CoursesCourses for the English Major

Introduction to literary analysis, with close reading and carefully written exposition of selections from principal modes of literature: poetry, prose fiction, and drama. Minimum of 15 to 20 pages of revised writing.

 

Fulfills a preparatory requirement for the English major and a lower-division requirement for the Creative Writing minor.

 

Fulfills Writing II requirement.

 

Additional sections of English 4W may open if the waitlist fills.

Designed to introduce fundamentals of creative writing and writing workshop experience. Emphasis on poetry, fiction, drama, or creative nonfiction depending on wishes of instructor(s) during any given term. Readings from assigned texts, weekly writing assignments (multiple drafts and revisions), and final portfolio required.

 

Fulfills a lower-division requirement for the Creative Writing minor.

 

Fulfills Writing II requirement.

 

Additional sections of English 20W may open if the waitlist fills.

This course recovers the surprising prehistory of the word innovation. Today, the term reflects the widespread assumption that change is valuable for its own sake. But before the 1800s, innovation’s meaning was profoundly negative: it described a prohibited activity associated with violent rebellion and religious heresy. We’ll explore how this vast historical shift occurred by reading early modern political, religious, scientific, colonial, and revolutionary texts. And we’ll revisit more recent objects and topics like modernist poetry, economic theory, sci-fi film, and the threat of climate change in light of what we’ve learned. While most people living circa 1600 believed that innovation was always dangerous, some were beginning to wonder whether its benefits might be worth the risk. Yet this often involved harnessing innovation’s power to remake environments and dominate people of another class, gender, race, or faith. Assignments will include a short keyword essay and a paper that uses an early text to analyze a contemporary advertisement involving innovation.

When the future feels precarious, we often look to the past for blueprints of how to survive the present and move towards something else. In this course, we will turn to the 1960s and 1970s and the literature and legacies of Black feminist thought that blossomed during these artistically rich and politically wrought decades. Through the works of visionaries such as Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Alice Walker, we will explore the intersectional philosophies and revolutionary visions of Black feminisms. Through their emphasis on embodiment and relationality, the materials and assignments of this course aim to show how Black feminist thought operates as a methodology, praxis, and call to action. Our shared goal in this course is therefore to take part in relevant social and political conversations that continue the aims of Black feminisms. We will do so by understanding its historical contexts and corresponding drive to dismantle systems of oppression, and by creating sustainable practices—from our own positionalities—that ensure universal equity.

In this course, we will build research and writing skills by analyzing representations of sex and sexuality from the pulp fiction of the early 20th century to the popular fiction of the 21st. Our study will culminate with the international bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey (2012) as we consider its effects on 21st century American discourse around sex. Some questions we may consider over the course of the quarter include: Who decides what “sex” is and what it isn’t? Why do some materials get classified as “obscene” and others find their way into the mainstream? What kinds of sex, sexual identities, and sexual people are portrayed in our source materials? What does sex look like in popular literature, and how might it reflect and/or inform U.S. culture and politics?

Consideration of ways in which discourses of otherness circulate and operate in speculative fiction. From Frankenstein’s monster to encounters with alien species in outer space, the genre has a long history of exploring cultural conceptions of alterity, as well as contact zones where divergent ideologies and values collide. Study will explore texts—primarily, though not exclusively, American—that critically evaluate our notions of the Other in its various guises: the foreign, the uncanny, the monstrous, the threatening, the incomprehensible, the alluring. Course objective is to critically evaluate how speculative fiction reflects, informs, reorients, and shifts cultural understandings of difference. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, N. K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and China Miéville.

In a world increasingly dominated by images, the power of one’s “face card” seems increasingly important. This course explores contemporary manipulations of the face in photography, film, and digital media to understand the significance of the face in current debates over desire, identity, and surveillance. We will examine works in a variety of genres, including Ruth Ozeki’s The Face: A Time Code (2015), the 1995 documentary Shinjuku Boys, Kim Kardashian’s Selfish (2015), the YouTube makeup tutorials of Nikkie de Jager, and other works. There will be a creative option for the final project.

