Department of English
Department of English

Summer Courses 2025

Session 1 (5/19-6/13)


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ENGL 2599-001: Routes, Writing, Reggae

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 03:30PM-05:45PM
Njelle Hamilton

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 listen closely to Marley’s entire discography to understand the literary devices, musical structures, and social contexts of reggae songs. You will learn to analyze songs, poetry, and film and craft a range of critical and creative responses from album reviews to response (‘diss’) tracks.  You will also 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. (Fulfills: Second Writing Requiring; AIP Discipline).

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ENGL 3010-001: History of English Language

In Person
MTWRF 10:30AM-12:45PM
Stephen Hopkins

This course is part of the Summer Technology Sabbatical: https://summer.virginia.edu/summer-technology-sabbatical

“Tasting HEL: A Language Lab History of the English Language” immerses students in the history of our language, from its origins as a dialect of Proto Indo-European, on through Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English. This journey will help students build up cognitive endurance as we work together to acquire and hone a suite of interdisciplinary skills to become philologists (lovers of language, but also literary linguists)—by tasting each stage of the language and reading them aloud together. We will draw from modern and historical linguistics, literary criticism, book history and paleography, lexicography, and more as we dive deep into each stage of the language to see what made it tick, and what made it different from what we speak now. 

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ENGL 3500-001: Hacking for Humanists

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 10:30AM-12:45PM
Brad Pasanek

This is a course for English majors (and other students) that introduces the basics of computer programming, text analysis, text encoding, and statistics as experimental methodologies that promote new kinds of reading and interpretation. The aim is to move from "computation into criticism." We’ll work, primarily, with a Shakespeare play, poetry by William Blake, and a Jane Austen novel. No prior familiarity with coding or the language R required: we’ll be moving slowly, covering the basics. Advanced Computer Science majors will not be turned away, but they will be required to recite poetry aloud in front of their peers and show an interest in Emma Woodhouse’s misprisions.

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ENWR 2610-001: Writing with Style

In Person
MTWRF 01:00PM-03:15PM
Keith Driver

Develops an understanding of the wide range of stylistic moves in prose writing, their uses, and implications. Students build a rich vocabulary for describing stylistic decisions, imitate and analyze exemplary writing, and discuss each others writing in a workshop setting.

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ENWR 2700-001: News Writing

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 10:30AM-12:45PM
Amykate Sweeney

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ENWR 3760-001: Studies in Cultural Rhetoric: The Cultural Work of Stories

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 01:00PM-03:15PM
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 discursive techniques involved in these processes - concepts and techniques that may 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 may include: a course presentation, a brief analysis activity, and a storywork portfolio.


 

Session 2 (6/16-7/11)

One course session will meet on Saturday 6/28.

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ENGL 2599-003: American Refugees

In Person
MTWRF 10:30AM-12:45PM
Joshua Miller

Despite generations of critique, the national narrative of the US as a land of and for refugees is still frequently retold. However, the history and literature of the past century and a half tells a different story. Many different stories, in fact. The history of migration and immigration turns out to be an ongoing crisis of representation itself. 

This course is an introductory seminar in literary studies with no prerequisites or prior knowledge required. It will provide historical and sociological contexts for understanding the rise of mass immigration and the varied waves of political and cultural responses. If we approach 21st-century US refugee fiction as an ongoing crisis of narrative (how to tell the stories of individuals who adopt a new culture and language of consciousness), it emerges as a rich tradition of literary innovation, subtle social critique, and transracial alliance-building. 

After briefly viewing the historical trajectory of US migrant fiction since the 19th century, we’ll focus on contemporary novels that complicate borders, documentation, rights, community, and language. In reading a wide range of genres, we’ll consider recent narrratives that complicate what the term refugee means, the status of undocumented and stateless people, how borders shape literary narrative, migrant time, and the perils of translation. 

This course can fulfill the College’s AIP discipline and second writing requirements.The course also satisfies the English major prerequisite and counts as one course toward the major.

