ENGL 105-01 10267 |
LGBTQ2S+ Literature in America: Identities and Differences in U.S. Literature |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room:
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Instructor: Rachel Gold
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Details
This introductory English course covers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and Two Spirit literature in America. We will examine how American culture and politics have shaped and been shaped by LGBTQ2S+ writing and art. We will look at historical texts that helped to create queer and trans identities in America and appreciate intersections of race, ethnicity, and class as we move into current work. And we'll explore what it means to queer a text, a life and a culture. Requirements include written responses to reading, a journal, a creative project, and a 5-7 page essay. Authors we’ll read include: Charles Brockden Brown, Jewelle Gomez, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, Gloria Anzaldúa, Allison Bechdel, Malinda Lo, Kai Cheng Thom, Tommy Pico, Mariko Tamaki, and Junauda Petrus.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 112-01 10268 |
Introduction to African American Literature |
Days: M W F
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Time: 09:40 am-10:40 am
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Room:
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Instructor: Daylanne English
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*Cross-listed with AMST 112-01 (10269); registration limit has been adjusted to save 5 seats for incoming FYs*
Details
In this introductory course, we will study African American literature from its origins to the present. We will study major genres and movements, including the Harlem Renaissance and Afrofuturism. We will learn to use the tools of literary analysis in order to read closely, critically, appreciatively—and collectively. Themes of prophesy (what Du Bois termed “second sight”), literary experimentation, and beauty will focus our study. Authors will include: David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Claudia Rankine, and Ross Gay. Requirements include: a presentation, brief written responses to the readings, one medium length essay and a revision of it, and a final project that will include a written component. This course fulfills either the foundation course in literature requirement or the literature by U.S. writers of color requirement for the English major.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 125-F1 10270 |
Craft, Activism, and Subversive Stitchers |
Days: M W F
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Time: 02:20 pm-03:20 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Amy Elkins
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*First-Year Course Only*
Details
The 2020 pandemic was marked by a global turn to the handmade, from learning the art of baking and DIY political yard signs to crocheting, embroidery, woodworking, painting, collage, and more. But this phenomenon has roots that go beyond our contemporary moment, and writers have frequently tapped into the resources of craft in their novels, short fiction, poetry, and life-writing. In this first-year course, we will study the ways subversive stitching and other activist craft practices have shaped the work of resistance in contemporary literature and theory. We will take a global and experimental approach to these questions, studying Southern and Indigenous quilting practices, the poetics of silk worms, legacies of Irish handiwork and global migration, and poetry inspired by Japanese kintsugi (in which broken pots are mended with gold), Botswana’s “careless seamstress,” and the legacies of race and art in Jamaican hybrid identity. Students will study these texts through writing and hands-on research, experimenting with various craft forms along the way. No art or craft experience required; all curious makers and scholars are welcome!
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 136-01 10271 |
Introduction to Drama: Staging Capitalism |
Days: T R
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Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Penelope Geng
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Details
The love of money is the root of all evil (radix malorum est cupiditas), so goes the old proverb. In this introductory course to drama, we will chart the rise of commercial drama and its response to different forms of capitalism (mercantile, racial, and global) from the seventeenth century to the contemporary era. The marriage of art and commerce has long been central to theater, and playwrights like Shakespeare, Edward Bond, Lynn Nottage, and David Henry Hwang have used theater to bring attention to themes of precarity and dispossession, the psychology of risk, and the intoxicating allure of easy profit. We will study our texts from a historical, textual, and performance perspective, and participate in a special communal experience by attending the Guthrie Theatre’s fall production of The Lehman Trilogy, a modern classic. This course serves as a foundation course for the English major.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 137-01 10272 |
Introduction to the Novel |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: James Dawes
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*First day attendance required*
Details
In this course we will read some of the most popular novels ever written in the United States. They will be heart-wrenchingly beautiful, tear-jerkingly sad, philosophically bold, and seriously weird. We will discuss love, death, the meaning of life, cruelty, beauty, loneliness, artificial intelligence, and mystery.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 137-02 10273 |
Dark Academia |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room:
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Instructor: Amy Elkins
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Details
You know it when you see it: tweed blazers, a pile of leatherbound books read bydripping candlelight, Gothic architecture, boarding schools, crunchy leaves, and oldpaintings. Dark Academia is an internet subculture devoted to the material and visualculture of universities and student life. But it’s also an aesthetic shaped by literaryhistory and the socioeconomics of higher education. In this class, we will study thepolitics of aesthetics by way of Dark Academia—murder, magic, and various forms ofrogue bookishness included! Students will read novels by writers such as KazuoIshiguro, Zadie Smith, Donna Tartt, and Oscar Wilde (with some detours into film andtelevision) as we think critically about academia itself—as a lifestyle, as the pursuit ofknowledge, and as a neoliberal system.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 137-03 10274 |
