Lower Division Courses
First Year Writing Courses:
ENG-100 Basic First Year Composition 3.0 cr.
Fall. Prereq.: Placement. Coreq: HIS-101, 102, 103, 105, or 106. A course in the essential elements of critical thinking and rhetorical strategies necessary for effective college writing. The course emphasizes writing as process and focuses extensively on revision. A research paper, which involves library work and instruction in research techniques, is required. Students whose native language is English and who are enrolled in ENG-100 are encouraged to enroll in STS-110, Effective Studying. Students whose native language is not English may be required to do work in English as a Second Language (MFL-101, 102) prior to enrolling in ENG-100. All students who complete ENG-100 must also complete ENG-101 in order to fulfill the Liberal Arts Curriculum requirement in Writing.
ENG-101 Writing the First Year Experience 3.0 cr.
Fall, spring. Prereq.: Placement. Fall coreq.: HIS-101, 102, 103, 105, or 106. A course in the essential elements of critical thinking and rhetorical strategies necessary for effective college writing. The course emphasizes writing as process and focuses extensively on revision. (WRITING)
WRI-102 Finding a Voice 3.0 cr.
Fall. Prereq.: Placement. Coreq.: HIS-101, 102, 103, 105, or 106. Students apply and practice the techniques of writing through sustained intellectual inquiry in a specific discipline (such as creative writing or political philosophy). (WRITING)
English Courses:
NOTE: All 200-level English courses fulfill the Literature portion of the Humanities Liberal Arts Core Curriculum.
ENG-140 Native American Art & Literature 3.0 cr.
(Same as ART-140). This course will offer students an opportunity to see the connection between Native American art and literature. The focus will be on Navajo and Pueblo traditions involving word and image. Authors will include Leslie Silko and Scott Momaday. (HUMANITIES and FINE ARTS and CULTURAL DIVERSITY)
ENG-202 Trends in Contemporary Poetry 3.0 cr.
An investigation of trends and techniques in international contemporary poetry. Students will study elements of poetry (form, rhythm, diction, subject matter, and voice), with attention to the ways contemporary poets build upon—and bend—tradition. Writers may include Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Antonio Porchia, Billy Collins, and Pattiann Rogers. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-203 Trends in Contemporary Fiction 3.0 cr.
An examination of the poetics of international contemporary fiction. Students will study elements of fiction (point of view, characterization, setting, etc.) and concepts of authorship, and will evaluate how contemporary works of fiction bend the rules of storytelling. Readings may include House of Leaves, White Teeth, and Running in the Family. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-204 Trends in Contemporary Creative Nonfiction 3.0 cr.
An examination of the various forms, methods (including fieldwork), and subject matter of 20th- and 21st-century creative nonfiction writers who produce literary journalism, nature writing, and memoir. Writers studied may include Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, John McPhee, and Annie Dillard. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-218 Poetry Writing Workshop I 3.0 cr.
An opportunity for students to read widely in and begin writing poetry.
ENG-219 Fiction Writing Workshop I 3.0 cr.
An opportunity for students to work in a variety of fictional forms.
ENG-220 Creative Nonfiction Writing Workshop I 3.0 cr.
An opportunity for students to write creative nonfiction focused on natural history, nature, environment, conservation, science, medicine, landscape, or place.
ENG-294 Independent Study 1.0 to 3.0 cr.
Fall and spring. Prereq.: Permission. A special research project on a selected topic. This course will not fulfill the Liberal Arts Core requirement for independent work. Independent studies cannot substitute for specific course requirements in the major or minor. See the English Department's independent study guidelines and the College's independent study guidelines
ENG-299T.3 Money in Literature 3.0 cr.
Sampling several centuries, countries, and literary genres, this course traces the love-hate relationship between literary art and financial calculation, a relationship which raises questions regarding what has value and what doesn't, what is real and what isn't, what humans in society owe to one another, and what purpose artistic endeavor is supposed to serve in a world where such endeavor rarely pays. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.4 Thief-making & Thief-taking: Nineteenth-century Crime Literature 3.0 cr.
The nineteenth century was immersed in the cultural project of defining criminality and, through the gradual professionalization of the police, constructing the criminal's nemesis, the detective. Through popular crime fiction, newspaper accounts of an actual criminal case, and articles from nineteenth-century periodicals, we'll explore how the nineteenth-century fascination with crime and detectives was shaped by preoccupations with the construction of gender, class dynamics, and the tension between the didactic and entertainment functions of popular fiction. We will also turn the spotlight on ourselves, considering why we might sustain that fascination today and why mystery stories remain one of the most widely read genres. As we address these questions, we'll be making forays into interpretative strategies based on Marxist, cultural studies, psychoanalytic, and narrative literary theories. Texts include Charles Dickens' Newgate novel, Oliver Twist; Wilkie Collins' sensation novel, Woman in White; selected short stories featuring the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, and at least one late twentieth-century text adopting and adapting the figure of Sherlock Holmes. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.8 Forever Mourning: Narratives of Loss in Expatriate & Immigrant Writing 3.0 cr.