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ENWR 2520-001: Walking Nature, Writing Nature

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 10:30AM-12:45PM
Cory Shaman

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ENWR 3550-001: Professional Communication in a Digital World

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 01:00PM-03:15PM
Heidi Nobles

In today’s professional world, strong communication isn’t just a bonus—it’s a core skill. In this interactive course, you’ll work with your classmates and professor to practice writing and collaborating in the kinds of situations you’ll encounter in your future career: team updates, client proposals, job applications, and more. Along the way, you’ll learn to write clearly, revise with purpose, and adapt your message to different audiences and platforms. We’ll also explore how generative AI tools (like MS Copilot and ChatGPT) can support your writing process—when to use them, how to use them well, and where your judgment as a communicator matters most. Expect daily hands-on activities, team projects, and a final professional portfolio of your own to take with you beyond the course.

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ENWR 3660-001: Travel Writing

In Person
MTWRF 01:00PM-03:15PM
Kate Stephenson

This course will explore travel writing using a variety of texts, including essays, memoirs, blogs, photo essays, and narratives. We will examine cultural representations of travel as well as the ethical implications of tourism. Students will have the opportunity to write about their own travel experiences, and we will also embark on "local travel" of our own.


 

Session 3 (7/14-8/7)

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ENGL 2599-002: The Vampires We Need

In Person
MTWRF 10:30AM-12:45PM
Charity Fowler

In Our Vampires, Ourselves, Nina Auerbach presents a compelling argument that we, as a culture assume vampires are easy to stereotype and “we all know Dracula,” they are, in fact, not marginalized figures in literature and history but, rather, inherently mutable survivors who are central to history, politics, culture and humanity itself. Her seminal text offers a history of Anglo-American 19th and 20th century culture through the lens of the literary vampire, demonstrating that “every age embraces the vampire it needs, and gets the vampire it deserves.” This course takes this thesis and tests it, using Our Vampires, Ourselves as a framing text, starting with world legend and lore as catalogued by Montague Summers in the 1920s, visiting the poetry of Goethe and the historical vampire craze of the 18th century, journeying through the literary vampires of the 19th century, from Byron to Dracula, tracing the figure’s development through the 20th century, and pushing beyond Auerbach’s work to examine if the thesis holds true in the age of post-Rice vampire figures and 21st century adaptations of older figures like Dracula and Lestat.  Beyond Our Vampires, Ourselves, and relevant folklore anthologies, texts will include, Lord Byron and John Polidori’s Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre, Joseph Le Fanu’s lesbian Carmilla, Stoker’s Dracula, Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, and Smith’s The Vampire Diaries, along with film and television adaptations, where appropriate.
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ENGL 2599-004: The Contemporary Essay

In Person
MTWRF 03:30PM-05:45PM
John Casteen

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.

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ENGL 3559-001: Booms and Busts in US Culture

In Person
MTWRF 01:00PM-03:15PM
Laura Goldblatt

The 2008 financial crisis threatened the health of the world economy and also challenged many tenets of modern economic thought. Taking this crisis as our starting point, this course will examine various representations of market “perturbations”—booms and busts—in news, films, TV shows, music albums, photographs, and other media. We will pair these cultural texts with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian analyses of economic crisis theory. These three competing economic frameworks construct and justify the narratives of capitalist accumulation and dispossession very differently, and we will try to identify the perspectives and assumptions that frame their differing conclusions.
 
Comparing these differing narratives will allow us to ask fundamental questions, such as: what is capitalism, and how does it function? Are there ecological or other limits to economic growth? What notion of freedom is posited by the “free market”? What structures were responsible for various cycles of booms and busts, and how can we understand their social effects through the (intertwined) lenses of class, race, and gender? How is a notion of the public constructed, and what are its limits?
 
The course will close by turning to the recent rise of apocalypse fiction—zombie narratives, pandemics, and mysterious disappearances—to ask whether global capitalism is heading for an ultimate crash, and, if so, what we can imagine coming next.
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ENWR 1510-001: Writing about Science & Tech

In Person
MTWRF 10:30AM-12:45PM
Rhiannon Goad

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ENWR 1510-002: Writing about Culture/Society: Writing in Popular Culture

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 01:00PM-03:15PM
Sarah Richardson

This course, Writing in Popular Culture, focuses on how popular culture influences media and writing. We will look at movies, tv shows, songs, newspaper articles and more to see how events and people are discussed and influence our writing.

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ENWR 2800-001: Public Speaking

Online Synchronous
MTWRF 01:00PM-03:15PM
John Modica

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?

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