in this historically remote period the basic structures (and basic problems) of contemporary culture were in the making; appreciating and understanding this paradox, and the medieval texts that express it, thus requires (and can help foster) some intellectual agility and an open mind. All texts used will be in Modern English translation, though we will occasionally dip into the Middle English originals. 

ENGL 5650: Performance, Narrative, and the Law: The Codification of Inequality in the U.S.

How does performance affect our understanding of the law? What is the role of narrative in shaping the law? What narrative work does law perform? This course takes a performance studies, transhistorical approach to studying the codification of inequality in the United States. Surveying key legal doctrinal areas (i.e., property law, criminal law, and constitutional law), this course interrogates the role of narrative-making in the weaponization of the law against marginalized communities, including queer communities, the poor, people of color, and unhoused persons. This course is also concerned with how popular media shapes what we understand the role of the law to be in eliminating or entrenching inequality. Readings will include legal cases, television episodes, humanities-based theory, films, podcasts, and traditional literary forms (e.g., poetry and short stories).  If you have any questions about the course, please contact the instructor, Kim Welch, PhD at  kcw10@ucla.edu.

Graduate Courses for the Creative Writing MFA

ENGL 5100: Graduate Workshop in Poetry

In this course you will write poems, many of them, which your peers will read and respond to. You will read and respond to the poems of your peers. As a group we will grapple with those poems, examine them, test them, troubleshoot them. We will explore issues of process and technique. We will challenge each other and support each other and partake in the rare gift of a close community with other working writers. You will cultivate a deeper and more sustainable relationship to your own work.

ENGL 5110: Graduate Workshop in Fiction

Open to students in the creative writing program and to others with permission of instructor. Consists of a writing workshop in which the fiction (short stories or chapters of a novel) written by the students enrolled in the course is discussed and analyzed by the instructor and members of the class. Students taking this course will be expected to write original fiction throughout the course. May be repeated for maximum credit of 15h.

ENGL 5180: Form and Theory of Poetry

This course examines in detail the techniques and principles that inform the work of the contemporary poet. Students will explore the ways in which poets use language and form to create meaning and expression. This course will challenge students to write outside of their comfort zones, to explore the possibilities (and the history) of the art, to become more deliberate and adaptive poets. This is the course that fills the poet’s toolbox and teaches her how to use the tools.

ENGL 5190: Literary Journal Editing

Prerequisites: Open to students in the MFA program who have had at least two graduate writing workshops and to others with consent of the instructor. Throughout this semester, student in this course students serve as first level readers of all (poetry, fiction, non-fiction) submissions to Boulevard and Natural Bridge. Students will read and narrow down the field of submissions evaluating and recommending selected submissions to the editorial board of the magazine. The editorial board will then consider the class consensus in its final selection of material for publication. In addition to this primary task of editorial selection, students will also be involved in the other activities necessary for the production of an issue of the magazine. May be repeated for maximum graduate credit of nine hours.

Graduate Courses for both the Master of Arts and the Creative Writing MFA

ENGL 6000: Thesis

Prerequisite: 3.5 graduate GPA. Thesis research and writing on a selected topic in English studies.  May be taken over two semesters, three (3) hours each semester.

Undergraduate Language and Writing Courses

ENGL 1100: First-Year Writing

Integrates critical readings, writing, and thinking skills and studies actual writing practices. Sequenced reading and writing assignments build cumulatively to more complex assignments. Includes formal and informal writing, drafting, and revising, editing for correctness, synthesizing source material, and documenting sources accurately. Fulfills 3 hours of the General Education requirement for Communicating Skills. Does not count toward the major in English.

ENGL 1110: First-year Writing for International Students

Designed for any student whose first language is not English. Integrates critical readings, writing, and thinking skills and studies actual writing practices. Sequenced reading and writing assignments build cumulatively to more complex assignments. Includes formal and informal writing, drafting and revising, editing for correctness, synthesizing source material, and documenting sources accurately. Special attention given to verb tenses, idioms, articles, and syntax. Does not count toward the major in English. Substitute for English 1100 in all university requirements: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 credit hours) and 56 credit hours. Acquaints students with the basic methods of literary criticism and trains them in explicating particular texts and writing about literature. Introduces students to basic research and MLA documentation. Counts toward the Certificate in Writing. 

