General Literature Courses Spring 2027
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 305. World Indigenous Literatures.
Instructor: Robert Warrior
64662 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 AM | Strong 334A
A survey of contemporary world indigenous literatures that includes literary and other textually-based work from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the Pacific. Texts are in English (original or translation). Materials studied include novels, poetry, video, film, and graphic work. Past readings and viewings have included works by Louise Erdrich, Leanne Simpson, Joshua Whitehead, the comic book Kiss Me Deadly by Richard Van Camp, and short films by Sterlin Harjo, Jude Norris, and Taika Waititi.
ENGL 305 listed works:
Tommy Orange, There There
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Leanne Simpson, This Accident of Being Lost
Billy-Ray Belcourt, NDN Coping Mechanisms
Elissa Washuta, My Body Is a Book of Rules
Joshua Whitehead, Jonny Appleseed
Cherie Dimaline,The Marrow Thieves
Richard Van Camp, Kiss Me Deadly (comic book distributed in class)
Goodnight Irene (Sterlin Harjo)
Navajo Talking Picture (Arlene Bowman)
Two Cars, One Night (Taika Waititi)
Red Buffalo Skydive (Jude Norris)
Boy (Taiaika Waititi)
ENGL 306. Global Environmental Literature.
Instructor: Phillip Drake
59323 | By appointment (Jan 19-Mar 12) | Online
Instructor: Paula Console-Soican
66413 | By appointment (Mar 22-May 14) | Online
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 Canvas page.
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 338. Introduction to African-American Literature.
Instructor: Zay Dale
62480 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 PM | Wescoe 4020
This course introduces students to prominent works of African-American literature from the 18th century to the present as well as to the basic approaches to study and principles of this body of work, including its connection with African sources. Literature will include a wide variety of genres, and course materials may be supplemented by folklore, music, film, and visual arts.
Prerequisite: ENGL 102 or ENGL 105 or the equivalent, or consent of the instructor.
Satisfies: Goal 4 Outcome 1 (AE41) , US Culture (USC)
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: Happily Ever After: Romance as Freedom.
Instructor: 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 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
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 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
*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.)
