ENGL 340.001     Literature and Law     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Gulick

What can literature teach us about law? This question will guide our journey in this course, which will include a historically and geographically diverse reading list. Aeschylus’s The Eumenides, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (yes, you read that right) will help us imagine the origins of law—where it comes from, how it claims authority over a political community, and what its relationship is to violence, power, gender, and justice. We’ll turn to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, and Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull in order to further probe where law's legitimacy comes from, how law can and perhaps can't help a society grapple with mass historical atrocity, and what relationship confession has to various kinds of truth. We’ll look at stunningly complex book-length poems by NourbeSe Philip (Zong!) and Layli Long Soldier (WHEREAS) that radically rewrite legal documents and, in so doing, raise questions about what it means to seek redress for past wrongs in the present. We’ll read (or maybe reread) a beloved but complicated American classic, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, attending both to the powerful statement that novel is trying to make about racial justice in the Jim Crow South—and to some of the limits of its vision as well. In the final weeks of class we’ll tie many of these questions and themes together as we turn to contemporary texts such as Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends, Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, and Layla Lalami’s The Dream Hotel to grapple with legal debates and crises that pertain to our own historical moment. 

ENGL 340 is a class for English majors and non-majors alike. I welcome students from all academic backgrounds who are prepared to read voraciously, write carefully, and approach in-class discussions with enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, candor, and generosity.

ENGL 340 counts as an upper-level elective (or a post-1800 course) for the English major, or towards the Law and Society minor.

ENGL 390/CPLT 301    From the Bible to the French Revolution: The Literature and History of Western Thought and How We Became Who We are Today    |     MW 2:20-3:35     |     Schoeman

Through the discovery, analysis and interpretation of several international literary masterpieces, this course will enable students to understand, in its historical context, the evolution (and revolution) of European literary traditions from ancient times to the Enlightenment.

This course is structured chronologically and its approach is strongly comparative and interdisciplinary—taking into account history, philosophy, and the development of Western artistic taste in painting, architecture, and music.

There are no research papers for this course. We sit together and discuss great books, art, and music, and what they tell us about western history, its relation to the present and our future.

I’ll send you all the details as early as April, and you will have the whole summer to do the readings (if you so choose) and come prepared to face a relaxed, stress-free, easy semester together.

ENGL 404.001     English Drama to 1660     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Harris

Drama in England, from the Middle Ages to the Restoration (excluding Shakespeare).

ENGL 419.001     Legends of King Arthur     |  TTh 4:25-5:40     |     Gwara

 Study of the evolution of Arthurian legend from its origins to the 20th century. Texts include: James J. Wilhelm, The Romance of Arthur (Garland, 1994); Thomas Malory, King Arthur and his Knights, ed. Eugene Vinaver (Oxford UP); Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King (St. Martin’s Griffin); Robertson Davies, Lyre of Orpheus (Penguin).

ENGL 424.001     American Drama     |    TTh 11:40-1:55     |     Keyser

This class provides an overview of modern and contemporary US drama. Reading dramatic literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will pay particular attention to how American playwrights represent history and geography on the stage to contest any one singular vision of the nation, its inhabitants, or its trajectory. We will also consider the unique formal attributes of a genre that arguably finds its fullest expression in embodied performance. Plays studied may include Susan Glaspell's Trifles, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Lynn Nottage's Sweat, and Kimberley Belflower's John Proctor Is the Villain.

ENGL 430.001     Harlem Renaissance     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Lee

Emphasizing a nascent and robust intramural social life of “the New Negro” the movement known as the Harlem Renaissance included a wide range of cultural activity, including cinema, music, performance (comedy, theater), visual art, and literature (drama, essay, poetry, novel). Frameworks of a relatively autonomous African American culture, signalling what Alain Locke describes in 1925 as “a renewed self-respect and self-dependence,” emerged from this era. This course will attend to some of the movement’s major figures, as well as some of its canonical literary and cultural texts, in order to assess its ambitions regarding notions of Black beauty, community, pedagogy, pride, and resistance.

ENGL 439.001     Fiction and Mental Health     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Jackson

Attending school can be stressful for all of us, but according to a 2019 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, America's colleges are currently witnessing a "student mental health-crisis."  In the last decade, the number of students visiting campus counseling services for depression and anxiety has grown by forty percent.  Our lives have only become more stressful with the advent of Covid, climate change, and political polarization.  What can fiction possibly teach us about mental health, and how might fiction, and stories more generally, help us achieve and maintain it?  In this course, we'll find out.  We'll read a variety of contemporary novels and short stories, and a few historical ones, about anxiety, depression, dissociation, and isolation but also consider fictions about healing, happiness, and wellness.  We'll probe the boundaries of what counts as fiction by reading clinical case histories and memoirs, and we'll investigate how fiction has operated in therapeutic practices such as Bibliotherapy, Existential, Narrative, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies.  We'll also investigate the value of traditional wellness practices including mindfulness and yoga.  We'll cover a wide range of approaches to interpreting and analyzing fiction and along the way learn about some basic concepts in mental health and wellness. Assessment will be by a variety of take home assignments.  This class is not a substitute for attending counseling, but our emphasis will be on reading fiction in ways that are not only perceptive but also helpful and hopeful.

ENGL 439.002     From Margin to Mainstream: Twentieth-Century American Culture from a Minority Viewpoint     |    MW 3:55-5:10     |     Schoeman

 Wait! I know you think this sounds like a “niche” topic regarding people you don’t care about! But give me a chance, and I promise I’ll make this course fun, interesting, and utterly surprising!

Do you enjoy Hollywood films? Pop music? How about comedy and comedians? Comics and graphic novels? This course might be just the entertaining, mind-blowing class you were hoping for and didn’t know existed until now.

