ENGL 101     Literature and Composition  (4)

This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.

ENGL 200     Representative Masterpieces  (4)

An examination of several masterpieces of Western literature, including Homer's Iliad and Dante's Divine Comedy. Some sections are writing-intensive. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 203     Roots of the English Literary Tradition  (4)

An examination of several key texts of the classical and late-classical periods that provide critical reference-points for the English literary tradition. Texts will be read with an eye to how they shape writerly efforts in the subsequent centuries, and the class will ask students to think carefully about the status of the classical world as an element of literary value, both past and present. Texts (in translation) might include the dramatic tradition of Sophocles and Aeschylus, the poetry of Ovid, Lucretius, Statius, the writing of Boethius, Apuleius, Boccacio, Augustine, and more. Some sections are writing-intensive.

ENGL 207     Women in Literature  (4)

A consideration of the role of women in literature. Topics include Gothic fiction, nineteenth and twentieth century women writers, and women in fiction. Drawing on authors of both genders, the course considers gender relations, the historic role of women, the special challenges that have faced women writers, and the role of women in fiction. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 210     Studies in Poetry  (4)

An examination of poems from British and American literature selected by the instructor. Writing-intensive some semesters. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 211     Studies in Fiction  (4)

An examination of novels and short fiction from British and American literature selected by the instructor. Writing-intensive some semesters. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 212     Studies in Literature  (4)

A course which examines texts in various genres and which may focus on a particular theme chosen by the instructor. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 215     Studies in Drama  (4)

An introduction to drama, with an emphasis on history, form, and adaptation. Different sections may focus on such topics as the influence of classical forms on later playwrights, on genre, or on plays as a form of social commentary. Writing intensive some semesters. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 216     Studies in Literature: American Literary Journalism  (4)

Students examine, compare, and analyze the journalistic and literary writings of 19th and 20th century American writers such as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Fanny Fern, Ernest Hemingway, and Katherine Anne Porter. They also study 20th century "New Journalism" (Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Mailer) and conclude with an examination of contemporary journalism, creative non-fiction, personal essays, and multi-media journalism. Students are required to analyze literary and journalistic writing with an eye towards discerning the difference between news writing, editorials, and literary journalism. They write journalistic pieces as well as analytical essays. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 218     Studies in Literature: Literature and Religion  (4)

Study of a broad range of imaginative writings, from ancient to modern, concerned with the human search for God, transcendence, and ultimate meaning. The specific focus of this course and the readings will vary from year to year. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 221     The Literature of Memoir  (4)

Students examine the memoirs of writers such as Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, Tobias Wolff, Joan Didion, Patti Smith, J. Drew Lanham, Garrett Hongo, Jesmyn Ward, Maggie Nelson, Stephanie Danler, and Kiese Laymon. Students analyze the techniques of memoir with an eye towards addressing the difference between memoir and autobiography, engaging the matter of “truth” in memoir, and discerning the influence of literary traditions as well as regional, racial, ethnic, and gendered histories within an author’s articulation of self. Students write several short memoir pieces as well as analytical essays. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 224     Slavery and Race in the American Literary Imagination  (4)

Slavery and its legacy, systemic racism, have been subjects for American writers, for more than two centuries. Revealing a yawning gap between American ideals and practices, they continue to tell us something vital about our country. This course examines representations of slavery and racism in major texts such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, and I Can’t Think About the Trees Without the Blood by Tiana Clark. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 227     Studies in Speculative Fiction  (4)

Speculative fiction is a genre that asks “what if,” allowing us to imagine alternative social arrangements while holding up a mirror to our own assumptions about culture and human identity. The nationality and time period of speculative fiction examined in this course may vary based on the instructor. In different semesters, this class may focus on such topics as the origin and development of science fiction, featuring such writers as Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells; climate speculative fiction (Richard Powers), feminist speculative fiction (Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin), or Afrofuturism (Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin). Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 251     History of the English Language(s)  (4)

A survey of the development of the English language from its Indo-European roots to its present variations with attention to both historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. The course explores the concept of language, the early origins of English, patterns of pronunciation and spelling, linguistic diversity through time, and modern dialectal variation. As well, it explores political, economic, and cultural factors that have helped to determine the character of the multiple forms of the language that are spoken today. Students engage in some close study of earlier forms of English. Prerequisite: One course with attribute G1 including AP or IB credit.