Dark Academia |
Days: T R
|
Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Amy Elkins
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|
Details
You know it when you see it: tweed blazers, a pile of leatherbound books read bydripping candlelight, Gothic architecture, boarding schools, crunchy leaves, and oldpaintings. Dark Academia is an internet subculture devoted to the material and visualculture of universities and student life. But it’s also an aesthetic shaped by literaryhistory and the socioeconomics of higher education. In this class, we will study thepolitics of aesthetics by way of Dark Academia—murder, magic, and various forms ofrogue bookishness included! Students will read novels by writers such as KazuoIshiguro, Zadie Smith, Donna Tartt, and Oscar Wilde (with some detours into film andtelevision) as we think critically about academia itself—as a lifestyle, as the pursuit ofknowledge, and as a neoliberal system.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 150-01 10276 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Days: M W F
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Time: 12:00 pm-01:00 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Peter Bognanni
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Details
In this course we will dive right into the study of creative writing by reading and writing poetry, flash fiction, short stories, and personal essays. We will study how published authors craft their pieces, how they convey sensation and emotion, and how they artfully tell a story. Along the way, you’ll try your hand at each literary form we study. This is the basic template you can expect on a day-to-day basis. But, beyond this relatively simple pattern, what I hope will happen this term is that you’ll lose yourself to the daring act of creating literature. I hope you’ll use your growing knowledge of writing technique and literary history to say something fearless and artful about the world around you. And I hope you will see that what you write matters. Great creative writing aspires to more than just a pleasant diversion from life. At its best, it directly engages with life and even tries to change it. We look to stories, poems, and essays to give us an experience in language that we’ve never had before, to deepen our knowledge of the world, and to allow us into the hearts and minds of others. I hope this semester will be a window into that experience for you.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 150-02 10277 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Days: M W F
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Time: 01:10 pm-02:10 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Matt Burgess
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Details
This course will focus on the basic elements of creative writing. Students will be asked to read and discuss published work by writers across a wide range of cultures, to support one another through peer workshops, and to write multiple drafts of short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Throughout the semester our focus will be on creating an artistic community that encourages everyone to discover and nurture their own individual creative voice, and then to express that voice with force and conviction.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 150-03 10278 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room:
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Instructor: STAFF
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Details
Ray Bradbury wrote “toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.” Emily Dickinson described poetry as “feel[ing] physically as if the top of my head were taken off.” In this introductory creative writing course, we will explore different kinds of writing that might shake loose our brains and hone an orientation toward curiosity and wonder. When we read or write, we are both in and out of ourselves—where does a poem or story take us without physically moving us? Where else can our minds go? What inspires us, moves us, makes us daydream? Together, we will work to find our own personal answers to these questions by experimenting with form, content, and style. We will approach theblank page as a place of possibility and lean into our sense of bewilderment. As a group, we’ll open the door to open-endedness and see what (or who!) walks through. Throughout this cross-genre class, you will write several creative pieces. Classes will consist of readings, discussions, writing exercises, and responses to each other’s work. The class will culminate in a final portfolio of original creative work.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 150-F1 10275 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 09:40 am-10:40 am
|
Room:
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Instructor: Peter Bognanni
|
|
*First-Year Course Only*
Details
In this first year course we will dive right into the study of creative writing by reading and writing poetry, flash fiction, short stories, and personal essays. We will study how published authors craft their pieces, how they convey sensation and emotion, and how they artfully tell a story. Along the way, you’ll try your hand at each literary form we study. This is the basic template you can expect on a day-to-day basis. But, beyond this relatively simple pattern, what I hope will happen this term is that you’ll lose yourself to the daring act of creating literature. I hope you’ll use your growing knowledge of writing technique and literary history to say something fearless and artful about the world around you. And I hope you will see that what you write matters. Great creative writing aspires to more than just a pleasant diversion from life. At its best, it directly engages with life and even tries to change it. We look to stories, poems, and essays to give us an experience in language that we’ve never had before, to deepen our knowledge of the world, and to allow us into the hearts and minds of others. I hope this semester will be a window into that experience for you.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
|
ENGL 194-01 10398 |
Words are Hard: Literary Modernism and Limits of Language |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room:
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Instructor: Ross Shields
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*Cross-listed with GERM 194-01 (10397)*
Details