Join us for a semester dedicated to world-renown, Nobel-winning, Oscar-worthy literature, films, and general cultural production from the perspective of a small minority (the Jewish one) that created so much of what we think today as “quintessentially American.” (From Fiddler on the Roof to Jon Stewart, from Superman to Maus, passing through Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bob Dylan, and so much more.)

There are no research papers for this course. We sit together and discuss great books, movies, art, and music, and what they tell us about 20th-century U.S. history, its relation to the past, present and future.

I’ll send you all the details as early as April, and you will have the whole summer to do the readings (if you so choose) and come prepared to face a relaxed, stress-free, easy semester together.

ENGL 490.001     Text as Data in Global Communications     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Gavin

This course introduces students to the study of global communications through computational approaches to language and media. Using text-as-data methods, we will analyze multilingual corpora of news reports, political speeches, social media, and other sources to understand how discourse about politics, culture, and identity circulates across nations and regions. Students will connect theoretical readings in media and political communication with hands-on practice in text analytics, learning how to quantify language and identify patterns in large text collections. The course emphasizes practical experimentation: no prior coding experience is required, though basic comfort with statistics is helpful. Students will gain introductory experience with R or Python in a supportive, workshop-style environment.

ENGL 200.001     Creative Writing, Voice, and Community     |    TTh 11:40-12:55     |     Dings

 We will read and discuss stories, poems, and some essays to focus on the relationship of individuals and communities.  Specifically, what roles do shared and conflicting values play in the relationship?  What is the responsibility of an individual to the society of which he/she/they are a part?  What is the community’s responsibility to its members, especially when those members dissent?  What difference does it make when individual membership is involuntary instead of voluntary?  What difference does it make when assent is acquired through coercion instead of persuasion? Students will engage these matters and others through reading, discussion, and creative writing of their own.

Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements

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ENGL 200.002     Creative Writing, Voice, and Community     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Dings

 We will read and discuss stories, poems, and some essays to focus on the relationship of individuals and communities.  Specifically, what roles do shared and conflicting values play in the relationship?  What is the responsibility of an individual to the society of which he/she/they are a part?  What is the community’s responsibility to its members, especially when those members dissent?  What difference does it make when individual membership is involuntary instead of voluntary?  What difference does it make when assent is acquired through coercion instead of persuasion? Students will engage these matters and others through reading, discussion, and creative writing of their own.

Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements

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ENGL 200.003     Creative Writing, Voice, and Community     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Staff

 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community is an introduction to writing as a form of social engagement. By examining creative work by established writers, we will discover formal strategies we can put to use in creative assignments. Both the outside texts and writing assignments are geared toward helping us to explore and assert our own identities and aesthetic values. In addition to reading and analyzing outside texts and creating poems and stories of our own, we will become accustomed to describing and helping further the development of our classmates’ writing, the ultimate goal being the creation of a workshop community in which everyone feels able to take risks in their writing.

Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements

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ENGL 200.004     Creative Writing Voice and Community     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Johnson-Feelings

 This section of “Creative Writing, Voice, and Community” is an introduction to writing, giving special attention to the idea of the social responsibility of the artist. Readings and writing assignments will emphasize the exploration of identity and community, values, and ethics. Model texts will include short fiction, biography and memoir, poetry and novel-in-verse, written largely for audiences of children and young adults. Workshop participants will be encouraged to write for these audiences. We will offer thoughtful feedback to each other, together creating a workshop community in which everyone is able to take risks and to grow as writers.

Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements

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ENGL 200.005     Creative Writing, Voice, and Community     |    MW 3:55-5:20     |     STAFF

 Workshop course on creative writing with a focus on values, ethics, and social responsibility.

Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements

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 ENGL 200.006     Creative Writing, Voice, and Community     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     STAFF

Workshop course on creative writing with a focus on values, ethics, and social responsibility.

Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements

ENGL 240.002    Film and Media Analysis     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Minett

Introduction to the critical study of film and media. Students will closely analyze moving images and develop written arguments about film and media.

ENGL 240.001     Film and Media Analysis     |    TTh  11:40-12:55     |     Ozselcuk

 This course introduces students to the critical study of film and television. It focuses on developing skills to analyze formal elements (such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound and narrative) of audiovisual media. 

The course requires careful viewing and reading of all assigned materials and regular engagement in class as well as successful completion of written work. Some of the films and TV productions we will cover are The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Do The Right Thing, Fight Club, Mad Men, and America's Next Top Model. 

Satisfies AIU

ENGL 280.J10     Literature and Society: Science Fiction and Posthumanism     |     Muckelbauer

Online Asynchronous

This course explores how science fiction helps us think critically about technology, society, and what it means to be human. We’ll look at stories, films, and other cultural texts that imagine near futures shaped by artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, memory modification, virtual and augmented reality, and other emerging technologies—many of which are already becoming part of everyday life.  Rather than focusing on distant sci-fi topics such as space operas or time travel, this course pursues the ways technology is already affecting real human concerns: identity, relationships, power, inequality, responsibility, and ethical decision-making. Through the lens of posthumanism, we’ll examine how traditional ideas about the “human” are challenged when minds can be enhanced, bodies modified, memories altered, or consciousness digitized.

The fully asynchronous online course is organized into weekly thematic modules that combine novels, short stories, movies, documentaries, and related media. Each week, you’ll discuss the material with a small group and write a reflection that brings multiple texts into conversation. The goal is to practice repeated, sustained, thoughtful analysis of complex social and ethical questions raised by emerging technologies. By the end of the semester, you’ll be better equipped to analyze cultural texts, reflect on values and ethics, and understand how technological change shapes both individual lives and society as a whole.

This course fulfills Carolina Core requirements in Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding (AIU) and Values, Ethics, and Social Responsibility (VSR).

