ENCW 5310 - 001: Advanced Poetry Writing II - Research for Poets

Sumita Chakraborty

The muses aren’t coming to save us, so we have to inspire ourselves. This course is a cross between a workshop and a craft or methodology class, and it is designed to help each participant cultivate a research practice to aid their creative work. Research can be an indispensable poetic skill for any subject matter from the deeply personal to the most conceptual; it’s often one of the surest-fire ways to encounter something that is unexpected or unlock a new avenue of imagination. It can help with something as small as enriching a metaphor or something as big as sparking an entire project. In addition to offering an opportunity to develop practical skills in ways that are organic to your writing practice, to learn how to use library and archival resources to your advantage, and to acquire habits around inquiry that stimulate your work, this course will serve as an opportunity to develop a substantial sequence of work, with the help of guided prompts, that enriches and complicates your existing poetry and your ongoing artistic or intellectual obsessions. Undergraduates and graduate students alike can expect to generate work that would well serve a capstone, thesis, or book manuscript, or to encounter a new area of interest heretofore unknown to you. Undergraduates, please do not be wary of “advanced”: the prerequisite is any 2000-level course. Graduate students, please do not fear redundancy: this course is designed to meet each participant where they are at in terms of what they yet need or wish to learn or discover. 

ENCW 5610 - 001: Advanced Fiction Writing II - Grimm Variations

Jesse Ball

The class is divided into two groups. Each week one group of students will compose variations on a particular folk tale chosen from BROTHERS GRIMM. The variations may be in any genre. 

ENCW 7310 - 001: MFA Poetry Workshop - poetrees & treasons:  genealogies | generation

Lisa Spaar

This is an advanced poetry workshop open to first- and second-year poetry students in the Master of Fine Arts Program of the Department of English.  In the first half of the semester, students will each present to the class a suite of their poems in constellation (new work, old work, problematic work), two poets per class, allowing time for deep questions and discussion.  The poets presenting in a given week will also preface discussion of their constellations by offering a context for their constellation:  three aesthetic, formal, or flood subject “ancestors” or antecedents for the poems under consideration: exemplary poems/poets or excerpts from other texts, but also non-literary influences: clips from film, details/images/texts from science or technology, music, cuisine, family history, particular geographies, manga, dance, hagiography, Buddhism, etc.  The second half of the semester will be intensely generative, with poets turning in work every other week, and peers introducing and leading discussion of the week’s poems. The idea is to think beyond the beads-on-a-string, linear structure of some typical workshops and to invite writers to think “across & beyond the poem” about the formal, thematic, and other obsessions, ticks, gestures, ruses, and preoccupations of their work in constellation.  What happens when your poems cluster?  Is a given poem domesticated?  Made wilder?  Brought into prismatic stereoscopy?  Perhaps most important, in addition to illuminating their own work, poets will illuminate and learn from other poets about their own work, poetics, praxis, and intention.

ENCW 7610 - 001: MFA Fiction Workshop

Jane Alison

ENGL 5101 - 001: "Beowulf and Its Monstrous Manuscript"

Stephen Hopkins

In this course, we will read about half of Beowulf in Old English, alongside samples from the other texts found in the same manuscript, Cotton Vitellius A XV. These other texts include Judith, the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, Wonders of the East, and the Life of St. Christopher (a dog-headed saint!). Alongside extensive translation work, we will also study the manuscript itself and the various arguments about its date and the date(s) of the texts it contains.

ENGL 5500 - 001: Blake and Yeats

Mark Edmundson

A close and careful reading of 2 visionary poets, with particular attention to Blake's influence on Yeats.

ENGL 5500 - 002: Transforming Desire: Medieval and Renaissance Erotic Poetics

Clare Kinney

This seminar will focus upon lyric, narrative and dramatic works from the medieval and Renaissance periods which explore the striking metamorphoses and the various (and on occasion very queer) trajectories of earthly—and not so earthly--love. We'll be examining the ways in which desire is represented as transforming the identity and consciousness and language of the lover; we will also be examining (and attempting to historicize) strategies employed by our authors to variously transform, redefine, enlarge and contain the erotic impulse. We'll start with some selections from the Metamorphoses of Ovid; we will finish with two of Shakespeare’s most striking reinventions of love. Along the way we’ll be looking at the gendering of erotic representation and erotic speech, the intermittent entanglement of secular and sacred love, the role of genre in refiguring eros, and some intersections between the discourses of sexuality and the discourses of power.

Tentative reading list: selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses; the Lais (short romances) of Marie de France; Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde; lyrics by Petrarch, Philip Sidney and Lady Mary Wroth; Philip Sidney’s Old Arcadia; Shakespeare's As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale. (All non-English works will be read in translation.) And occasional critical/theoretical readings. 

Requirements: regular attendance, lively participation in discussion, a series of reflective discussion board postings, a short paper (6-7 pages); a long term paper (14 pages).

ENGL 5530 - 001: Literature of British Abolition

Michael Suarez

How did Great Britain come to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and what roles did literature play in enlightening readers to the barbarities of this human traffic? Reading works such as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, and a variety of poems, both canonical and from relatively unknown voices, we will attempt to immerse ourselves in the literature of British abolition. Juxtaposing such writings with visual materials (viz., the slave ship Brooks), abolitionist political pamphlets, and letters in the C18 public press will give greater depth to our discussions. Finally, we will read Caryl Phillips’ novel Cambridge and reflect on how a literature of abolition might function in our own time.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 5559 - 001: American Wild

Stephen Cushman

With biblical images of wilderness in mind, seventeenth-century English colonizers of Massachusetts described what they found as another wilderness, howling, savage, terrible. For them it was to be feared, avoided, and, where possible, tamed. Four centuries later, with eighty percent of U.S. citizens living in cities, many of them exposed to wilderness only through calendar pictures or screensaver photos, what meaning or value does American wildness have? Is it only a fantasy image, part of an American brand, as in the phrase “the wild West.” Are wildness and wilderness the same thing? Has the howling, terrible, untamed wildness of the seventeenth-century forest relocated to another sphere, in the wildness of wildfires in California and elsewhere? Is weather the new frontier, the new wilderness, where Americans encounter untamed wildness in droughts, floods, and violent storms? Have we come full circle to more biblical imagery, with apocalypse replacing wilderness as the rubric under which we encounter the wild?

This course will begin with a look at biblical antecedents and their influence on European colonists encountering landscapes inhabited by native people. From there we will move to the literature of westward exploration, and further encounters with indigenous populations and their lands, in selections from the journals of Jefferson-commissioned Lewis and Clark. Then it’s on to the mid-nineteenth pivot toward wildness in the eyes of Romantic beholders, foremost among them Henry David Thoreau, patron saint of the environmental movement. Next comes John Muir, whose vision of wilderness preservation begat the U.S. National Park System. Proceeding to the twentieth century, we’ll add important voices, such as Aldo Leopold’s and Rachel Carson’s, as the preservation impulse merges with concern about public health and social justice. We’ll complete our tour in the twenty-first century by joining a conversation with Robert Bullard, Alice Walker, Linda Hogan, Carol Finney, Lauret Savoy, J. Drew Lanham, and Garnette Cadogan.

ENGL 5560 - 001: Woolf, Eliot and the Culture of Modernism

Michael Levenson

A seminar on the fiction of Virginia Woolf, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, and the wider cultural context of Modernism (in painting, film, and philosophy).  Alongside the close reading of signature literary works, we address the conditions of intellectual modernity and political-technological modernization. The responsibility of students includes weekly comments, an oral report and a final essay.

ENGL 5580 - 001: Introduction to Textual Criticism & Scholarly Editing

David Vander Meulen

This course in textual criticism deals with some of the fundamental problems of literary study:

● If a work exists in multiple forms and with different wording, what constitutes "the text"?
● How are such judgments made and standards determined?
● How are verbal works as intellectual abstractions affected by the physical forms in which they are transmitted?
● If one is faced with the prospect of editing a work, how does one go about it?
● How does one choose an edition for use in the classroom?

● What difference does this all make?

The course will deal with such concerns and will include:

● A short survey of analytical bibliography and the solution of practical problems as they apply to literary texts.
● Study of the transmission of texts in different periods.
● Consideration of theories and techniques of editing literary and non-literary texts of different genres, and of both published and unpublished materials.

The course will build to the preparation of a scholarly edition by each student. The class on books as physical objects, ENGL 5810, provides helpful background but is not a prerequisite.

*This course satisfies the Graduate English requirement for the history of criticism or literary theory.*

ENGL 5800 - 001: History of Literary Criticism

Walter Jost

Much if not all of what currently goes under the name of “cultural studies” and “critical theory,” not to mention concepts like genre, period, author, literature, imagination, poetry and so on, cannot go far without feeling the tug of the extensive root system in which they are grounded in the “history of literary criticism” (terms whose meanings are themselves multivalent and historical). One cannot study everything at once, to be sure; but judicious selection among the major critical texts of our changing traditions can serve both to make one feel at home in his or her culture, and to help de-mystify (as well as organize) large swatches of contemporary literary thinking. Along with a range of poems, we read a variety of short primary works, from a Platonic dialogue and Aristotle’s Poetics to Sidney’s “Defense of Poetry” to Pater, Eliot, Greenblatt and Cavell; and selections from an extremely useful secondary volume, M. A. R. Habib’s A History of Literary Criticism and Theory (Blackwell, paperback). Our reading load is manageable, though it requires hard thinking; our reading list is exciting and varied; and our class discussions about our readings and how they might be applied take primary place in the design of the class. We will write papers, present research, gather examples, and learn to "go on" from others in new ways.

ENGL 8527 - 001: Shakespeare's History Plays

Katharine Maus

ENGL 8540 - 001: Nineteenth-Century Fiction and Novel Theory

Victoria Baena

This course is an introduction to classic and contemporary theories of the novel through the lens of nineteenth-century fiction. As we make our way through five novels that have prompted a vast range of critical responses -  Vanity Fair, Great Expectations, The Moonstone, Nana, and Middlemarch - we pair these with notable  twentieth- and twentieth-century critics who have sought to understand how narrative fiction works. What if anything, defines “the” novel as a genre? What kinds of worlds can it construct or imagine? To what extent can these worlds generate (or, conversely, prove resistant to) critiques of our own? Throughout, the course will focus on the novel as a mode of thinking in its own right. We’ll analyze each literary text on its own terms while also opening up a dialogue between prose fiction and its theories. Critics may include Lukács, Bakhtin, Auerbach, Schor, Armstrong, Gilbert and Gubar, Said, Jameson, Mazzoni, Bourdieu, Wynter, Barthes, Moretti, Brooks.

ENGL 8559 - 001: Reading AI

Matthew Kirschenbaum

This course starts from the premise that whatever it may mean technologically “artificial intelligence” is also a discursive formulation, which is to say an active signifier in the cultural imagination. To begin working towards some understandings of that signifier we will undertake readings of "AI" in multiple registers: current critical writing that allows us to consider not only how today’s generative AI technology works but what work—political, social, aesthetic—we are calling upon it to do; representations of AI in literary fiction, from the 18th century to the present; and writing actually written by AI in the form of creative and experimental texts whose provenance and agency is indeterminate. While the focus of the course will be critical and theoretical (with no technical background required or assumed) we will also engage in some hands-on experimentation of our own. And while pedagogy will not be our focus, the course will offer a conceptual grounding for those who plan to teach in a world where AI is prevalent. Requirements will include leading discussion, a short reflective paper, and a longer semester project which could be either critical or creative. 

ENGL 8559 - 002: Fashioning the Nation

Kelly Fleming

From its talking coins, tortuous chocolate pots, and trials of hoopskirts to its accounts of “the Calico Craze,” the boycott of sugar, and insurrections in the name of cockades, British and Irish literature between 1660 and 1832 records not only the invention of the modern fashion system and the rise of shopping as we know it but also the institutionalization of mercantile capitalism, colonialism, and liberalism through its attention to material culture. As the “consumer revolution” resulted in tariffs, technological developments, and debates about the positive and negative effects of luxurious commodities, property transformed from a simple legal concept to a complex political and philosophical ideology that justified, on the one hand, imperial expansion and slavery, and on the other, riots and revolution.  

With this history in mind, this course will explore how material culture fashioned the British nation. It will offer an interdisciplinary overview of the different methodological approaches to analyzing material culture, including learning to identify the basic components of men’s and women’s dress. As we examine the things themselves and their significance in works of art, economics, literature, law, and philosophy over the course of the semester, we will think through the following questions. How did people understand their things as things? How did things inform their understanding of persons?  How did things engineer our ideas of gender, race, class, and ability? How did things influence literature’s form and content? How did small things result in big political change? And finally, have you ever felt personally victimized by a fabric? 

ENGL 8559 - 003: Approaches to Culture in its Many Forms

Sandhya Shukla

This graduate seminar critically considers culture as the dream life of society and a space of struggle.  Works to be discussed may include those by: Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lauren Berlant, Caroline Levine, Kathleen Stewart, Anna Tsing, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams.  In engaging interdisciplinary debates about reading and interpretation across fields like literary studies, history, anthropology, and philosophy, students will be encouraged to develop their own practices of relating to texts, events, phenomena and performance in original research and writing projects.  

ENGL 8560 - 001: Narrating the Caribbean

Njelle Hamilton

In this seminar we will trace the key concerns and texts that have shaped postcolonial Caribbean literary aesthetics, through reading a range of historical documents from Columbus to Lady Nugent; literary manifestos from Brathwaite to Glissant; and seminal contemporary Caribbean poetry, drama, and fiction by Maryse Condé, NourbeSe Philip, Marlon James, Nalo Hopkinson, and Derek Walcott, among others. Topics include: interrogating the canon; narrating an often traumatic history; the politics of language; narrative form (magical realism, sci-fi, créolité); postcolonial, anti-colonial, and postmodern narration; the place of music, orality, and folk forms in literary narration; and depicting the hybrid and shifting identities that define the region.

ENGL 8580 - 001: Introduction to Critical Theory

Nasrin Olla

This course introduces students to a broad range of 20th- and 21st-century theoretical paradigms that have reshaped the ways we think about culture, power, and identity. Topics include structuralism, poststructuralism, postcolonial thought, African diasporic thought, feminist thought, and gender and queer theory. Readings will feature works by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Achille Mbembe, Frantz Fanon, Simone de Beauvoir, and others. This course will appeal to students interested in continental philosophy, traditions of critique, feminist thought, and postcolonial worlds.

ENGL 8596 - 001: Ecofeminist Poetry & Poetics

Brian Teare

“How can we listen across species,” asks Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “across extinction, across harm?” How can the practice of poetry extend our attention, aid us in listening and speaking to, touching, and moving in ethical relation to an imperiled world? Much contemporary ecofeminist poetry focuses on fostering ethical relations to the more-than-human, and it often does so by situating these relationships in the Anthropocene, a geological epoch sometimes reframed by ecocritics as the Plantationocene or the Colonialocene. Ecofeminist poets often makes visible how chattel slavery, imperialism, industrialization, and settler colonialism take advantage of and thrive off of the intrinsic interconnectedness between species, ecosystems, humans, and human systems. Thus this interdisciplinary course will interweave brief readings from ecofeminist theory, ecopoetics, and Black and indigenous environmental theories with books of contemporary ecofeminist poetry. This curriculum will encourage each of us to see what happens when we “rethink and re-feel,” writes Gumbs, our own “relations, possibilities, and practices” in conversation with the more-than-human world. Assignments will range from the creative to the critical, with an emphasis on process-led ecofeminist research that culminates in a final project.

ENGL 8598 - 001: Potential Literature

Micheline Marcom

We will read Rabelais, Borges, Cervantes, Calvino, Perec, and other writers of the OuLiPo: Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle as we explore potentiality and constraint in literature.

ENGL 8900 - 001: Writing Pedagogy Seminar

Kenny Fountain

This course prepares graduate students in English for the teaching they will do here at UVA, specifically first-year writing and other writing-enhanced courses. Covers topics such as classroom management, leading discussion, writing assignment design, incorporating writing instruction, responding to student writing.

ENGL 8900 - 002: Writing Pedagogy Seminar

Devin Donovan

This course prepares graduate students in English for the teaching they will do here at UVA, specifically first-year writing and other writing-enhanced courses. Covers topics such as classroom management, leading discussion, writing assignment design, incorporating writing instruction, responding to student writing.

ENGL 9530 - 001: The Prepostmodern Novel

Brad Pasanek

In this course we move back and forth between eighteenth-century and more contemporary literatures in order to gauge how texts are written and rewritten, one against another. Fiction and meta-fiction are two red threads; our reading, a braid or knot. We'll start by sampling theoretical accounts of modernity, pre and post: say, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Horkheimer and Adorno, Bruno Latour, and Fredric Jameson. Cervantes’ rewritings (by means of Tobias Smollett’s translation) and later quixotisms follow. Complications ensue as we layer on readings and consider reenactment: Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Michael Winterbottom’s Shandean adaptation of the aforementioned, and the minute particulars of James Boswell’s Life of Johnson. We’ll read Robinson and Foe and Concrete Island. Another constellation assembles Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, and those latter-day dunces, Vanessa Place and Kenneth Goldsmith. We’ll ask, was ist Aufklärung? And whither parody? We’ll ask also, as recent critics have, why literary periods mattered and if now is the time to militate against periodization.

ENCW 2100 - 001: Intro to Creative Writing

Charles Clateman

ENCW 2100 is a workshop-based class that explores the craft of writing creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction at the introductory level. The class will also cover the basics of academic essays as they apply to literature and literary analysis. Students will participate in workshops to elicit early feedback on their work, examine various revision techniques, and submit a final portfolio of extensively revised material.

ENCW 2300: Poetry Writing

An introductory course in poetry writing, with a primary focus on creating new poems in a workshop setting. Students will study basic poetic terms and techniques and revise and arrange a series of poems for a final portfolio. The course will also have extensive outside reading and non-creative writing requirements.

ENCW 2559: Making it Up: Experiments in Knowing

Charles Clateman

This is a hybrid fiction/nonfiction prose studio class studying the works of writers and thinkers, ancient and contemporary, who have relied solely on their own senses, intuitions, and imaginations to explain the world. We will attempt to do the same and share our findings along the way. Each student will compile a personal encyclopedia by the semester’s end. Readings from Democritus, Lucretius, da Vinci, Lorrie Moore, Ben Marcus, Flann O’Brien, Stein, Kafka, Benjamin, Borges, and more.

ENCW 2600: Fiction Writing

An introductory course in fiction writing, with a primary focus on creating short stories in a workshop setting. Students will study basic narrative terms and techniques and revise several short stories for a final portfolio. The course will also have extensive outside reading and non-creative writing requirements.

ENCW 3310 - 001: Intermediate Poetry Writing I - Energy & Play

Kiki Petrosino

In this intermediate poetry workshop, we’ll connect with playfulness as way of tapping into our creative energy as poets. We’ll read published works of poetry by writers for whom formal experimentation is key. We’ll also think about & explore the physical space of Grounds as a site for reading, writing, and sharing poems. Students in this course will engage in a regular writing practice and will take seriously the processes of composition, critique, and revision. We’ll spend a significant portion of the semester “workshopping” student poems, but we also will discuss assigned reading and perform independent & in-class writing challenges. These activities, plus attendance, participation, and a final portfolio, will inform the grading policy.

Instructor Permission is required for enrollment in this class: please request enrollment through SIS and email a writing sample of 4-5 poems with a cover sheet including your name, year, email address, major, prior workshop experience, and other workshops to which you are submitting. Submit your application IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT to Prof. Petrosino (cmp2k@virginia.edu). Applications will be considered on a rolling basis once registration opens. For full consideration, email your application as soon as possible. Address any questions to Professor Petrosino, cmp2k@virginia.edu.

ENCW 3500 - 001: Topics in Creative Writing: Performance Prose

Anna Beecher

This course is for students with experience of writing creatively, interested in writing fiction and other texts to be spoken aloud, embodied and shared with others in real time. Over the semester you will develop original stories, work on putting them ‘up on their feet’ in performance and explore how liveness and orality can challenge, shape and invigorate writing. We will also touch upon the oral roots of literature, reading works such as the 1001 Nights and the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm and the texts they have inspired. We will read, watch and discuss works of fiction, live-art, narrative comedy, spoken word and drama. You may be a fiction writer, interested in how spoken stories could attune your ear for language and narrative pattern, or writer and performer interested in marrying those two passions. Performance experience is not a requirement for this class, but a willingness to explore performance in a supportive atmosphere is essential. 

Admission by Instructor Permission. Please send a sample of your prose writing (5-10 pages) and a brief statement (1 page max) about why this course interests you to am2aw@virginia.edu.

ENCW 3610 - 001: Intermediate Fiction Writing

Corinna Vallianatos

ENCW 3610 - 002: Intermediate Fiction Writing

Corinna Vallianatos

ENCW 3610 - 003: Intermediate Fiction Writing

Kevin Moffett

ENCW 4350 - 001: Advanced Nonfiction Writing - Inventive Memoir

Jane Alison

How do memoirists look back upon vaporous life and find shapes in it that matter? How do they choose moments and images that reveal those patterns? How do they create the “I” that will see and translate what’s seen? How do they decide what’s “true”? How, above all, do they transform the private to public, transmute life to art? In this class we’ll explore some of the arts of memoir, especially inventive memoir, where voice and formal experimentation might create both truthfulness and wildly original art. A writer might distill personal experience through a color, for instance, or a long-dead poet, or a fish . . . We’ll read long and short texts, among them some classic explorations of a (strand of) life, but also works that call themselves “dreamoir,” “autoportrait,” “memory criticism,” “a life among ghosts,” or “possible lives.” Alongside reading, you’ll prepare first a series of studies and then a longer project, which might be several essays, a series of linked fragments, a single extended work, or an entirely new literary invention.

INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED: Unless you’re in the APLP, please send me (jas2ad) a five-page sample of your creative writing and a note saying what draws you to this class.

ENCW 4550 - 002: Novels of the Hour

Jesse Ball

We will read the verymost contemporary books--many that are even being published during the semester. We will tear some apart. Others we'll adore. 

ENCW 4720 - 001: Literary Prose Thesis

Anna Beecher

ENCW 4820 - 001: Poetry Program Poetics Seminar - Inspiration & The Lyric

Kiki Petrosino

Where does your poetry come from? How do we, as poets, create new works of art from the many sources of inspiration all around us?

This seminar examines the special nature of inspiration--that electric, generative "spark" that draws us to the page. Readings and discussion will invite students to explore the varied ways that poets transform personal emotions, lived experiences, observations of the natural world, and artistic traditions into powerful and resonant poems. The semester will begin with an overview of lyric poetry--its textures, concerns, and qualities--before delving into a range of books by contemporary poets whose writing demonstrates the tension between the speaker's inner emotional landscape and the external world that shapes it. This seminar is for students seeking to deepen their understanding of lyric poetry and find new possibilities for their own creative work.

This course fulfills a requirement for the Poetry Writing Concentration (formerly known as the Area Program in Poetry Writing). Other students may enroll, regardless of major or minor, if they have taken at least one 2000-level Creative Writing Workshop. At semester’s end, you’ll compose a Final Chapbook (8-10 poems + a 2-3 pp introduction) on a theme of your choice. The final grade will calculate Attendance, Participation, Written Assignments, and the Final Chapbook. Address any questions to Professor Petrosino, cmp2k@virginia.edu.

ENCW 4830 - 001: Advanced Poetry Writing I - “Flood Subjects”:  Poetry’s Infinite Possibilities

Lisa Spaar

(Instructor Permission Required: Request permission to enroll in SIS and contact Professor Lisa Russ Spaar at LRS9E@virginia.edu)

Emily Dickinson called immortality her “Flood subject”—an obsession with death and its resonances in life and beyond that she would explore in countless poems throughout her writing life.  What feeds you, literally and metaphorically, as a person, a reader, a maker of poems?  Is it slow cinema? Record shopping?  Forest raves?  Biodynamic farming or butter sculptures?  Cold plunges in the ocean, runs on mountain trails, personalized Crocs? Long novels, writing by hand, a strawberry matcha by an open window?  This question will be at the heart of our workshop as we explore in poems our personal and shared sources of literal and metaphorical sustenance.

ENCW 4920 - 001: Poetry Program Capstone

Brian Teare

The Capstone offers graduating Poetry Writing Concentration students time and pedagogical space to think beyond the realization of single poems toward the realization of a book-length poetry manuscript. With support from the Concentration Director, a graduate student mentor, and most importantly from our Poetry Concentration colleagues, each of us will gather together a draft collection of our poems for a semester of intensive collaborative editorial work that will encourage us to become more deeply aware of our poetic ambitions and evolving aesthetics. In conversation with editorial feedback, each of us will organize and revise our existing poems and write new work in order to fully realize what poet and critic Natasha Sajé calls the “dynamic design” of our first manuscripts. The course schedule will begin with weekly discussion of assigned readings, followed by collaborative editorial sessions of our Capstone Project drafts. This means that, for the first three quarters of the semester, we will meet as a group, but the latter quarter of the semester will largely consist of independent work and one-on-one meetings. After mid-term, each of us will be assigned a graduate student mentor who will offer the Capstone Project draft a close reading. After this, each of us will meet with the Director to discuss the feedback and devise a final revision strategy. The course will culminate in our Capstone Projects – revised, polished manuscripts of the poetry only we could write – which we will celebrate together at the Poetry Writing Concentration graduation reading.

ENCW 5310 - 001: Advanced Poetry Writing II - Research for Poets

Sumita Chakraborty

The muses aren’t coming to save us, so we have to inspire ourselves. This course is a cross between a workshop and a craft or methodology class, and it is designed to help each participant cultivate a research practice to aid their creative work. Research can be an indispensable poetic skill for any subject matter from the deeply personal to the most conceptual; it’s often one of the surest-fire ways to encounter something that is unexpected or unlock a new avenue of imagination. It can help with something as small as enriching a metaphor or something as big as sparking an entire project. In addition to offering an opportunity to develop practical skills in ways that are organic to your writing practice, to learn how to use library and archival resources to your advantage, and to acquire habits around inquiry that stimulate your work, this course will serve as an opportunity to develop a substantial sequence of work, with the help of guided prompts, that enriches and complicates your existing poetry and your ongoing artistic or intellectual obsessions. Undergraduates and graduate students alike can expect to generate work that would well serve a capstone, thesis, or book manuscript, or to encounter a new area of interest heretofore unknown to you. Undergraduates, please do not be wary of “advanced”: the prerequisite is any 2000-level course. Graduate students, please do not fear redundancy: this course is designed to meet each participant where they are at in terms of what they yet need or wish to learn or discover. 

ENCW 5610 - 001: Advanced Fiction Writing II - Grimm Variations

Jesse Ball

The class is divided into two groups. Each week one group of students will compose variations on a particular folk tale chosen from BROTHERS GRIMM. The variations may be in any genre. 

ENGL 1590 - 001: Literature and Medicine

Taylor Schey

This course introduces students to the intersection of literature and medicine, with a focus on how the skills and competencies developed in literary studies are essential to the medical professions as well. Topics include illness and illness narratives; the doctor-patient relation; the language of pain; the histories of medical misogyny and medical racism; epidemics and pandemics; and popular representations of medical practice. Through engaging with a variety of textual forms—including poetry, fiction, drama, essay, film, and television—students will come to understand why, as the physician-scholar Rita Charon puts it, “good readers make good doctors.”

The course satisfies both the AIP and SES Disciplines requirements.

ENGL 2500 - 001: Intro to Literary Studies

Walter Jost

One reads “literature” differently than one reads other written materials in part by raising questions about language and interpretation, questions that might be raised elsewhere but usually aren’t.  To become a better reader of fiction, and through fiction a better reader of ourselves and other situations and people, and through them a better reader of the life that you and others lead, one can attend closely to literary texts and ask: Why?  How?

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2502 - 001: Four Centuries, Four Texts, Four Genres

John O'Brien

We will read devote our time together to studying four great masterpieces, four works produced over the last four centuries, each in a different genre: a play (William Shakespeare’s King Lear, first staged in 1606); a novel (Jane Austen’s Emma, published in 1816); a poem (T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, published in 1922); and a film (Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, issued in 1954). We will consider each of these works slowly and carefully. We will also use them as case studies for exploring the strategies that scholars in the disciplines of literature and film criticism have developed to achieve rich understandings of their objects of study. These will include (among other strategies) close reading, source study, comparison of variant editions, and historical contextualization. Our objective is to emerge at the end of the semester with expertise in these four works, and with experience in using different critical strategies to analyze other works in these genres. This course serves as a prerequisite for students who wish to major in English. This course also fulfills the College’s second writing requirement and the AIP Discipline. And of course anyone with an interest in these works or in literature in general is welcome to join us. 

ENGL 2506 - 001: Poems, Poets, Poetry

Emily Ogden

What is poetry for and how do we approach it? What counts as a poem, and what is poetry’s place in the human experience? We’ll read poems in English written in a wide range of times and places by a variety of people: William Shakespeare, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, and many others.  We’ll read intensively and write carefully about these poems. In this course, we’ll work on paper, not on screens, in order to improve our attention to the poems. This course is appropriate for students with no prior knowledge of poetry, and also for those with significant prior interest in the form. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. 

ENGL 2506 - 002: Queer American Poets

Peyton Davis

What does it mean to be queer? What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be a poet? All of these questions have a major characteristic in common: they are each associated with entire fields of study. In this class, we will look at queer American poets through each of these lenses (sexuality/queer studies, American studies, and poetic studies) to understand how poets seek to answer these questions for themselves.

How have poets over the last century balanced multiple facets of identity (e.g., race, gender, class) in relation to their queerness and Americanness? How have major historical events influenced or inspired queer American poetry? What characteristics does queer American poetry have outside of being queer and American? In order to answer some of these questions, we will read poets such as Amy Lowell, Claude McKay, Pauli Murray, Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Ocean Vuong.

Course requirements include regular attendance and active participation in discussion, a presentation, and shorter and longer writing assignments together totaling 20 pages.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the Artistic, Interpretive and Philosophical Disciplines Requirement. 

ENGL 2506 - 003: Poetic Forms

Jeddie Sophronius

From the haiku to the sonnet crown, contemporary poets—writing in the age of free verse—have often returned to, entered into dialogue with, or reinvented established poetic forms. How are poetic forms carried through time and into the contemporary sphere? How can restrictions be generative? In this course, we will center these questions as we explore the purpose of tradition, writing, and invention.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2507 - 001: Modern and Contemporary Drama

Victoria Olwell

This course introduces students to Modern and Contemporary drama from the United Kingdom and the United States. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - 001: Contemporary American Novel

Christopher Krentz

This course will provide an introduction to the contemporary American novel. We will read some celebrated fiction published since 1970, probably including Morrison’s Sula; Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home; Roth's Nemesis; Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead, and Amna's American Fever. Focusing on whatever themes the novels raise, we’ll talk about narrative style, ethnicity and identity in America, and much more. Moreover, we’ll concentrate on developing analytical and writing skills, which should help students to succeed in other English and humanities classes.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - 002: Gender and the Gothic

Cristina Griffin

In this class, we will read (and watch) stories that engage with the long tradition of the gothic: stories that are pleasurably thrilling, that structure themselves around suspense, secrecy, romance, intrigue, and even sometimes fear. We will begin the term by focusing on some of the eighteenth-century texts that established and popularized the gothic conventions that novelists, filmmakers, and television writers still use today. We will then turn to more contemporary reactions to the gothic, investigating how twentieth- and twenty-first-century forms respond to the gothic genre. Our focus as we make our way across the centuries will be on how these stories open up questions about gender. How do gothic texts represent women’s bodies? What is the relationship between gender and violence? How do gendered portrayals of the gothic change over time or embody different political and cultural crises? How do popular contemporary forms—the television show, dystopian fiction—reimagine the gothic?

UVA is the ideal place to study gothic literature, since it houses the world’s largest collection of gothic fiction. We will immerse ourselves in this vast treasure trove with an archival project in which you will become an expert on a gothic novel, and contribute your findings to a digital companion to the archive. No library or research experience necessary: we will be working from the ground up as you learn to give these important gothic texts new lives in the twenty-first century.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - 003: The Historical Novel

Debjani Ganguly

This course will explore the relationship between literature and history. Specifically, we will focus on the emergence of the historical novel in early nineteenth century Britain and trace its global evolution into the twenty-first century. Historical fiction and films have proliferated in recent years. Can any novel set against a recognizable historical backdrop be considered a historical novel? How factual and realistic do historical novels need to be, and how do they navigate the relationship between individual and collective destinies? What specific modes of characterization do such novels call for? How are ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ recalibrated in counter-factual historical novels?

The seminar will explore these questions by focusing on five novels that bring alive key revolutionary moments in modern history. They are Walter Scott’s Waverley (the Jacobite Revolution in Scotland in 1745), Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (the French Revolution in 1789), Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (the British Opium Trade with China between 1791 to 1858), Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (the rise of fascism in the 1930s), and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (the Nigerian Civil War from 1967-70). We will also read excerpts from the works of literary theorists who have helped us understand the historical novel and its subgenres. Requirements: two take home essays and an oral presentation. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - 004: Narrative Experiment in Contemporary American Fiction

Caroline Rody

Narrative Experiment in Contemporary American Fiction: Graphic Novels, Eccentric Narrators, Alternative Histories, Magical Realities

Contemporary American fiction brims with surprises. It’s not just that an unprecedent diversity of voices is generating a global literature centered upon U.S. territory, but also that this influx of the world’s energies has accelerated the modern and postmodern experimentation with new ways to tell a story.