ENGL 301     Old English Language and Literature  (4)

This course is an introduction to Old English, the language spoken in (what would become) England between the 5th – 11th centuries. Students will learn pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar as they read a variety of works written in Old English, both prose (including selections from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and verse (including "Cædmon's Hymn," "The Dream of the Rood," "The Wanderer," "The Battle of Maldon," and selections from Beowulf). Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 316     The Novel in the Global Age  (4)

This course explores the contemporary Anglophone novel since 1989, a period that coincides with the increased pace of globalization. Written largely from transnational perspectives that defy traditional national boundaries, the novels in this course share a common concern with capturing global experience and analyzing the cultural and economic impact of globalization. Potential readings include works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole, Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, and Ruth Ozeki. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 320     Poetry, Nature, and Contemplation  (4)

This course approaches the reading and writing of poems as contemplative practices through a diverse selection of poetry with environmental themes, combined with daily meditation in and outside of class, and assigned journals and other writing. In doing so, it explores the relationship of the self to its surroundings and the role of the written word in defining that relationship. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 330     The Life and Literature of Tennessee Williams  (4)

A study of the major dramatic works of Tennessee Williams, as well as his poetry and fiction. The course also examines Williams' life and his impact on twentieth-century American literature and theatre. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 331     Melville and his World  (4)

A course centered upon one of the most ambitious and challenging novels ever composed in English, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) by Herman Melville. But readings range well beyond that text, attempting to place it in several of its contexts: that of Melville’s prior and subsequent career (possible titles include Typee, Clarel, and Billy Budd ), his intellectual milieu (works by contemporaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne), and the nautical and scientific literature available to Melville as he wrote. Much more than a fish story, Moby-Dick makes claims about literary history, politics, philosophy, religion, and—to use a term available to us though not to Melville—ecology. This course tries to engage as many of those claims as possible. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 338     Border Fictions: Literature of the U.S.-Mexico Border  (4)

This course focuses on literary representations--in fiction, nonfiction and poetry--of the experience and meaning of the imaginary line that divides the United States and Mexico. Among the themes to be discussed are the experience of border-crossing (in both directions), the possibility or impossibility of assimilating to life across the border, and especially the desire that draws migrants toward el otro lado (the other side). Writers to be discussed may include Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Katherine Ann Porter, Americo Paredes, Sandra Cisneros, Cormac McCarthy, Oscar Casares, and Luis Alberto Urrea. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 347     Old English Literature  (4)

A study of literature written in Old English (700-1100), taught in translation. This course includes works of both poetry and prose, as well as extensive investigation of early medieval Britain’s history, context, and culture. Works potentially studied include Beowulf, religious and historical texts (The Dream of the Rood, The Battle of Maldon, The Passion of King Edmund, and Judith), and Old English elegies (The Wanderer and The Seafarer), as well as Norse sagas and early Irish literature. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 348     Middle English Literature  (4)

A study of literature written in Middle English (1100-1500), including instruction in the reading and pronunciation of Middle English. The course thematically examines the explosion of literature in late medieval England, which includes Geoffrey Chaucer, the Pearl Poet, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, William Langland, and Thomas Malory. The course also explores the history and context of late medieval Britain, including its relationship to literature of the Continent. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 349     Special Topics  (4)

Though its content will vary from semester to semester, this class always focuses on a special topic in English, Anglophone, or American literature not fully covered in existing courses. Examples might include courses on a single author, a literary movement or tradition, a genre, or a theme. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic differs. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 352     Chaucer  (4)

A study of the Canterbury Tales and other poems by Chaucer. A term paper is usually expected. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 353     English Drama to 1642  (4)

A study of drama from the fifteenth century to the English Civil War, excluding works by Shakespeare but typically including tragedies by Thomas Kyd, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster, as well as comedies by Ben Jonson, Mary Wroth, and Francis Beaumont. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 354     Early Women's Voices  (4)