ENGL 280.J11     LITERATURE AND SOCIETY (second half online async)     |     GREVEN

Community and The Outcast

American life equally prizes community and individualism. Or does it? The individual who fails to conform becomes that dread figure, the outcast. Focusing on several literary and cinematic works (Hawthorne's tales, plays like *Angels in America,* films by Alfred Hitchcock), this course examines works that dramatize community's clash with the outcast. Completely asynchronous, the class consists of weekly e-lectures and required readings. Grading will be based on weekly discussion posts, quizzes, exams, and a term paper.

Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements

ENGL 282.003     Speculative Fiction for Young Readers     |    TTh 11:40-12:55     |     Viswanath

  Speculative fiction is often used as an umbrella term to encapsulate a variety of genres that, in the words of Marek Oziewicz, “deliberately depart from imitating ‘consensus reality’ of everyday experience” (“Speculative Fiction”). It has therefore come to refer to a number of genres including but not restricted to fantasy, dystopia, science fiction, supernatural fiction, magic realism, and horror fiction. Despite their fantastical settings and/or otherworldly elements, speculative fiction often revolves around larger ethical, philosophical, and/or moral questions about what it means to live in our world. For instance, what does it mean to be human, and what separates us from other non-humans, be they animal or machine? What do words like “equality” and “justice” actually entail?    

 In this course, we will focus on American fantasy and dystopia, with an emphasis on literatures written for young audiences. In addition to reading children’s and young adult literature, we will discuss scholarly works that examine the different aspects of speculative fiction. Please note that this is a reading intensive course, and includes weekly assignments, discussions, and exams.

Satisfies AIU   

ENGL 287.002     American Literature     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Forter

(Designed for English Majors)

This course traces the history of literature in the U.S., focusing especially on the period from 1850 to the early 2000s. We will explore major literary movements and their characteristic forms (narrative techniques, styles) by placing them in relation to the historical conditions from which they emerged. This means attending to the different ways in which authors have grappled with the central issues of their day. At the same time, the course will emphasize the continuity of certain themes across the movements and periods that we study: the problem of “freedom” and its relationship to the idea of America; the legacy of chattel slavery and place of race in the imagination of Black and white authors; the persistent attempts by women writers to develop literary forms adequate to their experience; and the alienating effects of capitalism on writers from all backgrounds.

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ENGL 287.003     American Literature: Cultures of Extraction     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Jelly-Schapiro

 (Designed for English Majors)

American history—and indeed the history of the world at large—has been shaped by various forms of resources extraction. Beginning in the late 1500s, the mining of silver in South America, made possible by the innovation of new technologies such as mercury amalgamation, catalyzed capitalist development in Europe and beyond, while providing a material foundation for the monetary mediation of emergent market processes. Concurrently, the wealth amassed in the New World was joined to the intensification of energy extraction in Europe and the Americas alike—the accumulation of biomass such as timber and peat, the creation of hydro-power infrastructure, and, later, the establishment of coal as the first quintessential fossil fuel of capital in its industrial form. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the expansion of coal mining—across the surface of the earth and into its depths, in Appalachia as in Yorkshire, fed the newly invented steam engine, which drove the infrastructure of both resource extraction and industrial production: the mining and smelting of gold, silver, iron, and copper; the transportation, via rail, of those minerals and the migrant workers enlisted to extract them; the refinement of cotton in the mills of Lancashire and New England. In the middle and latter decades of the 1800s, meanwhile, the gold rushes in California, on the Witwatersrand, and in New South Wales coincided with the advent of commercial oil production. The first commercial oil wells were drilled in Ontario and Pennsylvania in 1858 and 1859. The exploitation of large petroleum reserves in Texas began around the turn of the century. And today, various sites and technologies of extraction—from the Marcellus Shale of the eastern United States to the coltan mines of Central Africa—continue to shape social and political life around the planet. Reading a range of novels—with an emphasis on more contemporary literary history—this course will consider how significant works of American literature have registered the social and cultural consequence of extractive modernity at large.

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ENGL 287.004     American Literature     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Trafton

(Designed for English Majors)

Seeing in Black and White: Race and Vision in African American Literature 
This course takes selections from contemporary African American writers that highlight issues of race.  Specifically, these readings each ask questions regarding the structure of race and of race relations, especially as they appear in late twentieth-century American culture, and especially as they involve issues of vision and visibility.  Our authors ask this:  since race is at least in part a function of sight – of some people seeing other people who look different than themselves – then what can be learned about race and race relations by artistically challenging our preconceptions about both what and how we see?  Using such texts as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Toi Derricotte’s The Black Notebooks, and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, we, along with our authors, will investigate these issues. 

ENGL 240.002     Film and Media Analysis    |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Minett

 Introduction to the critical study of film and media. Students will closely analyze moving images and develop written arguments about film and media.

ENGL 240.001     Film and Media Analysis     |    TTh 11:40-12:55     |     Ozselcuk

 This course introduces students to the critical study of film and television. It focuses on developing skills to analyze formal elements (such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound and narrative) of audiovisual media. 

The course requires careful viewing and reading of all assigned materials and regular engagement in class as well as successful completion of written work. Some of the films and TV productions we will cover are The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Do The Right Thing, Fight Club, Mad Men, and America's Next Top Model. 

ENGL 363.001     Introduction to Professional Writing     |     Th 11:40-12:55     |     STAFF

Overview of concepts, contexts, and genres used in professional communication. Intensive practice in analyzing, emulating, and creating textual and multimedia documents for a variety of professional, non-academic purposes (including commercial, informative, persuasive, and technical). 

ENGL 387.001    Introduction to Rhetoric     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Edwards

 What is rhetoric? In politics, people often use the term “rhetoric” to refer to empty speech or talk that is opposed to action. Some people argue that rhetoric is a means to conceal the truth and deceive audiences about actual conditions or issues. Others describe rhetoric as an essential feature of open and democratic societies. Today we find rhetoric in speeches and movies, social media posts and memes, novels and clothing and protests. We find rhetoric everywhere that people use words, music, images, or even their own bodies to produce, sustain, or challenge truth, knowledge, and authority in the world. We find rhetoric everywhere that people struggle to hold on to power or advocate for change.