In this course we will explore the possibilities generated by narrative innovation of several kinds. We’ll take up from the booming genre of the graphic novel, in which the visual dimension bursts open the conventional boundaries of narrative fiction (in texts like Art Spiegelman’s MAUS, Thuy Bui’s The Best We Can Do, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home). We’ll read novels narrated by outrageous, elusive, sometimes magical voices (in texts like Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest). And we’ll consider novels that re-imagine ethnic American histories by means of inventive strategies: magical, multi-vocal, counterfactual, or speculative (in texts like Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, and Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s “My Monticello”).

Requirements: devoted reading and active participation, multiple online postings, leading of class discussion (in pairs), a short and a long paper.

This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2508 - 005: Science Fiction

Patricia Sullivan

Like to sink into a book that challenges the ways we think about ourselves by imagining other worlds, speculative futures, aliens, artificial intelligences, cyborgs, technology and society at its best and possible worst, and more? We will read several books or pieces of short fiction that are classified loosely as science fiction, though there may be some overlap with other genres such as speculative fiction or climate fiction.

We will also practice close reading strategies, reflect on acts of literary interpretation through brief references to critical essays, inquire into some of the functions and effects of fictional narratives, and practice constructing reflective, analytical, and argumentative essays. Generally, students can expect to write regular reading responses and exploratory pieces, participate in and lead seminar discussions, write three short essays, and take a brief final exam. The majority of our readings will be novels (entire books), with the occasional story, novella, or film. Texts might include (but are not limited to) the following: Parable of the Sower, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Bête, Arrival, The Left-Hand of Darkness, Frankenstein, or All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries.

This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2508 - 006: The Novel of Upbringing

Dan Kinney

How does the fictional representation of upbringing reflect on the cultural uses of fiction in general as well as the actual work of becoming adult? Works to be studied: Jane Austen, Emma; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Tom Perrotta, Joe College; Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Perfectly Fine. Class requirements: Lively participation including including 8 brief email responses, one short and one longer essay, and a final exam.

This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2508 - 007: Science Fiction

Charity Fowler

This survey of the science fiction genre is a seminar that will start with examining the genre's roots in 18th and 19th century “proto-science fiction.” We’ll then trace its development through the genre’s distinct temporal and cultural eras from the late-19th century to the present day. We’ll be reading a mix of novels and short stories and watching a few adaptations of these texts into movies and TV shows. Though we’ll touch on many themes and tropes, from space travel to AI, we’ll primarily focus on examining and writing about the social and cultural possibilities of the genre, along with the technological and scientific advancements it has inspired. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2527 - 001: Shakespeare on Film

Clare Kinney

This course will explore in detail four major works by Shakespeare across several genres and look at some of their cinematic adaptations. How does one translate a Shakespearean work from a highly verbal medium into a highly visual medium? How can the resources of film offer us new insights into the plays—and how do different film adaptations of the same play allow us to rethink the interpretive challenges and pleasures provoked by their original texts?

Tentative list of plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Henry V; Macbeth; The Tempest.

Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation in discussion; shorter and longer writing assignments together totaling 20 pages; a final exam.

This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2527 - 002: Shakespeare and Poetic Justice

Rachel Retica

The drama of judicial ritual was popular in the plays written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. These plays are full of trial scenes, lawyers, and law enforcement characters, and they often uphold a strict moral economy: in what we would now call “poetic justice,” the just are rewarded and the unjust suffer. For as much as his plots adhere to this narrative, Shakespeare was also interested in dramatic resolutions that feel contrived or inadequate; portrayals of justice that make one wish for some other means of resolving things. To explore the uneasy balance between justice, representation, and reality, we will read early modern prose, poetry, and four Shakespeare plays, each of which ends in a trial scene or something very like one: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, and The Winter’s Tale. How do literary depictions of justice influence our sense of the concept? What do Shakespeare’s trials suggest about the relationship between the theater and the courts?

Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation in discussion; writing assignments together totaling 20 pages.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the Artistic, Interpretive and Philosophical Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2572 - 001: Black Women Writers

Lisa Woolfork

This seminar uses Black women’s writings from mid-century to the present to introduce new English majors to important concepts in literary analysis. To better understand genre, themes, and assorted literary conventions, we will focus closely on a range of literary styles.  We will also consider patterns of representation established in the 1950s and watch how they develop, disintegrate, or evolve into the present day.  Do certain issues or themes remain important in Black women’s writing of the last fifty years?  How has the literature adapted in response to specific cultural or historical moments?

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the Artistic, Interpretive and Philosophical Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - 002: Comedy and Character

Rebecca Rush

In this course, we will meditate on the art of character-reading by spending time with four great observers of human nature. We will read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (the General Prologue, the Miller’s Tale, and the Merchant’s Tale), Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night, Austen’s Emma, and Dickens’s David Copperfield. All four of these authors agree that it is worthwhile to look closely at the subtle details that make up a character, but they disagree about what kinds of details are worth observing and representing, about what is needed to build a character piece by verbal piece. Do we come to know a character by taking note of her red face and fine scarlet hose, by observing how he responds familial betrayal, by attending to her treatment of garrulous neighbors, or by hearing what happened on the day he was born? How do character writers use exaggeration and caricature not only to entertain us but to reveal something about human foibles and habits we might otherwise be unable to see? How do they use ensemble casts of major and minor characters to depict a full array of humors and habits? How do these authors stage scenes that show the difficult art of sizing up and judging character? No prior knowledge of literature is required; the only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand. Note that Emma is 453 pages and David Copperfield is 882. The syllabus is designed to spread out your reading of David Copperfield over the course of the semester, but please only take this course if you are prepared to dedicate considerable time to reading on the weekends. I am quite confident the books will reward your efforts.

This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2599 - 003: Monstrous Forms

Kelly Fleming

This course will introduce students to the practices of academic writing and critical reading by inviting you to explore texts about monsters. From the twelfth century to today, we will examine how literature, television, and film frequently uses monsters—witches, fairies, changelings, ghosts, vampires, zombies, and creatures—to speak to and provide rational explanations for things that are very human but that humans have trouble confronting outright: loss; death; political events; sexual, racial, and physical difference. As we engage with different media from different periods, we will pay particular attention to what forms (literary, visual, and physical) monsters take and consider how these forms shape our understanding of the societies that produced these narratives.

This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2599 - 004: Landscapes of Black Education

Ian Grandison

This course examines how seemingly ordinary spaces and places around us, “landscapes,” are involved in the struggle to democratize education in the United States. It uses the African American experience in this arena to anchor the exploration. We explore how landscape is implicated in the secret prehistory of Black education under enslavement; the promise of public education during Reconstruction; Booker T. Washington’s accommodation during early Jim Crow; black college campus rebellions of the 1920s; the impact of Brown v. Board of Education; the rise of black studies programs at majority campuses in the 1960s and ‘70s; and the resonance of Jim Crow assumptions affecting education access in our current moment. We also touch on the experience of other marginalized groups. For example, women’s college campuses, such as those of Mount Holyoke and Smith College, were designed to discipline women to accept prescribed gender roles at the height of the women’s suffrage movement. 

Some of the materials we study include excerpts from the following: Frederick Douglass’ 1845 Narrative, Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America, Raymond Wolters’ The New Negro on Campus, and James D. Anderson’s The Education of Blacks in the South. Films include Peter Gilbert's With All Deliberate Speed. We’ll explore interpreting historical and contemporary maps, plans, and other design- and planning-related materials to help develop the ability to interrogate landscapes critically. Graded assignments include two midterms, a team research project, a final team project symposium, and an individual critical reflection on the team project. There will be a number of informal in-class and take home exercises connected especially with developing skills in preparation for the midterms, and final project.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - 005: Two Truths and a Lie: Aesthetics of Doubt in American Literature 

Lauren Parker

Doubt and uncertainty provoke a variety of emotions—fear, anxiety, anger, frustration—but are also the productive forces that sustain the mood and feel of some of the most prototypically ‘American’ genres, including noir, Southern Gothic, and American modernism. Drawing on a range of forms including novels, plays, films, poetry, and short stories, in this course we will explore texts that suggest how nineteenth and twentieth century texts have taken up and/or destabilized the very ideas of truth, knowledge, and certainty and consider how those same questions have been continually taken up in other disciplines (science, journalism, urban planning, etc.)

Potential Texts: poems and short stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Flannery O'Connor; Herman Melville (Benito Cereno), Nella Larsen (Passing), Ann Petry (Country Place) William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying), Toni Morrison, (Beloved), Gillian Flynn (Sharp Objects)

Potential Films: [Orson Welles] The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice] Jacques Tourneur [I Walked with a Zombie], Carl Franklin [Devil in a Blue Dress], and Dan Gilroy [Nightcrawler]

Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation in discussion, weekly 4-500 word response posts, one 2-3 page paper, and two 5-7 page papers, plus a short final.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. 

ENGL 2599 - 006: Writing Across Time: Memory, History, and Belonging

Aindrila Choudhury

Imagine tracing a line through history, expecting it to unfold as a single temporal axis, only to find that it twists unexpectedly. Like a rope thick with knots, or a Mobius strip that turns and coils, where times fold over each other, snagging, sedimenting, looping over. How might that unsettle your sense of time and narrative? This course invites you into that twist. Here, we’ll dive into key literary and theoretical texts of the 20th and 21st-century that offer, in place of narratives suggesting that history is a steady march of time, temporal ruptures and intricate entanglements with other kinds of time: localized, recursive, spectral. These are stories where memory fragments, timelines collapse, and the past returns unexpectedly, sometimes like a haunting specter. Our focus on the last two centuries reflects an age of unprecedented upheaval: world wars, decolonization and independence movements, mass migrations, digital revolutions, times when histories refused to march in lockstep. From archival silences to ghostly presences, we’ll ask: Can we think of time as something we inhabit rather than something that passes? How does fragmented, palimpsestic, and cyclical time disrupt our idea of how we inhabit the world? What forms of belonging and selfhood emerge when time splinters into multiple, uneven, localized temporalities? What kinds of futures become imaginable when we stop thinking of time as a straight line? If you’re interested in how literature remembers, forgets, or reimagines time, this course offers a path, knotted though it may be, into those questions.

Readings will be selected from the following: Toni Morrison, Beloved; Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; Mohsin Hamid, Exit West; Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things; Marisa Parham, Break.dance (webpage); Kevin Quashie, Black Aliveness, Or a Poetics of Being (excerpts); Terence Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (select poems); Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (excerpts); Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic (excerpts); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (excerpts)

Course Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation in class discussion . Shorter and longer writing assignments that will total approximately 20 pages of writing over the course of the semester.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the Artistic, Interpretive and Philosophical Disciplines Requirement. 

ENGL 2599 - 007: Dreaming in Literature

Molly Nichols

Have you ever wondered about the connection between dreams and reality? Is it possible to interpret dreams using real-world understanding? And what do our dreams have to say about our hopes and fears about reality? This class explores how English writers have presented both the creative potential and futility of dreams in literature, from medieval poems to modern novels. We will begin with medieval dream visions (in modern translations), including the Old English poem “The Dream of the Rood,” Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess, the Gawain-poet’s Pearl, and excerpts from William Langland’s Piers Plowman. We will then turn to novels like C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven and wonder: How do these stories look back on the rich literary history of dream visions while also looking forward to the future humanity has been dreaming about for millennia? Throughout the semester, we will investigate these questions in light of the history – and present, and future – of dream interpretation, paying special attention to the connection between such interpretation and the analysis of literature as a whole. Regular attendance and active participation in discussion are required for this course, and shorter and longer writing assignments together will total 20+ pages.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the Artistic, Interpretive and Philosophical Disciplines Requirement. 

ENGL 2599 - 008: The Witch in Literature

Jared Willden

People have been writing about witches for thousands of years. Some of these writers have believed in the existence of witches; others haven’t. Although belief in witches is now nearly extinct in Western culture, the witch has remained a prominent cultural touchstone. Why has the witch proved so resilient to millennia of attempts to burn, ban, defame, or disbelieve her? We will read (and watch) works from the ancient Mediterranean, the Renaissance London stage, and twentieth-century American film and television to consider the witch’s place in Western literature, her cultural significance, and what she reveals about our modern society that rejects the belief in witchcraft without being able to reject the witch.

This is a skills-focused class that prioritizes high-quality critical reading and writing. Tentative course requirements include consistent attendance, regular reading quizzes, active participation in class discussions, four essays totaling 21 pages, and a final exam.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement (Artistic, Interpretive and Philosophical). 

ENGL 3002 - 100: History of Literatures in English II

Joshua Miller

John Keats, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Ocean Vuong: these are some of the authors that we will be reading and studying together in this survey of literature in English from around 1750 to the present moment. Along the way, we will trace the emergence of English as a global language and literature in our post-colonial world. Literary movements to be covered include Romanticism, Victorianism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. This course is part of the two-semester sequence of the history of literature in English (along with ENGL 3001) that is required of English majors, but is open to anyone interested in exploring some of the most significant works of literature of the last two-plus centuries. You do not need to have taken ENGL 3001 first; the courses can be completed in any order that works best for you.

ENGL 3010 - 001: History of English Language

Stephen Hopkins

This course studies the history and development of the English language, from the Old English period (550CE-1100CE) to Middle and Early Modern English, and concluding at present-day English. We will sample literature from these time periods, as well as come to understand the linguistic processes behind each historical stage of the language and its vocabulary.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3162 - 001: Chaucer II

Courtney Watts

This course satisfies the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3260 - 001: Milton

Rebecca Rush

Our ultimate aim in this course is to linger over Paradise Lost and its distinctive intellectual and poetic beauties. In order to understand the questions that animate Milton’s epic poem, we will first survey Milton’s youthful poems and controversial prose. Milton dedicated his life as a writer to debating about the nature of liberty. Convinced that it is impossible to be good without choosing goodness rationally and deliberately, Milton argued repeatedly for new and radical ideas that he thought freed the mind from the irrational tyranny of custom and passion; he defended beheading the king, loosening divorce laws, and abandoning pre-publication censorship. But Milton saw himself as a radical in the root sense of the word (radix=root in Latin): he wanted to return to the classical past and what he called the “known rules of ancient liberty.” He wrote in forms like the sonnet and the epic that were downright outmoded by the seventeenth century. And he often based his arguments for radical liberties on appeals to reason, truth, and temperance. Milton’s peculiar brand of radicalism leaves readers wondering whether he is more modern or ancient, more dedicated in classical reason or Christian piety, more sympathetic with Adam and God or with Eve and Satan. As we unravel the intellectual positions of a poet who stood at the crossroads of antiquity and modernity, we will also attend to what makes him distinctive as a poet, including his ear for the rhythms of verse and his dedication to producing lines that are thick with learned allusions, etymological puns, and interpretive ambiguities. No prior knowledge of Milton or the seventeenth century is required; the only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3273 - 100: Shakespeare Tragedies Romances

Katharine Maus

This course deals with the second half of Shakespeare's career as a playwright, in which he was mainly writing tragedies and romances.  ENGL 3271, the fall semester course, deals with the first half of Shakespeare's career, in which he was mainly writing histories and comedies.  You may take either or both courses; neither is a prerequisite for the other.
2 50-minute lectures and 1 50-minute discussion section per week.

Requirements: 3 five-page papers, a final exam emphasizing material covered in lectures and section meetings, and regular short assignments made by section leaders.

Satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the major.  This course does not automatically fulfill the Second Writing Requirement, but it may be tweaked to do so.  See me in the first few weeks of the semester if you are interested in this option.

ENGL 3370 - 001: Restoration & Eighteenth-Century Drama

Cynthia Wall

This course will range over the vast goodly fields of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama: tragedies, she-tragedies, heroic, gothic, and colonialist, along with samples of other popular stage entertainments such as operas, adaptations, pantomimes, farces.  We’ll poke into contemporary biographies of the principal actors and managers, acting manuals, descriptions of theatres, sets, and costumes, accounts of the audiences, and the rise of Shakespeare as a national icon. Core playwrights will include William Wycherley, Aphra Behn, William Congreve, Susanna Centlivre, George Lillo, John Gay, Richard Cumberland, Oliver Goldsmith, Frances Burney, and Matthew Lewis.  Added fun will be found in Nahum Tate’s happy version of King Lear (1688), Henry Fielding’s truly wonderful The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1731), and Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows (1798) (yes, the one in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park). Requirements: participation; weekly commentaries and in-class activities (“The Contemporary Stage”); one short paper; midterm; final exam.

This course can be used to fulfill the 1700-1900 period requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3500 - 001: Literary Games

Brad Pasanek

This is a course in “extra-literary” criticism in which English majors and other students are tasked with investigating the ways in which video games are available for literary interpretation. We will read games studies and literary theory, play games, and--take note!--learn to build them. Students will be introduced to the Godot game engine and framework. (No prior experience with programming required.) Our main effort is to check and test literary theory in "defamiliarized" ludic contexts, designing sprites and worlds and complicating traditional intuitions about narrative, characters, and fiction by means of game experiences.

Course enrollment currently set to "Instructor Permission" so that we can build a balanced group of English majors and CS students (double majors to be enthusiastically welcomed). Contact Brad Pasanek with any questions!

ENGL 3500 - 002: Conversations with Dead People

Sumita Chakraborty

Death is often imagined as one of the main topics of interest to poets across literary periods and traditions. But some poems, and some poets, take this interest one step further, positioning themselves as capable of speaking to the dead. In this course, we’ll read poems in which poets reimagine the relationship between the living and the dead—and study the wild history of poets (including W. B. Yeats, Sylvia Plath, James Merrill, and Lucille Clifton) who used material means, such as Ouija boards, mediums, and automatic writing, to communicate with spirits. Our main texts will be poems—largely poetry of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—but we will also explore academic scholarship, popular writing, and other media about the history of and various ways of imagining “the occult.” Along the way, we’ll also learn strategies of reading and interpreting poems as well as some fundamental literary and poetic devices. Main assignments will include explications, an analytical essay, and a creative project, along with in-class discussions and activities.

ENGL 3540 - 001: Romantic Poetry

Mark Edmundson

We’ll read and interpret the six major English Romantic poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron. We’ll reflect on the pleasures of their work, and on what they might have to teach us about love, politics, nature, art, the self, society, and the imagination.  We may end with a Jane Austen novel for contrast, probably Pride and Prejudice. Two fact-based exams, one paper at the close. 

This course can be used to fulfill the 1700-1900 period requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3540 - 002: Global Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Stephen Arata

In this course we will read novels and short stories (all superb examples of narrative art) drawn from a range of cultures and countries. The overarching goal is to engage with these works not from the perspective of their separate national traditions but with an awareness of the novel as a transnational literary form, bound up in networks of authors and readers stretching around the globe. Likely candidates for the syllabus include Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Vernon Lee (England), George Sand and Honoré de Balzac (France), Mikhail Lermentov (Russia), Multatuli (Denmark), Benito Pérez Galdós (Spain), Machado de Assiz (Brazil), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (India), and Mary Prince (Bermuda). Course requirements will include two 5-6 page essays, a final exam, and a handful of shorter writing assignments. All the readings will be in English.

This course can be used to fulfill the 1700-1900 period requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3560 - 001: Fiction in the Age of Modernism

Stephen Arata

The time period covered in this course is roughly 1890-1960: the age of Modernism in the literatures of Europe and the Americas. We will read novels and short stories from across a range of cultures and countries that explore the question of what makes a work of fiction not just “Modern” but “Modernist.” Likely authors include Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, James Joyce, Jean Toomer, Samuel Beckett, Haldor Laxness, Franz Kafka, Fernando Pessoa, G. V. Desani, Knut Hamsen, Vladimir Nabokov, Clarice Lispector, and Nella Larson. Course requirements will include two 5-6 page essays, a final exam, and a handful of shorter writing assignments. All the readings will be in English.

ENGL 3560 - 002: Woolf, Eliot and the Culture of Modernism

Michael Levenson

A seminar on the fiction of Virginia Woolf, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, and the wider cultural context of Modernism (in painting, film, and philosophy).  Alongside the close reading of signature literary works, we address the conditions of intellectual modernity and political-technological modernization. The responsibility of students includes weekly comments, an oral report and a final essay.

ENGL 3560 - 003: Global Speculative Fiction

Debjani Ganguly

The course will explore the emergence of speculative fiction as a global literary form in our contemporary age. Broadly encompassing the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror and alternative history, speculative fiction is any kind of fiction that creates a narrative world which may or may not resemble the world we live in. This kind of fiction embodies alternative ideas of reality including magic, space or time travel, alternative realities, or alternative histories. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of speculative fiction from Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific that figure alternative futures for peoples oppressed by centuries-long colonialism. The rapid proliferation of digital technology and the accelerating effects of anthropogenic climate change have given a new edge to this body of fiction. We will study the emergence of counter-factual utopian and dystopian narratives, Afrofuturism and animism, the specter of fossil futures, and apocalyptic fiction on environmental collapse through a range of exciting works. The goal of this course is to understand the rise of speculative fiction as a literary form and a mode of world-making that captures cataclysmic shifts in human and non-human worlds that can no longer be comprehended by social, political, and moral frameworks of our recent past and present.

Proposed Novels

Namwalli Serpell, The Old Drift

Nnedi Okorafor Lagoon

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

Omar Elakkad, American War 

Kim Stanley Robinson, Ministry For The Future 

ENGL 3740 - 100: Intro to Asian American Studies

Sylvia Chong

An interdisciplinary introduction to the culture and history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. Examines ethnic communities such as Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Asian Indian, and Native Hawaiian, through themes such as immigration, labor, cultural production, war, assimilation, and politics. Texts are drawn from genres such as legal cases, short fiction, musicals, documentaries, visual art, and drama.

ENGL 3750 - 001: Placed & Displaced in America

Lisa Goff

The history of America is a history of place-making and displacement. Iconic American sites such as Monticello, Walden Pond, and our network of national parks have inspired generations of Americans. But displacement is just as much a part of our national identity—as the stories of Indigenous dispossession, housing discrimination, Japanese internment, redlining, gentrification, and homelessness attest. In this class we’ll critique the “iconic” American places, the ones we brag about, and study the displacement that has characterized our nation since the colonial era—the stories that were long buried, and are still coming to light. We’ll also pay special attention to the placemaking efforts of displaced or marginalized groups—such as Black Americans during the Great Migrations, lgbtq+ communities, immigrants, and survivors of natural disasters such as the Dust Bowl and Hurricane Katrina—who continue to redefine American identity through place-making. To do this we will analyze fiction, journalism, and film, as well as paintings, photographs and other elements of visual culture for insights into race, ethnicity, gender, class, and generation in America.

ENGL 3790 - 001: Moving On: Migration in/to US

Lisa Goff

“Moving On: Migration In/To the U.S.” examines the history of voluntary, coerced, and forced migration in the U.S. Students will trace changing attitudes about migration over time using a variety of cultural products, including videos, books, documentaries, poems, paintings, graphic novels, photographs, fashion, digital humanities, and academic scholarship. Class participation/contribution is the core of this class. Students will be required to volunteer 5-10 hours with a migration-related project during the course of the semester.

ENGL 3825 - 001: Desktop Publishing

Jeb Livingood

This course helps you learn how to edit and publish a contemporary book-length project—everything from proofreading manuscripts to graphic design and the publishing process—in both print and reflowable ePub formats. You will learn fundamentals of typesetting projects in Adobe InDesign, the main desktop publishing software used in the publishing industry. The class also gives you a firm grounding in the The Chicago Manual of Style, the dominant style manual used by literary publishers, by having you complete “gates” in an online system. This class will stress the typesetting and editing of textual projects. Photo collections and graphic-heavy projects are not usually acceptable.

ENGL 3910 - 001: Satire

John O'Brien

What is satire? Most of us think that we can more or less identify a satire when we see it, but beyond that, defining satire and talking it about meaningfully have often proven elusive. In this course, we will work to figure out not only what satire is, but what it does, socially and politically. We will read satires from the ancient world to the present, from authors like the Roman poet Juvenal, the Irish cleric Jonathan Swift, the Norwegian novelist Gerd Brandenberg, and the American writer Paul Beatty. We will read about theories of humor and satire: where it comes from, and what problems it raises and attempts to address. We will also consider film and video satires, as well as what crops up in the media in the course of the semester—because we know that something will. Midterm and final exams; two writing exercises; participation.

ENGL 3924 - 001: Vietnam War in Literature & Film

Sylvia Chong

It has been over 40  years since the Fall of Saigon in 1975, marking the end of a war that claimed the lives of an estimated 58,260 American troops and over 4 million Southeast Asians across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In the U.S. today, “Vietnam” signifies not a country but a lasting syndrome that haunts American politics and society, from debates about foreign policy to popular culture. But what of the millions of Southeast Asian refugees the War created? What, in this moment of commemoration and reflection, are the lasting legacies of the Vietnam War / American War for Southeast Asian diasporic communities? We will examine literature and film (fictional and documentary) made by and about Americans and Southeast Asians (Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmong) affected by the Vietnam War, spanning the entirety of this 40 year period. Texts may include Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now; Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried; Peter Davis, Hearts and Minds; Yusek Komunyakaa, Dien Cia Dau; Tiana Alexander, From Hollywood to Hanoi; Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer; Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind; Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino; Socheata Poeuv, New Years Baby.

ENGL 4500 - 001: The Frankenstein Circle

Cynthia Wall

“I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts. The tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends and myself agreed to write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.” So wrote young Mary Godwin; the two friends were the poets Lord Byron and her lover Percy Shelley. The tale was Frankenstein. (For the record, one Dr Polidori was there as well, and he did finish his tale, “The Vampyre”; it’s on the syllabus.) With Frankenstein as our ultimate text, we will also read works by Percy, Byron, Polidori, and William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary’s parents), excerpts from Mary’s journals, and selections from Mary & Percy’s mammoth reading lists for 1814-1818 (John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edmund Burke, M. G. Lewis, Sir Humphry Davy, Captain James Cook). Requirements: active participation, weekly commentaries, presentation, 5-7pp. close reading paper, 10-12pp. research paper.

ENGL 4510 - 001: Medieval Women

Courtney Watts

This course will consider women in the literature of medieval Europe. We will read texts by and about women written in Middle English as well as translated texts written in other languages.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 4520 - 001: Afterlives of the Epic

Dan Kinney

What becomes of the epic, especially (but not only) in Renaissance England? Where has it been, and where does it still have to go? Why does the most elevated of literary modes in traditional reckonings end up seeming passe or impossible to so many moderns? Works to be read include Homer's epics, The Aeneid, The Inferno, Paradise Lost, Robinson Crusoe, The Dunciad, and The Waste Land. Class requirements: lively participation including brief email responses, two shorter or one more substantial term paper, and a final exam.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 4540 - 001: Literary Lives, Creative Collaborations

Taylor Schey

This course offers an in-depth study of the lives and works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William and Dorothy Wordsworth, with a focus on their joint creative projects. Although British Romanticism is often associated with the myth of the solitary genius, its watershed text of literary “experiments”—Lyrical Ballads (1798)—was produced through collaboration and a whole lot of walking and talking. Reading that text in both its first and second editions, we’ll reflect on the social uses of the ballad form at the turn of the nineteenth century as well as explore its affordances in our own historical moment. We’ll follow in Dorothy Wordsworth’s footsteps, too, not only considering the channels of influence between her Grasmere Journals and her brother’s poetry but also finding inspiration in our own observations of natural and quotidian phenomena. And we’ll take the time to immerse ourselves in William Wordsworth’s epic, autobiographical blank-verse poem The Prelude, to peruse selections from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, and to listen to the conversations between the rest of these authors’ greatest hits. Through activities that are both creative and analytical, collaborative as well as individual, students will cultivate their own literary lives and come to appreciate why, more than two hundred years later, Coleridge and the Wordsworths remain such great authors with whom to think. Assignments include a ballad project, a reading journal, a book review, and an in-class presentation.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 literature requirement for the English major

ENGL 4559 - 001: Aesthetic Theory: AI, Literature, and Human Judgement

Chad Wellmon

As ChatGPT and other artificial intelligences have saturated our lives, their critics and defenders alike have insisted that human judgement, however fallible and flawed, is not only imperiled but necessary. But what is so human about judgment? How did the capacity to judge come to be heralded as marking a line between humans and machines? What is the relationship between judgement and other capacities (e.g. rationality, imagination, sociability)? This seminar will trace competing conceptions of a distinctly human judgment as they emerged between 1700 and 1900. We will consider, in particular, the relationship of aesthetic judgement and the emergence of Literature as a distinct form of writing. Our readings will include philosophical and literary texts ranging from Locke, Kant, Hegel, and Schiller to Addison, Coleridge, Goethe, Wordsworth, Schiller, and G. Eliot. The seminar will conclude with more recent discussions of literature, computation, and artificial intelligence in the work of Turing, Calvino, and others.   

ENGL 4560 - 001: Contemporary Women's Texts

Susan Fraiman

This course takes up recent Anglophone works by women across multiple genres and referencing a range of cultural contexts. Primary texts include visual as well as literary forms. A selection of secondary materials will help to gloss their formal, thematic, and ideological characteristics while giving students a taste of contemporary theory.  Possible works (final list still to be determined) include fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri, Carmen Machado, Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Danzy Senna, Ryu Murakami, and Chimamanda Adichie; memoirs by Suad Amiry, Maggie Nelson, Michelle Zauner, and Sarah Smarsh; a graphic narrative by Roz Chast; a play by Annie Baker; a neo-Western film by Kelly Reichardt; images by South African photographer Zanele Muholi. Among our likely concerns will be the juxtaposition of verbal and visual elements in a single text; depictions of queer, raced, immigrant, and transnational subjectivities; narratives that make “truth claims” and how such claims affect the reader; representations of growing up, aging, migration, maternity, violence, marriage, creativity, sexuality, and work; ties and tensions among women across boundaries of place, generation, class, and race.  One project of the course will be to explore its own premise that “women’s texts” is a useful and meaningful category. Two papers and a final exam. This course is intended for 3rd- and 4th-year English majors or other advanced students with a background in literary/cultural/gender studies.

ENGL 4560 - 002: The Modern Memoir

Jim Seitz

In this course, we’ll read several memoirs published over the past thirty years, and we’ll consider some memoirish films as well. Coming-of-age stories and narratives of loss will figure prominently, as will experimental memoirs that challenge the genre’s formal conventions. Students should plan to engage with actual books (rather than access content on computers or phones) and to write in class each week about what they’ve read. They’ll also have the option of writing about their own lives for at least one assignment to learn about the creation as well as the interpretation of memoir.

ENGL 4560 - 003: Narrative Experiment in Contemporary American Fiction

Caroline Rody

Narrative Experiment in Contemporary American Fiction: Graphic Novels, Eccentric Narrators, Alternative Histories, Magical Realities

Contemporary American fiction brims with surprises. It’s not just that an unprecedent diversity of voices is generating a global literature centered upon U.S. territory, but also that this influx of the world’s energies has accelerated the modern and postmodern experimentation with new ways to tell a story.

In this course we will explore the possibilities generated by narrative innovation of several kinds. We’ll take up from the booming genre of the graphic novel, in which the visual dimension bursts open the conventional boundaries of narrative fiction (in texts like Art Spiegelman’s MAUS, Thuy Bui’s The Best We Can Do, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home). We’ll read novels narrated by outrageous, elusive, sometimes magical voices (in texts like Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest). And we’ll consider novels that re-imagine ethnic American histories by means of inventive strategies: magical, multi-vocal, counterfactual, or speculative (in texts like Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, and Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s “My Monticello”).

Requirements: devoted reading and active participation, multiple online postings, leading of class discussion (in pairs), a short and a long paper.

This course satisfies the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 4560 - 004: American Novels, American Controversies

Victoria Olwell

When novels are published, they enter the public sphere, joining in the whole buzzing cacophony of contemporary culture. Often, novels step into ongoing public discussions about things that are not novels – political issues, contemporary developments in the social world, ideas about history, social inequality, scientific advances, and the like. Novels do this in a wide variety of ways, but, always, they operate through the specific formal characteristics of the novel (plot, character, narrative, the premise of fiction, etc.) and carry with them the distinctive history of the novel as a genre. In this course, we’ll consider contemporary U.S. novels that explicitly take up current issues in the public sphere. We’ll read these novels on their own terms, but also in the context of two other genres:  contemporary non-fiction on the same issues and literary criticism on the form and history of the novel. We’ll ask, what are the distinctive ways in which novels add to public discussion? By the way, I chose novels that meet two requirements. First, they have received a great deal of critical attention and acclaim, meaning that we can consider them to be novels with a hearty public presence. Second, I select only novels I find aesthetically compelling and intellectually enchanting, because one way that novels engage the public is by grabbing readers’ interest.