Through a cross-genre mixture of travel writing, memoir, fiction, poetry, and essays on displacement, this course will address particular elegiac narratives unique to the expatriate and immigrant experience. In addition to examining transnational modes of mourning, the class will also evaluate whether or not such displaced writers can ever achieve consolation. Possible authors include Hanif Kureishi, Bharati Mukherjee, Derek Walcott, Agha Shahid Ali, Mohsin Hamid and Edward Said. (HUMANITIES and CULTURAL DIVERSITY)
ENG-299T.9 Visions of Environment 3.0 cr.
This course focuses on writers who have shaped thinking about the environment in the United States. The course first examines the historical and philosophical bases for American conceptions of nature, and then analyzes literary treatments of concepts such as bioregionalism, wilderness, sense of place, and environmentalism. Authors include Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and others. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.10 Shakespearean Comedy 3.0 cr.
This course will trace the development of Shakespearean comedy through representative plays from all stages of the dramatist's career. In the process, the class will explore the literary, theatrical, religious, political, and cultural significance of comedy, both in general and in its Shakespearean form. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.15 World War I & Modern Literature 3.0 cr.
World War I, the most literary war in British history, may well have permanently altered the landscape of British literature through its poetry and prose. This course will examine the war poets' verse; soldiers' and nurses' autobiographies; Virginia Woolf's modernist novel Mrs. Dalloway; T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land"; and Pat Barker's recent novel Regeneration, the fictional account of the relationship between military psychiatrist William Rivers and shell-shocked poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.18 You Can't Read This: Censorship & the Politics of Literature 3.0 cr.
This course will explore the political and ideological dimensions of literature through a study of censorship and book banning. The course will focus on the power of literature, both real and imagined, as a subversive and disruptive force in society through case studies of banned books. Case studies may include Huckleberry Finn, The Awakening, Lolita, and The Satanic Verses. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.19 Introduction to Shakespeare 3.0 cr.
Through careful scrutiny of representative plays in several genres and from different periods in Shakespeare’s career, this course will test popular perceptions of English literature’s most overexposed figure by situating him in his literary, theatrical, historical, and cultural contexts. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.20 Captivity & Emancipation 3.0 cr.
This course looks at representations, both fictional and non-fictional, of captivity and enslavement. Students will explore the psychological, political, and intercultural dynamics of captivity and domination, as well as the role of language in defining, enabling, justifying, and protesting captivity as well as emancipation. Authors may include Mary Rowlandon, William Apess, Frederick Douglas, and Ken Kesey. (HUMANITIES and CULTURAL DIVERSITY)
ENG-299T.21 Literature & Medicine 3.0 cr.
This course focuses on literature as a medium of empathy and explores such relationships as those between doctor and patient, mind and medicine, the scalpel and the act of poetry. Authors may include William Carlos Williams, Robert Coles, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekov, and Toni Morrison. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.22 The Literature of Motherhood 3.0 cr.
This course will critically examine various constructions of motherhood through close readings of literature written by both mothers and non-mothers. Authors may include Pattiann Rogers, Jane Smiley, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Barbara Kingsolver. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.23 Asia Through Its Movies 3.0 cr.
Students will analyze contemporary Asian cultures through movies from Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam, mainland China and the Indian subcontinent. Genres will include wu-xia, anime, sci-fi, musicals, yakuza narratives and "art house" movies. Course readings will include cultural studies theory, short stories, and the directors' and artists' essays and commentaries. (HUMANITIES and CULTURAL DIVERSITY)
ENG-299T.25 Prose & Cons 3.0 cr.
This course looks at representations of incarceration and explores relations between crime and art by examining prose by current and former prisoners. Authors may include Chuck Culhane, Malcom X, Antonio Gramsci, Wole Soyinka, Assata Shakur, and Victor Hugo. (HUMANITIES)
ENG-299T.26 Literature of the American West 3.0 cr.
What is the American West as imagined and depicted by 20th-century writers? Which mythologies and ideologies about the West (such as rugged individualism and the idea of the frontier) dating from the 19th-century are still present and perpetuated by contemporary authors? How do contemporary writers reject or revise such mythologies? How do individualism, counter-culturalism, racial difference, aridity, competition over natural resources, and environmentalism shape the way Americans imagine the West? How does the West?in its conflicts, diversity, and complexity?epitomize in a dramatic way what we imagine as deeply American? These are just some of the questions that we will attempt to answer through our reading of novels, short stories, poems and essays by 20th-century American westerners such as Wallace Stegner, Gretel Ehrlich, Ken Kesey, Leslie Marmon Silko, Edward Abbey, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Gary Snyder. (HUMANITIES)