During this semester, you will have the opportunity to study ancient and contemporary perspectives on rhetoric and develop a working understanding of rhetorical theory, criticism, and practice. Through course readings and your own rhetorical scholarship, we will work to differentiate between communication that sponsors violence or closes down dissent and communication that opens opportunities for understanding, productive disagreement, and collective action.

ENGL 360.001     Creative Writing Workshop     |    TTh 2:50-4;05     |     Barilla  

This course will explore strategies for producing compelling creative work in different genres. At the beginning of the course, we will work with elements of fiction and poetry, and move in more experimental directions as the course proceeds. The course will function primarily as a workshop, in which students will share work in progress and help create a supportive community of writers. The course will also involve reading and discussing published models, as well as numerous writing exercises. Students will produce a portfolio of original creative work, which they will turn in at the end of the course for a final grade.

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ENGL 360.002     Creative Writing Workshop     |    MW 3:55-5:10     |     Bajo

This will be a course in the writing of the contemporary short story (novel chapters possible). We will begin by studying stories and essential elements of fiction writing in order to explore the aim and possibilities of contemporary literature.  However, the course will primarily be a workshop for students’ own stories.

Basically, the course will have a three-part structure comprised of writing fiction, workshop discussion, and fiction writing assignments. The assignments are designed to add dimension to the stories students will be composing, to make their work richer and more attuned to contemporary literature.

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ENGL 360.003     Creative Writing Workshop     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     STAFF

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ENGL 360.004     Creative Writing Workshop     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     STAFF

ENGL 464.001     Poetry Workshop     |    TR 1:15-2:30     |     Countryman

The focus of this course will be writing and revising new poems. Students will refine their ability to articulate their own poetic aims and style, while also expanding their view of what a poem can be and do through readings of contemporary poetry and writing exercises tied to those readings. Peer response will factor heavily into the final grade. The final goal of this course is a portfolio of original creative work.

ENGL 465.001     Fiction Workshop     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Blackwell

Workshop in writing fiction. This will be a workshop in two senses: a place where art gets made (like a studio art class for stories) and a place where original writing is discussed. Most meetings will include some combination of guided writing exercises, group analysis of original student work, mini-lectures on craft, and/or group discussion of the art and craft of fiction writing.

ENGL 492.001     Advanced Fiction Workshop     |    TTh 11:40-12:55     |     Jimenez

Students will study the art and craft of writing literary fiction at an advanced level through close readings and the composition of original short stories.

ENGL 404.001     English Drama to 1660     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Harris

 Drama in England, from the Middle Ages to the Restoration (excluding Shakespeare).

ENGL 405.001    Shakespeare’s Tragedies     |    TTh 10;05-11:20     |     Harris

 In this course, we will read six plays by William Shakespeare designated as “tragedies”. Our exploration of Shakespeare’s plays will move on three fronts: analysis of Shakespeare’s use of language and his engagement with the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, analysis of Shakespeare’s use of theatrical effects and the interpretation of those effects by today’s theatre artists, and contemporary critical discourse surrounding Shakespeare studies and Shakespeare productions.

ENGL 419.001     Legends of King Arthur     |    TTh 4:25-5:40     |     Gwara

 Study of the evolution of Arthurian legend from its origins to the 20th century. Texts include: James J. Wilhelm, The Romance of Arthur (Garland, 1994); Thomas Malory, King Arthur and his Knights, ed. Eugene Vinaver (Oxford UP); Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King (St. Martin’s Griffin); Robertson Davies, Lyre of Orpheus (Penguin).

ENGL 340.001     Literature and Law     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Gulick

What can literature teach us about law? This question will guide our journey in this course, which will include a historically and geographically diverse reading list. Aeschylus’s The Eumenides, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (yes, you read that right) will help us imagine the origins of law—where it comes from, how it claims authority over a political community, and what its relationship is to violence, power, gender, and justice. We’ll turn to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, and Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull in order to further probe where law's legitimacy comes from, how law can and perhaps can't help a society grapple with mass historical atrocity, and what relationship confession has to various kinds of truth. We’ll look at stunningly complex book-length poems by NourbeSe Philip (Zong!) and Layli Long Soldier (WHEREAS) that radically rewrite legal documents and, in so doing, raise questions about what it means to seek redress for past wrongs in the present. We’ll read (or maybe reread) a beloved but complicated American classic, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, attending both to the powerful statement that novel is trying to make about racial justice in the Jim Crow South—and to some of the limits of its vision as well. In the final weeks of class we’ll tie many of these questions and themes together as we turn to contemporary texts such as Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends, Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, and Layla Lalami’s The Dream Hotel to grapple with legal debates and crises that pertain to our own historical moment. 

ENGL 340 is a class for English majors and non-majors alike. I welcome students from all academic backgrounds who are prepared to read voraciously, write carefully, and approach in-class discussions with enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, candor, and generosity.

ENGL 340 counts as an upper-level elective (or a post-1800 course) for the English major, or towards the Law and Society minor.

ENGL 424.001     American Drama     |    TTh 11:40-1:55     |     Keyser

This class provides an overview of modern and contemporary US drama. Reading dramatic literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will pay particular attention to how American playwrights represent history and geography on the stage to contest any one singular vision of the nation, its inhabitants, or its trajectory. We will also consider the unique formal attributes of a genre that arguably finds its fullest expression in embodied performance. Plays studied may include Susan Glaspell's Trifles, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Lynn Nottage's Sweat, and Kimberley Belflower's John Proctor Is the Villain.