ENGL 4570 - 001: W.E.B. Du Bois

Marlon Ross

This course examines the work, career, and life of W.E.B. Du Bois, among the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, by placing him in relation to the movements he led, the figures he allied himself with and fought against (such as Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett,  and Marcus Garvey), and the transformations in thought, social activism, and literature he helped to bring about. A founder of the NAACP and of the Pan-African Movement, as well as a leader of the Harlem Renassaince, Du Bois conceived of such important concepts as "The Talented Tenth," "double consciousness," and "the color-line as veil." We'll explore Du Bois's intellectual reach as sociologist, historian, activist, novelist, philosopher, poet, dramatist, and editor, focusing on works like "The Souls of Black Folk," "The Philadelphia Negro," "Black Reconstruction in America," and "The World and Africa." 
 

ENGL 4580 - 001: Race in American Places

Ian Grandison

Required Site Visit I--Monticello 

Sunday, February 22, 12:45pm to 5:00pm ET. (Class meets at Monticello Visitor Center at 12:45pm ET sharp. We end at the African Cemetery at 5:00pm ET. There will be no class on Tuesday, April 25 to compensate for the time commitment for the Monticello visit.)

Required Site Visit II—Downtown Charlottesville 

Tuesday, March 24, 4:45pm to 8:00pm ET.  Class meets at the former Greyhound Bus Station at 310 West Main Street at 4:45pm ET sharp. We end at Friendship Court by 8:00pm ET.) Overlaps with regular class meeting.

Required Final Symposium on Zoom (exam period)

Saturday, May 2, 6:00pm to 9:00pm ET. 

This interdisciplinary seminar uses the method of Critical Landscape Analysis to explore how everyday places and spaces, “landscapes,” are involved in the negotiation of power in American society.  Landscapes, as we engage the idea, may encompass seemingly private spaces (within the walls of a suburban bungalow or of a government subsidized apartment) to seemingly public spaces (the vest pocket park in lower Manhattan where the Occupy Movement was launched in September 2011; the Downtown Mall, with its many privately operated outdoor cafés, that occupy the path along which East Main Street once flowed freely in Charlottesville; or even the space of invisible AM and FM radio waves that the FCC supposedly regulates in the public’s interest).  

We launch our exploration by considering landscapes as arenas of the Culture Wars.  With this context, we unearth ways in which places are planned, designed, constructed, and mythologized in the struggle to assert and enforce social (especially racial) distinctions, difference, and hierarchy.  You will be moved to understand how publicly financed freeways were planned not only to facilitate some citizens’ modern progress, but also to block others from  accessing rights, protections, and opportunities to which casually we believe all "Americans" are entitled.  We study landscapes not only as represented in written and non-written forms, but also through direct sensory, emotional, and intellectual experience during two mandatory field trips to places in our region.  

In addition to informal group exercises and individual mid-term exam, a critical field trip reflection paper, and final exam, you are required to complete in small groups a final research project on a topic you choose that relates to the seminar.  Past topics have ranged from the racial politics of farmers’ markets in gentrifying inner cities to the gender--and the transgender exclusion—politics of  universal standards for public restroom pictograms.  Students showcase such results in an informal symposium that culminates the semester.  Not only will you expand the complexity and scope of your critical thinking abilities, but also you will never again experience as ordinary the spaces and places you encounter from day to day.

ENGL 4902 - 001: The Bible Part 2: The New Testament

John Parker

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through much of the New Testament, from the Gospels to Revelation, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the New Testament; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible is needed or assumed. It can be taken before or after the Bible Part 2: The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

ENGL 4999 - 001: Distinguished Majors Program

Caroline Rody

ENGL 5101 - 001: "Beowulf and Its Monstrous Manuscript"

Stephen Hopkins

In this course, we will read about half of Beowulf in Old English, alongside samples from the other texts found in the same manuscript, Cotton Vitellius A XV. These other texts include Judith, the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, Wonders of the East, and the Life of St. Christopher (a dog-headed saint!). Alongside extensive translation work, we will also study the manuscript itself and the various arguments about its date and the date(s) of the texts it contains.

ENGL 5500 - 001: Blake and Yeats

Mark Edmundson

A close and careful reading of 2 visionary poets, with particular attention to Blake's influence on Yeats.

ENGL 5500 - 002: Transforming Desire: Medieval and Renaissance Erotic Poetics

Clare Kinney

This seminar will focus upon lyric, narrative and dramatic works from the medieval and Renaissance periods which explore the striking metamorphoses and the various (and on occasion very queer) trajectories of earthly—and not so earthly--love. We'll be examining the ways in which desire is represented as transforming the identity and consciousness and language of the lover; we will also be examining (and attempting to historicize) strategies employed by our authors to variously transform, redefine, enlarge and contain the erotic impulse. We'll start with some selections from the Metamorphoses of Ovid; we will finish with two of Shakespeare’s most striking reinventions of love. Along the way we’ll be looking at the gendering of erotic representation and erotic speech, the intermittent entanglement of secular and sacred love, the role of genre in refiguring eros, and some intersections between the discourses of sexuality and the discourses of power.

Tentative reading list: selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses; the Lais (short romances) of Marie de France; Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde; lyrics by Petrarch, Philip Sidney and Lady Mary Wroth; Philip Sidney’s Old Arcadia; Shakespeare's As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale. (All non-English works will be read in translation.) And occasional critical/theoretical readings. 

Requirements: regular attendance, lively participation in discussion, a series of reflective discussion board postings, a short paper (6-7 pages); a long term paper (14 pages).

ENGL 5530 - 001: Literature of British Abolition

Michael Suarez

How did Great Britain come to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and what roles did literature play in enlightening readers to the barbarities of this human traffic? Reading works such as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, and a variety of poems, both canonical and from relatively unknown voices, we will attempt to immerse ourselves in the literature of British abolition. Juxtaposing such writings with visual materials (viz., the slave ship Brooks), abolitionist political pamphlets, and letters in the C18 public press will give greater depth to our discussions. Finally, we will read Caryl Phillips’ novel Cambridge and reflect on how a literature of abolition might function in our own time.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 5559 - 001: American Wild

Stephen Cushman

With biblical images of wilderness in mind, seventeenth-century English colonizers of Massachusetts described what they found as another wilderness, howling, savage, terrible. For them it was to be feared, avoided, and, where possible, tamed. Four centuries later, with eighty percent of U.S. citizens living in cities, many of them exposed to wilderness only through calendar pictures or screensaver photos, what meaning or value does American wildness have? Is it only a fantasy image, part of an American brand, as in the phrase “the wild West.” Are wildness and wilderness the same thing? Has the howling, terrible, untamed wildness of the seventeenth-century forest relocated to another sphere, in the wildness of wildfires in California and elsewhere? Is weather the new frontier, the new wilderness, where Americans encounter untamed wildness in droughts, floods, and violent storms? Have we come full circle to more biblical imagery, with apocalypse replacing wilderness as the rubric under which we encounter the wild?

This course will begin with a look at biblical antecedents and their influence on European colonists encountering landscapes inhabited by native people. From there we will move to the literature of westward exploration, and further encounters with indigenous populations and their lands, in selections from the journals of Jefferson-commissioned Lewis and Clark. Then it’s on to the mid-nineteenth pivot toward wildness in the eyes of Romantic beholders, foremost among them Henry David Thoreau, patron saint of the environmental movement. Next comes John Muir, whose vision of wilderness preservation begat the U.S. National Park System. Proceeding to the twentieth century, we’ll add important voices, such as Aldo Leopold’s and Rachel Carson’s, as the preservation impulse merges with concern about public health and social justice. We’ll complete our tour in the twenty-first century by joining a conversation with Robert Bullard, Alice Walker, Linda Hogan, Carol Finney, Lauret Savoy, J. Drew Lanham, and Garnette Cadogan.

ENGL 5560 - 001: Woolf, Eliot and the Culture of Modernism

Michael Levenson

A seminar on the fiction of Virginia Woolf, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, and the wider cultural context of Modernism (in painting, film, and philosophy).  Alongside the close reading of signature literary works, we address the conditions of intellectual modernity and political-technological modernization. The responsibility of students includes weekly comments, an oral report and a final essay.

ENGL 5580 - 001: Introduction to Textual Criticism & Scholarly Editing

David Vander Meulen

This course in textual criticism deals with some of the fundamental problems of literary study:

● If a work exists in multiple forms and with different wording, what constitutes "the text"?
● How are such judgments made and standards determined?
● How are verbal works as intellectual abstractions affected by the physical forms in which they are transmitted?
● If one is faced with the prospect of editing a work, how does one go about it?
● How does one choose an edition for use in the classroom?

● What difference does this all make?

The course will deal with such concerns and will include:

● A short survey of analytical bibliography and the solution of practical problems as they apply to literary texts.
● Study of the transmission of texts in different periods.
● Consideration of theories and techniques of editing literary and non-literary texts of different genres, and of both published and unpublished materials.

The course will build to the preparation of a scholarly edition by each student. The class on books as physical objects, ENGL 5810, provides helpful background but is not a prerequisite.

*This course satisfies the Graduate English requirement for the history of criticism or literary theory.*

ENGL 5800 - 001: History of Literary Criticism

Walter Jost

Much if not all of what currently goes under the name of “cultural studies” and “critical theory,” not to mention concepts like genre, period, author, literature, imagination, poetry and so on, cannot go far without feeling the tug of the extensive root system in which they are grounded in the “history of literary criticism” (terms whose meanings are themselves multivalent and historical). One cannot study everything at once, to be sure; but judicious selection among the major critical texts of our changing traditions can serve both to make one feel at home in his or her culture, and to help de-mystify (as well as organize) large swatches of contemporary literary thinking. Along with a range of poems, we read a variety of short primary works, from a Platonic dialogue and Aristotle’s Poetics to Sidney’s “Defense of Poetry” to Pater, Eliot, Greenblatt and Cavell; and selections from an extremely useful secondary volume, M. A. R. Habib’s A History of Literary Criticism and Theory (Blackwell, paperback). Our reading load is manageable, though it requires hard thinking; our reading list is exciting and varied; and our class discussions about our readings and how they might be applied take primary place in the design of the class. We will write papers, present research, gather examples, and learn to "go on" from others in new ways.

ENWR 1506 - Writing and Critical Inquiry: The Stretch Sequence

Offers a two-semester approach to the First Writing Requirement. This sequence allows students to take more time, in smaller sections and with support from the Writing Center, practicing and reinforcing the activities that are central to the first-year writing course. Like ENWR 1510, ENWR 1505-06 approaches writing as a way of generating, representing, and reflecting on critical inquiry. Students contribute to an academic conversation about a specific subject of inquiry and learn to position their ideas and research in relation to the ideas and research of others.  Instructors place student writing at the center of course, encourage students to think on the page, and prepare them to reflect on contemporary forms of expression.  Students read and respond to each other’s writing in class regularly, and they engage in thoughtful reflection on their own rhetorical choices as well as those of peers and published writers.  Additionally, the course requires students to give an oral presentation on their research and to assemble a digital portfolio of their writing.

001 - Writing about Culture/Society  - The Good Life
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (BRN 332)
John Modica

002 - Writing about Culture/Society
MW 02:00PM-03:15PM (CAB 036)
Claire Chantell

003 - Writing about Culture/Society​
MW 03:30PM-04:45PM (KER 317)
Claire Chantell

004 - Writing about Culture/Society - Language and Culture: Brain Rot or Demure​
TR 02:00PM-03:15PM (CAB 056)
Patricia Sullivan

005 - Writing about Culture/Society - Writing About Mental Health and Well-Being in College Life
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (BRN 330)
Ethan King

College life can often feel like a balancing act between ambition and exhaustion, connection and isolation, thriving and just getting by. This course invites you to explore how college culture—from the pressure to achieve and the pull of perfectionism to the need to belong—shapes emotional well-being. Through readings from psychologists, educators, journalists, and student writers, we’ll consider how ideas about success, motivation, and belonging influence what it means to “do well” and “be well” in academic life. You will develop your writing through analytical essays, reflective narratives, and public pieces that examine how institutions and individuals talk about, support, and sometimes challenge mental health in higher education.

006 - Writing about Culture/Society - The Good Life
TR 03:30PM-04:45PM (BRN 330)
John Modica

007 - Writing about Culture/Society - Writing About Mental Health and Well-Being in College Life
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (BRN 330)
Ethan King

College life can often feel like a balancing act between ambition and exhaustion, connection and isolation, thriving and just getting by. This course invites you to explore how college culture—from the pressure to achieve and the pull of perfectionism to the need to belong—shapes emotional well-being. Through readings from psychologists, educators, journalists, and student writers, we’ll consider how ideas about success, motivation, and belonging influence what it means to “do well” and “be well” in academic life. You will develop your writing through analytical essays, reflective narratives, and public pieces that examine how institutions and individuals talk about, support, and sometimes challenge mental health in higher education.

008 - Writing about Culture/Society - Language and Culture: Brain Rot or Demure
TR 03:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 044)
Patricia Sullivan  

ENWR 1510 - Writing and Critical Inquiry (70+ sections)

Approaches writing as a way of generating, representing, and reflecting on critical inquiry. Students contribute to an academic conversation about a specific subject of inquiry and learn to position their ideas and research in relation to the ideas and research of others.  Instructors place student writing at the center of course, encourage students to think on the page, and prepare them to reflect on contemporary forms of expression.  Students read and respond to each other’s writing in class regularly, and they engage in thoughtful reflection on their own rhetorical choices as well as those of peers and published writers.  Additionally, the course requires students to give an oral presentation on their research and to assemble a digital portfolio of their writing.

001 - Writing about Digital Media - Writing about Attention
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (CAB 064)
Tyler Carter

002 - Writing about Digital Media - Writing about Attention
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (CAB 287)
Tyler Carter
 
003 - Writing about Culture/Society
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 068)
Alison Cotti-Lowell

004 - TBA
MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM (CAB 415)
Caroline Erickson

005 - TBA
MW 02:00PM-03:15PM (CAB 064)
Jeddie Sophronius
 
006 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (BRN 330)
TBA
 
007 - TBA
MWF 09:00AM-09:50AM (CAB 044)
TBA
 
008 - Writing about Culture/Society
MWF 10:00AM-10:50AM (KER 317)
TBA
 
009 - TBA
MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM (KER 317)
TBA
 
010 - Writing about Culture/Society
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 036)
Keith Driver

012 - Multilingual Writers
MWF 01:00PM-01:50PM (CAB 068)
Davy Tran
(Multilingual or international students ONLY)
 
013 - TBA
MWF 09:00AM-09:50AM (CAB 056)
TBA

014 - Writing about Culture/Society - Assessing Performance, Risk, and Reward
MWF 10:00AM-10:50AM (CAB 107)
Jon D'Errico
 
015 - TBA
MW 08:30AM-09:45AM (CAB 064)
TBA
 
016 - TBA
MW 03:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 064)
Jeddie Sophronius
 
017 - TBA
MWF 10:00AM-10:50AM (CAB 068)
TBA
 
018 - TBA
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 044)
TBA
 
019 - TBA
MW 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 036)
TBA
 
020 - Writing about Identities
MW 02:00PM-03:15PM (CAB 056)
devin donovan
 
021 - Writing about Culture/Society
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (CAB 287)
Kate Natishan

022 - TBA
MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM (CAB 036)
TBA
 
023 - Writing about Digital Media - The Art of the Post: Performance in Social Media Spaces
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (CAB 211)
Dana Little

In the digital era, social media platforms have become integral spaces for self-expression, communication, and cultural production. This course investigates how individuals and communities perform identities, narratives, and micro-cultures through various forms of digital expression. Beyond merely observing, we will critically examine how social media platforms serve as stages for creative expression, social interaction, and civil discourse, using theoretical frameworks drawn from media studies, cultural theory, performance studies, and digital humanities.
  
024 - TBA
MW 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 044)
TBA
 
025 - Writing about Culture/Society - Writing about Writing and Literacy
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (CAB 036)
Kate Kostelnik

Writing is a tool that allows us to discover new ideas and communicate our ideas to others. In this class, we will inquire into writing itself and education—specifically what academic literacy means in the twenty-first century. We will investigate what writing means for us as individuals and what factors influence how we write. Throughout the course we will be considering different genres (personal essays, academic arguments, and fiction) and trying different writing strategies (invention, reflection, critical analysis, drafting, revision, and final editing). Particular attention will be paid to developing a working knowledge of rhetorical concepts such as audience, purpose, and context for writing. In the final month of the course, we’ll consider arguments about academic discourse and how college writers progress; our final projects will allow us to enter these ongoing academic conversations and articulate our own ideas and experiences in the context of scholarship.
 
026 - Writing about Culture/Society - Assessing Performance, Risk, and Reward
MWF 11:00AM-11:50AM (CAB 107)
Jon D'Errico
 
027 - Writing about Culture/Society
MW 03:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 036)
Kaitlyn Airy
 
028 - Writing about Science & Tech
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (KER 317)
Cory Shaman
 
029 - TBA​
MW 03:30PM-04:45PM (WIL 244)
TBA
 
030 - Writing about Digital Media - Did the Camera Ever Tell the Truth?
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (CAB 283)
Jodie Childers

In this class, we will build upon this provocative question posed by documentary filmmakers Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson to explore what it means to be a discerning content consumer in the age of digital media. As we become active readers, viewers, and listeners, we will analyze the ways in which content creators attempt to shape our perception, from the Kuleshov effect in a video to the pathos of the sound design in a podcast. We will also apply the tricks of the trade as we make our own digital projects. With the rise of AI-generated media, it’s more important now than ever to grapple with the ethics of digital content creation and consumption.
 
031 - Writing about the Arts - Sci-fi and Its Present
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (WIL 244)
Hodges Adams

In the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin declares that “Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” What, then, can a work of science fiction tell us about the time in which it was written? Students in this course should expect to read and watch works of science fiction across a variety of genres and forms, including novels, short stories, essays, poetry, television episodes, and movies, and then generate critical written responses. This class focuses on reading, writing, researching, and revising carefully and with intention. Student papers will be peer reviewed and revised multiple times during class.
 
032 - Writing about Science & Tech
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (KER 317)
Cory Shaman
 
033 - Multilingual Writers
MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM (Cab 068)
Davy Tran
(Multilingual or international students ONLY)
 
034 - Writing & Community Engagement - Walking Charlottesville
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (CAB 115)
Kate Stephenson

035 - TBA
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 411)
TBA
 
036 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 411)
TBA
 
037 - Writing about Culture/Society - Writing about Writing and Literacy
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (CAB 036)
Kate Kostelnik

Writing is a tool that allows us to discover new ideas and communicate our ideas to others. In this class, we will inquire into writing itself and education—specifically what academic literacy means in the twenty-first century. We will investigate what writing means for us as individuals and what factors influence how we write. Throughout the course we will be considering different genres (personal essays, academic arguments, and fiction) and trying different writing strategies (invention, reflection, critical analysis, drafting, revision, and final editing). Particular attention will be paid to developing a working knowledge of rhetorical concepts such as audience, purpose, and context for writing. In the final month of the course, we’ll consider arguments about academic discourse and how college writers progress; our final projects will allow us to enter these ongoing academic conversations and articulate our own ideas and experiences in the context of scholarship.
 
038 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 415)
TBA
 
039 - TBA
MW 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 068)
TBA
 
040 - TBA
MWF 11:00AM-11:50AM (CAB 068)
TBA
 
041 - Writing about the Arts - Sci-fi and Its Present
TR 03:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 056)
Hodges Adams

In the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin declares that “Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” What, then, can a work of science fiction tell us about the time in which it was written? Students in this course should expect to read and watch works of science fiction across a variety of genres and forms, including novels, short stories, essays, poetry, television episodes, and movies, and then generate critical written responses. This class focuses on reading, writing, researching, and revising carefully and with intention. Student papers will be peer reviewed and revised multiple times during class.
 
042 - Writing about Culture/Society
MW 02:00PM-03:15PM (BRN 332)
Kaitlyn Airy
 
043 - Writing about Digital Media - Did the Camera Ever Tell the Truth?
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (CAB 283)
Jodie Childers 

In this class, we will build upon this provocative question posed by documentary filmmakers Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson to explore what it means to be a discerning content consumer in the age of digital media. As we become active readers, viewers, and listeners, we will analyze the ways in which content creators attempt to shape our perception, from the Kuleshov effect in a video to the pathos of the sound design in a podcast. We will also apply the tricks of the trade as we make our own digital projects. With the rise of AI-generated media, it’s more important now than ever to grapple with the ethics of digital content creation and consumption.
 
044 - TBA
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 064)
TBA
 
045 - Writing about the Arts - Writing about Television
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (CAB 036)
Cristina Griffin

046 - Writing about Science & Tech - Writing about Medicine
MW 05:00PM-06:15PM (KER 317)
Rhiannon Goad
 
047 - TBA
MW 02:00PM-03:15PM (TBA)
TBA
 
048 - TBA
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (CAB 287)
Kate Natishan
 
049 - TBA
MWF 10:00AM-10:50AM (CAB 064)
TBA
 
050 - TBA
MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM (BRN 330)
TBA
 
051 - Writing about Idenities
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (BRN 334)
Charity Fowler
 
052 - Writing & Community Engagement
TR 02:00PM-03:15PM (CAB 283)
Kevin Smith
  
053 - Writing about Culture/Society
MWF 11:00AM-11:50AM (KER 317)
Kevin Smith
 
054 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 211)
TBA

055 - Writing about Culture/Society
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 211)
TBA
 
056 - TBA
MW 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 068)
TBA
 
057 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 283)
TBA
 
058 - Writing about Digital Media - The Art of the Post: Performance in Social Media Spaces
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (CAB 068)
Dana Little

In the digital era, social media platforms have become integral spaces for self-expression, communication, and cultural production. This course investigates how individuals and communities perform identities, narratives, and micro-cultures through various forms of digital expression. Beyond merely observing, we will critically examine how social media platforms serve as stages for creative expression, social interaction, and civil discourse, using theoretical frameworks drawn from media studies, cultural theory, performance studies, and digital humanities.
 
059 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 064)
TBA
 
060 - Writing about Culture/Society
MW 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 056)
TBA
 
061 - Writing about Culture/Society
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 056)
TBA
 
062 - Writing about the Arts - Writing about Visual Narratives
MWF 10:00AM-10:50AM (CAB 056)
Rory Sullivan

In this course, we will examine what it means to read, experience, write about, and create visual narratives. By looking at a variety of media objects, including comics, graphic novels, archival materials, and video games, we will explore what makes these narratives unique as a genre.


063 - TBA
MWF 11:00AM-11:50AM (CAB 287)
TBA
 
064 - TBA
MW 05:00PM-06:15PM (CAB 064)
TBA
 
065 - TBA
MWF 01:00PM-01:50PM (BRN 330)
TBA
 
066 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 044)
TBA
 
067 - Writing about Culture/Society - Writing about Sports
MWF 11:00AM-11:50AM (CAB 283)
Rory Sullivan

In this course, we will discover the various ways that sports reflect and shape culture. Writing projects will include game summaries, audio and visual podcasts, and research projects.
 
068 - Writing about Culture/Society - Writing about Writing and Literacy
TR 03:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 036)
Kate Kostelnik

Writing is a tool that allows us to discover new ideas and communicate our ideas to others. In this class, we will inquire into writing itself and education—specifically what academic literacy means in the twenty-first century. We will investigate what writing means for us as individuals and what factors influence how we write. Throughout the course we will be considering different genres (personal essays, academic arguments, and fiction) and trying different writing strategies (invention, reflection, critical analysis, drafting, revision, and final editing). Particular attention will be paid to developing a working knowledge of rhetorical concepts such as audience, purpose, and context for writing. In the final month of the course, we’ll consider arguments about academic discourse and how college writers progress; our final projects will allow us to enter these ongoing academic conversations and articulate our own ideas and experiences in the context of scholarship.

069 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (KER 317)
TBA

070 - TBA
MWF 01:00PM-01:50PM (CAB 415)
TBA

071 - Writing about Culture/Society
MWF 01:00PM-01:50PM (KER 317)
TBA

072 - Writing about Identities
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (BRN 334)
Charity Fowler

073 - TBA
TR 05:00PM-05:15PM (KER 317)
TBA

074 - TBA
TR 08:00AM-09:15AM (CAB 036)
TBA

075 - TBA
MWF 09:00AM-09:50AM (CAB 036)
TBA

ENWR 1520 - Writing and Community Engagement (5 sections)

ENWR 1520 shares the same writing goals and approaches as ENWR 1510, but focuses on community engagement in pursuit of those goals. In ENWR 1520, students contribute to a conversation and learn to position their ideas, research, and experiential learning in community engaged projects. Students should expect to spend time outside the classroom interacting with community partners, either in person or virtually.

002 - Writing and Community Engagement - You and A.I.
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (BRN 332)
Piers Gelly

In this course, we will practice the skills associated with college-level writing by asking a provocative question of one another: in the age of ChatGPT, do we still need writing courses like this one? 

003 - Writing and Community Engagement - Writing about Native American Rhetoric
TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (RTN 150)
Sarah Richardson

This course will focus on how Native American histories are written and how to combat dominant narratives surrounding these histories and portrayals. Students will learn concepts such as: colonization, rhetoric, dominant and counter narratives, and current and past representations in memory. Students will also learn how to research, compose, and revise ethical and effective arguments to address specific audiences. 

004 - Writing and Community Engagement - Writing about Native American Rhetoric
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (RTN 150)
Sarah Richardson

This course will focus on how Native American histories are written and how to combat dominant narratives surrounding these histories and portrayals. Students will learn concepts such as: colonization, rhetoric, dominant and counter narratives, and current and past representations in memory. Students will also learn how to research, compose, and revise ethical and effective arguments to address specific audiences. 

011 - Writing and Community Engagement - Writing Place
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (KER 317)
John T. Casteen IV

This course offers students focused instruction on academic writing, research, and argument. It's organized around Place-- how we experience and understand our physical surroundings-- and the way we write it. The course includes a free, mandatory field experience on Virginia's Eastern Shore from February 27 through March 3 at UVa's Coastal Research Center, along with engagement in advance with its history, ecology, and culture.

ENWR 2510 - Advanced Writing Seminar (4 sections)

The course in highest demand for students on the FWR+ track is ENWR 2510, an Advanced Writing Seminar. Like ENWR 1510, ENWR 2510 approaches writing as a way of generating, representing, and reflecting on critical inquiry. Students contribute to an academic conversation about a specific subject of inquiry and learn to position their ideas and research in relation to the ideas and research of others.  Instructors place student writing at the center of course, encourage students to think on the page, and prepare them to reflect on contemporary forms of expression.  Students read and respond to each other’s writing in class regularly, and they engage in thoughtful reflection on their own rhetorical choices as well as those of peers and published writers.  Additionally, the course requires students to give an oral presentation on their research and to assemble a digital portfolio of their writing. While ENWR 2510 and ENWR 1510 share the same goals and practices, ENWR 2510 offers added rigor, often in the form of denser course texts and longer, more self-directed writing assignments.

001 - Writing about Digital Media - Writing in the Age of Generative AI
TR 3:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 183)
Ethan King

In this humanities-based writing seminar, we will explore generative AI as a rhetorical and cultural force reshaping how we read, write, and think. Rather than treating AI simply as a professional tool or as a looming threat, we’ll approach it as a site of inquiry: asking who we become when we write with, through, or against machines that can simulate language. Our work will build layered AI awareness, including a functional understanding of how these systems operate, rhetorical insight into how they shape meaning, and ethical attention to their social and environmental impacts. Readings will span a range of perspectives, from those who see AI as a creative collaborator to its most critical opponents. Through a variety of writing projects, we will enter current debates about writing and technology and practice what it means to write deliberately in a world increasingly shaped by automated language.

002 - Writing about Identities - The Cultural Work of Life Writing
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (COC 101)
Tamika Carey

From posting on social media to writing memoirs, people are constantly documenting their lives for the public. This class will explore these acts of disclosure to understand what they reveal about how members from different cultural groups use writing to form, reform, and share their identities. In addition to reading theoretical works, popular critiques, and primary texts by a variety of memoirists, scholars, and journalists, students will collect, analyze, and compose brief life writings, and complete a final critical or creative project.

003 - TBA
MWF 11:00AM-11:50AM (BRN 310)
Heidi Nobles

004 - Writing about Culture/Society - Exploratory Writing
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (BRN 312)
James Seitz

ENWR 2520 - Special Topics in Writing (8 sections)

001 - Queer Writing: Theory and Practice
TR 05:00PM-06:15PM (BRN 330)
John Modica

This course is designed to transform your relationship to writing by introducing you to queer theories and practices of writing. We will consider what it means to enact a ‘queer’ approach to writing today, and put our theories to the test in our own writing and classroom activities.  

002 - Listening to Horror
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (CAB 207)
Kate Natishan
ECHOLS STUDENTS ONLY

Are there aspects of fear and horror that are cross-cultural? How do creators use larger sociological anxieties to scare or unnerve their audiences? This class explores the genre of cosmic horror: we begin with an overview of the history of cosmic horror and its place in society, then take deep dives into two horror podcasts. Throughout the semester, we will examine how sound design enhances written scripts. 

004 - Audible Writing
MWF 01:00PM-01:50PM (BRN 310)
Jon D'Errico

Text meets audio. As a class, we'll explore, analyze, and produce audible writing about UVa and Charlottesville in a range of genres, from podcast-style scripts to hybrid multi-modal documents. Appropriate for students who combine strong writing with a lively and engaged intellectual curiosity.

005 - Writing Within the Archive
MW 02:00PM-03:15PM (BRN 334)
Rory Sullivan

This course explores how to research and write about archival material. Working closely with UVA Special Collections, we will identify materials to study, conduct research, develop arguments, and practice different modes of sharing our findings, including born-digital compositions. We will also consider theoretical understandings of archival practices.

006 - Writing about Virginia's Native Community
TR 02:00PM-03:15PM (CAB 036)
Sarah Richardson

In this course, students will employ research skills, focus on critical engagement, reflect on how information is presented and written to craft effective arguments to address a public facing audience.  In particular, students will work with Virginia’s Tribal Nations to create a document that discusses the similarities and differences between the Tribal Nations socially, historically, and culturally.

007 - Writing about Medicine
MW 03:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 044)
Rhiannon Goad
ECHOLS STUDENTS ONLY

This course dives into the art and ethics of communicating about health. You'll dissect everything from dense medical studies to viral news, learning to translate complex science into clear, compelling language. With short essays, you will develop skills to evaluate diverse sources, including medical literature, health journalism, and patient narratives, and apply responsible communication principles in contexts such as reporting research findings without hype and explaining public health issues effectively. You'll practice these communication skills throughout the semester, culminating in a final project: the creation of a zine about medicine.

008 - You and A.I.
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM (BRN 332)
Piers Gelly
ECHOLS STUDENTS ONLY

In this course, we will practice the skills associated with college-level writing by asking a provocative question of one another: in the age of ChatGPT, do we still need writing courses like this one? 

100 - Writing (and creating) Democratic Spaces
T 06:00PM-08:30PM (BRN 312)
Steve Parks
ECHOLS STUDENTS ONLY

Students will study theories of democracy and work with global democratic advocates, as well as students located in international contexts. This course will involve all-day workshops on February 15th, 16th, 22nd, and 23rd. This course will also end on March 9th.

ENWR 2700 - News Writing

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (SHN 109)
Kate Sweeney

No fake news here, but rather progressive exercises in developing the news-writing style of writing from straight hard news to "soft" features. Satisfies Second Writing Requirement.

ENWR 2800 - Public Speaking

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM (CAB 056)
devin donovan

An inquiry-based approach to the development of a confident, engaging, and ethical public speaking style. Beyond practical skills, this course emphasizes rhetorical thinking: what are the conventions of public speaking? Where are there opportunities to deviate from convention in ways that might serve a speech’s purpose? How might we construct an audience through the ways we craft language and plan the delivery of our speech?

ENWR 3500 - Topics in Advanced Writing & Rhetoric

001 - Environmental Justice Writing
TR 02:00PM-03:15PM (PV8 102)
Cory Shaman

Designed to offer students practice in engaged environmental writing, this course will focus on environmental justice (EJ) discourse in US and international contexts. While the class will be grounded in a study of established forms of EJ theory, special attention will be given to advancing an understanding of the entangled claims and interests of humans and non-humans together as a method to enable students to develop more expansive conceptions of justice and produce just forms of writing.

Course materials will draw heavily on texts associated with historical and contemporary environmental justice efforts at the grassroots level, but also in academic, governmental, and commercial contexts. Case studies in local EJ campaigns in Virginia may form a significant portion of the class. Students will gain experience as readers of these texts and apply insights to a variety of writing tasks shaped by their specific interests within the framework of environmental justice.

002 - Rhetoric of Crime
MW 02:00PM-03:15PM (BRK 103)
Rhiannon Goad

Sensational news headlines, tough-on-crime political campaigns, and gripping true crime narratives: how we talk about crime profoundly shapes our understanding of criminals, victims, justice, and social order. This course explores the rhetorical dimension of crime, examining the persuasive strategies used to define crime, influence public perception, and shape policy in contemporary culture. Together, we will critically analyze how language constructs our reality of crime and punishment. Through a series of analytic papers and a podcast, students will use rhetorical analysis to identify significant trends in crime discourse, identify agents shaping these narratives, and develop a critical perspective on the power of language in matters of law, order, and justice.