ENGL 2110: Information Literacy in the Humanities and Fine Arts

Introduces students to the main components of information literacy, including digital, web, and media literacies as well as library databases. Students will work with both digital and print materials to find, to evaluate, and to synthesize information while developing the critical thinking skills of questioning and reasoning. Frequent writing and multimedia assignments will provide practice in using various technologies to assemble and to share information. Fulfills UMSL’s General Education requirement for a course in information literacy.

ENGL 2188: Public Relations Writing (cross-listed with COMM 2180)

Same as COMM 2180. Prerequisites: COMM 1150 or ENGL 1100 or MEDIA ST 2180. This course is an introduction to the process of planning, producing, and evaluating messages in public relations. It examines various forms of contemporary public relations writing, with special emphasis on preparation of messages for different media and audiences, setting long-range and short-term goals and objectives, and identifying appropriate message channels.

ENGL 2410: Literate Lives

This course raises definitional and exploratory questions: What is literacy? How does it change across time? Who has access to it? How can literacy both empower and marginalize people? To explore these complex questions, students will investigate the ways in which contemporary practices of literacy – reading, writing, listening, speaking, digital composing, and critical thinking – function in the lives of individuals, communities, and cultures. Students will interrogate current definitions of literacy, study scholarship about literacy, explore literacy myths, and reflect on how their own literate lives have been shaped. They may engage in field work and interact with local literacy communities. This course satisfies the core curriculum requirement for the Language and Writing Studies area.

ENGL 2830: Introduction to English Language Variety

This course introduces students to the intersections of language and culture, including some of the many dialects of English. Students will learn about the social dimensions of language variation: why people from different cultural groups and regions use different versions of English, how they define themselves based on vocabulary, accent, and phrasing, and how these aspects of language change over time. This course satisfies the English core requirement for the Language and Writing Studies area.

ENGL 3090: Turning the Kaleidoscope: How We Look at Texts

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours) and 56 credit hours. Acquaints students with the basic methods of literary criticism and trains them in explicating particular texts and writing about literature. Introduces students to basic research and proper MLA documentation. Required of all English majors. Does not count toward the major in English. May not be taken on satisfactory/unsatisfactory option. Counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 3100: Junior-Level Writing

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 credit hours) and 48 credit hours. This course enhances analytical, communicative, persuasive, and explanatory capabilities in contemporary American English. It emphasizes academic reading, writing, research, and documentation. It fulfills the university’s junior-level writing requirement and counts towards the Writing Certificate.

ENGL 3120: Business Writing

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours) and 48 credit hours. This course further develops the experienced writer’s style and analytical capabilities to the level of sophistication necessary for business and professional settings. Writing assignments may include business correspondence, reports, resumes, proposals, analyses, presentations, marketing, promotional, and multi-modal materials, discussion postings and blogs, articles for in-house publications, and research and documentation. The course fulfills the University’s junior level writing requirement and may not be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.

ENGL 3130: Technical Writing

Prerequisite: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours). The major elements of industrial technical writing. Writing assignments include technical definitions, abstracts and summaries, mechanism descriptions, instructions, process analyses, technical reports and proposals. Emphasis is placed on clarity, conciseness, organization, format, style, and tone. The course includes an introduction to research methods and documentation. All readings are selected from industrial material. Fulfills the university’s requirement for a junior-level course in communicative skills, subject to the approval of the student’s major department. Course counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 3160: Writing in the Sciences

Prerequisite: ENGL 1100 or equivalent (3-6 hours). Designed to teach students how to write effectively in the sciences. Writing assignments include short reports, proposals and a major project. Students are encouraged to select projects that will reflect work in a science course which may include a research or analytical report, a formal proposal or a procedure/instruction manual. Emphasis is placed on clarity, conciseness, organization, format, style, and tone. The course will include an introduction to research methods and documentation. Fulfills the university’s requirement for a junior-level course in communicative skills, subject to the approval of the student’s major department. Counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 4810: Descriptive English Grammar

This course presents a descriptive study of modern English morphology and syntax (grammar) informed by Linguistic theory but targeted towards English and English Education majors. A principle goal of the course is to sensitize students to linguistic prejudice visited upon speakers of language varieties deemed nonstandard by unscientific prescriptive approaches to grammar.