ENGL 427.001     Southern Literature     |    TTh 11:40-12:55     |     Powell

 All southern literature is American, but not all American literature is southern. English-language representations of how and why people live in the U.S. American South, and the debates they record over the area’s perceived distinctiveness from regions around it, are essential reading for anyone interested in American literature. The literary south today exists alongside its physical and historical counterparts, sometimes as record, sometimes as wish, and sometimes as prophecy. Indeed, Southern letters is a fertile place to consider how imaginative writing has mattered or can matter in the modern world. While not a systematic survey, this course explores the intersection of ideas about southern spaces in a unit-driven reading list that emphasizes slave narratives, the Southern and Harlem Renaissances, and later 20th century literature of the New South. In addition to completing course readings in poetry and prose, and attending and participating in class activities, participants will complete 3-4 written assignments and demonstrate mastery of course materials on a cumulative final exam.

ENGL 428A     African American Literature to 1903     |    TTh 4:25-5:40     |     Trafton

This course provides an introduction to some of the most important issues, themes, and texts associated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century African American literature.  The selections we will cover include fiction and nonfiction, poetry and political manifestos, novels and autobiographies, and the distinctly African American genre known as the slave narrative. 

ENGL 430.001     Harlem Renaissance     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Lee

Emphasizing a nascent and robust intramural social life of “the New Negro” the movement known as the Harlem Renaissance included a wide range of cultural activity, including cinema, music, performance (comedy, theater), visual art, and literature (drama, essay, poetry, novel). Frameworks of a relatively autonomous African American culture, signalling what Alain Locke describes in 1925 as “a renewed self-respect and self-dependence,” emerged from this era. This course will attend to some of the movement’s major figures, as well as some of its canonical literary and cultural texts, in order to assess its ambitions regarding notions of Black beauty, community, pedagogy, pride, and resistance.

English 432.001     Young Adult Literature     |    TTh 8:30-9:45     |     Johnson-Feelings 

The subject matter of this course is contemporary American young adult (YA) literature. Students will examine texts that are in some way related to central ideas about America and Americans of various backgrounds and experiences. Discussion topics will include the meanings of literary excellence in the young adult literature world, the politics of the children’s book publishing industry, and current issues and controversies in the field, including awards, censorship, gender, authorship, race, and more. Most importantly, students will give attention to the relationship between literature and social justice.

ENGL 436.J10     Science Fiction and Post-Humanism     |     Online     |     Muckelbauer

Mathematician, Vernor Vinge summarizes a paper he delivered at a NASA conference in 1993 as follows: “Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” This event has become a topic of debate among scientists and artists alike: are we on the verge of a major transformation to our species?  Is this superhuman intelligence even possible? And if so, is it desirable? Or controllable?  While questions surrounding artificial intelligence are a key element of this transformation, many contemporary thinkers also point to significant changes in bio-technology as indicating that our near future might look significantly “post-human.”  In fact, some have even argued that our society’s increasing dependence on mood-enhancing medications indicates that we are already well on our way to becoming something other than human.  But what exactly do we mean by this? What, precisely, does it mean to be human? Or post-human? These are big questions with profound moral, ethical, and legal implications. In this fully online, asynchronous class we will engage a series of works (novels, short stories, movies, documentaries) that not only pose such questions but wrestle with some possible responses.  Each week, you’ll discuss the material with a small group and write a reflection that brings the multiple texts into conversation.  The goal is not to definitively answer these questions, but to begin thinking carefully and seriously about them as we move toward our post-human future. 

ENGL 437.001     Women Writers and the American Literary Bestseller     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Davis

What does it take for a fictional work to simultaneously earn critical praise and bestseller status? For much of US literary history, these two outcomes have remained in tension, which explains why a highly regarded author like Nathaniel Hawthorne felt justified in complaining that “America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash.” This course will trouble that longstanding gendered division between literary quality and popularity by exploring examples of women’s writing published since 1900 that have achieved both phenomenal US sales and critical acclaim. The reading will include a couple of society novels, a gothic thriller, a children’s book, a Southern coming-of-age novel, a work of historical fiction, a graphic novel, and a dystopian fantasy. Our goal for the term will be to account for the ability of works like these to please both readers and critics alike. 

ENGL 439.001     Fiction and Mental Health     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Jackson

Attending school can be stressful for all of us, but according to a 2019 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, America's colleges are currently witnessing a "student mental health-crisis."  In the last decade, the number of students visiting campus counseling services for depression and anxiety has grown by forty percent.  Our lives have only become more stressful with the advent of Covid, climate change, and political polarization.  What can fiction possibly teach us about mental health, and how might fiction, and stories more generally, help us achieve and maintain it?  In this course, we'll find out.  We'll read a variety of contemporary novels and short stories, and a few historical ones, about anxiety, depression, dissociation, and isolation but also consider fictions about healing, happiness, and wellness.  We'll probe the boundaries of what counts as fiction by reading clinical case histories and memoirs, and we'll investigate how fiction has operated in therapeutic practices such as Bibliotherapy, Existential, Narrative, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies.  We'll also investigate the value of traditional wellness practices including mindfulness and yoga.  We'll cover a wide range of approaches to interpreting and analyzing fiction and along the way learn about some basic concepts in mental health and wellness. Assessment will be by a variety of take home assignments.  This class is not a substitute for attending counseling, but our emphasis will be on reading fiction in ways that are not only perceptive but also helpful and hopeful.

ENGL 439.002     From Margin to Mainstream: Twentieth-Century American Culture from a Minority Viewpoint     |    MW 3:55-5:10     |     Schoeman

 Wait! I know you think this sounds like a “niche” topic regarding people you don’t care about! But give me a chance, and I promise I’ll make this course fun, interesting, and utterly surprising!

Do you enjoy Hollywood films? Pop music? How about comedy and comedians? Comics and graphic novels? This course might be just the entertaining, mind-blowing class you were hoping for and didn’t know existed until now.