ENWR 3550 - Advanced Topics in Digital Writing & Rhetoric

001 - Digital Public Writing
TR 12:30PM-01:45PM (CAB 283)
Kevin Smith

ENWR 3550: Digital Public Writing examines the rhetorical, technological, and cultural dimensions of writing for public audiences with an emphasis on digital communities. Students will analyze and produce multimodal compositions meant to circulate beyond the classroom, developing rhetorical frameworks for understanding how (digital) texts address audiences and perform work in the world.

002 - Digital Maker Studio
TR 02:00PM-03:15PM (CLM 320)
Jodie Childers

In this hands-on maker workshop, students will explore the craft of digital making. Students will engage in independent and collaborative projects, creating audio narratives, videos, and digital stories. Experimentation, invention, and design will be emphasized as students learn how to use digital tools; compose with still and moving images, sound, and text; and consider the ethics and aesthetics of citation. 

ENWR 3559 - New Course in Writing & Rhetoric

001 - Rebuilding (and Expanding) Democracy
M 06:00PM-08:30PM (CAB 211)
Steve Parks

This course will enable students to gain fluency in linking their academic writing to public debates. In particular, the course will investigate the status of democracy as both a concept and set of participatory practices, asking students to consider how their education might support a robust democratic sphere. Students will engage with global democratic advocates (via Zoom) as well as a democratic organizing skills workshop.

ENWR 3640 - Writing with Sound

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM (FHL 215)
Piers Gelly

Trains students to become attuned, thoughtful listeners and sonic composers. In addition to discussing key works on sound from fields such as rhetoric and composition, sound studies, and journalism, we will experiment with the possibilities of sound as a valuable form of writing and storytelling. Students will learn how to use digital audio editing tools, platforms, and techniques for designing and producing sonic projects. (Meets second writing requirement.)

ENWR 3660 - Travel Writing

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM (CAB 056)
Kate Stephenson

Why is everyone suddenly going to Portugal? Why do we travel? What is the difference between a traveler and a tourist?  Using different types of writing, including journal entries, forum posts, peer reviews, and formal papers, we will explore the world of travel writing.  Since we all write best about ideas we are passionate about, we will work together to generate interesting questions about the role of travel in our culture, as well as about specific books and essays. We will also investigate the world of tourism and consider the many ethical issues that arise in the exploration of our modern world. Throughout the course, we will ponder questions like:  

• What is the relationship between travel writer, reader, and inhabitant?  
• How can we use writing to navigate the relationship between writer, reader, inhabitant, and place?  
• What is the role of “outsider” in travel writing?
• How does travel writing encourage us to see ourselves differently?  
• How can we use the very best of travel writing—the sense of discovery, voice, narrative suspense—in other forms of writing, including academic essays?  
• Can travel writing evoke political and social change? 

As the semester unfolds, I hope we will revise and refine our views, paying close attention to how we put words together to write powerfully and engagingly about travel. 

ENWR 3720 - Argumentation Across Disciplines

TR 03:30PM-4:45PM (CAB 411)
Tyler Carter

Argumentation Across Disciplines examines how the linguistic and rhetorical features of argument vary from discipline to discipline. The course will make two primary movements: The first is an examination of what argument is through the lens of classical and new rhetorical theory. Second, students will do comparative research on the linguistic and rhetorical features of texts in two different disciplines.

ENWR 3760 - Studies in Cultural Rhetoric

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM (FHL 215)
Tamika Carey

This course will explore how cultural groups develop, use, and remix stories to build and reshape their worlds. With special attention to the social concepts and communication techniques involved in this work – concepts that include master narratives, rhetorical listening, identification, testimony, and counterstory – we will deepen our understanding of how rhetoric influences the worlds in which we live. Projects will include a story collection project, an analysis presentation, and a final creative or critical project.

ENWR 3900 - The Forbes Seminar in Career-based Writing and Rhetoric

001 - Strategic Communication in the Age of AI and Social Media
TR 03:00PM-04:45PM (CAB 111)
Dana Little

Career-Based Writing & Rhetoric is a hands-on, workshop-style course designed to equip you with the advanced communication skills essential for thriving in the modern workplace. In this course, you’ll combine persuasive writing with practical strategies in social media marketing and Generative AI tools. Through self-designed projects, you’ll practice proposing, drafting, and editing content while exploring recent research, learning GenAI best practices, and integrating these materials into your writing process. Along the way, you’ll learn the foundations of effective communication, analyze real-world case studies, and discover how social media platforms—from TikTok to LinkedIn—shape modern branding, promotion, and engagement. As you master adapting your writing to various audiences and formats, you'll stay ahead of emerging trends, such as influencer marketing and short-form video, setting yourself up for success in today’s dynamic communication landscape and preparing you to write effectively for any career-focused goal.

ENCW 2300 -- Poetry Writing

An introductory course in poetry writing, with a primary focus on creating new poems in a workshop setting. Students will study basic poetic terms and techniques and revise and arrange a series of poems for a final portfolio. The course will also have extensive outside reading and non-creative writing requirements.

ENCW 2600 -- Fiction Writing

An introductory course in fiction writing, with a primary focus on creating short stories in a workshop setting. Students will study basic narrative terms and techniques and revise several short stories for a final portfolio. The course will also have extensive outside reading and non-creative writing requirements.

ENCW 3310-1 -- Intermediate Poetry Writing: Serious Play

Kiki Petrosino
MoWe 11:00am - 12:15pm

In this intermediate poetry workshop, we’ll connect with playfulness as an approach to composition and revision, and as a key concept for expanding our toolbox of techniques. We’ll read published works of poetry by writers for whom formal experimentation is key. We’ll also think about & explore the physical space of Grounds as a site for reading, writing, & sharing poems. Students in this course will engage in a regular writing practice and will take seriously the processes of composition, critique, and revision. We’ll spend a significant portion of the semester “workshopping” student poems, but we also will devote time to discussing assigned reading and to performing independent & in-class writing challenges. These activities, plus attendance, participation, & a final portfolio, will inform the grading policy.

Instructor Permission is required for enrollment in this class: please request enrollment through SIS and email a writing sample of 4-5 poems with a cover sheet including your name, year, email address, major, prior workshop experience, and other workshops to which you are submitting. Submit your application IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT to Prof. Petrosino (cmp2k@virginia.edu). Applications will be considered on a rolling basis once registration opens. For full consideration, email your application as soon as possible.

ENCW 3310-2 -- The Poetics of Childhood:  An Intermediate Poetry Writing Workshop

Lisa Spaar
Tu 11:00am - 1:30pm

Unlike other conditions of being human—being a parent, a lover, male or female or trans, cis-gendered or non-binary, Black, Latinx, Caucasian ,or Asian, a hip hop artist, a painter, a nuclear physicist, a lily of the field—being a child is a universal experience.   Not all of us will have our own children, but each of us has been a child.  As Mark Twain wrote, “We haven’t all had the good fortune to be ladies, we haven’t all been generals, or poets, or statesmen, but when the toast comes down to the babies, we all stand on common ground.”  What Naomi Nye calls the “flag of childhood” connects human beings across time, space, and culture. In this advanced poetry writing workshop, we will explore in original poems some of the ways in which children’s relationships to the world – to objects, to language, to experience – are akin to the poet’s:  mythic, metaphorical, fragmented, primal.   What can the experience of childhood tell us about our adult selves?   How does it relate to and what can it reveal about poetry itself? Permission of instructor is required.  Please request permission in SIS and contact Professor LisaRuss Spaar (LRS9E@virginia.edu) for more information.

ENCW 3350-1 -- Intermediate Nonfiction Writing

Kevin Moffett
Tu 11:00am - 1:30pm

This is a course in personal narratives. You'll read from a wide swath of nonfiction forms—memoir, literary journalism, oral histories, meditations, screeds, etc.—and use your reading as a springboard for your writing. “Notice what you notice," Allen Ginsberg said. "Catch yourself thinking." You'll use this as a point of reference as you write about yourself and others, reflecting more deeply on what's familiar to you, while you explore knowledge, expertise, and vernaculars currently unknown to you, all in the service of sketching out your own inimitable story. 

Admission by Instructor Permission. Please send a sample of your prose writing and a brief statement about why this course interests you to sem9zn@virginia.edu. Writing sample not required for students in the area programs in prose and poetry.

ENCW 3500-1 -- Small Press Publishing

Brian Teare
MoWe 6:30pm - 7:45pm

Small press publishing is one of the major forms of literary labor undertaken by writers of all genres; it’s also one of the main means by which contemporary writers form community. As this course will show, a small press publisher has to possess and hone the skills that all writers need: as an editor, they have to be an excellent close reader; as a curator of a list of authors, they need to be an acute critic of their chosen genre; and as a bookmaker and/or typesetter, they have to pay attention to the details of book production. Through in-class tutorials in bookmaking, we’ll acquire some of the pragmatic skills of small press publishing. Through research into four small presses, selected readings from their lists, presentations on the aesthetics and politics of their editorial practices, and prompts for discussion of the day’s readings, we’ll hone our curatorial acumen and gain a sense of the role small presses play in literary community. Through secondary readings we’ll gain a sense of the history and politics of the small press and the handmade object. Through writing and workshopping our own chapbook-length manuscripts and designs, we’ll practice our writerly and editorial skills. And finally, through collaborative publishing ventures that solidify the literary community we’ve created over the semester, we’ll bring our own chapbooks to life!   

ENCW 3610-1 -- Intermediate Fiction Writing

Jesse Ball
We 2:00pm - 4:30pm

Portraiture (of human beings, concepts, animals, inanimate objects, conceptual beings, inanimate people, human objects, etc). In this class we will make many portraits of things. There will be exercises which you will fulfill to the letter.  We will look at examples of exquisite and careful description, and then you will be sent out into the world to do as well as has been done. To write is largely useless if you cannot clearly describe a thing that isn't present. We shall learn to clearly and cleanly describe the objects of our attention, or we will perish while doing so. For Interested Parties: Please submit two brief descriptions. Twenty-four words each, exactly. One should be of your foot. One should be of a person you no longer know.

ENCW 4550 - Weird Books: The Strange, the Obscene, the Banned and the Incomprehensible in Literature

Micheline Marcom
W 3:00-5:30

In this class we’ll read an array of works of literature that have been, at different times, derided, banned, ignored, censored, and misunderstood—sometimes for their subject matter, sometimes for the style in which they are written—often for both. Plan to read a lot of strange and wonderful books, to write weekly creative responses, and to wrangle inside that beautiful dense wood we call literature. Some writers we may read: Boccaccio, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Tadeusz Borowski, Bohumil Hrabal, JG Ballard, Angela Carter, Nabokov, Gertrude Stein, Lautreamont, and De Sade. Instructor permission required, but all eager readers and writers are welcome to apply. If you’re NOT in the APLP, send me a note (mam5du) saying what draws you to this class.

ENCW 4820-1 -- Poetry Program Poetics -- Cutting Up: Collage, Play, Poetry, & Resistance

Brian Teare
Mo 2:00pm - 4:30pm

This seminar will present a capsule survey of Surrealist collage and its revolutionary inheritors. We’ll begin with modernist poets André Breton, Alice Paalen Rahon, Aimé Césaire, and César Moro, before moving on to three mid-century American poets associated with the New York School – Leroi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), John Ashbery, and Barbara Guest – and then three contemporary poets – Douglas Kearney, Oli Hazzard, and Kathleen Fraser – whose work repurposes Surrealism’s dual legacy of revolt and artificial paradise for feminist, anticolonial, and aesthetic ends. Alongside the poetry of these ten poets, we’ll study manifestos, interviews, and statements of poetics in order to better understand the theories of making practiced by collage-based poets. Intertwined with this survey of the poetry and poetics of collage will be an experiential learning portion of the course, which will allow us to explore collage techniques literally – through poetics exercises with scissors and glue stick. Together we’ll explore the many iterations of collage over the past century, from Surrealist salvos to anticolonial visions to Camp cut-ups to feminist interventions, while slowly each of us will begin to develop and articulate our own personal version of collage poetics. The course will be capped off with a final portfolio containing a reflective poetics statement and a manuscript of collage-based creative work.

ENCW 4830-1 -- The Big Themes.  An Advanced Poetry Writing Workshop

Lisa Spaar
We 12:30pm - 3:00pm

In this workshop for advanced poets, the aim of our collective project will be to generate poems that dare to embody, explore, provoke, illuminate, refute, and manifest “large” traditional poetic themes—Eros, Thanatos, Truth, Beauty, God, & Time­—in fresh, original ways.  In addition to writing about a poem a week, students will also be responsible for choosing a trio of “core poets” to read closely throughout the semester: one poet born before 1920, one poet born after 1965, and a poet on the faculty of the University of Virginia.  We will be incorporating these readings into our assignments, poems, and class discussion.  Permission of instructor is required.  Please request permission in SIS and contact Professor Lisa Russ Spaar (LRS9E@virginia.edu) for more information.

ENGL 2500 -- Introduction to Literature

Walter Jost
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

One reads “literature” differently than one reads other written materials in part by raising questions about language and interpretation, questions that might be raised elsewhere but usually aren’t.  To become a better reader of fiction, and through fiction a better reader of ourselves and other situations and people, and through them a better reader of the life that you and others lead, one can attend closely to literary texts and ask: Why?  How?

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2500-10 -- Introduction to Literary Studies

John O'Brien
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

We will read great works of literature and also work on the skills that need to read, describe, critique, and write well about literary texts.  But we will also be pursuing the question of what constitutes literature in the first place.  We will read texts in a variety of forms (poetry, fiction, drama, essay), and also read what a number of critical thinkers have had to say. Our readings will include works by authors such as William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, and Terrance Hayes. Some short in-class exercises; three written assignments, final examination. All students are welcome to join. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2500-11 -- Introduction to Literary Studies

Victor Luftig
TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

We will read poems, plays, fiction, and essays in ways meant to introduce the study of literature at the college level: we’ll focus on how these types of writing work, on what we get from reading them carefully, and on what good and harm they may do in the world.  The texts will come from a wide range of times and places, including works by authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Li-Young Lee, and Chimamanda Adichie; we will also attend a reading and two plays, one on Grounds and the other at the American Shakespeare Center. The course is meant to serve those who are interested in improving their reading and writing, for whatever reason, who seek an introductory humanities course, and/or who may wish subsequently to major in English.  We’ll discuss the works in class, and there will be in class-quizzes, three papers, and a final exam. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2506-1 -- Contemporary Poetry

Jahan Ramazani
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

In this seminar, we will examine an array of postwar idioms, forms, and movements. While devoting much of our attention to some of the most influential American poetry from the second half of the twentieth century, we will also bring ourselves up to date by examining poems published in recent years by poets of diverse backgrounds. To hone our attention to poetics, we will focus on several specific genres, forms, or kinds of poetry, including sonnets, elegies, persona poems, and poems about the visual arts. The seminar will emphasize the development of skills of close reading, critical thinking, and imaginative, knowledgeable writing about poetry.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2506-3 -- Introduction to Poetry

Hodges Adams
TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm

This class aims to strengthen the skills of close reading and analytical thinking through evaluating poetry. Discussion is the primary format; we will explore various poetic forms and movements and pay close attention to language. Students will read individual poems across a wide variety of styles and time periods, as well as reading one complete collection of contemporary American poetry. There will be three essays, one of which will be paired with an in-class presentation. Extensive revision of at least one essay is expected. We may take field trips to places around Grounds such as the Fralin Art Museum and the Special Collections Library.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2506-3 -- Black Experimental Poetry

Samantha Stephens
TuTh 5:00pm-6:15pm

This course maps a tradition of innovative poetry and poetics from writers across the African Diaspora. We will examine the rich practice of experimentation by Black writers in the twentieth and twenty-first century. In this class, students will explore how poets who are often marginalized disrupt the literal margins of the page - playing with color, sound, space, typeface - to respond to issues of colonialism and neocolonialism, racism, gender politics, and the politics of literary form. We will read Black poets and performers from the Caribbean, the U.S., and the U.K., including M. NourbeSe Philip, Kamau Brathwaite, Claudia Rankine, Evie Shockley, Douglas Kearney, Bernardine Evaristo, and others.

Course requirements include short presentations, three essays, and active class participation.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508-1 -- The Novel of Upbringing

James Kinney
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

The Novel of Upbringing -- How does the fictional representation of upbringing reflect on the cultural uses of fiction in general as well as the actual work of becoming adult? Works to be studied: Jane Austen, Emma; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Tom Perrotta, Joe College; Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Perfectly Fine. Class requirements: Lively participation including including 8 brief email responses, one short and one longer essay, and a final exam.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508-2 -- Science Fiction

Charity Fowler
TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

In this course we will read three Shakespeare plays and then see two or three film or live-theater versions of each one, considering various ways the directors and actors interpret the plays for a modern audience. Writing assignments are designed to help seminar participants consolidate the analytical and writing skills they need to succeed in college-level classes in English or other humanities fields. In addition to many short, informal writing assignments there will be two formal papers—one short, one longer.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2527-1 -- Text and Performance

Katharine Maus
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

In this course we will read three Shakespeare plays and then see two or three film or live-theater versions of each one, considering various ways the directors and actors interpret the plays for a modern audience. Writing assignments are designed to help seminar participants consolidate the analytical and writing skills they need to succeed in college-level classes in English or other humanities fields. In addition to many short, informal writing assignments there will be two formal papers—one short, one longer.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2560-1 -- American Literature in the Twenty-First Century

John Modica
TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm

The twenty-first century is a time of unprecedented global emergencies. Ecological devastation on a world-historical scale. Rampant, unchecked wealth inequality. War, genocide, mass disabling, and forced displacement. Anti-democratic forces on the rise—and, in the face of all these problems and more, growing feelings of hopelessness, disenchantment, alienation, and fear. What, in all of this, is the role of literature? Why should we bother to read and write literature now? How have contemporary writers, in writing about the problems of the twenty-first century, redefined our understanding of these problems, and literature’s place in confronting them? How can we use literature to set a new, better direction for the world? This course offers a unique introduction to the study of literature and culture through an examination of twenty-first century American literature. In the first part of the course, students and the instructor will work together to devise a reading schedule that reflects the interests, questions, and backgrounds of the students in the class. We will then embark on a journey through an exciting and diverse set of contemporary writings with the goal of defining for ourselves the possible meanings of “American literature” as an active and ongoing project. In doing so, we will develop skills and knowledge that can enable us to use literature as a tool for enriching, reflecting on, and transforming our everyday lives. This course satisfies the English major and minor prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement. No background in literary studies is expected or necessary.

ENGL 2592-1 -- Women of Letters: Epistolary Literature Written by Women

Alison Hurley
TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am

In eighteenth-century England young women were taught that their most desirable attribute was modesty and that their destiny lay in marriage. Such an education discouraged women from competing with men in the crowded, unruly, and potentially lucrative public sphere of commercial publishing. Or so one might think. In fact, women authors flourished at this time. By the early 1800s, some men even feared they had come to dominate popular literature. How did this come to be? One of the most effective vehicles by which women infiltrated the world of print was via the humble form of the letter. Letters could express all sorts of things, be addressed to diverse audiences, and be sent from myriad locations. But while letters proved themselves an adaptable form, they were also, at least theoretically, a private one. It was the letter’s association with privacy – with the merely personal – that allowed women to disguise their epistolary compositions as modest, slight, and unthreatening. The letter was the perfect secret weapon for making women’s voices heard.

In this class we will explore how British women living in the 1700’s wrote letters to do many different things: address injustice, report on fashionable society, titillate, mock, protest, and, sometimes, just tell a friend she was loved. Our readings will include private correspondence, verse epistles, epistolary novels, foreign correspondence, letters to the editor, and more.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-1 -- Gothic Forms

Cynthia Wall
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Gothic literature burst onto the scene in the eighteenth century with ruined castles, ethereal music, brooding villains and fainting heroines, all performing as metaphors of our deepest fears. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the gothic continued as a genre of cultural anxiety. This seminar will survey gothic literature through both history and genre: from the classic novels, such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1797), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886),  and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959); through the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti; the plays of Matthew Lewis and Richard Brinsley Peake; and the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W. W. Jacobs, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. And we will ask ourselves: What are we afraid of?

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-2 -- Beauty and Monstrosity

Jon D'Errico
MoWeFr 1:00pm - 1:50pm

In this class we will read a selection of texts exploring the roots of contemporary attitudes toward beauty and monstrosity. The readings range from the mid-14th century to the present, and the genres include poetry, short fiction, drama, and novels. Although we will, in passing, consider some literary theory, our focus in this class will be on your close analysis of the texts, via class discussions and your written assignments.

We will explore in broad terms some of the major literary traditions that contribute to modern understandings of beauty and monstrosity. We will especially attend to two overlapping and evolving themes: understanding of the relationship between nature and human nature, and the boundaries between the natural and the unnatural.

Along the way, we'll provide guided practice in managing key elements of argument and style. This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2599-3 -- Utopian and Dystopian Visions

Alison Cotti-Lowell
TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm

Imaginary places called utopias—hovering between the “good place” and the “no place”—are said to convey truths about the real world. Beginning with Thomas More’s famous 16th-century text, Utopia, this course surveys the utopian literary genre up to the 21st century, showing how writers have invented myriad new worlds through fiction. In this course, you will become familiar with diverse historical, social, and political contexts, and you will think critically about the utility of “utopia” for understanding the human condition: past, present, and future. In the second half of the semester, texts will shift into the dystopian register, allowing us to examine the relationship between utopia and its apparent opposite: dystopia. Authors may include Francis Bacon, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and J.G. Ballard. Class materials may also include examples from urban planning and architecture, as well as film and the visual arts. This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement.

ENGL 2599-4 -- The Literature of Everyday Life

Taylor Schey
TuTh 5:00-6:15

What could be more monotonous than ordinary, everyday life? And yet, since at least the late eighteenth century, the realm of the quotidian has been an extraordinary source of interest and inspiration for many different writers, some of whom have followed William Wordsworth in “awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us,” others of whom have been more drawn to what Joan Didion describes as “the peril, unspeakable peril, of the everyday.” This course will explore how everyday life has been mined and imagined in literary writing, from Jane Austen, W. H. Auden, and Elizabeth Bishop to Ross Gay, Christina Sharpe, and Monica Huerta. As we learn to attend to language as students of literature, we’ll hone our skills of close reading and apply them to our own everyday milieus. Plus, through working on a variety of both analytical and creative assignments, we’ll become stronger writers. Readings will include some poems, a handful of essays, a couple of autotheoretical texts, a novel, and at least one film. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-5 -- Monuments and the Aesthetics of Power

Ian Grandison
TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm

We generally understand monuments as commemorating people and events that are regarded as significant to shaping public knowledge, sense of identity, and social cohesion. We consider the processes by which monuments are proposed, promoted, funded, planned, designed, and erected as politically neutral and communal in their spirit. They are regarded as objects of beauty or even majesty--promoted as “works of art,” a notion that reinforces the perception that they unite and uplift individuals, communities, nations, and even empires. And yet the rupture associated with Confederate monuments that long had pride of place in landscapes North and South betrays the instability of the common perception of monuments as salutary and caused many to view them as apparatuses of ongoing warfare. We consider the role of monuments and memorials, whether public or private, in shaping collective ways of knowing, feeling, acting, and interacting as citizens in relation to state authority. To unearth this politics, we will explore the physical and historical contexts of monuments as well as their aesthetic qualities that are located on campus, in Charlottesville, and beyond--from ancient times to the present, from the Age of Exploration to colonial imperialism to modern nation-building. A few examples include: the Elmina Castle, built in the 1480s, which eventually became a "point of no return" for kidnapped captives in the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; Cleopatra's Needle, moved from Alexandria, Egypt to London's Victoria Embankment in 1878; the 1921 Stonewall Jackson Confederate Monument that once stood in Charlottesville's Court Square Park; and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, 2011, on the U.S. National Mall. Is Carlos Simon’s 2022 “Requiem for the Enslaved” (which was commissioned by Georgetown University to reckon with the role of slavery in its development) a monument? We will explore how monuments are used to shape local and national landscapes to affect social hierarchies, imperialist ambitions, and struggles for liberation. There will be a midterm and final exam, each including identification items and a critical essay, and a final team research project.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-6 -- Routes, Writing, Reggae

Njelle Hamilton
MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm

When most people think of reggae music, they think of lazing out on a Caribbean beach with a spliff and nodding to the music of Bob Marley. But what is the actual history of the music of which Marley is the most visible ambassador? How did the music of a small Caribbean island become a worldwide phenomenon, with the song “One Love” and the album Exodus named among the top songs and albums of the 20th century? In this course we will trace the history of reggae music and explore its influence on the development of Jamaican literature. We’ll listen closely to Marley’s entire discography to understand the literary devices, musical structures, and social contexts of reggae songs. As you practice analyzing a variety of literary and cultural forms and craft a range of critical responses from album reviews, to response (‘diss’) tracks, to close reading essays, you will engage topical and controversial issues such as: misogyny and homophobia in reggae and dancehall; the place of religion and spirituality (and yes, marijuana) in reggae; reggae’s critique of oppression and racial injustice; cultural appropriation and the global marketplace; and the connections between reggae, dancehall, hip-hop, and reggaetón.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-7 -- Literatures of the Nonhuman

Adrienne Ghaly
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

This course explores the nonhuman world in all its richness from Kafka to AI. It is organized around three major themes: objects, nonhuman animals, and alien 'others'. How do modern and contemporary texts envision the nonhuman across different scales, from the strangeness of the nearest everyday objects like a pebble, to what it’s like to be a fox, to 'deep time' planetary processes, to using Artificial Intelligence to reflect on cultural expectations and values?   Our focus will be on developing strategies of close reading and introducing the basics of literary critical analysis through shorter forms in poetry and prose that examine the nonhuman across a range of genres from the early twentieth century to the present. Several critical works and the questions they raise will guide our investigations of the capacious category of the nonhuman and the ideas it animates. Throughout we'll ask, what are the stories we tell about the nonhuman world? This course assumes no prior knowledge and satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-8 -- The Victorians: Fellow Moderns

Alex Buckley
TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am

The Victorians are often thought to be traditional to a fault: backward-looking, repressed, in denial of change. Upon closer examination, however, we can discover a more complex reality. The Victorians are frequently concerned observers of seismic societal upheaval—of globalization and empire, of race, gender, and class, of urban-industrial development and rural decline. In this course, we will interweave three novels (by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot) with a judicious selection of poetry and non-fiction prose to see how Victorian writers registered a changing world's shocks, anxieties, and opportunities. The writers considered, besides Brontë, Dickens, and Eliot, might include Christina Rossetti, Augusta Webster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle.
This course fulfills the AIP Disciplines requirement, the second writing requirement, as well as the prerequisite for the English major.  Its assignments will include formal papers, 5 to 6 pages in length, as well as shorter, more informal writing interspersed throughout the semester.

ENGL 2599-9 -- The Contemporary Essay

John Casteen
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

This course will examine literary prose in contemporary literature, ranging from more topical nonfiction to the personal, lyric, and experimental essay; it will also include two essay-films.  The idea of the essay—the attempt—requires uncertainty and poise.  How do writers and artists use the expressive potential of this elastic form to navigate the situation of the present?  Students will explore critical approaches to the essay and compose new work of their own.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-10 -- Monstrous Forms

(the instructor of this course, Kelly Fleming, will be joining us in the fall; her name won’t appear in SIS until later this summer. But you can still enroll in the course!)
MWF 12:00-12:50

This course will introduce students to the practices of academic writing and critical reading by inviting you to explore texts about monsters. From the twelfth century to today, we will examine how literature, television, and film frequently uses monsters—witches, fairies, changelings, ghosts, vampires, zombies, and creatures—to speak to and provide rational explanations for things that are very human but that humans have trouble confronting outright: loss; death; political events; sexual, racial, and physical difference. As we engage with different media from different periods, we will pay particular attention to what forms (literary, visual, and physical) monsters take and consider how these forms shape our understanding of the societies that produced these narratives.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-11 -- The Western

Jack Bradford
MW 3:30-4:45

This course surveys the literary Western from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, from its beginnings in popular romance to the peak of its critical acclaim in the 1980s and beyond. Why is this genre that so many people love to hate—as outdated, politically problematic, and aesthetically conservative—one that we can’t seem to escape? After all, Beyoncé just won Album of the Year at the Grammys for a record steeped in cowboy iconography, and, every six months or so, Taylor Sheridan churns out a new blockbuster TV series set in the American West. Is there redemption for the outlaw? In the latter part of the semester, we’ll examine how Black and Indigenous authors have adopted and transformed a genre that once took their exploitation and removal for granted. But there are queer undercurrents in the earlier works, too, that can enchant and unsettle us in spite of ourselves; the desert has proven fertile enough for artists interested in exploring the origins of the state, the limits of scientific inquiry, and the free play of unconventional desires. Brace yourself for a semester of novel-gazing, relieved at intervals by a film or two. Assignments will include short weekly close readings, two longer essays, and a brief presentation.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-12 -- Rethinking the Human

Christian Carlson
MW 2:00-3:15

What does it mean to be human? We live in a moment where the forces of climate crisis, political instability, and technological advances all intertwine, forcing a reevaluation of the very category we ostensibly belong to. However, this critical inflection isn’t anything necessarily new, if literary history testifies to anything. In this course, we’ll be exploring how authors spanning two millennia have questioned the stability of the “human” by imagining new modes of interpersonal, nonhuman, legal, and scalar interaction. By closely reading this literature, we’ll develop the language and thought to better consider our place in the world in hopes to walk through it more attentively.

Some of the authors we’ll encounter include Ovid, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Emily Dickinson, Natsume Sōseki, Djuna Barnes, Annie Dillard, and Karen Tei Yamashita. All works not originally written in English will be read in translation.

Assignments will consist of short weekly discussion posts, three close reading essays, and informal presentations on your work throughout the semester.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-13 -- Writing Across Time: Memory, History, and Belonging

Aindrila Choudhury
MW 5:00-6:15

Imagine tracing a smooth line through history, expecting it to unfold as a single temporal axis— only to find that it twists unexpectedly. Like a rope thick with knots, or a Mobius strip that turns and coils, where times fold over each other, snagging, sedimenting, looping over. How might that change your sense of time and narrative? This course invites you into that twist. We’ll explore how 20th and 21st-century writers and thinkers have challenged the ostensibly usual idea that history moves in a straight line, offering in its stead, stories where memory fragments, timelines collapse, and the past returns unexpectedly, like a haunting specter. Our focus on the last two centuries reflects an age of unprecedented upheaval—world wars, decolonization and independence movements, mass migration, digital revolutions— times when histories refused to march in lockstep. From archival silences to ghostly presences, we’ll ask: What does it mean to remember, and how do memories shape who we are? In what ways do archives, ruins, and ghostly presences become sites of remembrance or erasure? How does fragmented, palimpsestic, and cyclical time disrupt our reading experience? What does it mean to belong when the past constantly resurfaces? If you’re interested in how literature remembers, forgets, or reimagines time, this course offers a path, knotted though it may be, into those questions.

Tentative Reading List: Toni Morrison, Beloved; Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Mohsin Hamid, Exit West; Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (excerpts); Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic (excerpts); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (excerpts)

Course Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation. Aside from regular in-class short and informal writing assignments, two longer papers— one in lieu of a midterm, one at the end of the semester.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-14 -- Imagined Cities: Literature, Space, and the Politics of Urban Life

Tochi Eze
TuTh 8:00-9:15

How does literary form shape the ways we inhabit and imagine cities? This course explores how writers across the global Anglophone world depict the modern city not just as a setting, but as emotional, political, and aesthetic territories shaped by migration, surveillance, aspiration, and exclusion. Our readings include fiction by writers who offer vivid portrayals of London, New York, Lagos, Johannesburg, and Delhi. Together we’ll ask: How do stories help us make sense of urban life in a globalizing world? What kinds of voices become legible in the city, and which ones are silenced? How do questions of race, class, language, and mobility surface through literary form? Through close reading, short essays, creative mapping, and reflective writing, students will explore the possibilities and limits of the city as a literary form, and consider their own position within the urban worlds they encounter and imagine. Tentative Reading List: Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, Teju Cole, Open City, Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners , Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria; selections from Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Ato Quayson, Oxford Street, Accra, Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project.

Requirements: Consistent attendance and active participation in discussion; a series of shorter and longer writing/reflective assignments totaling 20 pages, and a final exam.

This course satisfies the English Major Requirement, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-15 -- Speculative Fictions / Mythic Pasts

Regan Schadl
TuTh 12:30-1:45

What might life on Earth be like in the future, an alternate present, or a mythic past? What do stories that tell of an alternate history, present, or future tell us about ourselves? How do the events, laws, beliefs, and relationships that shape speculative reality correspond to themes and issues that matter to us?

In this course we will explore three deliciously readable contemporary novels of speculative fiction through the lens of the English language classics which play a part in their fictive worlds—works by Shakespeare and Milton, and the anonymous Medieval poem, Sir Gawain. These classic works draw on a mythic past inbuilt in their speculative fictional worlds which then colors the worlds of the novels that allude to them.

