Diverse Identities & Communities Courses Spring 2025
ENGL 306: Global Environmental Literature
Instructor: Phil Drake
53638 | TuTh 09:30 - 10:45 AM | WES 4051 - LAWRENCE
This course surveys global perspectives of environments, environmental aesthetics, ecological dynamics, and environmental politics through literature. Coursework will draw on literature by authors in various geographical and cultural contexts, covering a broad time period to explore major historical movements and events that animate environmental literature, from the Enlightenment to the anthropocene. Theoretically, this course traces the emergence of ecocriticism as it evolves in conversation with feminism, postcolonialism, animal studies, and posthumanism. These theoretical movements will guide our discussions and inquiries into relevant issues that impact the environment, like colonialism, racism, patriarchy, industrialization, science, development, warfare, technological advancement, imperialism, conflict, and disaster. A broader goal of the course is to foster critical tools and perspectives to improve our conduct as social and ecological actors. Likely texts will include: Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place; Robert Barclay, Melal; Kang, The Vegetarian; Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream; and selected works that will be posted on the class Blackboard page.
ENGL 308: Intro to Literary Criticism & Theory
Instructor: Paul Outka & Emma Webster
55663 | MW 11:00 - 12:15 PM | WES 4047 - LAWRENCE
Study of significant problems in literary interpretation and methodology, in which basic critical principles and approaches are systematically examined and applied. These approaches might include, but are not limited to, feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies.
ENGL 340: Latina/x/o Literatures
Instructor: Marta Caminero-Santangelo
57416 | APPT ONLINE | WINTER BREAK SESSION DEC 23 - JAN 17
This class will focus on key readings in U.S. Latina/x/o literature, including literature by people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Central American descent. Various genres, including oral forms such as corridos as well as literature from the 1960s to the present including novels, poetry, essays, and autobiographical writing, will be considered. We will consider the separate histories of each of these groups and of their relationship to the U.S., while also discussing what (if anything) defines a common "Latine" identity. We will also consider issues such as the significance of various labels used to describe this group (e.g. “Latina/x/o,” “Hispanic,” “Chicano/a/x”); writers’ responses to their particular social and historical conditions; colonialism and U.S. intervention in Latin America; the construction of ethnicity; issues of racial identity, racial construction, and racism; the concept of cultural hybridity; indigenous and African heritage in the Americas; language and linguistic difference; the tension between cultural preservation and assimilation; the development of political consciousness (with particular attention to the Chicano farmworkers' movement); and stances of resistance to cultural and/or political oppressions.
ENGL 492: The London Review
Instructor: Mary Klayder
42682 | W 04:30 - 05:50 PM WES 4023 - ABROAD
This class meets one day a week throughout the semester and includes a nine-day visit to London over the spring break period. Students spend the early part of the semester selecting special interests, researching places to visit and study, and exchanging information. After the trip, students compile and publish a journal entitled "The London Review", which is comprised of essays, photos, art work, and other reflections about their experience in London.
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 390/590: Travel Writing & Costa Rica
Instructor: Marta Caminero-Santangelo
57300 OR 54714 | APPT STUDY - ABROAD JAN-03/JAN-14
On this program, students will investigate a variety of current issues in Costa Rican politics, culture, ecology, and tourism through lectures, excursions, and individual writing projects.
ENGL 390/590: Cuban/Cuban American Literature & Culture
Instructor: Marta Caminero-Santangelo
57321 OR 57529 | APPT STUDY - ABROAD MAR-15/MAR-23
Explore Cuban culture—including the centrality and importance of Afro-Cuban culture, the continuing legacy of Castro’s Revolution and of links to the former Soviet Union, the divide with the Cuban Diaspora, and Cuba’s rich literary, film, and music production.