Join us for a semester dedicated to world-renown, Nobel-winning, Oscar-worthy literature, films, and general cultural production from the perspective of a small minority (the Jewish one) that created so much of what we think today as “quintessentially American.” (From Fiddler on the Roof to Jon Stewart, from Superman to Maus, passing through Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bob Dylan, and so much more.)

There are no research papers for this course. We sit together and discuss great books, movies, art, and music, and what they tell us about 20th-century U.S. history, its relation to the past, present and future.

I’ll send you all the details as early as April, and you will have the whole summer to do the readings (if you so choose) and come prepared to face a relaxed, stress-free, easy semester together.

ENGL 487.001     Black Women Writers     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Finney

 An examination of literature by and about black women, including fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiography. This study will focus on issues that emerge from the creative representations of black women and the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class that interrogate what is both particular and universal experiences.

ENGL 363.001     Introduction to Professional Writing     |     Th 11:40-12:55     |     STAFF

Overview of concepts, contexts, and genres used in professional communication. Intensive practice in analyzing, emulating, and creating textual and multimedia documents for a variety of professional, non-academic purposes (including commercial, informative, persuasive, and technical). 

ENGL 387.001     Introduction to Rhetoric     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Edwards

What is rhetoric? In politics, people often use the term “rhetoric” to refer to empty speech or talk that is opposed to action. Some people argue that rhetoric is a means to conceal the truth and deceive audiences about actual conditions or issues. Others describe rhetoric as an essential feature of open and democratic societies. Today we find rhetoric in speeches and movies, social media posts and memes, novels and clothing and protests. We find rhetoric everywhere that people use words, music, images, or even their own bodies to produce, sustain, or challenge truth, knowledge, and authority in the world. We find rhetoric everywhere that people struggle to hold on to power or advocate for change.

During this semester, you will have the opportunity to study ancient and contemporary perspectives on rhetoric and develop a working understanding of rhetorical theory, criticism, and practice. Through course readings and your own rhetorical scholarship, we will work to differentiate between communication that sponsors violence or closes down dissent and communication that opens opportunities for understanding, productive disagreement, and collective action.

ENGL 460.001     Advanced Writing: Discovering Voice in Writing     |    MW 3:55-5:10     |     Rule

How do writers stand out? What about a writer's choices make us feel like we're experiencing their “voice”? How do writers shape language to convey their unique perspective, presence, personality, or identity? This course focuses on these questions, as we puzzle over what it means to say that writing has “voice” and experiment with how to bring out such force in our own writing (and other media). Through study of rhetorical style, sentence-craft, copia along with other concepts and exercises, students can expect to analyze a range of personal essays and other first-person genres, collect in a commonplace book samples of powerful sentences and excerpts, and develop composing projects in a writer's workshop and portfolio, including a multimodal project in which you literally give voice to your writing. Focusing neither on academic nor creative genres alone, this course is designed for any student interested in the power of writing and in improving their comfort with and effectiveness in writing across contexts.

ENGL 462.001     Technical Writing     |    MWF 1:10-2     |      Staff                                        

ENGL 463.001     Business Writing     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Anderson

English 463 provides students with intensive practice in the application of written communication theory to practical, real-world professional situations.  The focus is on the writing process as it is utilized in professional contexts.  Students will be introduced to current theory in business communication regarding style and formats, audience analysis, composing and designing documents, creating persuasive messages, and integrating design and formatting elements into text documents.  Also, students are introduced to GenAI as a tool in professional settings and the ethical use of this tool.  Other topics to be covered may include but are not limited to  using graphics and visuals in presentations, creating effective resumes and cover letters, developing a plan for job searching and the interview process, analyzing ethical issues of communication, composing bias-free documents, writing for international and culturally diverse audiences, and understanding the impact of technology on communication practices.  

Assignments focus on purpose (inform, persuade, negative news); audience analysis and tone; organization and document formats; effective style and conventions; design elements; accessibility and bias-free language. Students practice adapting writing styles to the context of a wide range of organizational settings.  Employers value a concise, effective writing style in any profession

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ENGL 463.002     Business Writing     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Anderson

English 463 provides students with intensive practice in the application of written communication theory to practical, real-world professional situations.  The focus is on the writing process as it is utilized in professional contexts.  Students will be introduced to current theory in business communication regarding style and formats, audience analysis, composing and designing documents, creating persuasive messages, and integrating design and formatting elements into text documents.  Also, students are introduced to GenAI as a tool in professional settings and the ethical use of this tool.  Other topics to be covered may include but are not limited to  using graphics and visuals in presentations, creating effective resumes and cover letters, developing a plan for job searching and the interview process, analyzing ethical issues of communication, composing bias-free documents, writing for international and culturally diverse audiences, and understanding the impact of technology on communication practices.  

Assignments focus on purpose (inform, persuade, negative news); audience analysis and tone; organization and document formats; effective style and conventions; design elements; accessibility and bias-free language. Students practice adapting writing styles to the context of a wide range of organizational settings.  Employers value a concise, effective writing style in any profession

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ENGL 463.003     Business Writing     |    MWF 12-12:50     |     STAFF

Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.

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ENGL 463.004     Business Writing     |    TTh 4:25-5:40     |     Anderson    

English 463 provides students with intensive practice in the application of written communication theory to practical, real-world professional situations.  The focus is on the writing process as it is utilized in professional contexts.  Students will be introduced to current theory in business communication regarding style and formats, audience analysis, composing and designing documents, creating persuasive messages, and integrating design and formatting elements into text documents.  Also, students are introduced to GenAI as a tool in professional settings and the ethical use of this tool.  Other topics to be covered may include but are not limited to  using graphics and visuals in presentations, creating effective resumes and cover letters, developing a plan for job searching and the interview process, analyzing ethical issues of communication, composing bias-free documents, writing for international and culturally diverse audiences, and understanding the impact of technology on communication practices.  