Through close readings, we’ll consider how these works take us through the layers of time, helping us to view our present in a new light. We will consider intertextual materials, audio recordings, and performances of the texts. Reflective prewriting assignments can be folded into the three required close-reading essays. You will expand your best essay into a polished piece and take a brief final exam.

Reading: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ca.1595-6) and; Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014); excerpts from Milton, Paradise Lost (1674) and Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003); Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. late 14th-c) and Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant (2015)

This course satisfies the English Major Requirement, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599-16 -- Nonsense Literature

Miranda Wang
MW 5:00-6:15

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein writes, “[T]he negation of nonsense is nonsense.” —What could he mean by that? It is imperative that our experience of the world make sense, yet a strain

of literary texts can always be detected that petulantly refuse to do so. Studying limericks, portmanteaux, and wordplays, we will explore nonsense literature’s multifarious gambits with regard to coherence, common sense, logic, and violence. We will glance at the popularity of nonsense art at particular historical moments and compare it with kindred modes such as parody, farce, and the absurd—and we will in the process sample visual art, film, song, and cartoons.

Tentative Reading List: Shakespeare, King Lear; Pope, from The Dunciad; Blake, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience; Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads; Lewis Carroll, Alice books; Edward Lear; Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons; Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”; Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Xu Bing, Book from the Sky; M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong!; Everything Everywhere All at Once; nonsense pop song of your choice.

Requirements: regular attendance and active participation in discussion; shorter and longer writing assignments totaling 20 pages; a final exam.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 3001-100 -- History of Literatures in English I

Rebecca Rush
MoWe 12:00pm - 12:50pm

This is an introductory survey: 1st-years and non-majors are encouraged to enroll.  

The aim of this course is to introduce you to the rich and strange body of English literature written before 1800 and to the rigorous but rewarding art of close, attentive reading. We begin our adventure with the Old English epic Beowulf, the tale of a Geatish warrior who sets out over the waves for a Danish mead hall, determined to perform a courageous deed or end his days trying. Along the way, we will meet a series of seekers, including Chaucer’s humorous pilgrims, Spenser’s wandering knights, Shakespeare’s bantering lovers, and Milton’s liberty-loving devil. Though we will be moving through nearly a millennium of English literature, we will take the time to linger over the distinctive language of each book and the distinctive image each author sketches of human habits and longings. Readings will include selections from Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Much Ado about Nothing, Milton’s “Lycidas” and Paradise Lost, and shorter poems by Wyatt, Sidney, Donne, Jonson, Pope, Cowper, and Gray, among others.

This course is a prerequisite for the English major, but it assumes no prior knowledge of English literature. If you plan to major in economics or biology or computer science but want to enjoy some great literature along the way, please sign up. The only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand.

ENGL 3161-1 -- Chaucer I

Elizabeth Fowler
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

We’ll read The Canterbury Tales and perhaps some shorter works looking for the author that the Scots poet Gavin Douglas praised as “evir all womanis frend.” One governing question will be how, for Geoffrey Chaucer and for us, do sexual politics guide political philosophy? This is a course in Middle English, in reading poetry, in considering how fiction shapes political thought, and in thinking alongside someone who lived before modernity and can shake our sense of the world to its roots while telling brilliant stories. We’ll meet under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row in camp chairs unless weather prohibits it: bring your sunscreen and hats. Write to Prof Fowler fowler@virginia.edu with questions.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3271-100 -- Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies

Katharine Maus
MoWe 11:00am - 11:50am

This course deals with the first half of Shakespeare's career as a playwright, in which he was mainly writing histories and comedies. ENGL 3272, in the Spring, deals with the second half of Shakespeare's career, in which he was mainly writing tragedies and romances.  You may take either or both courses; neither is a prerequisite for the other.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3275-1 -- History of Drama I: Ancient Greece to the Renaissance

John Parker
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

The first third of this course will cover the drama of classical antiquity in translation, beginning with Greek plays by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, then moving from there to the Latin plays of Plautus, Terence, and Seneca.  The next third of the course will consider the kinds of performance that displaced (and in some cases transformed) these pagan traditions after the Christianization of the Roman empire; we will likely read a liturgical drama, a morality play, a saint play, some vernacular Biblical drama and a secular farce.  The final third of the course will cover plays from the Renaissance, focusing particularly on the commercial London stage of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.       A major goal of the course will be to answer some of the questions posed by historical period: what does it mean, in the context of this particular genre, to move from antiquity to the Middle Ages to the Renaissance?  How seriously should we take the differences between paganism and Christianity?  What portion of early modern drama derives from classical antiquity, what portion from the Middle Ages, and what portion, if any, is new?

This course satisfies the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3300-1 -- English Literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

John O'Brien
MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm

Social media existed long before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a lot of literature could be defined as social media, works initially intended to circulate within defined groups, or produced to constitute community. In this course, we will survey the literature of the period from 1650 to 1800 with an eye towards the way that writers used their works to build communities large and small. Authors will include Anne Bradstreet, Samuel Pepys, Katherine Philips, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson, James Boswell, Olaudah Equiano, Benjamin Franklin, Susanna Rowson. Our reading will also give us the opportunity to think about digital social media in our own time and its effects on culture and community. Students will write two papers (one short, one longer), take a midterm and final exam, and also collaborate on a digital project where we will edit works to contribute to an open-access digital anthology, a project that stands itself as a form of social media.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3434-1 -- The American Renaissance

Christopher Krentz
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

In this class we’ll consider the extraordinary growth and flowering of American literature during the early and mid-nineteenth century.  How did these authors express America in all its complexity?  We’ll read work by such great writers as Emerson, Douglass, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson and explore whatever topics their writing presents.  Requirements will include active thoughtful participation, quizzes, a shorter and a longer paper, and a final exam. This course satisfies the 1700-1900 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3480-1 -- The English Novel II: The Realist Novel

Victoria Baena
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

This course traces the development of and experiments in the 19th century novel. Our focus will be on the Victorian novel—Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1852–3), George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871–2), and Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (1881)—though we’ll also consider the genre in a comparative context, reading in translation one influential (indeed notorious) contemporary French example: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856). There are many continuities to be traced across these texts, from the gendered expectations of their protagonists to the transnational and imperial underpinnings of their plots. In formal terms, we’ll focus on the question of realism—once defined by Henry James, in contrast to romance, as representing “the things we cannot possibly not know, sooner or later, in one way or another.” Through close reading and comparative analysis, we’ll examine how each of these writers exploited, grappled with, and sometimes even rejected realism’s expectations. Assignments will include short reading reflections, a midterm close reading essay, and a longer paper incorporating textual analysis as well as attention to critical discussions of literary realism.

This course can be used to fulfill the 1700-1900 period requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3530 -- The Women Who Made Jane Austen

(the instructor of this course, Kelly Fleming, will be joining us in the fall; her name won’t appear in SIS until later this summer. But you can still enroll in the course!)
MW 5:00-6:15

Before Jane Austen’s place in the literary canon was a truth universally acknowledged, she was just another woman novelist writing at the turn of the nineteenth century. In fact, while her work was very well received, she was not as popular in her own time as other women writers. This course re-positions Austen’s novels within the context of eighteenth-century women writers whose work her novels are indebted to. Alongside some of the novelists Austen read, we will read the novels that influenced her plots that propriety would not permit her to read. We will also consider the impact women’s poetry, drama, and interventions in Enlightenment and Romantic debates about education, the rights of women, and the abolition of slavery had on her novels. The course will conclude with the happy ending of Sense & Sensibility. Placed in the context of the eighteenth century, Austen’s novels stand out, provoking new and exciting questions about the novel, women’s writing, and poetic justice. Why do women writers before Austen refuse to call their works “novels”? Does Austen handle issues of gender, class, and race similarly or differently from her foremothers and contemporaries? Why doesn’t Austen describe women getting revenge, dueling in breeches, or being envious of corpses?

ENGL 3540-1 -- Romanticism

Taylor Schey
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

A time of revolution and reaction, the Romantic era (1784-1832) saw an explosion of literature that both witnessed and shaped new ideas about art, nature, politics, society, and the self, many of which are still with us today. This course explores some of the best works of this briefest and most momentous period in British literary history. We’ll defamiliarize ourselves with the strange lyrical ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, listen carefully to the odes and apostrophes of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, tarry with the darkly comic turns of Charlotte Smith’s sonnets and Lord Byron’s long poems, and examine the constitution—and the afterlife—or Mary Shelley’s “hideous progeny,” Frankenstein. Of particular interest to us will be how Romantic literature not only registers different historical events and developments (e.g. the French, Haitian, and Industrial Revolutions; the emergence of abolitionist and feminist discourses; the Napoleonic Wars and the Peterloo Massacre) but offers its own form of knowledge and prompts a unique, portable way of thinking about the world. Assignments will include a midterm exam, a creative project, and a final paper.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3545-1 -- U.S Literature and Social Justice

Victoria Olwell
TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

Exploring U.S. literature from the antebellum period through the Progressive Era, this course asks, what strategies did literary authors use to influence public debates about social, economic, and political justice? Beneath this question lie two more:  What underlying conceptions of justice did U.S. literature advance, and how might we assess them? Literature during the era we’ll consider spanned the full political spectrum, but our focus will be primarily on literature invested in the extension of rights, equality, and protections to dispossessed people, as well as in the amelioration of politically induced suffering. We’ll examine literary protests against slavery, Jim Crow law, Chinese exclusion, urban poverty, women’s status, and the conditions of industrial labor. Course requirements include several short papers, class participation, and a final exam.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3560-1 -- Contemporary Jewish Literature

Caroline Rody
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

In this course we will explore a literature positioned between tradition and modern invention, between the spiritual and the mundane, and—as Saul Bellow once put it—between laughter and trembling, in the emotionally rich territory where Jewish people have lived a spirited, talkative, politically engaged, book-obsessed modernity in the face of violence and destruction. We will read mainly Jewish American texts but also some by Jewish writers from other countries, taking up short stories, essays, poems, jokes, Broadway song lyrics, and a few complete novels, as well as short videos clips and a film, surveying a diverse array of modern Jewish literary and popular cultural production. About the first third of the course examines mid-twentieth century Jewish American writers, some from the immigrant New York milieu like Isaac Bashevis Singer, and then heirs to Yiddish culture with bold American aspirations, such as, Alfred Kazin, Grace Paley, Delmore Schwartz, Chaim Potok, Bernard Malamud, Elie Wiesel, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Lore Segal. For the rest of the term we will read fiction from the booming field of contemporary Jewish fiction, including authors such as Art Spiegelman, Allegra Goodman, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Michael Chabon, and David Bezmozgis.

The course will focus on the ways writers shape and reshape a new literature with roots in a formidable textual, cultural, and religious tradition. We will observe an evolving relationship to traditional and sacred Jewish texts, to Yiddish and the culture of Yiddishkeit; to humor as a social practice and imaginative force; to memory and inheritance as burdens or as creative touchstones. We will also consider changing conceptions of Jewish identity, of American identity, and of gender roles; the transformations wrought by assimilation and social mobility; socialist, feminist and other political commitments and visions; forms of engagement with history including the Holocaust, the founding of Israel and its ongoing conflicts; and life in multiethnic America. Requirements: reading, active class participation, co-leading of a class discussion, multiple short reading responses, a short paper, and a longer paper with a creative, Talmud-inspired option: a “scroll” of interlaced interpretations. This course may be used to satisfy the second writing requirement.

ENGL 3560-2 -- US Modernisms in Word and Image

Joshua Miller
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

How does one write something that’s never been thought? Why do authors experiment radically with the shape and structure of a novel? How do visual images respond to written narratives (and vice-versa)? We’ll discuss a broad range of novels, short fiction, film, photography, and graphic arts composed between 1898 and 1945 and the historical, political, and cultural trends that they were responding to and participating in. This was an extraordinary and tumultuous period of demographic change, artistic invention, economic instability, racialized violence, and political contestation that witnessed mass immigration, migration, and emigration. In paying particular attention to trends of demographic displacement and change within and across national borders, we’ll consider the heady experiments in language and narrative that took place during the first half of the twentieth century. The historical events of this period—framed by the wars of 1898 and World War II—will provide context for the novels we read. 

Some of the broad questions that we’ll track throughout the term include the following. How do these authors define the “modern”? What, for that matter, is a “novel” in twentieth-century U.S. literature?  How did these authors participate (and resist) the process of defining who counted as an “American”? What were the new languages of modernity? What role did expatriates and immigrants play in the “new” U.S. of the twentieth century? How did authors reconcile the modernist imperative to “make it new” with the histories of the U.S. and the Americas? 

ENGL 3560-3 -- The Literature of Extinction

Adrienne Ghaly
TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am

Whales, beetles, thylacines! How has the diminishment of species and biodiversity loss been thought about and written about in poems, novels, and essays? How do works of modern and contemporary literature respond to and help us understand the sixth mass extinction the planet may be entering? Where and how do we find evidence of extinctionary pressures in texts that are not explicitly 'about' human impacts on nonhuman life? This course explores biodiversity loss and species extinctions from megafauna to insects and across genres, time periods, and ecosystems to ask how literature thinks about, represents, and can be an unwitting record of the radical diminishment of nonhuman life. We’ll read texts that imagine extinction, grapple with knowledge and feelings around biodiversity decline and species revival, and we'll reframe literature not explicitly ‘about’ extinction as records of widespread impacts on nonhuman life. Finally, we'll explore ways of thinking that could help address the biodiversity crisis meaningfully. Assignments are two essays, some shorter pieces of writing, and engaged participation in discussion.

ENGL 3560-4 -- Kafka and His Doubles

Lorna Martens
TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm

The course will introduce the enigmatic work of Franz Kafka: stories including "The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "A Country Doctor," "A Report to an Academy," "A Hunger Artist," "The Burrow," and "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk"; one of his three unpublished novels (The Trial); the Letter to His Father; and some short parables. But we will also look at Kafka's "doubles": the literary tradition he works with and the way in which he, in turn, forms literary tradition. Thus: Kafka: Cervantes, Kafka: Bible, Kafka: Aesop, Kafka: Dostoevsky, Kafka: Melville; Kafka: O'Connor, Kafka: Singer; Kafka: Calvino, Kafka: Borges. Readings will center on four principal themes: conflicts with others and the self (and Kafka's psychological vision); the double; the play with paradox and infinity; and artists and animals. A seminar limited to 20 participants. Requirements include a short midterm paper (5-7 pages) and a longer final paper (10-12 pages).

ENGL 3570-1 -- American Civil Wars

Stephen Cushman, Caroline Janney
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

No moment in United States history has received more recent scrutiny than the American Civil War. Nearly half the respondents to a 2022 poll believe another such war “at least somewhat likely” to break out in the next decade. Comparing the events of 1861-1865 to the divisive politics of the 2020s has become commonplace. Against this fraught backdrop, our course will focus on the conflicting voices and perspectives behind the coming, fighting, and aftermath of war. Among those we may read are Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Kate Stone, Phoebe Yates Pember, James Henry Gooding, Ulysses S. Grant, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Chesnut, Susie King Taylor, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Gould Shaw, Mathew Brady, and Alexander Gardner. While wartime figures will absorb much of our attention, we will also turn to later representations, such as a new graphic novel of Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, a short story by Eudora Welty, a movie or two, and recent AI animations of famous Civil War photographs. Finally, we will sample recent discussions of prospects for another civil war, with examples drawn from mainstream journalism, online alternatives, and creative media. Assignments will include short papers and at least one exam. Professors Caroline Janney (History) and Stephen Cushman (English) will teach this course together.

ENGL 3570-100 -- Jim Crow America

Ian Grandison, Marlon Ross
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously called Sunday morning “the most segregated hour in the nation,” referring to church services. How, and to what extent, has racial separation changed since the height of the Jim Crow era, the 1890s through the 1950s? Despite some notable progress such as the military, why has Jim Crow persisted in various ways in so many areas of American life? This course examines how the Jim Crow regime was established in New England during the 1830s, how it was influenced by the institution of slavery, was nationalized after the Civil War, and how it has been perpetuated into the present, despite the passage of 1960s Civil Rights legislation. What have been the changing modes of maintaining Jim Crow, particularly in law (including law enforcement), education, housing, planning, public health, and mass media (newspapers, film, radio, and social media); and what strategies have been used to fight Jim Crow segregation, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and economic exclusion. Taking a place-specific approach to understanding the material practices and consequences of the Jim Crow regime, we’ll examine in depth the overlapping dimensions of everyday life where Jim Crow has been especially prominent, including: 1) personal and collective mobility; 2) the struggle over public education; 3) planning and access to public facilities; 4) housing and employment; and 5) the justice (or injustice) system. Course materials from various disciplines will include maps, planning documents, films, radio, and readings from literature, sociology, urban planning, history, political science, and journalism. Focus will be placed on Charlottesville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. as case studies, as well as a comparison with South Africa’s apartheid system. Requirements include a midterm, final, a critical essay, and a term team project.

ENGL 3572-1 -- Multimedia Harlem Renaissance

Marlon Ross
TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am

Why has the impact of the Harlem Renaissance persisted for a hundred years? This course explores that question from a multimedia perspective in literature, journalism, painting, sculpture, theater, dance, music, photography, film, audio recording, and politics. We’ll study the geopolitics not only of Harlem as a “Mecca of the New Negro” but also cultural centers like Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, and Chicago. Many of the debates of the time are still with us in different ways today. What are the most effective forms and venues for the promotion and production of African American arts and culture? How do African American migrations – both within the U.S. and between America and abroad – contribute to the idea of a cultural renaissance? Then and now, there is a debate about to what extent art should cater to propaganda. During the Renaissance, as now, artists debated elite versus vernacular approaches to artistic production. The prominence of women and queer artists at the center of the Renaissance is another connection with today’s cultural and social movements. Other matters to be examined include the Great Black Mass Migration, the national Negro newspaper, the birth of gospel music, Negro Wall Streets and pioneer towns, race rioting and lynching, urban sociology, trade unionism, the Garveyite Black Pride movement, Negro bohemianism, blackface minstrelsy, and interracial romance and sex. In addition to examining artistic forms like the anthology, the manifesto, the literary periodical, the sonnet, the blues lyric, the stage musical, the problem play, the art mural, and the sketch, we’ll ask how Renaissance advocates exploited modern technologies like print publication, photography, film, audio recording, and radio to promote Negro culture as cosmopolitan and avant-garde. Among those studied are writers Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen; composers Duke Ellington, Thomas Dorsey, Harry Burleigh; artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; photographers James VanDerZee and Addison Scurlock; dramatists Angelina Grimké and Willis Richardson; actors Bert Williams and Paul Robeson; singers Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Roland Hayes; dancer-choreographers Katherine Dunham, Josephine Baker, the Nicholas Brothers; filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, and many others.

ENGL 3635-1 -- Currents in African Literature

Njelle Hamilton
MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

This undergraduate seminar on contemporary African Literature takes the form of an in-depth study of the literary works of two brilliant, prolific young Nigerian women writers: feminist and social realist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and African-futurist Nnedi Okorafor, two of the most globally well-known authors the continent has produced. Through close analysis of their novels we will consider broad questions such as: How applicable are Western feminist theories to non-Western experiences? How are traditional literary forms such as the bildungsroman subverted by race, gender, and postcoloniality? How do sociopolitical realities inform literary expression? How does trauma affect narrative? How is Nigeria depicted in international news in contrast to how locals perceive and narrate their own reality? And how can these novels help us understand the contemporary African novel within the contexts of larger historical and cultural forces, events, and movements? Beyond the ultimate goal of affording you a deeper appreciation for African and Nigerian literature, history, and current events, this course aims to lead you through the process of crafting a sophisticated argument and writing about literary texts in their cultural and historical contexts.

ENGL 3660-1 -- Modern Poetry

Mark Edmundson
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

This course will introduce students to some of the best poets of the Anglo-American 20th century. We’ll spend a good deal of time on Robert Frost. A brilliant artist in himself, he’s perfect for teaching people how to read poetry. After Frost, we’ll have many fine poets to choose from: Elizabeth Bishop, T.S, Eliot, Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, and more. Two quizzes and a final paper.

ENGL 3690-1 -- Memory Speaks

Lorna Martens
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Memory is a crucial human faculty. Our ability to remember our own past is one of the things that make us human. Memory has long been thought to ground identity: without memory, one has no sense of self. Memory has been seen as fundamental to psychic health, and even as a remedy in times of trouble, as well as essential to our ability to imagine the future. Remembering has its delights. Certainly the idea of losing one’s memory, through shock or illness for example, is terrifying to contemplate. Yet having too many memories of the wrong kind is believed to endanger our equilibrium. Maddeningly, given its power to make us healthy or sick, memory often lies beyond our conscious control. It operates according to its own laws, giving us what we want only sometimes. Undeniably useful, it has also been seen as deceptive. It is demonstrably suggestible. It is not surprising, therefore, that memory is a subject of vital importance in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences alike.

This course will focus on individual memory and in particular on autobiographical memory (our memories of our own lives). We will read autobiographies and works of fiction, written from the early twentieth century to the present, by Patrick Modiano, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Marguerite Duras. We will also study two films on the theme of memory: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inside Out. Concurrently, we will read psychological, psychoanalytic, and neuroscientific work on memory. Some attention will be paid to the issues of false memory, external memory, and mediated memory, as well.

Two short papers, presentations, exam.

ENGL 3922-1 -- Deafness in Literature and Film

Christopher Krentz
MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm

What does deafness signify, especially in a western society that is centered upon speech?  In this course we will study some of the contradictory and telling ways that deaf people have been depicted – and have depicted themselves -- over the last three centuries.  Our approach will be contrapuntal.  We will juxtapose canonical texts by authors such as Dickens and McCullers and mainstream films like Johnny Belinda and Coda with relatively unknown works by deaf writers such as Clerc and Bullard. The class will feature a range of learning strategies, including brief lectures, whole-class discussion, smaller-group discussion, and probably occasional activities to keep us all fresh and engaged.  You’ll get the most from the course if you come to class having completed the reading or viewing and ready to talk thoughtfully about it.  Requirements will include shorter and longer papers, quizzes, and a final exam.

ENGL 4270-1 -- Shakespeare Seminar

John Parker
MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm

A broad survey of Shakespeare's plays, likely to include  The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.  We will explore Shakespeare's relation to his sources, inquire into the earliest printed versions of the plays, and consider how practices of the print shop and playhouse shaped the texts that we have.  We'll read one play per week, for the most part letting its particular concerns dictate the course of our conversation.  There will be two papers (around 6pp. each), a midterm and final.

ENGL 4500-1 -- Metamorphosing Myth

Clare Kinney
TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm

This seminar will explore the appropriation and transformation of some of the influential narratives of pagan antiquity: the myths that are kidnapped and remade as artists pursue their own aesthetic, cultural and political agendas. We will start by reading (in translation) Virgil’s great epic of empire, the Aeneid, as well as Ovid’s influential and bewitching tapestry of mythic narratives, the Metamorphoses. We’ll then move on to discuss the ways in which some medieval, Renaissance and contemporary authors metamorphose these powerful archetypes. Our post-classical readings will include works by Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare, as well as Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses and Ursula K Le Guin’s Lavinia. With luck, we’ll also hear from some of our own creative writing faculty about the afterlives of myth within their own work.

Course requirements: regular attendance and energetic participation in discussion. A series of discussion board postings. A 6-7 page paper, an oral presentation, a longer term paper.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.

ENGL 4500-2 -- Seven Ages, Seven Questions

Mark Edmundson
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

The course emerges from Jaques’s speech in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” on the seven ages of human life. We’ll consider childhood and education, erotic love, religion, warfare and courage in war, politics, the quest for wisdom, and old age.  Readings from, among others, Plato, Beauvoir, Freud, Wordsworth, Seven Ages Schopenhauer, and Marx.  Regular writing assignments and a long essay at the end.

ENGL 4500-3 -- Faust

Jeffery Grossman
MW 2:00-3:15

In depth study of the Faust legend in European literature and culture. Readings will include the English Faust Book, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Byron's Manfred, Rousseau's Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Goethe's Faust, parts I and II, and other materials; films will include: F. W. Murnau's Faust (1926) and István Szábo's Mephisto (1981).

ENGL 4540-1 -- Jane Austen in Her Time and Ours

Susan Fraiman
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

An intensive study of the work of Jane Austen. Take this course if you’re new to Austen or already a fan. Take it for Austen’s epigrammatic sentences and love stories, but also for her biting social commentary and (beneath the light, bright surface) her probing of the darker emotions. How do the novels treat such topics as family conflict, first impressions, sexual jealousy, women’s property rights, New World slavery, and the Napoleonic Wars? Why have Austen’s happy endings been accused of haste? In addition to exploring Austen’s formal strategies, thematic concerns, and engagement with the issues of her time, we will touch on her reception in subsequent eras, including a cinematic interpretation or two. Students read all six of the completed novels plus Sanditon, left unfinished at Austen’s death. Two papers and a final exam. 

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 4540-2 -- Literature and Social Movements

Victoria Baena
TuTh 9:30am-10:45am

What kind of role might literature play in—and as—social protest? This seminar takes up the question by exploring the relationship between nineteenth-century British literature and social movements, especially abolition, feminism and the “woman question,” and campaigns for social reform. We’ll frame our initial discussions through theoretical works on literature, resistance, and commitment: both twentieth-century texts by Virginia Woolf, Theodor Adorno, Ghassan Kanafani, James Baldwin, Jacques Rancière, and Edward Said, as well as Victorian-era writers and critics like Sojourner Truth, Charles Algernon Swinburne, William Morris, and Oscar Wilde.

In the main part of the term, we’ll look closely at a range of nineteenth-century writers who both sought to participate in contemporary social debates and, in doing so, reimagined literary and aesthetic forms. Authors will most likely include Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Prince, Flora Tristan, John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Elizabeth Gaskell. Along the way, we’ll ask: in what ways does literature intervene in the world—and to what extent should it? What are the politics of literary autonomy and commitment? How, in turn, might we read the aesthetic, not just thematic strategies, of genres like the manifesto, petition, or speech? Course requirements will comprise an oral presentation, research paper, and several shorter writing assignments.

This course can be used to fulfill the 1700-1900 period requirement for the English major.

ENGL 4559-1 -- Reading Archives: Gaps, Margins, Erasures

Sumita Chakraborty
We 2:00pm - 4:30pm

How do we tell stories that have been rendered impossible to tell? While no one is voiceless, institutions of power and privilege—including archives—often exclude or marginalize many voices, and philosophers, critics, literary artists, and other artists have long tackled the question of how to responsibly tell those elided stories. In this course, we will explore a range of such methodologies and practices. Our reading list will be comprised of theoretical and critical texts by Michel Foucault, Saidiya Hartman, and Ann Cvetkovich, among others, as well as literary artists like M. NourbeSe Philip, Don Mee Choi, Rick Barot, Solmaz Sharif, Robin Coste Lewis, Tyehimba Jess, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Nicole Sealey, and Victoria Chang. Major assignments will include reading presentations, a brief mid-term take-home written exam, and an imaginative final project that accords with students’ individual intellectual, artistic, and personal interests. The final projects will be developed in consultation with me and with archivists from Special Collections and the Rare Book School on a case-by-case basis; at several key points throughout the semester, we will meet in Special Collections or the Rare Book School to brainstorm and research your projects.

ENGL 4901-1 -- The Bible Part 1: Hebrew Bible / Old Testament

Stephen Cushman
MoWe 11:00am - 12:15pm

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through selections from the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, from Genesis through the prophets, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the Bible; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible needed or assumed.

PLEASE NOTE: Professor John Parker will teach a course focusing on the New Testament in spring 2025. Both courses will read the New Testament gospel of Mark, connecting the semesters, but you do not have to take the fall course as a prerequisite for the spring one. This course satisfies the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 4998-1 -- Distinguished Majors Program

Caroline Rody
Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm

ENGL 5100-1 -- Introduction to Old English

Stephen Hopkins
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

In this course (open to undergraduate and graduate students) we will learn to read the Old English language (roughly 500-1100 CE). To arrive at a sound reading knowledge, we will spend the first half of the semester internalizing the basics of Old English grammar and vocabulary, and will practice translating short bits of prose and poetry, from prose works like Bede's history, and later poetry such as the Exeter Book riddles, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, and excerpts from Beowulf. Along the way, we will also study Old English genres, contexts, and critical/theoretical approaches prevalent in the field, with an emphasis on the history of the book and writing technologies. Course work includes weekly translations, midterm and final exams, and a brief research presentation (~10 min) on a topic chosen by each student. Successful completion of this course is required for admission to ENGL 5110 Beowulf and Its Monstrous Manuscript in the Spring.  

This course may be used to satisfy the pre-1700 literature requirement for the English major.

ENGL 5500-1 -- Stories of Teaching

James Seitz
MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm

This course will examine a variety of ways in which the classroom has been represented through narrative—sometimes by teachers and sometimes by students—in memoir, fiction, scholarship, and film. We’ll work on sharpening both our critical resistance to the shortcomings of these narratives and our critical appreciation of their accomplishments. All narratives of teaching or learning are inevitably partial: nobody can say it all, even when representing a single class, much less when describing what happened during the course of a semester or year. Yet writers do try to portray their experience as a teacher or student over long as well as brief periods of time, and we can learn from their struggle to do so convincingly.

ENGL 5500-2 -- The Conflict of Interpretation in Literature, Law, and Religion

Walter Jost
TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

Ours is an age of communication, and one of its hallmarks is the “conflict of interpretations” among schools of criticism, theory, and cultural study. This course requires no specialized background in these matters, for in fact we all know how to talk, read, interpret, and argue. The question is, how well do we do this, with how much control and discipline? how do we develop our abilities? The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer once wrote that “Where, indeed, but to rhetoric should the theoretical examination of interpretation turn? Rhetoric from oldest tradition has been the only advocate of a claim to truth that defends the probable, the eikos (versimile), and that which is convincing to the ordinary reason, against the claim of science to accept as true only what can be demonstrated and tested.” Together we will develop a basic but wide-ranging understanding of the arts of discourse called “hermeneutics” and “rhetoric,” through close reading and discussions of selected scholarly texts (chiefly essays and book chapters), testing our learning against literary, legal, and religious works. 

From Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique, pp. 33 and 187: 

“Given the surge of interest in questions of reading . . . the neglect of the hermeneutic tradition in Anglo-American literary theory is little short of scandalous. Surely a correction of the record—and even some vigorous rebranding—is in order. Hermeneutics simply is the theory of interpretation . . . . The subject of this book, then, has been a specific genre of writing: the rhetoric of suspicious reading in literary studies and in the humanities and interpretative social sciences generally. Rather than being synonymous with disagreement, it is a specific kind of disagreement—one that is driven by the protocols of late-twentieth and twenty-first century academic argument. Critique, in this sense, is the hardening of disagreement into a given repertoire of argumentative moves and interpretative methods.”

ENGL 5510-1 -- Arthurian Romances

Elizabeth Fowler
TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

We'll dive into what is probably the most viral fan-fiction canon ever: stories about Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, Gawain, Merlin, the Ladies of the Lake, and their friends and enemies and magical stage props. What makes this kind of narrative work? How do different authors transform it? The late medieval Morte Darthur by Thomas Malory will be at the core of our inquiry, and we'll include texts from Marie de France and Chaucer to contemporary film. We'll be looking to describe how (and why) the romance genre offers us experiences of philosophy, emotion, political thought, spirituality, and wit. This is a graduate course with room for undergraduates who have some coursework in Middle English. We will meet outside under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row in camp chairs unless weather prohibits it. Contact Prof Fowler fowler@virginia.edu with questions.

ENGL 5559-1 --  Early Moderns & Throwbacks: Birth-Pangs of Modernity

James Kinney
TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm

This course will examine the ways in which cultural precursors ancient and medieval can both stall and inspire Renaissance innovation. To make sense of this perplexed cultural legacy we will also explore how Renaissance innovators revise and select from traditional models, especially religious and mythic models. Old and New World traditions confronted complete our survey of how moderns emerge from antiquity.

ENGL 5560-1 -- Contemporary Poetry

Jahan Ramazani
MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm

In this seminar, we will read and discuss some of the most influential poetry of the second half of the twentieth century and of the twenty-first century, mostly by American writers from various backgrounds. To hone our attention to poetics, we will focus on several specific genres and forms of poetry, including sonnets, elegies, persona poems, and poems about the visual arts. How do contemporary poets repurpose, transform, and revitalize poetic traditions? What is the value of poetry for writers of diverse ethnicities, races, nations, movements, social classes, and genders? What is distinctive about poetry as a means for addressing preoccupations such as the self, the environment, race, art, nationality, gender, sexuality, grief, violence, and historical memory?

ENGL 5560-2 -- James Joyce's Ulysses

Victor Luftig
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

This course is designed for first-time readers of Ulysses and is meant to provide a pleasurable introduction to it. We’ll explore the novel’s difficulty and its usefulness, tracking both which of the many available resources for reading it are helpful and what kinds of applications might justify the effort Ulysses summons. Prior to the first class session, please read as much as you can of an annotated edition of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. (The Viking edition with notes by Anderson, which you can easily find used, would be fine.) There will be two papers, one offering the class an account of a resource you’ve sampled and another asking you to think about what contemporary situation you think Ulysses might apply to most meaningfully. There will also be some in-class and/or take-home worksheets focused on contextual information and stylistic particulars. At the end of the course we’ll have a taste of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to prepare you for future explorations of that book—which too is challenging, rewarding, and “lovesoftfun.”