The first decades of the 20th century produced some of the most innovative works in literary history, permanently transforming how we see, hear, and otherwise perceive the world around us. More than any aesthetic movement before or since, modernists including Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gertrude Stein, and Marcel Proust were keenly aware of both the limits of language and the inevitability of their transgression. They used words in ways that stretch sense to the point where it breaks, but with the aim of revealing a richer domain of finer-grained perception that is obscured by our everyday linguistic and intellectual habits. Over the course of the semester, we will read literary and theoretical accounts that both thematize and perform their own linguistic (in)capacities: to represent, to translate, to obscure, to estrange, to reveal. We will also examine some instances of modernist music, painting, and film. Our aim is to arrive at a nuanced understanding of how words work, contrasting linguistic phenomena with other forms of expressive media, and inquiring into the potential of language to articulate non-linguistic modes of experience. All readings in English. The course has no prerequisites and is open to first years.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 208-01 10279 |
Literary Publishing |
Days: T R
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Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Steven Woodward
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Details
To many readers, the field of publishing seems opaque. How does a novel go from scribbled notes to finished paperback? What goes into editing, printing, and marketing a collection of stories or poems? This course will shed light on this rapidly evolving field through a combination of readings, in-class discussion, talks with local publishing professionals, and hands-on work. We will learn about publishing by producing our own anthology, tracing literary work from the hands of the author, through the processes of acquisition, editing, production, marketing and publicity, printing and finally into the hands of the reader. Additional topics will include trends in publishing technology, interior design and typesetting, magazine and book editing, and the roles of the literary agent, the independent publisher, and the book reviewer. We will take advantage of the extraordinary publishing resources in the Twin Cities through guest speakers and field trips. Assignments will include submitting your own writing, editing projects, presenting publisher profiles, and writing a final paper on publishing issues. This course is designed for readers who want to know how the book they’re holding got into their hands, for writers who want to know what happens when they send their works to publishers, and for those interested in publishing as a future career. Note: This is not an introductory writing class. Though all are welcome, students who have completed their first-year writing requirement are more successful. In addition, students who have sufficient creative material (poems, stories, or essays) ready for inclusion in the anthology will find it more fulfilling.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 260-01 10280 |
Science Fiction: From Matrix Baby Cannibals to Brave New Worlds |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room:
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Instructor: James Dawes
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|
*First day attendance required*
Details
In the past fifty years, science fiction has emerged as the primary cultural form for thinking about human extinction: climate catastrophe, pandemics, hostile AI, nuclear war. But science fiction has also emerged as the primary cultural form for imagining a near boundless future for humans: cybernetic enhancements, colonies on Goldilocks planets, post-scarcity economies, digital consciousness. Facing such disorienting and sometimes unfathomable changes, science fiction seeks to understand what it means to be a human and to live a meaningful life. Why are we here? What are we to become? How will both the promises and threats of technology change what it means to be a thinking, feeling human? In this course we will examine works of science fiction as complex aesthetic achievements, as philosophical inquiries into the nature of being and time, and as theoretical examinations of the nature of human cognition. We will engage in intensive readings of contemporary texts, including works by Ted Chiang, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Kazuo Ishiguro, and others. This class counts toward the Cognitive Science Concentration.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 262-01 10281 |
Literature and the Natural World: Victorian Nature Writing |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room:
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Instructor: Andrea Kaston Tange
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*First day attendance required; cross-listed with ENVI 262-01 (10282); registration limit has been adjusted to save 3 seats for incoming FYs*
Details
What is “nature writing,” and how is our sense of the balm that nature can provide tied to legacies of the Victorian period? This class considers these questions through a combination of readings, field trips, and scholarly and creative explorations of your relationship to the natural world. Although “nature” is not only plants, the nineteenth-century British fascination with plants makes them an excellent organizing motif. From exploring the globe for exotic specimens to fill out London’s Kew Gardens to devising flower dictionaries to send encoded messages to their beloveds, Victorian engaged with plant life in myriad ways. Readings for the course will cover many genres, and may include poetry (John Clare, Gerard Manly Hopkins), children’s books (Beatrix Potter, Frances Hodgson Burnett), travel writing (Isabella Bird, Mary Kingsley), novels (Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells), evolutionary science (Charles Darwin), and horticulture (John Louden, Gertrude Jekyll). We will considering these texts within key historical frames including extractive imperial practices, scientific systems of classification, the question of wild versus domesticated spaces/species, and gendered norms that shaped affective responses to nature. And we will put ourselves into nature—taking long walks together, visiting gardens and Como Conservatory, and observing, sketching, and writing about local natural environments. The class aims to offer some critiques of Victorian worldviews, imperial structures, and strategies, while still locating hope. How might the Victorians’ deep attention to the natural world inspire and sustain our own relationships to nature’s wonders and its fragilities? (This course satisfies the 18th/19th century British requirement on the English major. First-day attendance required.)