Undergraduate Literature and Cultural Studies Courses

ENGL 1800: Reading Life

This course is a low-key introduction to close reading, broadly conceived, in the Humanities. Texts may include poems both lyric and narrative, song lyrics and music, short stories, short essays, journalism, television and film, reviews of TV/Film/Music, religious scripture, or visual art. Can be counted as an ENGL elective. 

ENGL 2360: Hey Have You Read: The Brontë Sisters

How is it possible that three sisters living with their widowed father in a parsonage in an isolated village in Yorkshire, England, wrote some of the world's most acclaimed novels? To address this question, we will read two of the classic Brontë novels: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. We will also read some of Anne Brontë's work, the sisters' poetry, and read from books written on the Brontës. We will learn how the sisters achieved what they did and how.

ENGL 2370: Drama, The Greatest Hits

This course introduces students to some of history’s most famous dramas both as literary forms and as cultural expressions. Plays will therefore be considered for themselves-for their genre, structure, and language-as well as for their social function, in an effort to better understand the complex communal values, settings, and crises which produced them. Students will read and discuss a wide variety of well-known plays from ancient Greece and Rome, the early modern English stage, and modern and contemporary culture. This course satisfies the English core requirement for the Literature in English area.

ENGL 3330: Slouching Towards Chaos: The Early 20C in British Literature

Students read poetry, drama, and fiction by major writers of the Modernist era of British literature. This course meets the requirement for one 3000 level course in British literature.

ENGL 3710: American Literature Before 1865

This course provides students with a survey of American Literatures from their beginnings to 1865. Specifically, the course will navigate through colonial literature (including the Puritans and the  atriots), literature of Native American perspectives & discovery, literature of 19th Century reform, and the literature of a new nation (including Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe). All of the readings are available in an open source textbook at no cost to students.

ENGL 4060: Adolescent Literature

The course will expose students to the large variety of quality adolescent literature available for reading and study in middle and high school classes. It will also examine the relevance of a variety of issues to the reading and teaching of adolescent literature, among them: reader response; theory and practice; multi-culturalism; literacy; the relation of adolescent literature to “classic” literature the role of adolescent literature in interdisciplinary studies; adolescent literature as an incentive to extracurricular reading.

ENGL 4370: Shakespeare’s Tragedies & Romances

This course explores six of Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Romances. Lectures will emphasize the conventions of these genres and situate the plays in their historical, cultural, and literary contexts. Assignments focus on the language and structure of the plays and aim to develop students’ close readings skills. We may also bring modern film adaptations to bear on our study. Vital to our understanding will be late sixteenth & early seventeenth-century notions of novelty and innovation as opposed to custom and commonplace. How, in other words, did Shakespeare view his plays in relation to well-known stories inherited from scripture, the classical tradition, Britain’s chronicle histories, and other legends? To what extent did he see himself as a pioneer of an emergent vernacular literary canon?

ENGL 4620: Selected Major American Writers II

Undergraduate cognate section; see ENGL 5700.

ENGL 4950-001: Cool Old Movies

In the 1940s, roughly 90 million Americans a week went out to see the 400 movies that the Hollywood studios produced each year—a situation that’s kind of difficult to imagine in our current moment of streaming services, home theaters, and niche marketing. In this course we’ll try to understand what the excitement was all about by studying several films from the 1930s and 1940s, some classics and some not-so-classics, learning along the way something about the entertainment industry and the studio system, American cultural history, film language and technology, film stars and genres, and film theory and criticism. We’ll be “taking Hollywood seriously” as a site of artistic, cultural, social, economic, and imaginary importance, both then and now.

ENGL 4950-002: The Role of Place In English Studies

Undergraduate cognate section; see ENGL 5950-002.

Undergraduate Creative Writing Courses

ENGL 2020: Introduction to Creative Writing

Prerequisites: ENGL 1100 or equivalent. This course is a creative writing survey and workshop focusing on the study of three genres-short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students learn primary concepts and techniques of craft, including narrative, voice, character, setting, imagery, metaphor, point-of-view. Students will explore literary conventions specific to each genre, as well as universal qualities that make all writing effective for an audience. The course requires three different kinds of writing: brief analytic essays, open-ended exploratory exercises, and carefully revised original work.