ENGL 5700-1 -- Contemporary African-American Literature

Lisa Woolfork
TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am

ENGL 5810-1 -- Books as Physical Objects

David Vander Meulen
MoWe 9:30am - 10:45am

We know the past chiefly through artifacts that survive, and books are among the most common of these objects. Besides conveying a text, each book also contains evidence of the circumstances of its manufacture.  In considering what questions to ask of these mute objects, this course might be considered the "archaeology of printing"—that is, the identification, description, and interpretation of printed artifacts surviving from the past five centuries, as well as exploration of the critical theory that lies behind such an approach to texts. With attention to production processes, including the operation of the hand press, it will investigate ways of analyzing elements such as paper, typography, illustrations, binding, and organization of the constituent sections of a book.  The course will explore how a text is inevitably affected by the material conditions of its production and how an understanding of the physical processes by which it was formed can aid historical research in a variety of disciplines, not only those that treat verbal texts but also those that deal with printed music and works of visual art.  The class will draw on the holdings of the University Library's Special Collections Department, as well as on its Hinman Collator (an early version of the one at the CIA)

Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. This course satisfies the Graduate English requirement for the history of criticism or literary theory.

ENGL 5900-1 -- Literature Pedagogy Seminar

Cristina Griffin
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

“Counterpoint Seminar in Teaching Modern Literature”

This seminar is about how and why teaching literature matters today. How do secondary school and college instructors teach literature in challenging times? How do teachers make tough decisions about what to teach and why? What responsibility do teachers have to promote inclusive excellence through the literature they teach and the methods they use? In this course, we will tackle these big questions together as we explore what it means to pursue a career in teaching literature to middle school, high school, or college students. Each week, we will weave together your existing knowledge of literature and your emerging knowledge of pedagogy. You will be introduced to theories of learning-focused, culturally relevant, and culturally responsive pedagogy, and you will put your newfound knowledge into practice as we work step by step through designing your own teaching philosophy and materials.

This course will bring together students who already have experience as classroom instructors, students who are in the process of teaching for the very first time, and students who have yet to step up to the front of a classroom in the role of teacher. We will build on this variety of experiences, learning together how to bring transformative pedagogies into our present and future classrooms.

ENCW 7310 - MFA Poetry Workshop

Sumita Chakraborty
M 2:00-4:30

In lieu of a traditional course description, I’d like to tell you a brief story. My first published poem is a poem I consider very unsuccessful. I’ve revised it for years post- (and pre-!) publication; it’s never quite right. It is no longer a poem that I try to “perfect.” Instead, it’s become a room in which I go to think and experiment. When I find myself itching to open it again, that means that I want to try out something I do not yet understand or yet know how to do. Very often, particularly as we take steps to professionalize in a discipline or an art, our lives become pitched toward the dream of success: to perfect the poem; to perfect the thesis; to perfect the manuscript; to “perfect,” most insidiously of them all, ourselves. We won’t be able to undo this entirely: after all, this is a poetry workshop in an MFA program, which means that we’re gathering together in an academic context to work on our craft. But through our conversations, readings, and exercises, this workshop will foreground how to embrace the magic of the mistake—the pratfall, the banana peel under the heel, the wrong turn, the swing and a miss—as a cherished companion in your regular writing practice rather than shying away from it as something to be shunned or renounced. Your primary responsibilities will be to write poems, share them with one another, and give each other feedback.

ENCW 7610 - MFA Fiction Workshop

Kevin Moffett
M 2:00-4:30

ENGL 5100-1 -- Introduction to Old English

Stephen Hopkins
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

In this course (open to undergraduate and graduate students) we will learn to read the Old English language (roughly 500-1100 CE). To arrive at a sound reading knowledge, we will spend the first half of the semester internalizing the basics of Old English grammar and vocabulary, and will practice translating short bits of prose and poetry, from prose works like Bede's history, and later poetry such as the Exeter Book riddles, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, and excerpts from Beowulf. Along the way, we will also study Old English genres, contexts, and critical/theoretical approaches prevalent in the field, with an emphasis on the history of the book and writing technologies. Course work includes weekly translations, midterm and final exams, and a brief research presentation (~10 min) on a topic chosen by each student. Successful completion of this course is required for admission to ENGL 5110 Beowulf and Its Monstrous Manuscript in the Spring. 

ENGL 5500-1 -- Stories of Teaching

James Seitz
MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm

This course will examine a variety of ways in which the classroom has been represented through narrative—sometimes by teachers and sometimes by students—in memoir, fiction, scholarship, and film. We’ll work on sharpening both our critical resistance to the shortcomings of these narratives and our critical appreciation of their accomplishments. All narratives of teaching or learning are inevitably partial: nobody can say it all, even when representing a single class, much less when describing what happened during the course of a semester or year. Yet writers do try to portray their experience as a teacher or student over long as well as brief periods of time, and we can learn from their struggle to do so convincingly.

ENGL 5500-2 -- The Conflict of Interpretation in Literature, Law, and Religion

Walter Jost
TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

Ours is an age of communication, and one of its hallmarks is the “conflict of interpretations” among schools of criticism, theory, and cultural study. This course requires no specialized background in these matters, for in fact we all know how to talk, read, interpret, and argue. The question is, how well do we do this, with how much control and discipline? how do we develop our abilities? The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer once wrote that “Where, indeed, but to rhetoric should the theoretical examination of interpretation turn? Rhetoric from oldest tradition has been the only advocate of a claim to truth that defends the probable, the eikos (versimile), and that which is convincing to the ordinary reason, against the claim of science to accept as true only what can be demonstrated and tested.” Together we will develop a basic but wide-ranging understanding of the arts of discourse called “hermeneutics” and “rhetoric,” through close reading and discussions of selected scholarly texts (chiefly essays and book chapters), testing our learning against literary, legal, and religious works. 

From Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique, pp. 33 and 187: 

“Given the surge of interest in questions of reading . . . the neglect of the hermeneutic tradition in Anglo-American literary theory is little short of scandalous. Surely a correction of the record—and even some vigorous rebranding—is in order. Hermeneutics simply is the theory of interpretation . . . . The subject of this book, then, has been a specific genre of writing: the rhetoric of suspicious reading in literary studies and in the humanities and interpretative social sciences generally. Rather than being synonymous with disagreement, it is a specific kind of disagreement—one that is driven by the protocols of late-twentieth and twenty-first century academic argument. Critique, in this sense, is the hardening of disagreement into a given repertoire of argumentative moves and interpretative methods.”

ENGL 5510-1 -- Arthurian Romances

Elizabeth Fowler
TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

We'll dive into what is probably the most viral fan-fiction canon ever: stories about Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, Gawain, Merlin, the Ladies of the Lake, and their friends and enemies and magical stage props. What makes this kind of narrative work? How do different authors transform it? The late medieval Morte Darthur by Thomas Malory will be at the core of our inquiry, and we'll include texts from Marie de France and Chaucer to contemporary film. We'll be looking to describe how (and why) the romance genre offers us experiences of philosophy, emotion, political thought, spirituality, and wit. This is a graduate course with room for undergraduates who have some coursework in Middle English. We will meet outside under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row in camp chairs unless weather prohibits it. Contact Prof Fowler fowler@virginia.edu with questions.

ENGL 5559-1 --  Early Moderns & Throwbacks: Birth-Pangs of Modernity

James Kinney
TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm

This course will examine the ways in which cultural precursors ancient and medieval can both stall and inspire Renaissance innovation. To make sense of this perplexed cultural legacy we will also explore how Renaissance innovators revise and select from traditional models, especially religious and mythic models. Old and New World traditions confronted complete our survey of how moderns emerge from antiquity.

ENGL 5560-1 -- Contemporary Poetry

Jahan Ramazani
MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm

In this seminar, we will read and discuss some of the most influential poetry of the second half of the twentieth century and of the twenty-first century, mostly by American writers from various backgrounds. To hone our attention to poetics, we will focus on several specific genres and forms of poetry, including sonnets, elegies, persona poems, and poems about the visual arts. How do contemporary poets repurpose, transform, and revitalize poetic traditions? What is the value of poetry for writers of diverse ethnicities, races, nations, movements, social classes, and genders? What is distinctive about poetry as a means for addressing preoccupations such as the self, the environment, race, art, nationality, gender, sexuality, grief, violence, and historical memory?

ENGL 5560-2 -- James Joyce's Ulysses

Victor Luftig
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

This course is designed for first-time readers of Ulysses and is meant to provide a pleasurable introduction to it. We’ll explore the novel’s difficulty and its usefulness, tracking both which of the many available resources for reading it are helpful and what kinds of applications might justify the effort Ulysses summons. Prior to the first class session, please read as much as you can of an annotated edition of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. (The Viking edition with notes by Anderson, which you can easily find used, would be fine.) There will be two papers, one offering the class an account of a resource you’ve sampled and another asking you to think about what contemporary situation you think Ulysses might apply to most meaningfully. There will also be some in-class and/or take-home worksheets focused on contextual information and stylistic particulars. At the end of the course we’ll have a taste of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to prepare you for future explorations of that book—which too is challenging, rewarding, and “lovesoftfun.”

ENGL 5700-1 -- Contemporary African-American Literature

Lisa Woolfork
TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am

ENGL 5810-1 -- Books as Physical Objects

David Vander Meulen
MoWe 9:30am - 10:45am

We know the past chiefly through artifacts that survive, and books are among the most common of these objects. Besides conveying a text, each book also contains evidence of the circumstances of its manufacture.  In considering what questions to ask of these mute objects, this course might be considered the "archaeology of printing"—that is, the identification, description, and interpretation of printed artifacts surviving from the past five centuries, as well as exploration of the critical theory that lies behind such an approach to texts. With attention to production processes, including the operation of the hand press, it will investigate ways of analyzing elements such as paper, typography, illustrations, binding, and organization of the constituent sections of a book.  The course will explore how a text is inevitably affected by the material conditions of its production and how an understanding of the physical processes by which it was formed can aid historical research in a variety of disciplines, not only those that treat verbal texts but also those that deal with printed music and works of visual art.  The class will draw on the holdings of the University Library's Special Collections Department, as well as on its Hinman Collator (an early version of the one at the CIA)

Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. This course satisfies the Graduate English requirement for the history of criticism or literary theory.

ENGL 5900-1 -- Literature Pedagogy Seminar

Cristina Griffin
TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

“Counterpoint Seminar in Teaching Modern Literature”

This seminar is about how and why teaching literature matters today. How do secondary school and college instructors teach literature in challenging times? How do teachers make tough decisions about what to teach and why? What responsibility do teachers have to promote inclusive excellence through the literature they teach and the methods they use? In this course, we will tackle these big questions together as we explore what it means to pursue a career in teaching literature to middle school, high school, or college students. Each week, we will weave together your existing knowledge of literature and your emerging knowledge of pedagogy. You will be introduced to theories of learning-focused, culturally relevant, and culturally responsive pedagogy, and you will put your newfound knowledge into practice as we work step by step through designing your own teaching philosophy and materials.

This course will bring together students who already have experience as classroom instructors, students who are in the process of teaching for the very first time, and students who have yet to step up to the front of a classroom in the role of teacher. We will build on this variety of experiences, learning together how to bring transformative pedagogies into our present and future classrooms.

ENGL 8380 -- Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction

Cynthia Wall
MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm

Other than that they are (mostly) long to very long prose fiction narratives, eighteenth-century

British novels have little in common, formally speaking. From the dreamlike (or nightmarish)

landscape that is Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, through Haywood’s shrewd amatory fiction, Defoe’s circling first-person narratives, the suffocating epistolarity of Richardson (that’s a compliment, btw), the self-reflexive irony of Fielding, the agonies of sensibility (not to mention punctuation) in Radcliffe, the psychological labyrinths of gothic, and the innovative interiorities of Austen, each new instance defines and patterns itself anew, and none bears much similarity to nineteenth-century descendants. We will look at a variety of historical and cultural contexts, such as emerging genres; changes in perceptions of space, time, things, narrative, typography; and literary criticism from the eighteenth century to the present.

ENGL 8540 -- US Literature and the Politics of Justice

Victoria Olwell
TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm

ENGL 8560 -- Literature in the Modern Period: Comparative Approaches to Long Modernisms

Joshua Miller
Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm

Both modernist studies and American studies staked claims to having been made “new” in recent decades, thus participating in the discourse of exceptionality that has led these domains of thought and cultural production to produce both fascinating and, at times, troubling results. The inclusionary expansions of “New Modernisms” and the “New American Studies” fall under several rubrics: comparative studies, global/planetary cultures, new & mixed media, multiethnic literatures, and long modernisms, among others.

We’ll examine key trends shaping multiethnic modernist fiction in a broad historical context, starting with emergent U.S. imperial and racialist modernity, from 1890s views of U.S. immigration and territorial expansion to 1930s and 40s depictions of migration and racialized labor. Then we’ll pursue similar aspects of late-20th and early-21st narrative and transmedia experiments with the novel form to ask if modernisms endure not only in the postmodern period, but also in contemporary Information Age cultures.

We won’t be able to cover comprehensively the full range of methodologies and theoretical formulations that have emerged as exciting directions for modernist studies, so the variety of our readings will reflect the generative (and maddening) instability of this field. The goal of this course is not to develop a particular conception of either modernism or comparativism, but to work collaboratively to formulate original and compelling analytic questions and interpretive strategies.

ENGL 8596 -- Form & Theory of Poetry: Memory & Document

Kiki Petrosino
W 2:00-4:30

In this graduate seminar, we’ll examine what it means to compose poetry responsive to real places, times, events, and experiences. We'll read several works of contemporary poetry that take a variety of approaches to the concepts of "memory" and "archive," broadly (and capaciously!) defined. Readings will include craft texts and critical inquiry on documentary poetics and other compositional modalities. Coursework, including group learning experiences (one self-guided), will give students the opportunity to produce a critical or creative project engaging themes inspired by the course material. Though this is a readings-based course, students should be prepared and willing to participate in writing exercises, to exchange works-in-progress, and to offer constructive critique. These activities, plus attendance, participation, & the final project, will inform the grading policy.

This course is designed for first- and second-year MFA students in Creative Writing. Graduate students from other departments and programs are welcome, pending availability and instructor permission. If you would like to enroll in this course, but are not in the MFA Program, please contact Prof. Petrosino via e-mail (cmp2k@virginia.edu) with a message detailing your interest.

ENGL 8598 -- Form & Theory of Fiction: Vultures & Magpies

Jesse Ball
W 2:00-4:30

For makers, reading is a matter of theft. We may thieve small things as magpies are reputed to do in nestmaking. Or we may thieve in larger ways, as vultures do when at their luncheon.  In this class we will consider how best to steal and where to look for what to take. I don't know yet what we will read, what banks you will be asked to rob. But the class will consist of that: shameless robbery and reuse.  It will thus be a matter of reading and of writing--but with complete attention to our clownish stumbling hungers, and the vanity that brings us to grief. We will refuse to be special, to be original, to be the font of anything; instead we will take what we find where we find it, and use it as well or better than it was used before.

ENGL 8800 -- Introduction to Literary Research

Andrew Stauffer
We 9:30am - 12:00pm or Fr 9:30am - 12:00pm

ENGL 8900-1 -- Writing Pedagogy Seminar

James Livingood
Mo 12:30pm - 1:45pm

ENCW 2300 - Poetry Writing (8 sections)

An introductory course in poetry writing, with a primary focus on creating new poems in a workshop setting. Students will study basic poetic terms and techniques and revise and arrange a series of poems for a final portfolio. The course will also have extensive outside reading and non-creative writing requirements. 

ENCW 2600 - Fiction Writing (8 sections)

An introductory course in fiction writing, with a primary focus on creating short stories in a workshop setting. Students will study basic narrative terms and techniques and revise several short stories for a final portfolio. The course will also have extensive outside reading and non-creative writing requirements.

ENCW 3310 - Intermediate Poetry Writing: Myths of Adolescence and the Literary Imagination

T 11:00AM-01:30PM
Lisa Spaar

Our focus for this writing workshop will be the Crucible of Becoming: Myths of Adolescence & the Literary Imagination.   Human development across cultures and time inevitably involves some version or experience of adolescence, a liminal and archetypal territory between childhood and adulthood characterized by exploration, growth, intense feeling, conflict, becoming, power play, transgression, anxiety, and pain. No wonder, then, that writers have been drawn to this difficult, complex period, plundering its emotional dynamics and mythologizing its extremities in novels, short fiction, poems, and plays. In this course, we will plumb notions of adolescence and explore irs  versions of it in a variety of ways. The crucial question will not be “What is adolescence?” but rather, “How has adolescence been perceived, remembered, imagined?” As we attempt to articulate the significance of our own accountings of adolescence, we may hope to confront ways in which the young (ourselves) embody our most profound vulnerabilities and possibilities. As we explore this period in poetry, we will examine our own crucible of becoming, perhaps particularly as it relates to the adventure and journey of the University experience.  Admission is by permission.  Please contact Professor Spaar at LRS9E@virginia.edu to indicate your interest in the workshop.

ENCW 3310 - Intermediate Poetry Writing: Revolutionary Poetics

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM
Brian Teare

A revolutionary poetics involves two crucial gestures: turning away from, and turning toward. Poets engaged in individual and/or collective revolution tend to turn away from oppressive ideologies and dead forms and turn toward liberatory expression and living language. For such poets, liberatory forms are not prescribed but discovered, often shaped in response to historical context and personal identity and experience. But how does their work turn away from inherited harms and turn toward alternatives that acknowledge injustice without replicating it, fashioning instead new ways of relating to each other through poetic language and forms? This course will introduce us to contemporary poets whose revolutionary work addresses the collective and personal stakes of writing about climate crisis, religious trauma, war, migration, neurodiversity, gender transition, structural antiblackness, and addiction. The reading component of this course will include books by Oliver Baez Bendorf, H. G. Dierdorff,  Rea Visiting Poet Airea D. Matthews, Sahar Muradi, and Adam Wolfond. The workshop component of this course will begin with short poems written in response to prompts derived from our reading. These prompts will be designed to help us think about the flexible, powerful relationship between cultural critique and poetic form, between revolution and the literal letter. The long workshop portion of the course will offer each of us the chance to expand upon those poems in longer manuscripts. Throughout the semester, in both critical discussions and workshops, we’ll discuss the conceptual, political, and poetic aspirations of the work we read, and explore the possibilities of coming together as poets during a time of global flux. 

ENCW 3610 - Intermediate Fiction Writing

T 03:30PM-06:00PM
Jesse Ball 

Please email 3-4 pages of creative work + 1 paragraph about your interest in the class to mam5du@virginia.edu.

ENCW 3610 - Intermediate Fiction Writing

W 04:00PM-06:30PM
Micheline Marcom 

Please email me 3-4 pages of creative work + 1 paragraph about your interest in the class to mam5du@virginia.edu.

ENCW 4550 - Imagining • Remembering • Finding: Prose Between Fiction and “Non”

W 02:00PM-04:30PM
Jane Alison

A seminar for reader-writers who want to explore narrative that blurs the so-called line between fiction and non: autofiction, historical fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, speculative essay . . . We’ll read specimens of assorted types and lengths—from micro-essay to novel—and see how writers have drawn both energy and form from history, memory, other lives, other stories, facts themselves. Works might include Alvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires, Anna Garreta’s Not One Day, Fleur Jaeggy’s These Possible Lives, Justin Torres’s We the Animals or Blackouts, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion or Happening, Edna O’Brien’s Night, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Anne Carson’s The Glass Essay, as well as stories and essays by John Keene, Eliot Weinberger, Maria Gainza, and many others. In addition to weekly reading, you’ll play with regular exercises that let you draw upon history or memory or other found material, and you’ll produce a final critical-creative project.

Instructor permission required, but all eager readers are welcome to apply. If you’re not in the APLP, send me a note (jas2ad) saying what draws you to this class.

ENCW 4720 - Literary Prose Thesis

R 11:00AM-01:30PM
Kevin Moffett

ENCW 4810 - Advanced Fiction Writing: WRITING FROM, TOWARD, INTO, AGAINST —

F 11:00AM-01:30PM
Jane Alison 

A class for imaginative and open-minded students who want to explore ways of crafting literary fiction that converses with—or against—other narratives, documents, images, ideas. This will be a largely generative workshop: each week I’ll give you an item with which to engage imaginatively. This entity could be a painting, a scientific discovery, a snip of found dialogue, a photograph of a place, an animal, a piece of furniture, a myth, someone else’s story . . .  You’ll write short pieces each week that spring from or against these items, and you’ll gradually develop either a single long project from one of these pieces or create a collage of many: this will be up to you. Along the way, we will also read short and long narratives that likewise speak to or from other documents or texts or paintings or objects . . . Expect to read widely, write lots, and, I hope, find yourself writing about things you never knew intrigued you.

INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED. Unless you are in the APLP, please send me (at jas2ad) a note saying what appeals to you about this course, together with a brief (10-page) sample of your creative writing. BE SURE TO APPLY VIA SIS, TOO.

ENCW 4820 - Poetry Program Poetics: The Contemporary American Lyric Sequence

W 01:00PM-03:30PM
Lisa Spaar

This seminar for practicing writers will focus on the lyric sequence in American poetry written since 1980.  We will begin by exploring pointed gatherings of poems by early American innovators of the lyric sequence—Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Jean Toomer—but the focus of the course will be on contemporary American poets working in series, both within and across embodiment as a book, including series and sequences by Tom Andrews, Lucie Brock-Broido, Suzanne Buffam, Anne Carson, Lucille Clifton, Safiya Elhillo, Claudia Emerson, Shane McCrae, Harryette Mullen, Arthur Sze, Kevin Young, and others.  As we read, we will examine ways in which these contemporary sequences are in conversation with poets working in other cultures, traditions, and lyric modes, both mainstream and experimental.  What poems had to have been written in order for these late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century lyric sequences to exist?  How has the gestalt of the fragment in modernism and post-modernism contributed to the evolution/devolution of the contemporary lyric sequence?  What attracts poets to serial thinking?  Is there a poetics of the lyrical sequence?  What various formal ruses do poets working in series and sequences deploy and what might writers learn from them?   We may have the pleasure of hearing from visitors and make forays into the Fralin Museum of Art and Special collections from time to time, as well.  Course work will involve a creative project: the writing of a poetic sequence with accompanying poetics statement.  Preference is given to students in the Area Program in Poetry Writing, but others are most welcome to apply by contacting Professor Spaar at LRS9E@virginia.edu.

ENCW 4830 - Advanced Poetry Writing I

T 02:00PM-04:30PM
Rita Dove

This workshop is for advanced undergraduate students with prior experience in writing and revising poetry. The class will involve discussion of student poems and of assigned reading, with particular attention to issues of craft. Students will be expected to write and revise six to eight poems, to participate in class discussion and offer detailed notes in response to other students’ work, to complete two assignments generated by writing prompts, to attend and provide a written response to one poetry reading (in person or virtual), to turn in close-reading reviews of two assigned poetry books, and to complete one “wild card” assignment.

Instructor Permission is required for enrollment in this class: please apply for instructor permission through SIS. APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS: a writing sample of 4-5 poems with a cover sheet including your name, year, email address, major, prior workshop experience and grade, and other workshops to which you are submitting. Submit your application IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT to Prof. Dove at rfd4b@virginia.edu. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis once  registration opens. For full consideration, email your application as soon as possible.

The instructor will let all applicants know of their acceptance status before spring classes begin.

ENCW 4920 - Poetry Program Capstone

M 06:00PM-08:30PM
Brian Teare

The Capstone offers APPW students time and pedagogical space to think beyond the realization of single poems toward the realization of a book-length poetry manuscript. With support from the APPW Director, a graduate student mentor, and most importantly from our APPW colleagues, each of us will gather together a draft collection of our poems for a semester of intensive collaborative editorial work that will encourage us to become more deeply aware of our poetic ambitions and evolving aesthetics. In conversation with editorial feedback, each of us will organize and revise our existing poems and write new work in order to fully realize what poet and critic Natasha Sajé calls the “dynamic design” of our first manuscripts. The course schedule will begin with weekly discussion of assigned readings, followed by collaborative editorial sessions of our Capstone Project drafts. This means that, for the first three quarters of the semester, we will meet as a group, but the latter quarter of the semester will largely consist of independent work and one-on-one meetings. After mid-term, each of us will be assigned a graduate student mentor who will offer the Capstone Project draft a close reading. After this, each of us will meet with the Director to discuss the feedback and devise a final revision strategy. The course will culminate in our Capstone Projects – revised, polished manuscripts of the poetry only we could write – which we will celebrate together at the APPW graduation reading.

ENGL 1500 - Vikings: Myths and Sagas

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
Stephen Hopkins

This course introduces students to Old Norse mythology and cosmology, and their adaptation into later medieval prose sagas, such as Egil's Saga, Gunnlaug's Saga, and more. We will begin with Prose and Poetic Eddas, examining their mythic poems and learning essential historical and cultural contexts necessary to appreciate these bodies of myth and legend. We will then consider how the conversion to Christianity (in the summer of 999) changed Iceland’s literary landscape. Yet the heathen myths survived the advent of this new faith, and even thrived. In the back half of the course, we will focus on texts composed well within the Christian era to investigate the various ways in which medieval Icelanders reckoned with the heathen past of their ancestors while working out their own identity in verse and prose.

*This course fulfills the AIP requirement.*

ENGL 2500 - Intro to Literary Studies

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
Victor Luftig

We will read poems, plays, fiction, and essays in ways meant to introduce the study of literature at the college level: we’ll focus on how these types of writing work, on what we get from reading them carefully, and on what good and harm they may do in the world. The texts will come from a wide range of times and places, including works by authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hanbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Li-Young Lee, and Chimamanda Adichie; we will also attend a readings and two plays, one on Grounds and the other at the American Shakespeare Center. The course is meant to serve those who are interested in improving their reading and writing, for whatever reason, who seek an introductory humanities course, and/or who may wish subsequently to major in English. We’ll discuss the works in class, and there will be in class-quizzes, three papers, and a final exam.

The course will fulfill the second writing requirement, the AIP Discipline, and the prerequisite for the English major.

ENGL 2502 - Four Books, Four Centuries, Four Forms

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
John O'Brien

In this course, we will read four different works produced between 1600 and 2000, each of which is in a radically different form: William Shakespeare’s play King Lear, Jane Austen’s novel Emma, T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, and Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Each of these works is a masterpiece of its kind, an influence to many who followed it, and a work about which many critics have had things to say. They’re all incredibly pleasurable and rewarding as well. We’ll use these masterpieces to explore the kinds of ways that you can approach literary and filmic texts. The course will fulfill the second writing requirement, the AIP Discipline, and the prerequisite for the English major.

ENGL 2502 - Locating Jane. Or, Putting Austen in her Place

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM
Alison Hurley

Jane Austen is everywhere – at movie theaters, on coffee mugs, in myriad sequels, parodies, and re-imaginings of her novels. How is it that an author whose works are so deeply embedded in her own time remains a contemporary phenomenon? How is it that novels depicting a remarkably thin slice of a defunct society enjoy such broad appeal? In this course we will try to answer these questions by “putting Austen in her place.” We will carefully situate Austen’s novels within a number of specific but overlapping interpretive terrains – literary, political, intellectual, and gendered. By deeply contextualizing Austen, I believe we will be in a better position to assess her significance in both her world and in our own. In order to perform this work we will develop the skills necessary for reading and writing effectively about texts. Specifically, we will aspire to read closely, write precisely, argue persuasively, ask good questions, employ strong evidence, and take interpretive risks.

We will be reading Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2502 - Monsters and Marvels in Medieval Literature

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Viola Cozzio

In this course, we will see how medieval literature horrifies, thrills, and dazzles its readers from the medieval period to the present day. We'll read both poetry and prose (most in modern English translation, though we’ll try our hand at a few short passages in older forms of the English language) and find out how monsters and the sensations of fear and wonder helped medieval readers make sense of the world – and how they might do the same for us. 

Tentative list of readings: Excerpts from Beowulf, Andreas, the Morte Darthur, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; shorter works like the head-chopping Old English Judith, Marie de France’s werewolf story Bisclavret, and Sir Orfeo’s adventures in the fairy kingdom.

Requirements for this course: regular attendance and participation in discussion, occasional discussion board posts, four 3-4 page papers, and a 4-5 page revision of one of these shorter papers.

ENGL 2506 - Introduction to Poetry: Reading Poems

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
Henrietta Hadley

In this class we'll be reading and talking about poems of many kinds. Reading a poem, we'll ask: What makes it tick? What makes it stop? How does it move us, or not? In addition to individual poems, we'll read books of contemporary poetry by Carl Phillips, Don Mee Choi, Terrance Hayes, Ilya Kaminsky, and Mary Ruefle. For a prose guide through the various terrain of English-language poems we'll have Don't Read Poetry by Stephanie Burt. Over the course of the semester, students will draft, revise, and present a "reader's manual" for a poet of their choice. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2506 - Introduction to Poetry

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Taylor Schey

You’re likely practiced at comprehending the meaning of any text that you read. But how does language create meaning in the first place? How can a single word generate multiple, even conflicting, significations? How do various arrangements of sounds move us to tears, open new worlds, instigate actions, and give us pleasure? This course offers an introduction to poetry, the only form of literature that requires us to confront these questions head on. Through learning how to engage carefully with the subtleties and formal elements of poetic language (including meter, rhyme, figure, diction, sound, and syntax), you’ll hone your skills of close reading and critical thinking and learn how to use them beyond the classroom. Plus, through assignments both analytical and creative, you’ll become a stronger writer. Our readings will span from the early modern period to the present, covering an array of poetic styles, forms, and genres as well as a wide range of authors, from William Shakespeare and John Keats to M. NourbeSe Philip and Layli Long Soldier. All students are welcome, and no prior knowledge is expected. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2506 - Hybrid Poetry

MWF 09:00AM-09:50AM
Jeddie Sophronius

When an experience defies the confines of a single genre, it opens up a world of hybridity. In this course, we will examine hybrid poetry collections that blend verse, prose, drama, visual art, collage, and documentation to confront systemic oppression and the histories of war; poems whose forms challenge dominant narratives while also celebrating joy and kinship. From Tina Chang's Hybrida to Cynthia Dewi Oka's A Tinderbox in Three Acts, we will study the work of contemporary poets who employ cross-genre and interdisciplinary methods to transform their practices into acts of survival.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2507 - Tragedy and Transgression

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Clare Kinney

To transgress is literally to “step across”; at the core of tragic drama is somebody’s movement beyond and outside laws and cultural norms. This movement into the terrible unknown is what we’ll be focusing upon in this course—there’ll be passion, mayhem, and a very high body count. What new visions, what new experiences do tragic protagonists acquire as a result of going “beyond the pale”? What kind of language can claw significance from the extreme edge of suffering? What exactly is “tragic knowledge”? And why, for so many hundreds of years, have audiences (and actors!) been fascinated by the spectacle of other people’s agony? We’ll address all of these questions (and many more) as we read works spanning over two millennia. Tentative Reading List: (all non-English works will be read in translation!): Sophocles, Oedipus the King and Antigone; Euripides, Medea; Shakespeare, Macbeth; Akira Kurosowa, Throne of Blood; Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler; Athol Fugard, The Island; Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman; Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman; Caryl Churchill, A Number.

Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation in discussion; shorter and longer writing assignments together totaling 20 pages; a final exam.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - The Historical Novel

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Debjani Ganguly

This course will explore the relationship between literature and history. Specifically, we will focus on the emergence of the historical novel in early nineteenth century Britain and trace its global evolution into the twenty-first century. Historical fiction and films have proliferated in recent years. Can any novel set against a recognizable historical backdrop be considered a historical novel? How factual and realistic do historical novels need to be, and how do they navigate the relationship between individual and collective destinies? What specific modes of characterization do such novels call for? How are ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ recalibrated in counter-factual historical novels?

The seminar will explore these questions by focusing on five novels that bring alive key revolutionary moments in modern history. They are Walter Scott’s Waverley (the Jacobite Revolution in Scotland in 1745), Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (the French Revolution in 1789), Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (the British Opium Trade with China between 1791 to 1858), Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (the rise of fascism in the 1930s), and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (the Nigerian Civil War from 1967-70). We will also read excerpts from the works of literary theorists who have helped us understand the historical novel and its subgenres. Requirements: two take home essays and an oral presentation. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - Science Fiction

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM
Patricia Sullivan

Like to sink into a book that challenges the ways we think about ourselves by imagining other worlds, speculative futures, aliens, artificial intelligences, cyborgs, technology and society at its best and possible worst, and more? We will read several books or pieces of short fiction that are classified loosely as science fiction, though there may be some overlap with other genres such as speculative fiction or climate fiction.

We will also practice close reading strategies, reflect on acts of literary interpretation through brief references to critical essays, inquire into some of the functions and effects of fictional narratives, and practice constructing reflective, analytical, and argumentative essays. Generally, students can expect to write regular reading responses and exploratory pieces, participate in and lead seminar discussions, write three short essays, and take a brief final exam. The majority of our readings will be novels (entire books), with the occasional story, novella, or film. Texts might include (but are not limited to) the following: Parable of the Sower, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Bête, Arrival, The Left-Hand of Darkness, Frankenstein, or All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries.

