Capstone Courses Spring 2027
ENGL 520. History of the Book.
Instructor: Jonathan Lamb
64668 | MW 3:30-4:45 PM | Spencer Research Library 350
What is, and was, the book? This course explores the history of the book in the West from the invention of the alphabet to the advent of the electronic book, with a particular emphasis on the printed book. We will investigate how changing material, technological, and social forces have shaped the production, circulation, and consumption of books. The class will meet at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, where students will gain hands-on experience with books, ranging from medieval manuscripts to early printed books to nineteenth-century triple-decker novels to twentieth-century fine press titles. We may even smell the books. At a time when the concept of the book is changing, we will explore issues that producers and consumers of books have long confronted, such as the interplay of text and image, access and censorship, innovation and form, and aesthetics and economics. Course readings will include articles and essays on the history of authorship, book production, publication, distribution, and readership. Course requirements will include readings, various hands-on projects, three short, formal papers, and a final project.
ENGL 534. Major Authors: Momaday & Erdrich.
Instructor: Robert Warrior
64669 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 PM | Fraser 225
N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) and Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) are among the handful of Native American writers whose works have become the landmarks that established contemporary Indigenous writing as a significant part of the landscape of world literature. Momaday’s 1968 novel House Made of Dawn, for instance, was the first novel by a writer of color to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Erdrich’s 2012 The Round House is the only novel by an Indigenous author to win the National Book Award for Fiction. This course focuses on these two highly accomplished authors in a comparative way as a way of understanding their interventions as Indigenous artists and their vital contributions to contemporary literature. Along with their major novels, we will also read examples of their poetry, nonfiction, and children’s books.
Reading list
Momaday:
The Way to Rainy Mountain
House Made of Dawn
The Names
The Ancient Child
Selected poems, essays, and dramatic writing
Erdrich:
Love Medicine
Tracks
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
The Birchbark House
The Round House
Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country
Selected poems and essays
ENGL 551. Fiction Writing II.
Instructor: Laura Moriarty
60429 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4037
Instructor: Adam Desnoyers
59412 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 PM | Wescoe 4019
62488 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 PM | Wescoe 4019
This course is an intensive exploration of the ideas and techniques of fiction writing within the form of the short story, with primary emphasis on the careful analysis and discussion of student works-in-progress. We will read a variety of published stories each week and discuss narrative structure and style, imagery and metaphor, use of scene and exposition, dialogue, and the various points of view. Requirements: Students will attend class regularly and participate actively in discussion. They will produce three short stories of their own during the semester, which they will submit to the class to be workshopped. They will also provide critiques for their peers’ stories as these are workshopped. Lastly, students will revise their own stories for inclusion in their final portfolio.
Instructor: Brian Daldorph
53506 | M 5:30-8:20 PM | Regnier 152 – Edwards
ENGL 552. Poetry Writing II.
Instructor: Meagen Youngdahl
62489 | MW 2:00-3:15 PM | Bailey 301
This course will build upon lessons in craft and poetics from Poetry I with the goal of helping each student to further explore and shape their particular style and approach to poetry writing. We will do this through an abundance of reading, writing, discussion, workshopping, and revision, as well as frequent generative writing exercises. Students will also be asked to familiarize themselves with the local poetry community (on campus and off) by attending readings and other poetry-centered events. By the end of the course, each student will have produced a chapbook-length collection (20-30 pages) of writing organized around a central theme, idea, or experience, as well as a self-reflection paper discussing how their work might fit into (and add to) the broader poetry landscape.
ENGL 555. Nonfiction Writing II.
Instructor: Doug Crawford-Parker
53512 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 AM | Fraser 225
English 555 is a creative writing workshop focused on continuing students’ development as essayists to expand their ability in the genre’s myriad possibilities of both form and content. The course focuses on student work through the peer review workshop, but we also read outside to understand better some of the potential, possibilities, and pitfalls of the essay form. Students write three essays and contribute regular critiques of one another’s work. One essay is then revisited at semester’s end as part of a larger revision project. Students are required to take part in a group reading of their own work and do several shorter presentations. The workshop format of the course demands a high level of student participation, both in degree and quality. Students can expect to be challenged intellectually and creatively in producing new and original writing and engaging with their fellow students to think about the process of writing as essayists.
ENGL 590. Studies in: The Body and the Novel.
Instructor: Colleen Morrissey
65006 | MW 2:00-3:15 PM | Wescoe 4021
This course explores the link between the body and the Anglo-American novel as a narrative form. Drawing upon narrative theory and history, we will investigate how sensation, (dis)ability, pain, desire, and the embodied experience as a whole are both reflected in and constructed by the novel as a powerful cultural force. Beginning with the English-language novel’s early days in the seventeenth century, we will trace the body’s literary permutations up to the twenty-first century through representative works by the likes of Aphra Behn, Bram Stoker, Toni Morrison, and Ottessa Moshfegh. In doing so, we will examine how Anglo-American culture makes moral, spiritual, and societal meaning out of life in a body. Coursework will emphasize discussion and researched analytical writing.
ENGL 598. Honors Proseminar: Robot Writing: Literacy and Literature in the AI Era.
Instructor: Sean Kamperman
59287 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 PM | Wescoe 4021
How are so-called generative AI technologies changing the way people read, write, think, and communicate? What can literary explorations of automated writing technologies teach us about the relationship between technology and human expression? What happens when current debates about “AI” elide the long history of automated writing? In this course, we will attempt to cut through the hype around AI to explore the real impacts of synthetic text generators on schools, literature, the publishing industry, the public sphere, and everyday acts of literary and rhetorical production.
ENGL 655. Victorian Literature: Victorian Fantasy.
Instructor: Anna Neill
64670 | By appointment | Online (Jan 19-Mar 12)
The Victorians invented fantasy. They recovered and rewrote folk tales and medieval stories. They reenchanted weary modern lives with tales of fairies and goblins. They imagined marvelous new lands whose indigenous peoples could be brutally conquered. They mixed magical thinking with evolutionary science to create improbable beings or to predict outlandish planetary futures. And they imagined utopian possibilities that drew on the conventions of romance. Over the semester we will read a wide range of fantastic Victorian stories, considering how they reflect and comment on contemporary science, industrial capitalism, imperialism, and the many cultural upheavals caused by revolutions in technology and commerce. These writers are the precursors of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. If you love these 20th-century fantasy classics, you will enjoy learning about the stories, the histories, and the conflicted visions of past present and future worlds that the Victorians tried to navigate with the help of romance, myth, and magic. Texts: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King; Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market; Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies; George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin; Marie Corelli, A Romance of Two Worlds;; H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines; William Morris, News from Nowhere.
*This course fulfills the pre-1900 requirement for the LLW degree.
