Topics Courses Spring 2027
ENGL 176: English First-Year Seminar, Trap: Serious Fun: Exploring Identity through Graphic Novels
Instructor: Sheila Murphy
65051 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Fraser 224
Storytelling is one of the most important ways we have to make sense of who we are and who we want to be in the world. Graphic novels offer an amazing array of powerful and enduring stories, from Pulitzer Prize-winning novels to cultural critiques on a huge range of topics. In this course, we will examine issues of identity through graphic novels that are specifically nonfiction personal memoirs. Key questions we will explore include: How do personal stories help us understand the ways our identities develop, change, and interact? How can we better understand social and cultural issues by exploring the personal stories of a diverse range of writers and artists? What insights might my own story-as-graphic-novel hold? For example, we might explore different ways Art’s identity was shaped more by his father’s memories and experiences than his own in "Maus." Through this course, you will be able to sharpen your visual literacy skills, enhance your analytical thinking as you critique non-traditional texts, and explore your own creative abilities by producing a short graphic memoir (no art skills required!).
ENGL 205: Freshman-Sophomore Honors Proseminar: The Odyssey and Its Adaptations
Instructor: Sarah Van der Laan
57609 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4019
A victorious hero, cast adrift on uncharted seas on his return from a cataclysmic war, struggles through unimaginable dangers and powerful temptations to return to the wife and home he left twenty years ago. The Odyssey—one of the oldest surviving works of European literature—continues to inspire films, plays, novels, poems, graphic novels, and artworks: war stories and love stories, postcolonial and feminist revisions, parodies and tragedies. We will discover how contemporary authors and directors from Derek Walcott to Madeline Miller to the Coen brothers reinvent myths for new audiences and examine the nature of adaptation itself. Students will explore these adaptations and ask why Homer’s tales of Troy, with their questioning of ideals of honor and glory, their awareness of the human cost of warfare, and their struggle to find heroism in human experience, remain necessary today.
ENGL 302: Topics in British Literature Since 1800: Monstrous Expectations
Instructor: Mark Luce
64980 | Th 7:00-10:00 PM | Regnier 154 – Edwards
The sun never set on the British Empire… until it did. Their imperial network of crown colonies, protectorates, chartered company territories, princely states and mandates was stitched together with a string of military might, mercantilism, economic coercion, resource extraction, and a healthy dose of arrogance. The Empire cultivated an aura of permanence, but their self-aggrandizing expectations soon led to monstrous results. But for all that English self-regard, we see an undercurrent of crime, cultural fears, colonial oppression, as well as literal and figurative monsters. In this course we will travel from Frankenstein to Bridget Jones as we examine how various class, cultural, individual, and imperial expectations shaped British literature in the last two centuries. Students will read short stories, novels, non-fiction and even newspaper serials as we explore what happens when the most powerful nation on earth loses that distinction.
ENGL 318: Topics in American Literature Since 1865: American Modernist Poetry
Instructor: Paul Outka
63545 | MW 3:30-4:45 PM | Wescoe 4037
This seminar will focus on one of the richest periods in American poetry. Emerging from the collapse of Victorian ideals in and around the First World War, Modernism expressed both cynicism, despair, and a shattering loss of cultural and religious authority for many, as well as a new freedom, acceptance, and quest for new forms of literary and personal expression for others. We will examine the different responses of a variety of poets to this charged moment in America’s cultural self-definition, especially with respect to race, gender, sexual orientation, and aesthetic philosophy. We will discuss roughly a poet a week, including the high Anglo-American Modernism of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound; the canonical local American versions of Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Williams, and Hart Crane; Langston Hughes’ voice from the Harlem Renaissance; and women modernists Mina Loy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Marianne Moore. We will finish the course with a look back—or forward—at the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson. By the conclusion of the course, students should be broadly familiar with modernism and significant poetic works in that tradition.
ENGL 381: Topics in Rhetoric & Composition - Writing for Nonprofits
Instructor: Sean Kamperman
64665 | By appointment | Online
This course offers an introduction to the principles of professional communication in nonprofit organizations. Through analyzing the rhetoric of successful nonprofits and investigating case studies, students will learn how to create a range of documents central to the operation of a successful nonprofit—possibly including grant proposals, brochures, newsletters, and donor reports, among others. Readings and assignments will emphasize the ethical and rhetorical complexities of nonprofit work and prepare students to engage with a range of audiences, from donors to clients to staff. Students will hone their professional writing and strategic communication skills by undertaking service-learning projects on behalf of actual nonprofit organizations. This course is designed equally for students who are interested in nonprofit careers and those who simply want to learn more about how to be an effective communicator in an organizational setting.