This course fulfills the second writing (and writing-enhanced) requirement and the AIP requirement (artistic, interpretative, and philosophical inquiry). ENGL2508 also prepares students interested in the English major for upper-level coursework in literature, though all majors are welcome.

ENGL 2508 - Science Fiction

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Charity Fowler

This survey of the science fiction genre is a seminar that will start with examining the genre's roots in 18th and 19th century “proto-science fiction.” We’ll then trace its development through the genre’s distinct temporal and cultural eras from the late-19th century to the present day. We’ll be reading a mix of novels and short stories and watching a few adaptations of these texts into movies and TV shows. Though we’ll touch on many themes and tropes, from space travel to AI, we’ll primarily focus on examining and writing about the social and cultural possibilities of the genre, along with the technological and scientific advancements it has inspired. 

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - The Novel of Upbringing

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM or TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
Dan Kinney

The Novel of Upbringing -- How does the fictional representation of upbringing reflect on the cultural uses of fiction in general as well as the actual work of becoming adult? Works to be studied: Jane Austen, Emma; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Tom Perrotta, Joe College; Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Perfectly Fine. Class requirements: Lively participation including including 8 brief email responses, one short and one longer essay, and a final exam.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2508 - The Novel in US Literary History

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Victoria Olwell

In this course, you’ll investigate history of the novel in the U.S., examining genres and styles that emerged over the decades and centuries. I change the syllabus year to year, but in the past the course has included works by Hannah Webster Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen Crane, Nella Larsen, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, and Celeste Ng. The course will help you strengthen your writing by asking you to write a combination of informal and formal writing assignments. The informal writing assignments will give you a chance to work on your fluency as a writer while also expanding your ideas about the novels you’ll read. The formal assignments will guide you through the process of developing and revising polished essays. By completing this course, you’ll satisfy the Second Writing Requirement. Extra bonus: While the course is designed for students headed towards any major, it also serves as a prerequisite for the English major, for those who are interested.

ENGL 2508 - From Austen to Morrison: Great House Fiction

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Caroline Rody 

The great house of English literature is a house most everyone knows: pictured imposingly on the cover of English paperbacks, setting the magnificent scene from the summit of a green lawn in BBC and Hollywood frame shots, serving as stage for plots of romance and intrigue in countless novels. Though always a site of inequality—the affluent “upstairs” and the servants “downstairs”—and though recently treated with strong irony and critique, it is nevertheless embraced in English literary tradition as ours, indigenous, part of the landscape.

In American literature, not so. Founded on the dream of breaking away from the house of the Old World, U.S. literature tends to treat the very fact of a big, impressive house as in and of itself an affront, an edifice built on exploitation, not our house at all, but an outrage on the American landscape. From this beginning developed a literary history of suspect, spooky, even downright evil American houses, from the enslaving plantation house to the haunted house that is itself a murderer, as well as a contemporary sub-genre that treats the great American house as a morally reclaimable fixer-upper.

This course will take up fiction and film that demonstrates the literary topos of the great house in transformation, a figure for nations changing in time. We will study and write about short fiction, novels and novel excerpts, and four films by (or adapting) some of the following authors: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Jean Rhys, Shirley Jackson, Lore Segal, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwen, Louise Erdrich, Alison Bechdel, Gish Jen, Mat Johnson, Helen Oyeyemi, and Joe Talbot/Jimmie Fails. Requirements include active reading and participation, multiple short papers, one of which is a revision, frequent short Canvas posts, and a group leading of one class.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2527 - Text and Performance

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
Katharine Maus

In this course we will read three Shakespeare plays and then see two or three film or live-theater versions of each one, considering various ways the directors and actors interpret the plays for a modern audience. Writing assignments are designed to help seminar participants consolidate the analytical and writing skills they need to succeed in college-level classes in English or other humanities fields. In addition to many short, informal writing assignments there will be two formal papers—one short, one longer.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2560 - Contemporary Global Literature

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
Christopher Krentz

One could claim with some justification that the most inventive and important contemporary fiction in English comes from places other than Great Britain and the United States. In this class we will explore some of this Anglophone literature and consider whatever issues or concerns it raises, from the legacies of colonialism to ways that culture, race, class, gender, violence, and religion show up in diverse societies in the Global South.  Syllabus is still under construction, but we will likely study Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (Nigeria), Narayan’s The Painter of Signs (India), Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (South Africa), Rushdie’s story collection East, West (India and the United Kingdom), and Danticat’s stories in Krik?  Krak! (Haiti).  Moreover, we’ll concentrate on developing analytical and writing skills, which should help students succeed in other English and humanities classes.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - Painting and Prose

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
Cynthia Wall

Somebody once said, “Ut pictura poesis,” or, “Poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry.” But what does that mean, exactly, and how does it work? Humans have told stories about famous paintings, and painted famous stories, all in attempt to figure out ourselves and our world. This course explores the many ways that art has imagined literature, and literature art, from Ovid and the Bible, through Shakespeare and Milton, Pope and Hogarth, Blake and Keats, Rossetti and Tennyson, to the fin de siècle and Oscar Wilde. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - King Arthur in Time

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
Courtney Watts

King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table are a romanticized staple in nostalgic notions of the medieval past. But who is King Arthur, and where did his legend come from? This course will chart the history of King Arthur in literature, from his early Welsh origins through medieval chronicle and romance, modern poetry and novel, and contemporary film. Along the way, we will consider how the changing historical context and conventions of genre shape and transform the Arthurian mythos. Whenever they were written, texts about King Arthur are always set in the mythic past, shrouded by the mists of half-forgotten history. How does the past function in the world of literary imagination? And what are the political uses of the imagined past? As we read famous works of literature, whether from the twelfth century or the twentieth, we will explore not only medieval narrative but also narratives about the Middle Ages. As writers, we will step into the unfolding history of Arthurian narrative to speak back to these texts and the critics who read them.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - How Should a Person Be?

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM
Lydia Brown

How does anyone become someone—and how does literature allow us to make sense of what it means to be a person in progress? How does the act of recognizing oneself take shape in language—or, rather, how does language’s precision—and flexibility—make visible the parts of becoming that seem otherwise unknowable? We’ll use these considerations to maneuver through the aesthetic, ethical, and philosophical capacities of literary forms, including novels, essays, and lyric poetry, down to examining the transformative potential of a single word. Less concerned with coming-of-age, this course asks how language conceptualizes—or complicates—the never-ending work of becoming someone.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - The Contemporary Essay

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
John Casteen IV

This course will examine literary prose in contemporary literature, ranging from more topical nonfiction to the personal, lyric, and experimental essay; it will also include two essay-films.  The idea of the essay—the attempt—requires uncertainty and poise.  How do writers and artists use the expressive potential of this elastic form to navigate the situation of the present?  Students will explore critical approaches to the essay and compose new work of their own.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - How to be Ethical?

TR 05:00PM-06:15PM
Nasrin Olla

How do novels, poetry, and philosophical texts teach us to relate ethically toward the stranger, the foreigner, or the other? How do we understand different cultures and peoples without reducing them to our already established frames of reference? How do we imagine otherness? This course approaches these big questions by exploring representations of the stranger and the foreigner in African and African diasporic literature. We will look at texts by Édouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon alongside reflections on the relation between ‘ethics and aesthetics’ by Immanuel Kant, Michel Foucault, and others.

This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 2599 - The Literature of Alienation

MW 05:00PM-06:15PM
Shalmi Barman

Why do we sometimes feel separated, cut off, or estranged from the world, other people, or our own selves? Are such feelings temporary aberrations or ‘normal’ symptoms of modern life? This intro-level course in literature* will tackle these and other questions by reading works of fiction, prose, and poetry from the long nineteenth century that represent alienation as both subjective and objective — both something felt internally and an effect of one’s external circumstances. In this course, we will pay attention to how writers like Alfred Tennyson, Herman Melville, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and others used language and imagination to express conditions of alienation. We will examine how literary modes like myth, fantasy, gothicism and humor can animate alienated characters. And we will, through class discussion and writing assignments, think about the choices that open up to us when we identify and come to terms with alienation in our own lives.

Requirements: 1 short paper (3 pgs.), 2 long papers (5-6 pgs.), a final exam, class participation. 

*This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.

ENGL 3002 - History of Literatures in English II

MW 11:00AM-11:50AM
Andrew Stauffer

John Keats, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Ocean Vuong: these are some of the authors that we will be reading and studying together in this survey of literature in English from around 1750 to the present moment. Along the way, we will trace the emergence of English as a global language and literature in our post-colonial world. Literary movements to be covered include Romanticism, Victorianism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. This course is part of the two-semester sequence of the history of literature in English (along with ENGL 3001) that is required of English majors, but is open to anyone interested in exploring some of the most significant works of literature of the last two-plus centuries. You do not need to have taken ENGL 3001 first; the courses can be completed in any order that works best for you.

ENGL 3025 - African American English

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Connie Chic Smith

Black English, Negro dialect, Ebonics, Black slang, and African American English Vernacular (AAEV) are just a few of the names that have been used historically to describe the form of communication that occurs among and between many African Americans.  Rickford & Rickford (2000) define AAEV as the informal speech of many African Americans.

Yet, for as long as there have been Africans in America, this form of communication has been assigned the same designation given to individuals who create and have spoken it for generations; inferior and inappropriate.  The belief that AAEV is a derogatory or demeaning manner in which to speak has been ingrained in the psyche of America and Americans.  This ideology has remained intact until recently.

This course examines the communicative practices of AAEV to explore how a marginalized language dynamic has made major transitions into American mainstream discourse.  AAEV is no longer solely the informal speech of many African Americans; it is the way Americans speak.

ENGL 3162 - Chaucer II: Chaucerian Dream Poems

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Elizabeth Fowler

Poetry can produce real bodily experiences—including laughter, tears, heat, taste, a sense of being intensely present—by means of marks on a blank page, even if they were made by someone who’s been dead for hundreds of years. How does it do that? With that question in mind, we’ll read four poems Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about his dreams together with some poems he had read and some short essays on art, dreams, sensory experience, and virtual reality. The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women are surreal, sweet, funny, philosophical, emotionally intense, feminist, and visually overstimulated poems. Dreams seem to provide Chaucer with a way of thinking about “para-sensory,” virtual experience and its relation to grief, love, and the other passions (the word medieval writers used for “emotions”). We'll be interested in how specific forms of language (image, metaphor, verb tense, and so on) work to produce the cognitive, emotional, and sensory effects of virtual experience. We’ll go slowly, so you can learn to “close read” poetry, and so you’re OK if Chaucer’s Middle English is new to you. There are no pre-requisites except a joy in thinking and a love of language.  This course fulfills the pre-1700 requirement.

ENGL 3260 - Milton

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM
Rebecca Rush

In this course, we will investigate the political, religious, and poetic debates of seventeenth-century England by focusing on a poet who had a habit of inserting himself into the major controversies of his age. In addition to tracing Milton’s career as a poet from his earliest attempts at lyric poetry to his completion of his major works Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, we will read selections from his prose, in which he advocated beheading the king, loosening divorce laws, and abandoning pre-publication censorship. We will debate about how to reconcile Milton’s radicalism with the more backward-looking aspects of his poetry and prose. (He consistently looked to ancient Greece and Rome as political and poetic models. He wrote in genres like the sonnet and the epic that were downright outmoded by the seventeenth century. And he often based his arguments for radical liberties on appeals to reason, truth, and temperance.) As we unravel the peculiar intellectual positions of a poet who stood at the crossroads of antiquity and modernity, we will also attend to what makes him distinctive as a poet, including his ear for the rhythms of verse and his dedication to producing lines that are thick with learned allusions, etymological puns, and interpretive ambiguities. No prior knowledge of Milton or the seventeenth century is required; the only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3273 - Shakespeare: Tragedies & Romances

MW 12:00PM-12:50PM
Katharine Maus

This course deals with the second half of Shakespeare's career as a playwright, in which he was mainly writing tragedies and romances.  ENGL 3271, the fall semester course, deals with the first half of Shakespeare's career, in which he was mainly writing histories and comedies.  You may take either or both courses; neither is a prerequisite for the other.
2 50-minute lectures and 1 50-minute discussion section per week.

Requirements: 3 five-page papers, a final exam emphasizing material covered in lectures and section meetings, and regular short assignments made by section leaders.

Satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the major.  This course does not automatically fulfill the Second Writing Requirement, but it may be tweaked to do so.  See me in the first few weeks of the semester if you are interested in this option.

ENGL 3300 - English Literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM
John O'Brien

In this course, we will read important works in English from what scholars sometimes call “the long eighteenth century,” a period that begins in the middle of the 1600s, since so many things of lasting importance happened then and lasts until at least 1800. We will read works from the British Isles, but also colonial America, which was, after all, a part of Great Britain until the end of the American Revolutionary War. This was an extraordinary period, one that witnessed, among many other things:  a massive expansion of print media that resulted in the emergence of periodical literature and the novel; political revolutions in England, America, France, and Haiti; the intensification of the slave trade and the emergence of an international abolitionist movement. We will read works from authors such as Joseph Addison, Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Olaudah Equiano, Anne Finch, Samuel Johnson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Phillis Wheatley.

This course will fulfill the English major requirement for a course in literature between 1700 and 1900. This is also a low-cost course, as our readings will all be found in a digital “anthology” of literature in English that I am collaborating on with students here and faculty at other universities. Requirements: two essays, reading quizzes, midterm and final examinations.

ENGL 3500 - Literary Games

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM
Brad Pasanek, co-taught with Jason Bennett

This is a course in “extra-literary” criticism in which English majors and other students are tasked with investigating the ways in which video games are available for literary interpretation. We will read games studies and literary theory, play games, and--take note!--learn to build them. Students will be introduced to the Godot game engine and framework. (No prior experience with programming required.) Our main effort is to check and test literary theory in "defamiliarized" ludic contexts, designing sprites and worlds and complicating traditional intuitions about narrative, characters, and fiction by means of game experiences.

Course enrollment currently set to "Instructor Permission" so that we can build a balanced group of English majors and CS students (double majors to be enthusiastically welcomed). Contact Brad Pasanek and Jason Bennett with any questions!

ENGL 3540 - Dangerous Women

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Cristina Griffin

When the phrase “nasty woman” rose to the forefront of our cultural discourse a decade ago, the label rested on a long-standing conception that women can be dangerous just by being women. In this class, we will look at the particular formations of dangerous women that materialized in the nineteenth century, an era in which women simultaneously remained held down by the law and yet unbound by newly possible social roles. Across texts by Jane Austen, Mary Prince, Christina Rossetti, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy, among others, we will consider what precisely made women dangerous as well as the other side of the coin: what put women in danger? What forms of female agency, sexuality, or sociability generate power and which engender fear? And what do we make of men’s roles: what does it look like to be a dangerous man or a man in danger? How do nineteenth-century notions of danger reify a gender binary and what are the ways in which this binary breaks down or becomes fluid? By reading texts across genres—some novels, short stories, poems, essays, and a play—we will immerse ourselves in the particular history of gender, fear, and power articulated by nineteenth-century writers while also avidly seeking out points of connection between these Victorian conceptions of dangerous women and those of our own twenty-first century.

This course satisfies the 1700–1900 requirement for the English major, and is also open to non-majors. Students in this course are forewarned that they will be in danger of reading dangerously fascinating texts, and will be expected to generate dangerously fascinating ideas in response.

ENGL 3540 - Global Nineteenth-Century Fiction

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
Stephen Arata

In this course we will read novels and short stories (all superb examples of narrative art) drawn from a range of cultures and countries. The overarching goal is to engage with these works not from the perspective of their separate national traditions but with an awareness of the novel as a transnational literary form, bound up in networks of authors and readers stretching around the globe. Likely candidates for the syllabus include Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Vernon Lee (England), George Sand and Honoré de Balzac (France), Mikhail Lermentov (Russia), Multatuli (Denmark), Benito Pérez Galdós (Spain), Machado de Assiz (Brazil), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (India), and Mary Prince (Bermuda). Course requirements will include two 5-6 page essays, a final exam, and a handful of shorter writing assignments. All the readings will be in English. This course can be used to fulfill the 1700-1900 period requirement for the English major.

ENGL 3559 - Placed and Displaced in America

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
Lisa Goff

The history of America is a history of place-making and displacement. Iconic American sites such as Monticello, Walden Pond, and our network of national parks have inspired generations of Americans. But displacement is just as much a part of our national identity—as the stories of Indigenous dispossession, housing discrimination, Japanese internment, redlining, gentrification, and homelessness attest. In this class we’ll critique the “iconic” American places, the ones we brag about, and study the displacement that has characterized our nation since the colonial era—the stories that were long buried, and are still coming to light. We’ll also pay special attention to the placemaking efforts of displaced or marginalized groups—such as Black Americans during the Great Migrations, lgbtq+ communities, immigrants, and survivors of natural disasters such as the Dust Bowl and Hurricane Katrina—who continue to redefine American identity through place-making. To do this we will analyze fiction, journalism, and film, as well as paintings, photographs and other elements of visual culture. We may also spend some time looking at archival sources at Special Collections and in online databases. By the end of the semester, you’ll know how to interpret space and place for insights into race, ethnicity, gender, class, and generation in America.

ENGL 3559 - Diary Fiction

TR 11:00-12:15
Lorna Martens

Cross-listed with GETR 3559.

Diaries are for intimate secrets? Yes--but not just! People have kept journals for many reasons. There are travel journals and sea logs, records of everyday life, testimonials to alarming events, gossipy accounts of social interactions, notebooks for capturing one's momentary aperçus and ideas, and so forth. Fiction writers, however, have invented many more uses for the diary form than these! The diary's strict yet elastic form (first-person periodic narration) has offered creative writers many intriguing possibilities beyond imitating the styles of real diaries. An ideal outlet for sincere self-expression, for intimate confessions, the fictive diary is also as if made to order for creating an unreliable narrator, one whose views are undercut by the plot. If a second voice is introduced alongside the diarist's monologue, this can destabilize the diarist's account, whereas, conversely, a diarist's truthful account can overthrow a second narrator's misguided opinions. Writing from day to day, a diarist is ignorant of what the future holds. Such blindness toward the future has inspired many writers to use the diary form for suspense stories (e.g., Dracula). In this course we will focus on the ways in which writers have imaginatively exploited the diary's formal features. We will also consider how diary fiction evolved from the late eighteenth century, when the first fictive diaries were written, to the present. We will read several masterpieces of diary fiction--novels--including Sartre's Nausea and Frisch's I'm Not Stiller, and otherwise stories from a brand-new anthology of short diary fiction. Students will have an opportunity to try their hand at writing a diary (easy!) and/or diary fiction.

ENGL 3560 - Modern Poetry

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Mark Edmundson

The mid-twentieth century sees a surge in excellent poetry in the United States.  Much of the best of it deals with the question of America. Who are we? Where are we as a nation? Have we gone radically wrong? If so, what can we do (if anything) to right ourselves? Robert Lowell will set the tone for the course, with his reflections on the national condition, culminating in his masterpiece, “For the Union Dead.” We’ll also read Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amy Clampitt, Robert Hayden, and the Jameses: Dickey, Wright, and Merrill. We’ll connect the poets’ vision of America to our current state and see what we might learn from them. There will be a mid-term quiz, a final quiz, and a paper at the end on the poet you care about most.

ENGL 3560 - Fiction in the Age of Modernism

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM
Stephen Arata

The time period covered in this course is roughly 1890-1960: the age of Modernism in the literatures of Europe and the Americas. We will read novels and short stories from across a range of cultures and countries that explore the question of what makes a work of fiction not just “Modern” but “Modernist.” Likely authors include Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, Jean Toomer, Jean Rhys, Samuel Beckett, Haldor Laxness, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Andrade, Knut Hamsen, Vladimir Nabokov, and Nella Larson. Course requirements will include two 5-6 page essays, a final exam, and a handful of shorter writing assignments. All the readings will be in English

ENGL 3560 - The Literature of Extinction

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Adrienne Ghaly

How do works of modern and contemporary literature respond to species extinction and help us understand the sixth mass extinction the planet may be entering? How has the diminishment of species and biodiversity been thought about and written about in poems, novels, and essays? Where and how do we find evidence of extinctionary pressures in literary texts?

From dodos to whales to insects and de-extinction technologies, this course explores biodiversity loss and species extinctions across genres, time periods, and ecosystems to ask how literature thinks about, records, and represents violence against nonhuman life. We’ll read texts that imagine extinction, grapple with knowledge and feelings around biodiversity decline and species revival, and we'll reframe literature not explicitly ‘about’ extinction as records of widespread impacts on nonhuman life. Assignments are two essays, some shorter pieces of writing, and engaged participation in discussion.

ENGL 3560 - Being Human: Race, Technology, and the Arts

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
Njelle Hamilton

What makes us human? How did science and technology play a part in racism and the dehumanization of blackness? And how have artists of color re-appropriated science, technology, and science fiction to subvert and resist dehumanization? This course is an introduction to Afrofuturism, exploring the intersections of race and alienness, race and technology, and race and modernity through global futuristic representations of blackness in TV, film, music, art, and literature. In this discussion-based seminar, we will trace “like race” tropes in sci-fi, including aliens, monsters, enslavement, and invisibility. We will think about the various ways that black artists/writers/creators displace or “dimension-shift” the African Diaspora experience to grapple with contemporary and historical issues, and employ science/technology/sci-fi to invent places and conditions where blackness can thrive. Assignments will include literary essays and creative work (short films, artwork, mashups, web-content etc) that reimagine and interrogate representations of race and science/technology in contemporary media. (No artistic talent of experience required)

ENGL 3610 - Global Cultural Studies

MW 12:00PM-12:50PM (Section 100)MW 02:00PM-02:50PM (Section 200)
Michael Levenson

Global Cultural Studies offers an interdisciplinary approach to our present-day world against the background of its recent past.  Engaging a wide variety of media (film, popular song, avant-garde art, memoir, political philosophy, etc.), the course examines conditions and conflicts in China, India, North and South Africa, and the Middle East.  Urgent social-cultural issues – such as the global plight of refugees, the place of Gandhi in present-day Indian politics, the campaign for international human rights, the resurgence of religious faith, the crisis of the environment, the rise of authoritarian nationalism, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – will be nodal points of concern.  At every stage we consider the making of the world since 1945, the pressing difficulties that now confront it, and the fragile state of hope.

ENGL 3690 - Memory Speaks

TR 2:00-3:15
Lorna MartensCross-listed with GETR 3780.

Memory is a crucial human faculty. Our ability to remember our own past is one of the things that make us human. Memory has long been thought to ground identity: without memory, one has no sense of self. Memory has been seen as fundamental to psychic health, and even as a remedy in times of trouble, as well as essential to our ability to imagine the future. Remembering has its delights. Certainly the idea of losing one’s memory, through shock or illness for example, is terrifying to contemplate. Yet having too many memories of the wrong kind is believed to endanger our equilibrium. Maddeningly, given its power to make us healthy or sick, memory often lies beyond our conscious control. It operates according to its own laws, giving us what we want only sometimes. Undeniably useful, it has also been seen as deceptive. It is demonstrably suggestible. It is not surprising, therefore, that memory is a subject of vital importance in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences alike.

This course will focus on individual memory and in particular on autobiographical memory (our memories of our own lives). We will read autobiographies and works of fiction, written from the early twentieth century to the present, by Patrick Modiano, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Marguerite Duras. We will also study two films on the theme of memory: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inside Out. Concurrently, we will read psychological, psychoanalytic, and neuroscientific work on memory. Some attention will be paid to the issues of false memory, external memory, and mediated memory, as well.

Two short papers, presentations, exam.

ENGL 3740 - Intro to Asian American Studies

MW 10:00AM-10:50AM
Sylvia Chong

An interdisciplinary introduction to the culture and history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. Examines ethnic communities such as Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Asian Indian, and Native Hawaiian, through themes such as immigration, labor, cultural production, war, assimilation, and politics. Texts are drawn from genres such as legal cases, short fiction, musicals, documentaries, visual art, and drama.

ENGL 3791 - American Cinema

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
Sylvia Chong

his course provides an introduction to film studies through an examination of American film throughout the 20th & 21st centuries. We will learn basic film techniques for visual analysis, and consider the social, economic, and historical forces that have shaped the production, distribution & reception of film in the US Examples will be drawn from various genres: melodrama, horror, sci-fi, musical, Westerns, war films, documentary, animation, etc.

ENGL 3825 - Desktop Publishing

Online AsynchronousJeb Livingood

This course helps you learn how to edit and publish a contemporary book-length project—everything from proofreading manuscripts to graphic design and the publishing process—in both print and reflowable ePub formats. You will learn fundamentals of typesetting projects in Adobe InDesign, the main desktop publishing software used in the publishing industry. The class also gives you a firm grounding in the The Chicago Manual of Style, the dominant style manual used by literary publishers, by having you complete “gates” in an online system. This version of the class is online and asynchronous, which means you will progress through class lessons at your own pace, though you will need to meet class deadlines by uploading project drafts or completing online assignments by specified dates. This class will stress the typesetting and editing of textual projects. Photo collections and graphic-heavy projects are not usually acceptable.

ENGL 3840 - Contemporary Disability Theory

MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM
Christopher Krentz

Over the last several decades, thinking about people with physical, cognitive, and sensory differences has moved from a mostly pathological medical-based understanding to a more rights-based framework, although both models persist and overlap.  In this course we will consider how conceptions of disability have (or have not) changed, considering such matters as how a disability is defined; disability in American history; autism and neurodivergence; deaf culture and medical interventions; disability and race, gender, class, and sexual orientation; technology; and much more.  The class will also consider how these theories relate to the depiction of disabled people in literature and film.  Possible texts include Goffman’s Stigma; Wells’ “The Country of the Blind”; Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians; Desai’s Fasting, Feasting; Nussbaum’s Good Kings, Bad Kings; and the films Unrest and Crip Camp.

The class will feature a range of learning strategies, from whole-class discussion to smaller-group discussion to short lectures.  Requirements will include two papers, quizzes, and active informed participation. 

ENGL 4500 - The Frankenstein Circle

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM
Cynthia Wall

“I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts. The tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends and myself agreed to write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.” So Mary Shelley reminisced about the famous weekend at the Villa Diodati (when she was still Mary Godwin). The two friends were the poets Lord Byron and her lover Percy Shelley. The tale was Frankenstein. (For the record, one Dr Polidori was there as well, and he did finish his tale, “The Vampyre”; it’s on the syllabus.) With Frankenstein as our central text, we will also read works by Percy, Byron, Polidori, and William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary’s parents), excerpts from Mary’s journals, and selections from Mary & Percy’s mammoth reading lists for 1814-1818 (John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Maria Edgeworth, M. G. Lewis, Sir Humphry Davy, Captain James Cook). This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement for the English major.

ENGL 4520 - Renaissance and Reformation

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Rebecca Rush

This course pursues the ramifications of the Reformation and the Renaissance in the poetry, prose, and drama of sixteenth-century England. We will read selections from seminal continental works by Petrarch, Machiavelli, Luther, Erasmus, and Calvin. We will then think about how English writers—including Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Richard Hooker—responded to these authors’ efforts to renovate understandings of politics, piety, and human nature. As we read each work with the utmost care, we will encounter questions such as how free is the will? Are faith and reason reconcilable? Is beauty an obstacle or a spur to higher things? What is the source of corruption (in the church, in the state, and in the individual) and can it be remedied? Is there a difference between a tyrant and a prince? What is the best way to read—does good reading require learning ancient languages or seeking out the original manuscripts? What are the limits of human knowledge, and is it possible to know too much? Readings will include selections from Luther and Erasmus’s debate on free will, Machiavelli’s Prince, Calvin’s Institutes, More’s Utopia, Wyatt’s lyrics and satires, Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Defense of Poesy, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, and Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1. No prior knowledge of early modern literature or religion is required; the only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand.

This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.

ENGL 4560 - Contemporary Women's Texts

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Susan Fraiman

This course takes up recent Anglophone works by women across multiple genres and referencing a range of cultural contexts. Primary texts include visual as well as literary forms. A selection of secondary materials will help to gloss their formal, thematic, and ideological characteristics while giving students a taste of contemporary theory in such areas as gender, queer, and postcolonial studies. Possible works (still to be determined) include fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, and Chimamanda Adichie; a graphic narrative by Roz Chast; a play by Annie Baker; experimental, multi-genre works by Claudia Rankine, Saidiya Hartman, or Maggie Nelson; a neo-Western film by Kelly Reichardt; images by South African photographer Zanele Muholi. Among our likely concerns will be the juxtaposition of verbal and visual elements in a single text; depictions of queer, raced, immigrant, and transnational subjectivities; narratives that make “truth claims” and how such claims affect the reader; representations of growing up, aging, migration, maternity, violence, marriage, creativity, diverse sexualities, and work; ties and tensions among women across boundaries of place, generation, class, and race. One project of the course will be to explore its own premise that “women’s texts” is a useful and meaningful category. Two papers and a final exam. This course is intended for 3rd- and 4th-year English majors or other advanced students with a background in literary/cultural/gender studies.

ENGL 4560 - American Novels, American Controversies

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM
Victoria Olwell

When novels are published, they enter the public sphere, joining in the whole buzzing cacophony of contemporary culture. Often, novels step into ongoing public discussions about things that are not novels – political issues, contemporary developments in the social world, ideas about history, social inequality, scientific advances, and the like. Novels do this in a wide variety of ways, but, always, they operate through the specific formal characteristics of the novel (plot, character, narrative, the premise of fiction, etc.) and carry with them the distinctive history of the novel as a genre. In this course, we’ll consider contemporary U.S. novels that explicitly take up current issues in the public sphere. We’ll read these novels on their own terms, but also in the context of two other genres:  contemporary non-fiction on the same issues and literary criticism on the form and history of the novel. We’ll ask, what are the distinctive ways in which novels add to public discussion? By the way, I chose novels that meet two requirements. First, they have received a great deal of critical attention and acclaim, meaning that we can consider them to be novels with a hearty public presence. Second, I select only novels I find aesthetically compelling and intellectually enchanting, because one way that novels engage the public is by grabbing readers’ interest.

ENGL 4561 - Poetry in a Global Age

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
Jahan Ramazani

In this seminar, we explore world poetry in English. To understand the global dimensions of modern and contemporary poetry, we closely read the vibrant anglophone poetries of India, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, Ireland, Black and Asian Britain, and Indigenous and diasporic America, which bring new worlds, new idioms, and new literary possibilities into English. Postcolonial writers enrich poetry in English by hybridizing local traditions with the poetic techniques of the global North. Issues to be discussed include the historical memory of colonization and enslavement; global challenges such as war and the climate crisis; and transformations of world-traveling poetic forms and strategies. Forged in response to an increasingly globalized world, the innovations of transnational modernist writers provide crucial tools that the poets of the global South repurpose. Featured writers include postcolonial poets such as Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Lorna Goodison, NourbeSe Philip, A. K. Ramanujan, Okot p’Bitek, Christopher Okigbo, and Daljit Nagra, and modernists like T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Claude McKay.

ENGL 4561 - The Queer Novel

TR 03:30PM-04:45PM
Mrinalini Chakravorty

What is “queer” about the novel?  Our course will grapple with this question by examining the rich legacy of non-normative sexual expressions and orientations in the literary arts.  The aim of the course is—

1. To understand what constitutes ‘queer literature’ as a meaningful genre or archive.  Is the queer novel unique in its expressivity, in terms of style and content?  Does the queer novel have its own canon?  Should this canon be more open to revision than others given the constant evolutions in how we understand gender?
2. To see how novels engage political ideas of sexuality germane to thinking about queerness, such as of ‘homophobia,’ the ‘closet,’ 'inversion’ ‘gender bending,’ ‘cis-acting,’ ‘coming out,’ ‘failure,’ ‘deviance,’ ‘camp,’ ‘cruising,’ ‘queer futurity,’ ‘queer feeling,’ ‘homonationalism,’ ‘disidentification,’ ‘performativity,’ ‘flamboyance,’ etc.  
3. To confront radical questions about subjectivity and embodiment that the analytic of sexuality enables us to ask about the worlds we inhabit and the texts that represent these worlds. 

To accomplish these goals, we will read sweepingly across the whole breadth of the queer canon.  We will begin with early classics of queer literature and then shift our attention to more contemporary transnational contexts concerned with representing queerness as a part of, and not apart from, affiliations of race, culture, religion, geography, class etc.  Our reading includes works by Radclyffe Hall, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel, Tove Jansson, Ocean Vuong, and Rabih Alemaddine, among others.  In other words, we will think of the important ways that the evolution of the queer novel involves a perpetual re-queering of the genre itself by the insistent heterogeneity of racial, transnational, and transgender contexts.  While most of the novels we read will come from the Anglophone tradition, some will be translated from other languages.