ENGL 2030: Poetry Jumpstart

This course provides new poets, would-be poets, and curious non-poets with exercises, experiments, and activities to explore two questions: what is a poem, and how does one get written? Students will read published poems and examine their use of imagery, metaphor, form, and other techniques, and experiment with those techniques in their own writing. This course satisfies the English core requirement for the Creative Writing area and counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 2040: Fiction Jumpstart

This course provides exercises, discussions, models, and practice for discovering short stories and the many ways to tell them. Students will read published short stories to learn how other writers have worked with point of view, distance, voice, plot, dialogue, setting, and characterization. Students will also write exercises and stories for workshop critique. Students who have taken ENGL 2060 may not take ENGL 2040 for credit. This course fulfills the English core requirement for the Creative Writing area and counts toward the Certificate in Writing.

ENGL 3030: Improving On The Blank Page: Writing Poetry

This course digs into questions of form and technique in poetry. Students will study and practice form, prosody, figurative language, and other techniques for (to borrow from Chilean poet Nicanor Parra) improving on the blank page. This course may be repeated once for a total of 6 credit hours. It counts toward the Certificate in Creative Writing.

ENGL 4160: Special Topics in Writing: Writing for the Business of Literary Journals

In this course, students will write to increase development and funding of the student literary journal Litmag, which includes soliciting donations, creating the crowdfund campaign, maintaining current advertisers while securing payment, soliciting new advertisers both on and off campus, and updating the media kit and other PR materials. Students will also promote the journal to potential submitters and readers, initiating the call for submissions through flyer development, campus-wide emails, in-class recruitment, digital signage, and ads with The Current. Toward the end of the semester, students will begin the submissions review process. All of this will include writing for social media with engaging and high-traffic posts throughout the semester. Students may write book reviews, writer interviews, and other editorial pieces for inclusion in the spring issue. Through all of this, students will develop skills in public relations and professional correspondence, fundraising, marketing and publicity, editorial tact and confidentiality, event planning, and networking.

ENG 4180: Novel Beginnings

The first few pages of a novel should startle, inspire and captivate. Learning to write a great beginning is an essential part of the writer’s craft. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the process of writing a novel through a series of lessons focused on the first few chapters of several critically acclaimed novels. The course will explore different elements of fiction: point of view, character, perspective, plot, scene, physical environment, dialogue and how these devices work to reel in the reader in the beginning pages. Readings will consist of selected novels. Students will often have to respond to the readings in writing. Students will also be required to write and submit original work. Attendance and class participation will be graded.

Graduate Courses for the Master of Arts

ENGL 5700: 20C American Literature: Writing From The Margins

The course will examine portions of American culture that have often been excluded from or overshadowed by dominant discourses. A series of novels will take the class from the Modernism of the early 20th century, through mid-century Postmoderism, to a Metamodernist perspective near the end of the century. Students will be responsible for leading seminar style discussion, a book review, and two smaller essays that will be revised to make up parts of the term paper.

ENGL 5890: Teaching College Writing

Teaching College Writing offers a broad introduction to various theories and practices of Rhetoric and Composition, a robust and diverse field within English Studies that focuses on practices,  processes, and pedagogies of writing. Intersecting theoretical perspectives covered in the course will include: critical race studies and anti-racism; queer theory; disability studies, access, and disability justice; community engagement and service learning; decolonialism and indigenous rhetorics; multilingualism; and teaching with technology (including online writing instruction and the approaches to generative AI).

Our ultimate goal is to collectively and critically explore writing and writing instruction, developing a sense of why teaching writing is a complicated task with high stakes. In particular, we will gain insight into how we can teach writing in evidence-based and thoughtful ways that account for the multiple identities, knowledges, and communities students (and teachers!) carry with them to classrooms. You will leave the class with a firm grounding in research in the field, various theories of writing, and how to apply this work in your present or future classroom. Assignments can take many forms; you select what best aligns with your needs and interests, including (but not limited to): academic essays, creative writing, multimodal experimentation, or the creation/revision of classroom materials like syllabuses or unit plans.