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 275-01 10283 |
African American Literature to 1900 |
Days: M W F
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Time: 02:20 pm-03:20 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Daylanne English
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*Cross-listed with AMST 275-01 (10284)*
Details
In this course, we will study African American literature from the end of the 18th century to the turn of the 20th century, from Phillis Wheatley to Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells. Themes of the course will include forging Black solidarity and writing as means of self-construction and resistance. We will also foreground early African American literature as art, as an at once aesthetic and political project, reading it closely and appreciatively. We will frame our semester’s work with sound studies, exploring how this literary tradition engages with oral culture and with the sonic. Requirements include: brief written responses to the readings, a presentation, a medium-length essay and a revision of it, and a final reflection. This course fulfills the English major requirement either of a course focused on literature by U.S. writers of color or a course on 19th-century American literature.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 280-01 10285 |
Crafts of Writing: Poetry; Form and (In)Fidelity |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: STAFF
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|
Details
As human beings, we give shape to our thoughts and emotions through language, and form is a particularly useful constraint when we do so through poetry. In this course, we will study form in poetry as projects of pattern making and breaking. We’ll consider both the histories and contemporary applications of poetic forms such as the sonnet, pantoum, ghazal, haibun, and others. One of the most exciting things about poetry in the twenty-first century is that living poets are working in invented forms as well as traditional ones that have reached us across cultures. Together, we’ll investigate the idea from Kierkegaard that “the more you limit yourself, the more fertile you become in invention.” Expect to read poems across time and technique, to write and rewrite, and to turn an eye to the world in search of forms known and yet-to-be. You might just be asked to invent one of your own!
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 285-01 10819 |
Playwriting |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 10:50 am-11:50 am
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Room:
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Instructor: STAFF
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*Cross-listed with THDA 242-01 (10818)*
Details
In this course, students engage in a series of playwriting exercises and read a wide variety of plays. They will read new and contemporary plays that employ different storytelling techniques (i.e., structure, character arcs, staging elements, etc.), embrace the unlimited possibilities of theatricality, and exemplify why we write for the stage. Students will develop a "playwriting toolkit" as they explore their artistic interests following the conventions of time-bound pieces: the 1-minute, 5-minute, 10-minute, and ultimately one-act form. In-class exercises and prompts, and small-group workshopping and reading will challenge each writer's individual development. A mid-term and final play reading series of one-acts will allow students to hear their work in a supportive public setting. May be repeated for credit.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 285-02 10821 |
Playwriting |
Days: T R
|
Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: STAFF
|
|
*Cross-listed with THDA 242-02 (10820)*
Details
In this course, students engage in a series of playwriting exercises and read a wide variety of plays. They will read new and contemporary plays that employ different storytelling techniques (i.e., structure, character arcs, staging elements, etc.), embrace the unlimited possibilities of theatricality, and exemplify why we write for the stage. Students will develop a "playwriting toolkit" as they explore their artistic interests following the conventions of time-bound pieces: the 1-minute, 5-minute, 10-minute, and ultimately one-act form. In-class exercises and prompts, and small-group workshopping and reading will challenge each writer's individual development. A mid-term and final play reading series of one-acts will allow students to hear their work in a supportive public setting. May be repeated for credit.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 286-01 10286 |
Narrative Journalism |
Days: W
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Time: 07:00 pm-10:00 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Baxter, Gilbert
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Details
This creative nonfiction course will focus on the elements of long-form narrativejournalism, including both print and audio storytelling. Students will learn to write storiesthat are clear and compelling as well as factual and precise. They will study thedifferences between writing for the eye and the ear. Students will learn how toidentify strong story ideas, conduct interviews and structure a narrative for maximumimpact. They will also write frequently, edit each other, and receive detailed suggestionson their writing from the instructor. This course will be taught by audio journalists Annie Baxter and Curtis Gilbert. Annieand Curtis have several decades of combined experience reporting and editing atMinnesota Public Radio and American Public Media. Annie currently works as an editorat The Wall Street Journal’s flagship podcast, The Journal. Curtis, a Macalesteralumnus, is currently an editor at APM Reports, a national investigative reporting group.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 294-01 10287 |
Crafts of Writing: Young Adult Literature |
Days: M W F
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Time: 01:10 pm-02:10 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Peter Bognanni