This course will require that students be prepared to engage directly and fearlessly with the field of queer theory.  Queer theory will inform how we contextualize the subcultures of queerness (from Bloomsbury or Stonewall to Queer-of-Color activisms), as well as understand why notions of reproductive normality, eroticism, pleasure, kinship, and indeed queer identity have been transformed in recent literary and aesthetic works.  Ultimately, we will ask how queer aesthetic works speak to, revise, and must be re-evaluated given the shifting dynamics of queer thought.  Here our reading includes, among others, work by Michel Foucault, David Halperin, Judith Butler, Jasbir Puar, and Lee Edelman, José Esteban Muñoz.  An occasional selection of salient films, poems, and short stories will allow us to see useful connections between the aesthetic and political charge—often one of transgression—that the sign of the “queer” carries.

This course fulfills the Modern and Global Studies seminar requirement for English majors in that concentration.

ENGL 4570 - James Baldwin

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Marlon Ross

This course focuses on the tumultuous life and diverse works of James Baldwin, whose intellectual influence is still palpable in today’s discussions on race, sexuality, social activism, national belonging, and exile. We’ll study major works from each of the genres that Baldwin engaged, including the novel, short story, drama, poetry, journalism, and the essay. Among the works to be examined are the novels Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, and Just Above My Head; plays The Amen Corner and Blues for Mr. Charlie; selected short stories from Going to Meet the Man; essays from Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, and No Name in the Street; and the children’s book Little Man Little Man. In addition to Baldwin’s works, we’ll explore him as a “spokesman” of the Civil Rights movement, and how his high visibility as a public intellectual whose appearances on the new medium of television helped to shape his “celebrity” status. We’ll also address a some of Baldwin’s most crucial intellectual dialogues, including with Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Lorraine Hansberry, William F. Buckley, Eldridge Cleaver, Amiri Baraka, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, and Tarell Alvin McCraney. We’ll also study films important to Baldwin’s legacy, including Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, academy award winner for best feature film. Assignments include: several short response essays, two critical essays, one team-led class discussion, and a term research paper

ENGL 4570 - Caribbean Latinx Literature

W 03:30PM-06:00PM
Carmen Lamas

We will explore novels, plays, short stories and poems by Latinx writers from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. While these writers’ genealogies emerge from these island countries, we will analyze how their lives in NYC, Jersey, Boston and Miami impact how they narrate the Latinx experience as situated between the US and their home countries in the Caribbean. All readings, discussions and assignments are in English.

ENGL 4590 - From Austen to Morrison: Great House Fiction

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Caroline Rody

The great house of English literature is a house most everyone knows: pictured imposingly on the cover of English paperbacks, setting the magnificent scene from the summit of a green lawn in BBC and Hollywood frame shots, serving as stage for plots of romance and intrigue in countless novels. Though always a site of inequality—the affluent “upstairs” and the servants “downstairs”—and though treated recently with strong irony and critique, it is nevertheless embraced by English literary culture as ours, indigenous, part of the landscape.

In American literature, not so. Founded on the dream of breaking away from the house of the Old World, U.S. literature tends to treat the very fact of a big, impressive house as in and of itself an affront, an edifice built on exploitation, not our house at all, but an outrage on the American landscape. From this beginning developed a long literary history of suspect, spooky, even downright evil American houses, from the enslaving plantation house to the haunted house that is itself a murderer, as well as a contemporary sub-genre that treats the great American house as a morally reclaimable fixer-upper.

This course will take up fiction and film that demonstrates the literary topos of the great house in transformation, a figure for nations changing in time. We will study and write about short fiction, novels and novel excerpts, and four films by (or adapting) some of the following authors: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Jean Rhys, Shirley Jackson, Lore Segal, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwen, Louise Erdrich, Alison Bechdel, Gish Jen, Maria Semple, Mat Johnson, Helen Oyeyemi, and Joe Talbot/Jimmie Fails. Requirements include active reading and participation, 20 pages of writing divided into two papers, frequent short Canvas posts, and a group leading of one class. This course meets the second writing requirement.

ENGL 4902 - The Bible Part 2: The New Testament

MW 02:00PM-03:15PM
John Parker

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through much of the New Testament, from the Gospels to Revelation, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the New Testament; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible is needed or assumed. It can be taken before or after the Bible Part 1: The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, taught by Professor Stephen Cushman.

Satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the major. 

ENGL 5060 - The Sonnet Revised & Revisited

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Clare Kinney

“A chamber of sudden change”; “a meeting place of image and voice”; “a game with mortal stakes”; “the collision of music, desire and argument”: these are some of the ways that poets and critics have described the sonnet. Starting with the Petrarchan experiments of Renaissance Europe and extending our reach through the Romantics and the modernists to Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Kiki Petrosino, Terrance Hayes, and others, we will consider the persistence and the many metamorphoses of the form. Sonnet writers construct a “a moment’s monument” for religious, political, philosophical and meta-poetical purposes as well as to anatomize desire, and when they present sonnets in sequence they make lyric do something of the work of narrative. Every time a sonnet is written, its author becomes part of a very long literary conversation and may make that intervention the occasion to set thought and feeling in a new dialogue, to reconsider “the contradictory impulses of being in the world,” to talk back to tradition, to make the dead speak again, to re-make and re-break the rules of form. Exploring the history, poetics (and the race and gender politics) of this tenacious short form, we will consider the craftiness of craft and the particular power of “bound language.” In addition to addressing a wide selection of sonnets written from the 16th century to yesterday, we will also read critical writings on the sonnet by a variety of scholars and poets.

Requirements: lively participation in discussion; a series of discussion board responses to readings, one 6-7 page paper; a presentation on a contemporary sonnet of your own choice; a substantial final project (critical or hybrid creative-critical).

This course can satisfy the pre-1700 requirement for PhD, MA and undergraduate students: contact instructor for more information.

ENGL 5190 - The Bible 

W 10:00AM-12:30PM
Stephen Cushman

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through selections from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, from Genesis to Revelation, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the Bible; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible needed or assumed.

This course fulfills the pre-1700 literature requirement.

ENGL 5500 - Milton & Whitman 

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Mark Edmundson

We’ll read with care and imagination what are perhaps the two greatest long poems in English, John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Both are works of palpable genius, but of very different kinds. Milton’s poem is committed to hierarchy, order and degree. In his cosmos, justified subordination and command are the highest ideals. (Though he is constantly challenging them.) His world at its best is firmly, yet flexibly ordered. He is a brilliant exemplar of true conservatism. Whitman is much different. “Unscrew the locks from the doors / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jams,” Walt chants. Whitman wants to dissolve all needless boundaries in the interest of perfect democratic equality. He wants to undo the barriers between old and young, rich and poor, women and men. And he does so, at least imaginatively, in “Song of Myself.” We’ll read the poems for what they are in themselves. But we’ll also consider them as brilliant exemplars of the progressive mind and its conservative counterpart. Students may be surprised as to where their allegiances lie. With any luck, we’ll all find ourselves, in the words of Wallace Stevens, “more truly and more strange.” A mid-term paper, a final essay, and some short writing assignments.

ENGL 5510 - Introduction to Old Norse

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM
Stephen Hopkins

This course provides an introduction to the language and literature of medieval Iceland (also called Old Norse or Old Icelandic, roughly 800-1400 CE), and the goal is to arrive at a sound reading knowledge of the Old Norse language. Drawing upon Byock’s textbook, Viking Language, the first half of the semester focuses on internalizing the basics of Old Norse grammar and vocabulary. While acquiring these rudimentary linguistic skills, we will practice translating bits of prose and poetry (The Prose Edda, Egils Saga, et al.)  as supplied in the textbook. After midterms, we will translate The Tale of Thorsteinn Staff-Struck. The course will also include secondary readings to orient us towards Old Norse genres, contexts, and critical/theoretical approaches prevalent in the field today, with an emphasis on the history of the conversion and the importation of writing technologies (i.e., basic paleography). 

This course fulfills the pre-1700 literature requirement.

ENGL 5530 - The Literature of British Abolition c. 1750-1810

T 03:30PM-06:00PM
Michael Suarez

How did Great Britain come to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and what roles did literature play in enlightening readers to the barbarities of this human traffic? Reading works such as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, and a variety of poems, both canonical and from relatively unknown voices, we will attempt to immerse ourselves in the literature of British abolition. Juxtaposing such writings with visual materials (viz., the slave ship Brooks), abolitionist political pamphlets, and letters in the C18 public press will give greater depth to our discussions. Finally, we will read Caryl Phillips’ novel Cambridge and reflect on how a literature of abolition might function in our own time.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 5559 - TASTE: Textual, Accessible, Sustainable, Teachable, Experimental 

TR 9:30AM-10:45AM
Alison Booth

This seminar is open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students in any humanities area or major. No prior experience in digital studies or coding is expected; the tech-adverse need not fear. Our focus is textual studies of post-1800 literature in English. Students may design their coursework to fulfill the course requirement “from 1700 to 1900,” while some of our texts will be post-1900. TASTE fulfills an elective for the graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities (DH), but the course will be accessible or teachable to anyone who likes to read or edit closely and who is curious to experiment. Sustainable, like accessible, has several meanings: in the environment as well as in DH (will it last?). Some literature is sustained (canonical) because taste (then or now) tells us to reread it and help make it more accessible. Something that we cannot dispute (personal taste) is deeply political and changeable.

With a cue from our acronym, we will read selected sources about taste: as aesthetic concept; as class and gender code; as racial/ethnographic/international divide; as connection between the body and cultural history; as related to property/propriety of sexuality. Among our aims is to cultivate our taste for written descriptions of interior decoration, fashion, food and dining, as well as people, buildings, and landscapes. Readings will include Jane Austen’s Persuasion; Elizabeth Gaskell’s novella Cousin Phillis; selected poetry from different contexts (prospects; country houses; beloveds), including African American and from former British colonies; short stories (some classics like Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” Carver’s “Cathedral”); a unit on consumer culture including foodways. One short, one longer essay; frequent short assignments on texts; a class presentation; participation in a joint project on passages in the ~400 analyzed short biographies of women in Alison Booth’s Collective Biographies of Women as they reveal biographers’ evaluations of historic women related to taste.

Texts have not been ordered at the bookstore; part of our project will be identifying and working with library and online sources and comparing editions.

ENGL 5559 - Latinx Literature & the Americas

M 03:30PM-06:00PM
Carmen Lamas

In this course we will read works that situate the Latinx experience in its Americas context. Such genres as the memoir, speculative fiction, romance, YA, graphic novels, historical fiction and poetry will be read. Issues such as border crossing, immigration, and deportation will serve to approach and query Latinidad in/from its many historical, geographic, generic, aesthetic, and political manifestations. We will locate these works in the wider debates regarding literature, language, departmental/field placement, and the interdisciplinary nature of Latinx studies. No prior experience reading Latinx literature is necessary. Fourth-years welcome with permission. All readings, writings, and discussions are in English.

ENGL 5580 - Material Culture: Theories and Methods

R 05:00PM-07:30PM
Lisa Goff“Material culture” is the stuff of everyday life: landscapes and street corners, skyscrapers and log cabins, umbrellas and dining room tables and Picassos and Fitbits. Every thing in our lives, those we choose and those that are thrust upon us, conveys meaning—many meanings, in fact, from the intentions of the creator to the reception (and sometimes the subversion) of the consumer. Interpreting objects, buildings, and places provides insight into the values and beliefs of societies and cultures past and present. In this course we will study theories of material culture, many of which now intersect with literary criticism, from a variety of scholarly disciplines including anthropology, historical archaeology, art history, geography, environmental humanities, American Studies, and literary studies. And we will apply those theories to texts and artifacts of all kinds, from novels and short stories to movies, photographs, historic sites, visual art and culture, fashion and clothing, landscapes, and more. We will read theorists familiar to students of literature, such as thing theorist Bill Brown, but also folklorist Henry Glassie; archaeologist James Deetz; anthropologist Elizabeth Chin, and political theorist Jane Bennett. The class will prepare you to interpret things in ways that illuminate texts, and to read texts in ways that reveal and cultivate the meanings of things.

ENGL 5580 - Intro to Textual Criticism & Scholarly Editing

F 09:30AM-12:00PM
David Vander Meulen

This course in textual criticism deals with some of the fundamental problems of literary study:

● If a work exists in multiple forms and with different wording, what constitutes "the text"?● How are such judgments made and standards determined?● How are verbal works as intellectual abstractions affected by the physical forms in which they are transmitted?● If one is faced with the prospect of editing a work, how does one go about it?● How does one choose an edition for use in the classroom?● What difference does this all make?

The course will deal with such concerns and will include:

● A short survey of analytical bibliography and the solution of practical problems as they apply to literary texts.● Study of the transmission of texts in different periods.● Consideration of theories and techniques of editing literary and non-literary texts of different genres, and of both published and unpublished materials.

The course will build to the preparation of a scholarly edition by each student. The class on books as physical objects, ENGL 5810, provides helpful background but is not a prerequisite.

*This course satisfies the Graduate English requirement for the history of criticism or literary theory.*

ENCW 7310 - MFA Poetry Workshop

M 02:00PM-04:30PM
Rita Dove

In this graduate-level workshop, designed for MFA poets in the first two years of the program, students will continue developing their own writing practices while exploring other compositional and critical techniques. We’ll devote most class sessions to reviewing peer-generated poetry, but we’ll also discuss published works by established writers and other aspects of the creative process. In addition, we will examine what it means to “manage” a writer’s life, with particular emphasis on writing routines as well as exploring ways to probe, massage and coax poems into revealing their secrets. Students should be prepared to participate energetically in group critique sessions in addition to polishing their own writing. All students will be required to complete one “wild card” assignment; both first and second-year MFA students will assemble a portfolio of poetry at semester's end.

ENCW 7610 - MFA Fiction Workshop

M 02:00PM-04:30PM
Jesse Ball

This advanced workshop is designed for first- and second-year graduate students in the Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction program.  Enrollment is by instructor permission only. 

ENGL 5060 - The Sonnet Revised & Revisited

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Clare Kinney

“A chamber of sudden change”; “a meeting place of image and voice”; “a game with mortal stakes”; “the collision of music, desire and argument”: these are some of the ways that poets and critics have described the sonnet. Starting with the Petrarchan experiments of Renaissance Europe and extending our reach through the Romantics and the modernists to Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Kiki Petrosino, Terrance Hayes, and others, we will consider the persistence and the many metamorphoses of the form. Sonnet writers construct a “a moment’s monument” for religious, political, philosophical and meta-poetical purposes as well as to anatomize desire, and when they present sonnets in sequence they make lyric do something of the work of narrative. Every time a sonnet is written, its author becomes part of a very long literary conversation and may make that intervention the occasion to set thought and feeling in a new dialogue, to reconsider “the contradictory impulses of being in the world,” to talk back to tradition, to make the dead speak again, to re-make and re-break the rules of form. Exploring the history, poetics (and the race and gender politics) of this tenacious short form, we will consider the craftiness of craft and the particular power of “bound language.” In addition to addressing a wide selection of sonnets written from the 16th century to yesterday, we will also read critical writings on the sonnet by a variety of scholars and poets.

Requirements: lively participation in discussion; a series of discussion board responses to readings, one 6-7 page paper; a presentation on a contemporary sonnet of your own choice; a substantial final project (critical or hybrid creative-critical).

This course can satisfy the pre-1700 requirement for PhD, MA and undergraduate students: contact instructor for more information.

ENGL 5190 - The Bible

W 10:00AM-12:30PM
Stephen Cushman

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through selections from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, from Genesis to Revelation, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the Bible; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible needed or assumed.

ENGL 5500 - Milton & Whitman 

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Mark Edmundson

We’ll read with care and imagination what are perhaps the two greatest long poems in English, John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Both are works of palpable genius, but of very different kinds. Milton’s poem is committed to hierarchy, order and degree. In his cosmos, justified subordination and command are the highest ideals. (Though he is constantly challenging them.) His world at its best is firmly, yet flexibly ordered. He is a brilliant exemplar of true conservatism. Whitman is much different. “Unscrew the locks from the doors / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jams,” Walt chants. Whitman wants to dissolve all needless boundaries in the interest of perfect democratic equality. He wants to undo the barriers between old and young, rich and poor, women and men. And he does so, at least imaginatively, in “Song of Myself.” We’ll read the poems for what they are in themselves. But we’ll also consider them as brilliant exemplars of the progressive mind and its conservative counterpart. Students may be surprised as to where their allegiances lie. With any luck, we’ll all find ourselves, in the words of Wallace Stevens, “more truly and more strange.” A mid-term paper, a final essay, and some short writing assignments.

ENGL 5510 - Introduction to Old Norse

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM
Stephen Hopkins

This course provides an introduction to the language and literature of medieval Iceland (also called Old Norse or Old Icelandic, roughly 800-1400 CE), and the goal is to arrive at a sound reading knowledge of the Old Norse language. Drawing upon Byock’s textbook, Viking Language, the first half of the semester focuses on internalizing the basics of Old Norse grammar and vocabulary. While acquiring these rudimentary linguistic skills, we will practice translating bits of prose and poetry (The Prose Edda, Egils Saga, et al.)  as supplied in the textbook. After midterms, we will translate The Tale of Thorsteinn Staff-Struck. The course will also include secondary readings to orient us towards Old Norse genres, contexts, and critical/theoretical approaches prevalent in the field today, with an emphasis on the history of the conversion and the importation of writing technologies (i.e., basic paleography). 

ENGL 5530 - The Literature of British Abolition c. 1750-1810

T 03:30PM-06:00PM
Michael Suarez

How did Great Britain come to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and what roles did literature play in enlightening readers to the barbarities of this human traffic? Reading works such as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, and a variety of poems, both canonical and from relatively unknown voices, we will attempt to immerse ourselves in the literature of British abolition. Juxtaposing such writings with visual materials (viz., the slave ship Brooks), abolitionist political pamphlets, and letters in the C18 public press will give greater depth to our discussions. Finally, we will read Caryl Phillips’ novel Cambridge and reflect on how a literature of abolition might function in our own time.

This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 5559 - TASTE: Textual, Accessible, Sustainable, Teachable, Experimental 

TR 9:30AM-10:45AM
Alison Booth

This seminar is open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students in any humanities area or major. No prior experience in digital studies or coding is expected; the tech-adverse need not fear. Our focus is textual studies of post-1800 literature in English. Students may design their coursework to fulfill the course requirement “from 1700 to 1900,” while some of our texts will be post-1900. TASTE fulfills an elective for the graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities (DH), but the course will be accessible or teachable to anyone who likes to read or edit closely and who is curious to experiment. Sustainable, like accessible, has several meanings: in the environment as well as in DH (will it last?). Some literature is sustained (canonical) because taste (then or now) tells us to reread it and help make it more accessible. Something that we cannot dispute (personal taste) is deeply political and changeable.

With a cue from our acronym, we will read selected sources about taste: as aesthetic concept; as class and gender code; as racial/ethnographic/international divide; as connection between the body and cultural history; as related to property/propriety of sexuality. Among our aims is to cultivate our taste for written descriptions of interior decoration, fashion, food and dining, as well as people, buildings, and landscapes. Readings will include Jane Austen’s Persuasion; Elizabeth Gaskell’s novella Cousin Phillis; selected poetry from different contexts (prospects; country houses; beloveds), including African American and from former British colonies; short stories (some classics like Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” Carver’s “Cathedral”); a unit on consumer culture including foodways. One short, one longer essay; frequent short assignments on texts; a class presentation; participation in a joint project on passages in the ~400 analyzed short biographies of women in Alison Booth’s Collective Biographies of Women as they reveal biographers’ evaluations of historic women related to taste.

Texts have not been ordered at the bookstore; part of our project will be identifying and working with library and online sources and comparing editions.

ENGL 5559 - Latinx Literature & the Americas

M 03:30PM-06:00PM
Carmen Lamas

In this course we will read works that situate the Latinx experience in its Americas context. Such genres as the memoir, speculative fiction, romance, YA, graphic novels, historical fiction and poetry will be read. Issues such as border crossing, immigration, and deportation will serve to approach and query Latinidad in/from its many historical, geographic, generic, aesthetic, and political manifestations. We will locate these works in the wider debates regarding literature, language, departmental/field placement, and the interdisciplinary nature of Latinx studies. No prior experience reading Latinx literature is necessary. Fourth-years welcome with permission. All readings, writings, and discussions are in English.

ENGL 5580 - Material Culture: Theories and Methods

R 05:00PM-07:30PM
Lisa Goff

“Material culture” is the stuff of everyday life: landscapes and street corners, skyscrapers and log cabins, umbrellas and dining room tables and Picassos and Fitbits. Every thing in our lives, those we choose and those that are thrust upon us, conveys meaning—many meanings, in fact, from the intentions of the creator to the reception (and sometimes the subversion) of the consumer. Interpreting objects, buildings, and places provides insight into the values and beliefs of societies and cultures past and present. In this course we will study theories of material culture, many of which now intersect with literary criticism, from a variety of scholarly disciplines including anthropology, historical archaeology, art history, geography, environmental humanities, American Studies, and literary studies. And we will apply those theories to texts and artifacts of all kinds, from novels and short stories to movies, photographs, historic sites, visual art and culture, fashion and clothing, landscapes, and more. We will read theorists familiar to students of literature, such as thing theorist Bill Brown, but also folklorist Henry Glassie; archaeologist James Deetz; anthropologist Elizabeth Chin, and political theorist Jane Bennett. The class will prepare you to interpret things in ways that illuminate texts, and to read texts in ways that reveal and cultivate the meanings of things.

ENGL 5580 - Intro to Textual Criticism & Scholarly Editing

F 09:30AM-12:00PM
David Vander Meulen

This course in textual criticism deals with some of the fundamental problems of literary study:

● If a work exists in multiple forms and with different wording, what constitutes "the text"?

● How are such judgments made and standards determined?

● How are verbal works as intellectual abstractions affected by the physical forms in which they are transmitted?

● If one is faced with the prospect of editing a work, how does one go about it?

● How does one choose an edition for use in the classroom?

● What difference does this all make?

The course will deal with such concerns and will include:

● A short survey of analytical bibliography and the solution of practical problems as they apply to literary texts.

● Study of the transmission of texts in different periods.

● Consideration of theories and techniques of editing literary and non-literary texts of different genres, and of both published and unpublished materials.

The course will build to the preparation of a scholarly edition by each student. The class on books as physical objects, ENGL 5810, provides helpful background but is not a prerequisite.

*This course satisfies the Graduate English requirement for the history of criticism or literary theory.*

ENGL 8005 - Intro to Environmental Humanities

TR 09:30AM-10:45AM
Adrienne Ghaly

How do the arts and the humanities contribute to conversations about the environment and the fate of our planet? How are they responding to the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, the geological age in which humans (some more than others) shape Earth systems? This course introduces the questions, methods, and arguments that organize work in the environmental humanities (EH). The seminar’s primary objective to is to advance graduate student capacities to use skills, knowledges, tools, and archives of the humanities to advance pluralist, integrated understandings of environmental issues. In support of that purpose, the seminar develops critical reflection on conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions in EH about disciplinarity, collaboration, innovation, and public engagement. The course materials draw from literary and cultural studies, philosophy, history, anthropology, and religion. This graduate seminar is open to MA and PhD students from any discipline, including the sciences and social sciences. 

This class is collaborative by design, with guest speakers from across UVA presenting over the course of the semester. It also fulfills one of the requirements for the graduate certificate in Environmental Humanities (info can be found here).  

ENGL 8262 - Edmund Spenser in Faery Land

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Elizabeth Fowler

The extreme art of the settler-colonial frontier—stringent, searching, terrifying, ambitious, violent, feminist, fantastic, surreal, comic—Spenser's poetry and prose, almost all written in Ireland, has provoked much of the best work by early modernists over the last three decades. We'll attempt immersive reading, make forays into the work of the in-progress Oxford Spenser edition, and grapple with problems poetic, editorial, theoretical, ecological, aesthetic, moral, historical, and jurisprudential. Spenser is soaked in Malory, Chaucer, Vergil, Homer, Aristotle—and English-language authors in all the ensuing centuries are soaked in him, Shakespeare to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Yet where else can you get a dominant female knight, an elusive queen of faerie, queer sex scenes of many variations, a dragon who vomits books, joyous rivers in hats getting married, the invention of the words “self” and “emotion,” cannibals singing Petrarchan blazons, and a sex-positive, anatomically correct Mound of Venus? (BTW, Milton says Spenser is a better teacher than Aquinas, and was he ever wrong?) Our goals will be to collaborate on a working sense of Spenser’s poetry and its bibliography, to get good at immersion in lots of material while keeping what’s important to you above the waterline, to become articulate about poetry and able to move around within it while developing interesting trains of thought, and to hone all those skills both in seminar conversation and in your prose.

This course fulfills the pre-1700 requirement.

ENGL 8500 - Oceanic Connections: Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds

T 03:30PM-06:00PM
Debjani Ganguly

The course will explore the emergence of the ‘ocean’ as a powerful rubric in global and hemispheric literary studies. The fluidity of the ocean as against terrestrial borders gives new meaning to categories like empire, diaspora, postcolonial, slave, settler, and indentured labor.

Through novels, philosophical tracts, and theories of history, we will study the import of the transatlantic slave trade and its traumatic entanglement with global histories of modern maritime colonialism including those of Indian Ocean worlds. Specifically, we will trace connections across the Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds through the novels of Barry Unsworth, Fred D’Aguiar, and Amitav Ghosh, and the narrative non-fiction of Paul Gilroy. The course will include excerpts from the work of Edouard Glissant, the famous exponent of Caribbean Creolite, from an anthology of black narratives that emerged during the transatlantic slave trade, and from Ian Baucom’s philosophical history of the Zong massacre of 1781.

Primary Texts

Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

Fred D’Aguiar, Feeding the Ghosts

Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic

Readings available on Canvas

Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic  

Vincent Caretta ed. Unchained Voices 

ENGL 8500 - Black Women's Rhetorics

T 02:00PM-04:30PM
Tamika Carey

This seminar explores Black women’s rhetorical practices as a critical tradition. Through an interdisciplinary lens grounded in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies scholarship and informed by work in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and literary criticism, we will work to identify the techne, the praxis, and the implications of Black women’s choice to use written, visual, and aural strategies to shape and reshape themselves and their worlds. By necessity, we will consider questions such as: how do Black women define and name conditions of their subjectivity and the constraints to their public participation and livelihood? What is the connection between Black feminist thought and Black women’s literacies? Which genres, arguments, and strategies do they rely upon to address personal or sociopolitical concerns? And what might Black feminist/womanist rhetorical criticism or pedagogy involve? Ideally, this work will enable us to outline how Black women’s rhetorics operate as interpretive, interventionist, and instructional resources. Our readings will involve a combination of primary texts and critical writings. The scholars and public intellectuals we are likely to engage include: Jacqueline Jones Royster, Marcyliena Morgan, Elaine Richardson, Gwendolyn Pough, Carmen Kynard, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Beverly Guy Sheftall, Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper, and Moya Bailey. Assignments may include: a discussion leading and course presentation activity, short weekly writing assignments, a brief annotated bibliography, and a seminar-length essay.

ENGL 8540 - Race-Making and Romanticism

R 03:30PM-06:00PM
Taylor Schey

This course explores how British literature of the Romantic era (1780s – 1820s) registers and participates in processes of race-making that have shaped the modern world. Taking our cue from theoretical readings in Black studies, we’ll investigate how the racial order of chattel slavery was insidiously strengthened during the historical period in which its economic infrastructure began to be dismantled. While we’ll study some poems and novels that directly address the transatlantic slave trade and plantation slavery (e.g. abolitionist poetry; The Woman of Colour; Mansfield Park) and a couple that reflect the popularization of racial science (e.g. Frankenstein), we’ll be especially interested in interrogating how the development of seemingly unrelated political movements (e.g. white feminism; popular radicalism), literary conventions (e.g. the ballad revival; the aesthetics of the sublime, beautiful, and picturesque), and Romantic ideals (e.g. community, liberty, the power of poetry, the human) are connected to the broader consolidation of antiblackness and white-supremacist logics in the nineteenth century. This seminar satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement. It also introduces students to an influential tradition of theoretical work in Black studies.

Authors include Jane Austen, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hannah More, Mary Robinson, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Southey, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth; theorists include Rizvana Bradley, Frantz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, bell hooks, Christina Sharpe, Hortense Spillers, Rei Terada, Alexander Weheliye, Frank Wilderson, and Sylvia Wynter.

ENGL 8560 - Poetry in a Global Age

MW 03:30PM-04:45PM
Jahan Ramazani

How does poetry articulate and respond to the globalizing processes that accelerate in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? In this seminar, we consider modern and contemporary poetry in English in relation to transnational, global, world literary, and postcolonial theory and history. Issues to be explored include the historical memory of colonization and enslavement, global challenges such as war and the climate crisis, and transformations of world-traveling poetic forms and strategies. We closely read the vibrant anglophone poetries of India, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, Ireland, Black and Asian Britain, and diasporic and Indigenous America, which bring new worlds, new idioms, and new literary possibilities into English. Postcolonial writers enrich poetry in English by hybridizing local traditions with the poetic inheritances of the global North. Forged in response to an increasingly globalized world, the innovations of transnational modernist writers provide crucial tools that the poets of the global South repurpose. Featured writers include postcolonial poets such as Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Lorna Goodison, NourbeSe Philip, A. K. Ramanujan, Okot p’Bitek, Christopher Okigbo, and Daljit Nagra, and modernists like T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Claude McKay.

ENGL 8560 - Caribbean Sci-Fi and Fantasy

M 05:00PM-07:30PM
Njelle Hamilton

Superheroes, space operas, time travel, futuristic tech — the stuff of dreams and the subject of countless popular literary and cultural works over the past century. Far too long featuring mainly white male heroes and US or European settings, sci-fi and fantasy (SF/F) have become increasingly diverse in recent years, even as reframed definitions open up archives of previously overlooked black and brown genre writing from across the globe. Still, the Caribbean is often ignored, or imagined either as a rustic beach or a technological backwater. In this seminar, however, you will encounter authors and auteurs (Indiana, Hopkinson, Ross, Diaz, et al) from the English-, Spanish- and French-speaking Caribbean working at the cutting edge of SF/F, and discover novels and stories that center Caribbean settings, peoples, and culture, even as they expand the definition of genre. We’ll read these novels and stories alongside important Caribbean and SF theory and criticism (expect roughly 300-500pp/wk of reading) to generate critical discussion around the limits of mainstream terms and discourses in SFF and formulate region-specific language and frameworks.

In addition to exposing you to Caribbean literary studies, critical debates and methods, this course encourages you to deepen as well as experiment with modes of academic scholarship. In tandem with the ways these Caribbean SFF texts interrogate form and narrative—especially in response to colonization and the hegemony of Western epistemologies—I’ll challenge/inspire you to think about un-disciplining academic writing. What projects might you imagine that match the level of #joysparking that reading these novels bring you, and that demonstrate Caribbean study as praxis? For whom will you write? What platforms, technologies and formats do those readers/listeners/thinkers frequent? How can scholarly writing (or other formats of disseminating research) become an act of radical speculation in its own right?

ENGL 8596 - Form and Theory of Poetry: What is Lyric? 

W 02:00PM-04:30PM
Sumita Chakraborty

Lyric poem, lyric voice, lyric speaker, lyric reading: these and other similar terms share one strange, variously theorized, and often-contested word at their core. This course will explore a range of theories of the lyric from Aristotle and Horace to more contemporary figures like Gloria Anzaldúa, Édouard Glissant, and the scholars who make up the recent turn to “New Lyric Studies.” We will also explore how poetic schools that critique the lyric—such as conceptual poetry and language poetry—define and contest it. MA, MFA, and PhD students are all most welcome, as the assignments for this course will include both creative and critical options.

ENGL 8598 - Form and Theory of Fiction: The Short Story 

T 02:00PM-04:30PM
Kevin Moffett

A foray into the short story as a discrete form, its constraints and possibilities. We’ll consider how story writers distill time and compress language to generate volatility and produce resonant echoes in a confined space. We’ll discuss Poe’s single effect and other apparent truisms and entertain, examine, revise, and perhaps debunk them. We’ll read minimalists, maximalists, and mediumalists, the formulaic and the formally inventive. Texts will be chosen with the aim of showing the plasticity and playfulness of the form: possibly Chekhov, Angela Carter, Barthelme, Murakami, Edward P. Jones, Joy Williams. From week to week students will read and write briskly in a variety of modes, culminating in a story project in the second half of the semester.

ENGL 8900 - Writing Pedagogy Seminar

T 06:00PM-08:30PM
Heidi Nobles

ENGL 8900 - Writing Pedagogy Seminar

W 10:00AM-12:30PM
Steph Ceraso

ENGL 8900 - Writing Pedagogy Seminar

Jeb Livingood

ENGL 9580 - Queer Theory

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Mrinalini Chakravorty

This graduate course is a survey of queer studies as a discipline. It situates the emergence of sexuality as an analytic of study for the humanities through a survey of influential foundational texts of the field. The course also engages the most important contemporary debates that is shaping our understanding of the history of sexuality.

ENGL 9995 - Dissertation Seminar

M 09:30AM-12:00PM
Bruce Holsinger

ENCW 5310-001: Advanced Poetry Writing II - Poets' Memoirs

ENCW 7310-001: MFA Poetry Workshop

ENCW 7610-001: MFA Fiction Workshop