Capstone Courses Spring 2025
ENGL 551: Fiction Writing II
Instructor: Kij Johnson
55730 | M 3:00-5:30 PM | Wescoe 4020 - Lawrence
This course advances an understanding and application of craft to the development and writing of short fiction. Building on a basic understanding of story, attention will be given to scenic writing and other techniques, characterization, theme, image, subtext, and revision. Students will read and engage in discussions about short fiction of note, which will be made available online; workshop student stories through discussion, written comments, and markup; develop detailed revision strategies and tools; and generate new work through exercises and as major assignments.
Instructor: Adam Desnoyers
53829 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4023 - Lawrence
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
45497 | M 5:30-8:20 PM | REGN 152 - Edwards
ENGL 554: Playwriting II
Instructor: Darren Canady
55925 | TuTh 1:00-2:15 PM | Wescoe 4037 – Lawrence
Students will build on foundational dramatic writing skills and concepts to craft and explore longer pieces of dramatic writing, including one-act plays and the first act of a full-length piece. Using a variety of experimental methods of story and script development employed by a range of playwrights and theatre companies, students will gain practical experience in storytelling methods that incorporate and then move beyond traditional narrative structure. Particular emphasis will be placed on further developing participants' skills in responding to new work through the workshop model. Additionally, there will be reading assignments built in to expose students to the variety of dramatic texts currently being produced for the stage.
ENGL 555: Nonfiction Writing II
Instructor: Doug Crawford-Parker
45503 | MW 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4023 – Lawrence
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. Texts • Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton, eds. Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. University of Washington Press, 2019. ISBN-10: 0295745754 • Zoë Bossier and Erica Trabold, eds. The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins. Wayne State University Press, 2023. ISBN-10: 0814349609 • Carl H. Klaus. A Self Made of Words: Crafting a Distinctive Persona in Creative Nonfiction. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2013. ISBN-10: 1609381947 • Priscilla Long. The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life. Second ed. U of New Mexico P, 2018. ISBN-10: 082636005X • Hanif Abdurraqib. A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. Random House, 2022. ISBN-10: 1984801201 • Anna Badkhen. Bright Unbearable Reality. New York Review Books, 2022. ISBN-10: 1681377063 • Sabrina Imbler. How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures. Back Bay Books, 2024. ISBN-10: 0316540501 • André Aciman. Homo Irrealis: The Would-Be Man Who Might Have Been: Essays • Picador, 2022. ISBN-10: 1250829283
ENGL 569: Modernism
Instructor: Kathryn Conrad
55667 | APPT ONLNE CRSE - ONLINC
Often defined as a movement in art and literature in the US and Europe that flourished between the two world wars and embraced radical formal experimentation, modernism can encompass a broader timeline and geography as well as a more complex collection of ideas and forms of expression. In this course, we will explore some of the standard definitions, texts, and aesthetics associated with modernism as well as some of the writers and artists in dialogue with, and sometimes resistant to, modernist approaches. While the course itself argues for a more global definition of modernism, the primary focus will be transatlantic due to the constraints of the semester. This is an online asynchronous capstone course and will require short papers, an annotated bibliography and research paper in addition to regular reading and online participation. There will be opportunities for one or two campus-based activities with alternatives provided for those for whom campus activity is not possible or preferred. Office hours will be available both virtually and in person.
ENGL 574: Black Masculinities
Instructor: Sarah Ngoh
55668 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 PM | WES 4020 - LAWRENCE
This course seeks to introduce students to the relatively new discipline of black masculinities studies—an interdisciplinary field concerned with revealing and interrogating the constructions and dynamics of maleness and blackness in an effort to visualize and problematize the black masculine experience—by examining how it intersects with African American literature. This course challenges students to understand black masculinity as a socially constructed concept, to think critically about how literature works to reinforce those constructions, thereby reproducing inequities, and to explore how African American authors have negotiated and subverted stereotypes about and attempts to define black masculinities/men in their literature.
ENGL 590: Care Practices: Ecology, Community, and Self
Instructor: Megan Kaminski
56850 | W 09:00 - 11:30 AM | FR 218 - LAWRENCE
This interdisciplinary course will explore practices to encounter, engage with, and care for the larger ecologies and communities of which we are a part—as well as liberatory modes of self-care. We will explore our local ecologies through field trips and community-engaged learning and connect what we learn to larger environmental issues, including species extinction, climate change, and the uneven distribution of harms across people and place. Assigned reading and creative and contemplative practices will help us connect to our shared ecosystem as a source of knowledge and inspiration for strategies to live in the world, to navigate uncertainty—and to re-align thinking towards reciprocity, community, and sustainability. More specifically, the class will focus on care practices that counters extractive and exploitative values and relationships with land and peoples (human and otherwise). We will consider expansive practices that have evolved from social and environmental justice movements, LGBTQ+ movements, decolonial studies, and disability justice movements. This project-based course welcomes students to explore the themes of the class within and across their own fields of interest, experience, practice, and study. Assignments will take the form of a field journal and a final project in a form/genre of the student’s choosing.
ENGL 590: Climate Fiction
Instructor: Paul Outka
53538 | MW 03:00 - 04:15 PM WES 4037 - LAWRENCE
This class will examine literary representations of nature and human/nature relations and their political, social and environmental consequences, with a particular focus on an emerging genre of speculative work called “Climate Fiction” or “CliFi” for short. We will ask be concerned throughout to ask how literary works might help us envision the dangers and possibilities for human and nonhuman life on earth, both in the recent past and in the imagined future.
ENGL 590: Programming Digital Humanities
Instructor: Wen Xin
56598 | MW 11:00 - 12:15 PM | WES 4021 - LAWRENCE
New methods in Digital Humanities (or DH) have enabled us to engage with a far larger collection of texts and uncover more nuanced patterns than traditional approaches, such as closing reading and human analysis, typically permit. This course will introduce humanities students to the foundational skills of computational text analysis, a core component of DH, in the R programming language. We will begin by learning how to convert unstructured textual data into a structured format. Then, we will proceed to visualizing and analyzing structured data using various methods, such as TF-IDF, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling. This course will expand your suite of skills as you pursue humanities questions. You will be expected to complete assignments that exercise in-class instructions and a group project where you work with your group members to plan, execute, and report your textual analysis. No prior technical skills are expected in this course. We will start with the very basics of programming. Bring your laptops!