“There are terrible creatures, ghosts, in the very air of America.” – D.H. Lawrence, English novelist & critic 

 

This upper-division summer course delves into the eerie and captivating realm of American horror fiction, traversing a vast landscape of ghost stories, transfiguration tales, and strange forms. From the early Gothic tales to contemporary film and television, we will examine the evolution of horror across media, exploring how American culture has shaped—and been shaped by—conceptions of fear, monstrosity, and the supernatural. In what ways is American fiction haunted, and how are its monsters made?

 

Through an interdisciplinary framework, we will analyze the intersections between horror fiction and major historical events, political movements, and social realities. We will consider the stakes of representation, probing how U.S. horror fiction reflects and refracts anxieties surrounding race, ethnicity, nationality, class, disability, gender, and sexual identity. Together, we will uncover the ways in which American horror stories reflect, shape, and haunt our understanding of the nation and its discontents.

When the future feels precarious, we often look to the past for blueprints of how to survive the present and move towards something else. In this course, we will turn to the 1960s and 1970s and the literature and legacies of Black feminist thought that blossomed during these artistically rich and politically wrought decades. Through the works of visionaries such as Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Alice Walker, we will explore the intersectional philosophies and revolutionary visions of Black feminisms. Through their emphasis on embodiment and relationality, the materials and assignments of this course aim to show how Black feminist thought operates as a methodology, praxis, and call to action. Our shared goal in this course is therefore to take part in relevant social and political conversations that continue the aims of Black feminisms. We will do so by understanding its historical contexts and corresponding drive to dismantle systems of oppression, and by creating sustainable practices—from our own positionalities—that ensure universal equity.

In this course, we will build research and writing skills by analyzing representations of sex and sexuality from the pulp fiction of the early 20th century to the popular fiction of the 21st. Our study will culminate with the international bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey (2012) as we consider its effects on 21st century American discourse around sex. Some questions we may consider over the course of the quarter include: Who decides what “sex” is and what it isn’t? Why do some materials get classified as “obscene” and others find their way into the mainstream? What kinds of sex, sexual identities, and sexual people are portrayed in our source materials? What does sex look like in popular literature, and how might it reflect and/or inform U.S. culture and politics?

Consideration of ways in which discourses of otherness circulate and operate in speculative fiction. From Frankenstein’s monster to encounters with alien species in outer space, the genre has a long history of exploring cultural conceptions of alterity, as well as contact zones where divergent ideologies and values collide. Study will explore texts—primarily, though not exclusively, American—that critically evaluate our notions of the Other in its various guises: the foreign, the uncanny, the monstrous, the threatening, the incomprehensible, the alluring. Course objective is to critically evaluate how speculative fiction reflects, informs, reorients, and shifts cultural understandings of difference. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, N. K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and China Miéville.

This course recovers the surprising prehistory of the word innovation. Today, the term reflects the widespread assumption that change is valuable for its own sake. But before the 1800s, innovation’s meaning was profoundly negative: it described a prohibited activity associated with violent rebellion and religious heresy. We’ll explore how this vast historical shift occurred by reading early modern political, religious, scientific, colonial, and revolutionary texts. And we’ll revisit more recent objects and topics like modernist poetry, economic theory, sci-fi film, and the threat of climate change in light of what we’ve learned. While most people living circa 1600 believed that innovation was always dangerous, some were beginning to wonder whether its benefits might be worth the risk. Yet this often involved harnessing innovation’s power to remake environments and dominate people of another class, gender, race, or faith. Assignments will include a short keyword essay and a paper that uses an early text to analyze a contemporary advertisement involving innovation.

 

This course qualifies for pre-1848 credit on the American Literature and Culture major.

“There are terrible creatures, ghosts, in the very air of America.” – D.H. Lawrence, English novelist & critic 

 

This upper-division summer course delves into the eerie and captivating realm of American horror fiction, traversing a vast landscape of ghost stories, transfiguration tales, and strange forms. From the early Gothic tales to contemporary film and television, we will examine the evolution of horror across media, exploring how American culture has shaped—and been shaped by—conceptions of fear, monstrosity, and the supernatural. In what ways is American fiction haunted, and how are its monsters made?

 

Through an interdisciplinary framework, we will analyze the intersections between horror fiction and major historical events, political movements, and social realities. We will consider the stakes of representation, probing how U.S. horror fiction reflects and refracts anxieties surrounding race, ethnicity, nationality, class, disability, gender, and sexual identity. Together, we will uncover the ways in which American horror stories reflect, shape, and haunt our understanding of the nation and its discontents.