Assignments focus on purpose (inform, persuade, negative news); audience analysis and tone; organization and document formats; effective style and conventions; design elements; accessibility and bias-free language. Students practice adapting writing styles to the context of a wide range of organizational settings.  Employers value a concise, effective writing style in any profession

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ENGL 463.006     Business Writing     |    MWF 10:50-11:20     |     STAFF

Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.

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ENGL 463.007     Business Writing     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Anderson

English 463 provides students with intensive practice in the application of written communication theory to practical, real-world professional situations.  The focus is on the writing process as it is utilized in professional contexts.  Students will be introduced to current theory in business communication regarding style and formats, audience analysis, composing and designing documents, creating persuasive messages, and integrating design and formatting elements into text documents.  Also, students are introduced to GenAI as a tool in professional settings and the ethical use of this tool.  Other topics to be covered may include but are not limited to  using graphics and visuals in presentations, creating effective resumes and cover letters, developing a plan for job searching and the interview process, analyzing ethical issues of communication, composing bias-free documents, writing for international and culturally diverse audiences, and understanding the impact of technology on communication practices.  

Assignments focus on purpose (inform, persuade, negative news); audience analysis and tone; organization and document formats; effective style and conventions; design elements; accessibility and bias-free language. Students practice adapting writing styles to the context of a wide range of organizational settings.  Employers value a concise, effective writing style in any profession

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ENGL 463.009     Business Writing     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Staff

Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.

ENGL 370.001     Language in the USA     |    MW 3:55-5:10     |     Esposito

Linguistic examination of the structure, history, and use of language varieties in the U.S., with a particular focus on regional and sociocultural variation and relevant sociolinguistic issues.

ENGL 389.001     The English Language     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Staff

Introduction to the field of linguistics with an emphasis on English. Covers the English sound system, word structure, and grammar. Explores history of English, American dialects, social registers, and style.

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ENGL 389.002     The English Language     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Staff 

Introduction to the field of linguistics with an emphasis on English. Covers the English sound system, word structure, and grammar. Explores history of English, American dialects, social registers, and style.

ENGL 450     English Grammar     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Holcomb

 This course focuses on English grammar for future educators in both English and Linguistics. We’ll begin by examining the term “grammar” itself, its different meanings (descriptive, prescriptive, etc.), and the role these different meanings have played in scholarly debates over grammar’s place in the classroom. We’ll then move on to our main focus: a deep dive into the particularities of English grammar, from word classes to phrases and clauses. As we do so, we’ll develop an approach to grammar that has come to be known as Rhetorical Grammar: that is, rather than viewing grammar strictly as a matter of compliance or error avoidance, Rhetorical Grammar sees it as strategy—that is, as ways for speakers and writers to leverage the resources of the language to help them achieve their broader communicative goals. We’ll end the semester with a unit on stylistics and explore ways in which we can reinforce instruction in grammar by using its terms and categories as a vocabulary for analyzing literary and non-fiction texts.

ENGL 240.H01     Film and Media Analysis     |    TTh 11:40-12:55     |     Ozselcuk

This course introduces students to the critical study of film and television. It focuses on developing skills to analyze formal elements (such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound and narrative) of audiovisual media. 

The course requires careful viewing and reading of all assigned materials and regular engagement in class as well as successful completion of written work. Some of the films and TV productions we will cover are The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Do The Right Thing, Fight Club, Mad Men, and America's Next Top Model. 

ENGL 280.H01     Literature and Society     |    MW 3:55-5:10     |     Greven

Community and The Outcast

American life equally prizes community and individualism. Or does it? The individual who fails to conform becomes that dread figure, the outcast. Focusing on several literary and cinematic works (Hawthorne's tales, plays like *Angels in America,* films by Alfred Hitchcock) and using sociological theory, this course examines works that dramatize community's clash with the outcast. Grading will be based on essays, quizzes, exams, and a term paper.

ENGL 282.H01     Dark Academia     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Gulick

What exactly is “dark” about academia? What kinds of fantasies does higher education generate, and what do they mean? This Honors seminar will explore these questions by way of a rich and varied group of literary texts, beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (does academia get any “darker” than an unhinged scientist who creates life from scratch?) and ending with R.F. Kuang’s tale of a grad student so desperate for her professor to help her get a job that she travels to hell to retrieve him. Novels such as Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Tara Westover’s Educated, J.K. Chukwu’s The Unfortunates, and films such as Saltburn and Sorry, Baby, along with a selection of short critical readings, will guide the rest of our investigation of how universities figure into cultural dreams and nightmares in 2026—and maybe even help us come to new insights about what we want out of our own time in this institution.

Academia might indeed get dark at times. But we will work hard as a group to make this Honors seminar the very best of what college can be by showing up for each other with authenticity and commitment throughout the semester. You do not need to be an English major to take this course. You should plan to read voraciously, write regularly, revise occasionally, approach class discussions with generosity, inquisitiveness, and candor. ENGL 282 counts toward the Carolina Core’s AIU requirement.

ENGL 285.H01     Environmental Writing and the New American Pastoral     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Powell

U.S. American writers inspired by the nation’s natural spaces have made the representation of those landscapes a distinctive feature of the nation’s literature from its beginnings. From the romantic to the dystopian, literary representations of iconic American landscapes have always shaped Americans’ ideas of who they are or may become where wilderness meets meets the keyboard. While not a systematic survey of pastoralism in American literature, this section of “Themes in American Literature” will study selected treatments of iconic American landscapes that attempt to reframe how readers see their relationship to environmental spaces. As we consider varied iterations of literary tropes such as southern plantations, the frontier, climate fiction, and adventure tourism, we will use exemplary works to develop a critical framework for understanding contemporary scholarship on literature about the environment. (Some of the terms we can work our way through include pastoralism, the sublime, nature writing, wilderness theory, geopoetics, cli-fi, ecopoetry, and ecocriticism.) In addition to completing course readings and attending and participating in class activities, participants will complete 3-4 written assignments and demonstrate mastery of course materials on a cumulative final exam.