A caveat, if this description feels unfamiliar: I’ll note that you don’t need to be at all familiar with the field of Rhetoric and Composition to dig into this class. Indeed, most of work in the first few weeks will be situating ourselves in the field and  what it means to us--and how it can guide and ground our work, yes, but also how it may inhibit us, and how we may want to question the field or add to it. Folks in the class will be coming from different backgrounds, so we’ll all be muddling through together, offering our own insights and expertise.

ENGL 5950-001: American Cinema of the 1930s & 1940s

In this course a selection of American films from the 1930s/1940s—Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” according to many—will serve as our gateway to an exploration of the entertainment industry and the studio system, film language and technology, film stars and genres, film theory and criticism, and the intersection of cultural history and artistic production. We’ll be “taking Hollywood seriously” as a site of artistic, cultural, social, economic, and imaginary importance, both then and now.

ENGL 5950-002: The Role of Place In English Studies

Place commonly becomes an analytical tool in fiction when it is thought of as a character, in, for example, Breaking Clean, a memoir of life on a cattle ranch on the High Plains that we might read. https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Clean-Judy-Blunt/dp/0375701303 

But place is a concept that offers entrée into many subjects under the umbrella of English Studies and allows me to bring together readings and topics that might typically be isolated from one another:

• Fiction
• Creative non-fiction (like memoir)
• Visual representations of place (like Ken Burns documentary on our national parks)
• Scholarship about place

A recurring thread in this course will be the study of place(s) that mean a lot to you. We’ll wonder why. And we’ll consider how place(s) shape the societal roles available to us. For example, in the novel, Gloryland, the main character leaves the Civil War South when his father, out of love, says the young man is too independent to remain alive under the restrictions placed on him there. And so, in the novel, he finds himself in the mountain spaces of Yosemite where he and a mule make communion. Another focus will be on how places gain their identity. Cultural geographer Yi- Fu Tuan shows us that we first come to know place kinesthetically when, as infants, we gain the ability to move through space, when we can crawl and walk. And so, at a fundamental level, our knowledge of place is embodied. But places also gain their identity from myths, like ones that consider the Midwest a flyover territory of boring landscape and bland consensus.

(Check out “View of the World from Ninth Avenue” by Saul Steinberg here:
https://saulsteinbergfoundation.org/essay/view-of-the-world-from-9th-avenue/
and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Avenue).

The origin of and functions such myths serve will be part of our study through a historical look at  myths about the Midwest and the North Woods of the Upper Midwest.

Graduate Courses for the Creative Writing MFA

ENGL 5100: Graduate Workshop in Poetry

In this course you will write poems, many of them, which your peers will read and respond to. You will read and respond to the poems of your peers. As a group we will grapple with those poems, examine them, test them, troubleshoot them. We will explore issues of process and technique. We will challenge each other and support each other and partake in the rare gift of a close community with other working writers. You will cultivate a deeper and more sustainable relationship to your own work.

ENGL 5110: Graduate Workshop in Fiction

Open to students in the creative writing program and to others with permission of instructor. Consists of a writing workshop in which the fiction (short stories or chapters of a novel) written by the students enrolled in the course is discussed and analyzed by the instructor and members of the class. Students taking this course will be expected to write original fiction throughout the course. May be repeated for maximum credit of 15h.

ENGL 5190: Literary Journal Editing

Prerequisites: Open to students in the MFA program who have had at least two graduate writing workshops and to others with consent of the instructor. Throughout this semester, student in this course students serve as first level readers of all (poetry, fiction, non-fiction) submissions to Boulevard and Natural Bridge. Students will read and narrow down the field of submissions evaluating and recommending selected submissions to the editorial board of the magazine. The editorial board will then consider the class consensus in its final selection of material for publication. In addition to this primary task of editorial selection, students will also be involved in the other activities necessary for the production of an issue of the magazine. May be repeated for maximum graduate credit of nine hours.

Graduate Courses for both the Master of Arts and the Creative Writing MFA

ENGL 6000: Thesis

Prerequisite: 3.5 graduate GPA. Thesis research and writing on a selected topic in English studies.  May be taken over two semesters, three (3) hours each semester.