This course recovers the surprising prehistory of the word innovation. Today, the term reflects the widespread assumption that change is valuable for its own sake. But before the 1800s, innovation’s meaning was profoundly negative: it described a prohibited activity associated with violent rebellion and religious heresy. We’ll explore how this vast historical shift occurred by reading early modern political, religious, scientific, colonial, and revolutionary texts. And we’ll revisit more recent objects and topics like modernist poetry, economic theory, sci-fi film, and the threat of climate change in light of what we’ve learned. While most people living circa 1600 believed that innovation was always dangerous, some were beginning to wonder whether its benefits might be worth the risk. Yet this often involved harnessing innovation’s power to remake environments and dominate people of another class, gender, race, or faith. Assignments will include a short keyword essay and a paper that uses an early text to analyze a contemporary advertisement involving innovation.

In this course, we will build research and writing skills by analyzing representations of sex and sexuality from the pulp fiction of the early 20th century to the popular fiction of the 21st. Our study will culminate with the international bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey (2012) as we consider its effects on 21st century American discourse around sex. Some questions we may consider over the course of the quarter include: Who decides what “sex” is and what it isn’t? Why do some materials get classified as “obscene” and others find their way into the mainstream? What kinds of sex, sexual identities, and sexual people are portrayed in our source materials? What does sex look like in popular literature, and how might it reflect and/or inform U.S. culture and politics?

Consideration of ways in which discourses of otherness circulate and operate in speculative fiction. From Frankenstein’s monster to encounters with alien species in outer space, the genre has a long history of exploring cultural conceptions of alterity, as well as contact zones where divergent ideologies and values collide. Study will explore texts—primarily, though not exclusively, American—that critically evaluate our notions of the Other in its various guises: the foreign, the uncanny, the monstrous, the threatening, the incomprehensible, the alluring. Course objective is to critically evaluate how speculative fiction reflects, informs, reorients, and shifts cultural understandings of difference. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, N. K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and China Miéville.

This course recovers the surprising prehistory of the word innovation. Today, the term reflects the widespread assumption that change is valuable for its own sake. But before the 1800s, innovation’s meaning was profoundly negative: it described a prohibited activity associated with violent rebellion and religious heresy. We’ll explore how this vast historical shift occurred by reading early modern political, religious, scientific, colonial, and revolutionary texts. And we’ll revisit more recent objects and topics like modernist poetry, economic theory, sci-fi film, and the threat of climate change in light of what we’ve learned. While most people living circa 1600 believed that innovation was always dangerous, some were beginning to wonder whether its benefits might be worth the risk. Yet this often involved harnessing innovation’s power to remake environments and dominate people of another class, gender, race, or faith. Assignments will include a short keyword essay and a paper that uses an early text to analyze a contemporary advertisement involving innovation.

In a world increasingly dominated by images, the power of one’s “face card” seems increasingly important. This course explores contemporary manipulations of the face in photography, film, and digital media to understand the significance of the face in current debates over desire, identity, and surveillance. We will examine works in a variety of genres, including Ruth Ozeki’s The Face: A Time Code (2015), the 1995 documentary Shinjuku Boys, Kim Kardashian’s Selfish (2015), the YouTube makeup tutorials of Nikkie de Jager, and other works. There will be a creative option for the final project.

“There are terrible creatures, ghosts, in the very air of America.” – D.H. Lawrence, English novelist & critic 

 

This upper-division summer course delves into the eerie and captivating realm of American horror fiction, traversing a vast landscape of ghost stories, transfiguration tales, and strange forms. From the early Gothic tales to contemporary film and television, we will examine the evolution of horror across media, exploring how American culture has shaped—and been shaped by—conceptions of fear, monstrosity, and the supernatural. In what ways is American fiction haunted, and how are its monsters made?

 

Through an interdisciplinary framework, we will analyze the intersections between horror fiction and major historical events, political movements, and social realities. We will consider the stakes of representation, probing how U.S. horror fiction reflects and refracts anxieties surrounding race, ethnicity, nationality, class, disability, gender, and sexual identity. Together, we will uncover the ways in which American horror stories reflect, shape, and haunt our understanding of the nation and its discontents.