A study of women’s literature before 1800, this course examines how feminine voices were presented and heard in their historical contexts. Readings for the class are drawn from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, and ask students to think through the conditions of feminine authorship and identity in the pre-modern period. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 356     Shakespeare Seminar  (4)

This course explores a selection of Shakespeare's plays through a critical framework chosen by the instructor. These approaches may include a focus on specific genres, the investigation of common themes, or the examination of performance tradition and cinematic adaptation. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 357     Shakespeare I  (4)

A study of several plays written before 1600. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 358     Shakespeare II  (4)

A study of several plays after 1600. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 359     Renaissance Literature I  (4)

A study of the major sixteenth-century genres, with emphasis on sources, developments, and defining concerns. Readings include the sonnets of Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare; the mythological verse narratives of Marlowe and Shakespeare; the pastoral poems of Spenser; and Books I and III of Spenser's Faerie Queene. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 360     Renaissance Literature II  (4)

A study of the major seventeenth-century poets, concentrating on such poets' redefinitions of genre, mode, and source. Readings emphasize works by Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Herrick, Milton, and Marvell. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 362     Milton  (4)

A study of Milton's poetry and prose in the context of religious and political upheavals in mid-seventeenth-century England. Particular emphasis is on Lycidas and Paradise Lost. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 365     The Restoration and Eighteenth Century  (4)

This course examines major authors of the period from 1680 to 1800, including Behn, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Gay, Johnson, Gray, Goldsmith, and Burns. Topics may include Restoration cultures and theater, neoclassicism, satire, and sensibility. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 367     Inventing the British Novel  (4)

The British eighteenth-century novel was at heart experimental, riffing on but also departing from established literary and popular forms. This reading- and writing-intensive survey includes such authors as Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Lawrence Sterne, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen, inviting us to explore the early British novel in all its multifarious inventiveness. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 368     Fictions of Empire  (4)

From the rise of the British Empire to its decline and fall, this course considers literary responses to the colonial experience, ranging from narratives of imperial adventurers, travelers, and administrators to contemporary responses to and reflections on the imperial era. The course analyzes how Britain's territorial and ideological expansion abroad shaped both British and colonial world views as well as the form and content of literary expression. Potential readings include works by Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, and Chinua Achebe. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 369     Authorship and Authority in 18th Century Britain  (4)

This course explores some of the radical shifts that occurred in English literature during the late eighteenth century. These developments involved not only changes in style, subject matter, and poetic theory, but also changes in the role of the author and the social purpose of writing. Both “major” and “minor” authors, male and female, are read as part of a complex revolution in cultural taste and literary practice. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 370     British Romanticism: the Early 19th Century  (4)

A study of the poetry and poetic theory of British romanticism. Included is an examination of such writers as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 371     Blake  (4)

A study of the poetry and designs of William Blake in the context of his revolutionary era. Selected readings from Milton and the Bible will be assigned as essential background; prior knowledge of these sources is helpful but not required. Digital resources will aid in our study of the visual art, and students will read and report on selected critical works. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 373     Victorian Poetry and Prose  (4)

A survey of British poetry and non-fiction prose of the Victorian era (1837 to 1901). Texts include poetry by Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Hopkins, and Hardy, as well as prose by Carlyle, Darwin, Arnold, Ruskin, Morris, and Wilde. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 374     The Victorian Novel  (4)

A study of several major Victorian authors, including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 377     American Literature, Beginnings to 1855  (4)

Many people know one sentence from early American literature: Puritan leader John Winthrop’s 1630 claim that “we shall be as a City on a Hill.” Often misinterpreted as a promise of inevitable national success, these words were actually a warning that America’s redemptive promises carried the risk of disastrous and conspicuous failure. This course traces the efforts of English-language writers to respond to both the promises and the failures of the tiny colonial settlements that became the United States. Authors studied include Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 378     American Literature from 1850-1900  (4)

Like Abraham Lincoln’s announcement of “a new birth of freedom” in the Gettysburg Address, the American literature covered in English 378 struggles to articulate, then problematize, American freedom in the era surrounding the Civil War and emancipation. What is freedom? To whom does it extend? What are its blessings and its costs? Nobody has ever thought more profoundly about these issues than the American writers who emerged before, during, and after the war America fought with itself: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 379     Origins and Development of the American Novel: 1790 to 1920  (4)