ENGL 390: Studies in: Reading Novels as a Writer
Instructor: Laura Moriarty
58318 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 PM | Wescoe 4075
In this course, we’ll read several novels, mostly contemporary, that have enjoyed critical and/or commercial success, and we’ll try to analyze what made them successful. We’ll read these novels as novelists, paying attention to their structures, narrative devices, story arcs, and techniques that might be useful in our own work. We’ll look at what the opening chapters accomplish, and how each author keeps the reader engaged through a novel’s middle and end. We’ll take novel-writing axioms (e.g. “The protagonist has to want something, and want it badly.”) and see if they hold up against real novels. Each student will write short papers and give presentations over the course of the semester. Students can also expect regular reading quizzes.
ENGL 390: Studies in: Mental (Un)wellness in Popular Literature & Culture
Instructor: Deborah Whaley
66120 | W 11:00-1:30 PM | Strong 334A
Is mental illness a social construction? What types of narratives represent how society, psychology, and individuals see, contest, and experience mental illness and mental wellness? We will grapple with these questions and consider what role geography and identity play in the construction and management of the (un)healthy mind. Readings center diverse voices: Killing Joke, Winesburg Ohio, Heart Berries, Everything Here is Beautiful, Last Night I Sang to the Monster, and Freshwater. Assignments constitute active engagement, a midterm, and a digital story project. We will also do a field trip.
ENGL 390: Studies in:Travel Writing & Costa Rica Experience
Instructors: Marta Caminero-Santangelo
63808 | Study Abroad (Dec 21-Apr 15)
Costa Rica is known for its natural beauty, extraordinary biodiversity, and commitment to the environment. This Study Abroad program focuses on experiencing a different landscape and culture while writing about these experiences. Pre-departure meetings discuss the history and geography of Costa Rica and the genre of travel writing, including how “travel writing” can incorporate creative nonfiction, personal reflection, and even fiction and poetry. Possible writing themes include Costa Rica’s biodiversity and cultural diversity, adventure travel, worldview, and personal transformation.
Highlights during the program itself include two volcanoes, Lake Arenal, two waterfalls including La Fortuna (over 200 feet tall), hot springs, the cloud forest, a sloth sanctuary, and beaches on both the Caribbean and Pacific sides of the country, as well as an Indigenous reserve (Bri Bri), an Indigenous cultural demonstration (Maleku), and Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side, which is heavily influenced by Afro-Costa Rican culture. Manuel Antonio National Park on the Pacific Ocean has three beaches and an incredible hike through a biodiverse landscape boasting a variety of monkeys. The program culminates in the spring with a dinner/reading at which students share their travel writing projects.
*This program enrolls through Study Abroad, with application deadlines in September. For more information on how to enroll in nexr year's program, please visit Costa Rica Study Abroad.
ENGL 390: Happily Ever After: Romance as Freedom
Instructors: Hannah Scupham
66178 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4020
Often maligned and misunderstood, popular romance fiction is both a best-selling and under-studied genre. In this course, we will explore the wide, wild, and wonderful world of the romance novels and its critical reception by scholars and readers alike with an emphasis on gender, race, sexuality, and disability. Our course begins with the "bodice rippers" of 1980s and 1990s and the early scholarship/critiques of the genre. We will then shift to discussing how romance media from the past 20 years depicts dating/relationships, pleasure, agency, joy, and readership. In our final unit, we will examine current trends in romance, readership, and publishing, including BookTok, Bookstagram, dark romances, the emergent New Adult genre, and fanfiction, just to name a few. Whether you’re a romance lover or a romance hater, this course is for you. Looking forward to exploring the delightful world of popular romance with you!
ENGL 492: The London Review
Instructor: Doug Crawford-Parker & Sarah Crawford-Parker
51207 | M 4:30-5:50 PM | Study Abroad (Mar 13-Mar 21)
The London Review is a Spring Break study abroad program through which students explore their individual interests in London with faculty support and guidance. Before Spring Break, students research museums, monuments, neighborhoods, sports venues, and other sites in preparation for the visit. They also read examples of travel writing as inspiration for the writing they will do upon return. After Spring Break, students collaborate to create a book documenting and analyzing their experiences. Students participating in the London Review enroll in ENGL 492 (anyone) or HNRS 492 (must be an Honors student).
*This program enrolls through Study Abroad, with application deadlines in October. For more information on how to enroll in nexr year's program, please visit London Review Study Abroad.
ENGL 534: Major Authors (Capstone): 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
*English Department Attendance Policy:
The Department of English reserves the right to terminate administratively the enrollment of any student who does not attend three consecutive class sessions (or engage with a week of course content, if online) prior to the end of the first drop period. Should an emergency situation cause the student to miss three or more consecutive class meetings, the student should contact their instructor(s) as soon as possible.)