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|
Details
In her article “If Fiction Changes the World, It’s Going to Be YA,” journalist Emily Temple states that young adult books are primed to do work for the social good because of their timeliness, their willingness to take on big political issues, and their wide readership. In the last few decades, the young adult genre has been growing in scope and in ambition, and much of it is being written by exciting new authors, closer to the age of their protagonists. In this class we will study some new and foundational texts of the genre, discussing subjects like depiction of mental illness, the political implications of fantasy novels, and the “We Need Diverse Books” campaign. Meanwhile, you will be working on your own YA projects, learning for yourself what makes these books tick. This course serves as a creative writing elective in the English major.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 294-02 10288 |
Movie Medievalisms |
Days: M W F
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Time: 01:10 pm-02:10 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Coral Lumbley
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Details
Since the invention of film, audiences have been fascinated by fantastic depictions of the Middle Ages on screen. Audiences love escaping into mysterious worlds of adventure with kings, warriors, and princesses. But how much do these movies really have to do with the historical Middle Ages? Do they illuminate truths or manufacture lies? Was medieval Europe really as exciting, romantic, and dangerous as movies imagine? In this class, we will use actual primary materials to explore how the medium of film adapts, subverts, and appropriates elements of the medieval past. In the end, we will discover what our favorite “medieval” movies say not just about medieval societies, but about ourselves. Assignments include semi-weekly film screenings, primary source readings, and quizzes; pair presentations; monthly readings on theories of medievalism; and two essays plus a film script. This class fulfills the pre-1800 Medieval requirement for the English major.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 294-03 10289 |
Crafts of Writing: Imitation and Influence |
Days: T R
|
Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Emma Törzs
|
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Details
Who are the writers you return to over and over? The songs you listen to on repeat, themovies you've seen a hundred times? This class is an in-depth, multi-genre study ofwhat it means to be artistically "influenced," and throughout the semester we willexamine our own influences as a way to understand and develop our own unique voicesas writers. We will also engage in imitation, both at the micro level of line and sentenceand the macro level of theme and feeling. We'll look at all the little fiddly bits that makeup a whole – syntax, word choice, stress pattern, sentence length – and all theintangibles, too; the emotions, the moods, the dream landscapes. We will reproduceand repurpose the work of others in order to make our own original works, studyingwriters like George Saunders, Ocean Vuong, Ross Gay, and Mary Oliver – as well asany writers you yourself bring to the table.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 294-04 10290 |
Curse/Cure: Literature, Medicine, and Magic in the Renaissance |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Penelope Geng
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Details
Doctor, occultist, magician. The great healers of the Renaissance fashionedthemselves not as surgeons (how barbarous), but magi. They sought to cure ailing patientsthrough a combination of drugs, bloodletting (with a knife or leeches), and magical remedies(amulets, casting, exorcism). What might it have been like to be a doctor or a patient in an ageof enchantment? What did “holistic” medicine look like during the Renaissance and after theReformation? How did literature shape cultural understanding of the doctor-patientrelationship, nursing as gendered labor, and disease as a blight or a curse? In addition toreading plays, poems, and short prose romances, we will examine the writings of notableRenaissance doctors and healers, chart the rise of royal and civic hospitals, and learn about the transmission of scientific and medical knowledge from the East to the West. Students will have the chance to conduct independent and original archival research and hone their writing skills in community. This course counts for the Renaissance period requirement for the English major and the Community and Global Health Concentration. No prerequisites, but familiarity with early modern English is an asset.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 294-05 10573 |
Music and Words: An Arts Writing Workshop |
Days: T R
|
Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
|
Room:
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Instructor: Mark Mazullo
|
|
*Cross-listed with MUSI 294-01 (10572)*
Details
In this writing workshop, we will practice transmuting artistic experience into words. We will look at visual art, listen to music, and watch theatrical and dance performances, and in response, we’ll practice different modes of incorporating our reactions into creative and critical writing. We’ll read fiction, poetry, personal essays, criticism, reviews, memoirs, etc. and we’ll try our hands at each form, gaining a sense of what is involved in describing the color of a cello’s sound, the gestures of a dancing body, or the intangible emotions we feel when we stand in front of a painting. In a final project, students will choose an artistic form and a mode of response and develop a larger-scale piece of writing.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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ENGL 310-01 10291 |
Studies in Shakespeare: Shakespeare and Justice |
Days: W
|
Time: 01:10 pm-04:30 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Penelope Geng
|
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Details