“In the four quarters of the globe,” sneered the English critic Sidney Smith in 1820, “who reads an American book?” This course introduces the U.S. writers who answered Smith’s challenge, such as Hannah Webster Foster, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, Charles W. Chesnutt, Willa Cather, and Theodore Dreiser. They invented a distinctively American novel and in the process produced masterpieces that are still recognized in all four quarters of the globe. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 380     Emily Dickinson  (4)

A study of one of the most important American poets, whose tight, elliptical lyrics inspired American poets for the next hundred years. This course examines in detail Dickinson's career, sometimes in relation to her poetic contemporaries, and many of the nearly 1800 poems she is known to have written. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 381     Making Nothing Happen: Modern and Contemporary British and Irish Poetry  (4)

Including poets from Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats to Carol Ann Duffy and Bernardine Evaristo, this course is a romp through the variety of forms, styles, and questions that shaped the modern lyric in England and Ireland. Arising amid and out of global wars, cosmopolitan cultural movements, changing political and national imaginaries, these texts are unpredictable, innovative, stubborn, wry, and complex. W.H. Auden claimed in a poem that “poetry makes nothing happen,” but reading these poets will give you plenty to think about. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 382     British Fiction From “On or about December 1910”  (4)

"On or about December 1910" human character changed,” Virginia Woolf wrote, and we will consider what truth might have been in her cheeky claim. Starting about twenty-five years before this supposed inflection point (Conrad, Wilde) and continuing about twenty-five years after it (Bowen, Anand), this course focuses on the British aspect of the complex global movement known as literary modernism: its ambivalences, false starts, poses, challenges, habits, and experiments. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 383     British Fiction Right Now  (4)

A consideration of British fiction from the last half-century, this course will put you into the most current currents of literary expression. There is no canon yet in this course; instead, you will be invited to make and test bold claims about canonicity and how literary value is accorded and revised. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 384     Fantasy Island: Visions of England in Modern and Contemporary Brit Lit  (4)

This course introduces students to modern British poetry, fiction, and drama, starting with the fin de siècle, continuing through high modernism and its mid-century detractors, and reaching to postmodernism. Using and breaking a variety of familiar forms, tropes, and conventions, the writers of this period work to understand and represent the practice of modern warfare, the disintegration of the British Empire, the rise of the English welfare state, and the slippery concept of "Britishness" itself. The survey explores these historical and cultural contexts, observes the different kinds of critical attention these genres demand, and emphasizes the practice of close reading. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 385     Revivals, Riots, Roots: Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature  (4)

This course introduces students to modern Irish and Northern Irish poetry, fiction, and drama, beginning with Yeats and the last phase of the Celtic Revival and reaching up through the short-lived Celtic Tiger of the Twenty-First Century. These texts are concerned with borders and bequests of all kinds, but class discussions focus primarily on literary responses to high modernism, cultural nationalism and the Irish language, sectarian violence, and the role of the Catholic Church. The survey explores these historical and cultural contexts, observes the different kinds of critical attention these genres demand, and emphasizes the practice of close reading. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 386     Joyce  (4)

A study of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 389     Gothic Literature  (4)

By turns terrifying, melancholy, and bizarre, Gothic literature channels real anxieties in monstrous forms. This course features literature of the mysterious, uncanny, supernatural, and grotesque. The specific focus of the class may vary from year to year (e.g. a special focus on American Gothic fiction, Literature of the Sublime, and so forth). Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 390     Power Plays: Modern and Contemporary Drama  (4)

An exploration of the development of Modern Drama from Ibsen's ground-breaking naturalism to contemporary drama's new variations. The course will emphasize the relationship between the theater and society and issues of performance, as well as close study of the plays themselves. Authors covered are both British and American and may include Wilde, Shaw, Beckett, Williams, Stoppard, and others. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 391     Modern American Poetry  (4)