ENGL 287.H01     American Literature     |    TTh 1:15-2:30     |     Jackson

This class offers a survey of American Literature from its colonial beginnings in the Fifteenth Century to present. We’ll focus on texts that cluster around recurrent thematic questions.  These include: What is America? Who are Americans?  Is there one fixed definition? Are humans fundamentally flawed, basically neutral, or inherently good? What defines us best: our souls, our heads, or our hearts? How do we come to terms with human suffering and the prospect of death?  What is literature, and what is it good for?  What is reality, and how can it best be depicted?  Others themes will emerge through class discussion.  Our class will have three goals: to introduce you to the sweep of American literary history and suggest something of its power and significance, especially by understanding what various works meant in their historical context; to encourage you to read closely and carefully, understanding how those works worked as art; and to help you develop as writers of critical academic prose, through a series of creative assignments.

ENGL 360.H01     Creative Writing     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Bajo

This will be a course in the writing of the contemporary short story (novel chapters possible). We will begin by studying stories and essential elements of fiction writing in order to explore the aim and possibilities of contemporary literature.  However, the course will primarily be a workshop for students’ own stories.

Basically, the course will have a three-part structure comprised of writing fiction, workshop discussion, and fiction writing assignments. The assignments are designed to add dimension to the stories students will be composing, to make their work richer and more attuned to contemporary literature.

ENGL 462.H01     Technical Writing     |    TTh 4:25-5:40     |     Hawk

Preparation for and practice in types of writing important to scientists, engineers, and computer scientists, from brief technical letters to formal articles and reports.

ENGL 463.H01     Business Writing     |    MWF 10:50-11:40     |     Staff

Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.

SCHC 350.H02     The American Bestseller, 1900-2025     |    TTh 11:40-12:55     |     Davis

When a work of fiction appeals to millions of American readers, it must tap into widespread, often unspoken needs and desires within its own cultural moment. Bestsellers have influenced the tastes and purchasing habits of readers in the Unites States since at least the 1850s, and they can teach us much about what mattered to readers at different points in our nation’s history. In the past, the enormous popularity of bestsellers has led to their omission from the classroom due to a longstanding academic preference for aesthetically complex literary texts over popular and accessible fictional forms. This course will take bestsellers seriously, seeking historical as well as aesthetic explanations for the vast and occasionally lasting appeal of select bestsellers published between 1900 and the present moment. We’ll read and discuss fictional works representing four different genres—adventure, mystery/thriller, romance, and fantasy,—all of which either immediately or eventually achieved bestseller status.

SCHC 353.H01     Otherworld Writing: Speculative Stories, Poems, and Games     |    TTh 10:05-11:20     |     Vanderborg

Speculative writing—a genre that includes science fiction and fantasy—can take you to the future, to alternate histories, to magical cities, and to places beyond the solar system. But what new literary forms does this imagination demand? The texts we’ll read reinvent traditional storytelling, poetry, graphic novels, and games to immerse you in their otherworlds and the creatures that inhabit them. 

-Find out how to write a love poem for a robot

-Read through fantastically illustrated pages of an encyclopedia from another planet 

-Visit a world where machines can run on language as fuel

-See time-capsule poems left for alien archeologists

-Decode voicemails and broadcasts from the future 

-Explore alien alphabets 

-See our own lives from an otherworlder’s perspective

-Discover poems written for other species

-Look at artifacts from our time displayed in a future Museum of Obsolescence

-Rewrite a superhero’s origin story with help from mythical spirits and aliens

-Gameplay in surreal worlds where fairy tale magic gets fractured

Possible texts: Gene Luen Yang’s The Shadow Hero graphic novel, M.T. Anderson’s novel Feed, games by Emily Short or Porpentine, Margaret Rhee’s Radio Heart; Or, How Robots Fall Out of Love, Susan Slaviero’s Cyborgia, Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, bio poetry by Eduardo Kac and Christian Bok, Craig Raine’s “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home,” Amy Catanzano’s iEpiphany, Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. 

SCHC 396.H01     Community: Literature, Art, Columbia     |    TTh 4:25-5:40     |     Stern

This course will explore the theme of community across literature, art, and our city. We will read works that raise essential questions about relationships, support, ethics, and inclusion. In tandem with our readings, we will hear from significant people and visit significant places across the city. In addition to hearing from local government, community organizations, libraries, and museums, students will have the opportunity to participate in curated Beyond the Classroom service learning experiences.

SCHC 450.H01     Women's Stories, Weird Fiction     |    TTh 2:50-4:05     |     Keyser

This class explores the recent works of contemporary women writers who tap into the "weird," a mode of fiction writing that appears to follow contemporary life and mores yet surprises the reader by incorporating elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, or folklore. This class will ask why women writers have specialized in the weird, how the supernatural or strange evinces the surreal experience of being a woman under patriarchy, and also how these alternatives to shared realities and power structures foster a vision of disruptive feminine power. We will study short story collections from the past twenty-five years by women writers including Nalo Hopkinson, Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, Ling Ma, Danielle Evans, Helen Oyeyemi, and Julia Elliott.

SCHC 455     Avant-Gardes     |    MW 2:20-3:35     |     Glavey

This class will survey a number of avant-garde artistic, literary, and musical movements across the twentieth and twenty-first century to think about the nature of artistic experimentation and cultural artistic transformation. Where do new ideas and styles come from? Why have so may artistic innovations come from groups of people rather than isolated individuals? This course will cover the so-called historical avant-garde of the early twentieth century (futurism, Dada, surrealism) and then a number of movements from the second half of the twentieth century: the New York School, Warhol’s Factory, Punk, New Narrative, Afrofuturism. The course will conclude by thinking about the status of the idea of the avant-garde today, and how it may or may not resonate with our moment of AI-produced slop and accelerating aesthetic micro-trends.