Upcoming Course Offerings
Spring 2025 Course Descriptions
Sample Course Offerings - previous semesters
ENG 212 - Topics in Modern American Literature: Dreaming of America (offered Fall 2019)
This semester, we’ll be thinking about the American Dream in its broadest terms—in short, that Americans are invested in the belief that each generation’s potential is not directly tethered to the one that preceded it. In this course, we’ll look at literature from the end of the Civil War to the present day and consider how American writers have reflected on the ideas of individual progress and communal evolution in their work. We’ll ask some big questions: What does it mean to be an American? How does our understating of national identity address (or elide) issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, and region? We’ll end our semester by thinking about how contemporary writers are working to reflect a culture whose Dream is still in flux and remains the subject of artistic preoccupation.
ENG 333 - The Rhetoric of Video Games (offered Spring 2019)
In this course, we will investigate theories of game and play as they manifest in video games, arguably the latest in a long line of media objects (that include television, film, and the novel) designed to both entertain and educate that has been met with extreme disdain and amazing celebration. Specifically, we will analyze the rhetorical implications (that is, how and in what ways video games persuade and change audiences – and how they do so uniquely as videogames as opposed to other media forms) and effects of videogames, and the impact that they have, or are believed to have, on our culture. We will examine how videogames represent particular groups, how they render (figuratively and literally) identity politics (i.e. race, class, gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.). We will read about, write about, analyze, play, and create video games, all while studying the culture and texts that surround them.
ENG 342 - Topics in African American Literature; Black Mobility and Freedom (offered Spring 2019)
One of the major themes that persists throughout African American literature is the theme of mobility, in particular the themes of migration and travel. Yet much of our thinking and understanding of the mobility and movements of black people has focused narrowly on their captivity and forced passages. The goal of this course will be to expand our understanding of black people as travelers, rather than just as captive or imprisoned bodies. In particular, we will explore the varying motivations for their travel, as well as the impact of their travel within their particular historical and social contexts. Moreover, through our reading, writing and class discussions, we will seek to discover the historical and literary significance of their travel and writing. The readings in this course will span the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries and will be a mix of selected excerpts along with a handful of full-length texts.
ENG 417 – Language and Ethnicity (offered Fall 2018)
According to C. Edley Jr., “Race is not rocket science. It’s harder than rocket science.” Indeed, in a climate of increased political correctness, constructive dialogue on the intersection of race and ethnicity with other domains has become more complex and politicized, or avoided altogether. This is unfortunate, as the merging of the study of ethnicity with other human phenomena like language, language histories, and the norms, conventions, attitudes, and movements associated with these is fascinating. As such, the main goal of this course is to provide a survey of the issues inherent to studying ethnicity and language as overlapping topics of inquiry. The course will introduce students to linguistic thought and methods via select topics like definitions of ethnicity, language and the construction of self- and world-view, language and dialect contact and change, case studies of African American, Latino, Hawaiian/Polynesian, Creole, Anglo and other language communities, issues of ethnic crossing via language use, and interethnic communication in specific contexts (e.g. in the classroom, in pop-culture, etc.).
ENG 465 - Special Topics: Animals (offered Fall 2019)
Though as humans we often consider ourselves to be the center of the universe, we share the earth and live alongside many other animal species. We connect to, categorize, and dismiss other animals via a series of loosely formulated interspecies relationships. We anthropomorphize our dogs, do our best to forget the lives of the animals we eat, and approach wild animals—from the meekest mouse to the fiercest grizzly bear—with a mix of fear, disgust, and awe. Our relationships to and categorization of animals complicate the borders of civilization as we have defined it. In this class, by studying literary and cinematic depictions of animals, we will interrogate how we use animals to understand our humanity, our ties to the natural world, and the responsibilities we bear toward the other species with which we share our planet.
ENG 479 Major Authors: Shared Traditions: The Portrait of An Artist: The Artist Novel from James Joyce to Spike Lee (offered Fall 2018)
If you are a creative artist — poet, fiction writer, singer-songwriter, sculptor, or fashion designer — at some point, you may have realized that producing works of art is something that you are compelled to do, and that your inspiration is rarely accountable to logic. In other words, you have a calling to create and are willing to overcome obstacles to do it. An artist finding him or herself and following his or her calling determinedly, since an early age, is what the artist novel (or, in German, the Künstlerroman) is about, in a nutshell. In this course, we will learn about this genre and sample a variety of 20th and 21st-century narratives, from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to the musical Passing Strange, filmed by Spike Lee.
