General Literature Courses Spring 2027
ENGL 301: Topics in British Literature to 1800: Literature of King Arthur
Instructor: Misty Schieberle & Victoria Wamsley
64661 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4008
Literature about King Arthur and his knights has been hugely influential on modern fantasy, romantic comedies, and coming-of-age stories. This course explores how Arthurian literature started and how it has been adapted throughout the centuries for literary, historical, and even propaganda purposes. We will follow a few symbols (e.g., the sword in the stone, the Holy Grail) and important characters and their actions (e.g., Arthur, Gawain, the Lancelot-Guinevere love affair) through various iterations. Texts will range from medieval literature like Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (in translation) to Tudor-era propaganda, nineteenth-century adaptations, and more modern media. Questions driving the course will include how Arthurian material is represented differently in different genres, how authors reinvent Arthurian narratives to address changing cultural contexts, and, of course, is Arthurian literature some of the first fanfiction? Course requirements include: regular class attendance and participation, quizzes and two short essays and exams. This course fulfills the English 312 or equivalent requirement for the English major.
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
ENGL 306: Global Environmental Literature
Instructor: Phillip Drake
59323 | By appointment | 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 534: Major Authors (Capstone): Momaday & Erdrich
Instructor: Robert Warrior
64669 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 PM | Fraser 225
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.