The origin and development of the modern period in American poetry, concentrating on the work of the major modernist poets: Frost, Pound, Stevens, Williams, and Eliot. The course includes a brief examination of their influence in poems by Berryman, Bishop, Brooks, Hughes, Lowell, Moore, Rich, Roethke, Wilbur, and others. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 392     Modern American Fiction  (4)

A study of fiction by James, Hemingway, Cather, Wright, Faulkner, Ellison, Petry and others. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 393     Faulkner  (4)

The most innovative American novelist of the twentieth century is also the writer we need to make sense of the twenty-first. “The past is never dead,” Faulkner said. “It isn’t even past.” But why isn’t it? Why can’t we, as so many Americans ask, “just move on”? Faulkner’s novels keep asking this plaintive question, his characters yearning for the freedom of the fresh start but caught by a tragic past that doesn’t want to let go. This class focuses on the major novels Faulkner wrote, in blindingly quick succession, between 1929 and 1942, what he later called his “matchless time.”. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 394     Literature of the American South  (4)

A paradox of American literary history is that the South--the poorest and least educated American region, the one beset by the most glaring injustices, the one that seemed to resist modernity most fiercely—produced the most innovative and important American writers of the twentieth century, writers like William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Ernest Gaines. This course focuses most intently on their era, “the Southern renascence,” but examines its origins in the nineteenth century and its echoes in the remarkable Southern writing of contemporaries like Jesmyn Ward, Natasha Trethewey, Janice Ray, and others. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 395     African-American Literature  (4)

A study of the major traditions of African-American writing from the nineteenth century to the present, including Frederick Douglass, Linda Brent, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison, and Rita Dove. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 396     American Environmental Literature  (4)

A study of the American environmental imagination. Readings include both literary fiction and nonfiction. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 397     Contemporary American Fiction  (4)

A study of representative American fiction published after World War II, including work by Thomas Pynchon, Josephine Humphreys, Louise Erdrich, Ernest Gaines, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Stone, and Tim O'Brien. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 398     American Poetry Since World War II  (4)

A study of American poets whose major work was published after World War II, concentrating on Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, Donald Justice, Robert Lowell, Howard Nemerov, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Richard Wilbur, and Mona Van Duyn. Among others, John Berryman, Maxine Kumin, Adrienne Rich, X.J. Kennedy, and Derek Walcott will also be considered. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 399     World Literature in English  (4)

A study of twentieth-century literature written in English from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, concentrating on colonial and post-colonial themes, as well as issues of gender, politics, and nationalism. Possible authors include Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, V. S. Naipaul, and Derek Walcott. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 401     Literary Criticism  (4)

A study of criticism from classical times to post-structuralism and contemporary approaches to literary and cultural analysis, students will read closely and discuss major critical documents in the literary tradition of the West. Emphasis is placed on practical application of critical theory as well as on its history and development. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 402     African American Poetry  (4)

A study of the development of the African American poetic tradition, extending from the eighteenth century to the present. Authors may include Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, Robert Hayden, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Nikki Giovanni, Jay Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Claudia Rankine, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez, Jericho Brown, Marilyn Nelson, Caroline Randall Williams, and Tiana Clark. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.

ENGL 444     Independent Study  (2 or 4)

To meet the needs and particular interests of selected students. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic differs. Prerequisite: Instructor prerequisite override required.

ENGL 451     Honors Seminar  (4)

This course supports students in conceiving and writing an honors thesis. Students explore the research and writing methods required by a thesis, such as creating a project bibliography, reading scholarship critically, identifying a compelling research question, drafting sections, and bringing multiple pieces of writing together into an extended work of scholarship. The writing for this course will culminate in a polished draft of the thesis. Open only to seniors pursuing majors in English. Prerequisite: Instructor prerequisite override required.

ENGL 452     Honors Tutorial  (2)

Graduating seniors only. Permission of the chair of the department is required. Prerequisite: Instructor prerequisite override required.

ENGL 491     Contemporary Latinx Literature  (4)

An introduction to Latinx literary production in the United States from 1999-present. This course will explore the current landscape of Latinx literary production, including: Latinx nationalism and the realist novel, immigrant narratives, the Latinx lyric tradition, metafiction and magical realism, mestizaje, queer Latinidad, ecological refugism, and US border control and detention. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.