In Shakespeare’s England, whipping, branding, mutilation (of the hand,nose, ears, or face), pillorying, hanging, burning, and beheading were common forms of legalpunishment. The rigors of early modern law may seem strange or “barbaric” to us, yet we mayrecognize the intentions behind the law: to restore order, keep the peace, and stabilize socialrelations. What can Shakespearean drama teach us about the human desire for justice,retribution, and forgiveness? To grasp what justice meant to the early moderns and, in turn,what it means to us today, we will study the representation of law and justice in plays byShakespeare and his contemporaries. We will read early modern and contemporary legal andpolitical theory, and attend shows or lectures related to the topics of this class. This coursesatisfies the Renaissance period requirement for the English major and counts as a course for the Legal Studies Concentration. Prerequisite: a 100- or 200-level English course or permission of the instructor.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 367-01 10455 |
Postcolonial Theory |
Days: T R
|
Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: David Moore
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*Cross-listed with INTL 367-01 (10454)*
Details
Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947-1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., and the post-Soviet sphere. The course bridges cultural representational, and political theory. Prerequisite(s): Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 380-01 10292 |
Topics in African American Literature: LOVE |
Days: M W F
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Time: 12:00 pm-01:00 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Daylanne English
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*Cross-listed with AMST 380-01 (10293)*
Details
In this class, we will explore how love resides at the very heart of the African American literary tradition by studying how African American writers of the 20th and 21st centuries have consistently expressed, theorized, and embraced love. Our readings will represent multiple kinds of romances and sexualities, yet all will center the love that both emerges from and helps to create Black collectivity, solidarity, and joy. Our readings will also reveal and challenge the oppressive forces that Black love and lovers so often must withstand. Authors will include: W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Samuel Delany. In addition, we will read some scholarship related to the course topic and to our texts. Course requirements include: discussion questions on our readings, a presentation, a short essay, and a final project. This course fulfills the U.S. writers of color requirement for the English major. Prerequisite: One prior English course numbered in the 100s.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 401-01 10294 |
Projects in Literary Research: Medieval Trans/Formations |
Days: M W F
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Time: 10:50 am-11:50 am
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Room:
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Instructor: Coral Lumbley
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Details
This capstone course will give English majors in the Literature Path the opportunity to use a diverse set of advanced analytic methods to design and craft an independent research project on the broad topic of trans/formation, focusing on formative elements of identity like race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and species. The semester will be divided in three units that scaffold to the capstone project itself. First, students will engage deeply with primary and secondary materials from the Middle Ages that illuminate processes of medieval trans/formations. Together we will read stories of magical transformation (encountering a transgender knight in Roman de Silence, a trans-racial convert in King of Tars, and tranimalities in the Mabinogi) together with the work of critical theorists like Homi Bhabha, Glorida Anzaldúa, Susan Stryker, Mel Chen, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Donna Haraway. Students will develop analytical skill in historicist, postcolonial, feminist, trans*, and ecocritical approaches, and select the direction of their capstones through a research proposal. Second, students will begin independent research processes, developing their own approaches with annotated bibliographies. Finally, students will write and craft capstones, which may incorporate digital or multimodal material. Assignments will include weekly readings, a class presentation, a research proposal, an annotated bibliography, a written capstone project, and a department-wide presentation of the project.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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ENGL 406-01 10295 |
Projects in Creative Writing: The Craft of the Novella |
Days: T R
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Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room:
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Instructor: Emma Törzs
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Details
As a literary form, "the novella" is often defined by what it is not: too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel. In this capstone class, however, we will study the novella as a discrete form unto itself, perfectly suited to read in one or two immersive sittings and uniquely able to develop story and character with elegant concision. We will explore the history, architecture, possibilities and delights of fictional works that range from 10,000 to 40,000 words, reading novellas in genres including literary realism, horror, and fantasy, from authors such as Victor LaValle, Claire Keegan, and James Welch. Over the course of the semester students will write and workshop their own ~15,000 word novella, with emphasis on character, structure, and sentence-level craft.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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