Introductory English Courses Fall 2026
ENGL 105: Honors Introduction to English - Literature of the Body
Instructor: Colleen Morrissey
26359 | MWF 11:00-11:50 AM | Wescoe 4019
26360 | MWF 12:00-12:50 PM | Wescoe 4019
In this course, we will examine the literature of the body—how the written word has reflected and constructed our concepts of what it means to sense, suffer, live, and die as beings of flesh. Through literature, we will trace the ways in which the body’s shapes, desires, and abilities are represented as signs of personal worth, attractiveness, character, virtue, and even one’s humanity or inhumanity. Through our study, students will build their critical thinking, reading, research, and writing skills, learning to uncover the ways that literature, culture, and history co-define each other. Most importantly, students will explore how the written word—both others’ and their own—is a powerful force for creating and capturing the most intimate human realities. Class meetings will emphasize discussion while coursework will emphasize critical writing. Texts will include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from writers such as the Brothers Grimm, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Helen Oyeyemi.
ENGL 105: Honors Introduction to English - Murder, They Wrote
Instructor: Megan Dennis
26269 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4021
How do we understand representations of crime and
victimhood in literature and culture? Representations
of crime, victims, and suspects have broader
implications for the ways we understand embodiment,
social mores, and justice. Crime and detective stories
have retained a foothold in the Western imagination
since the days of Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin and Arthur
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. These texts hold us
in suspense, while also revealing anxieties among
society’s members, particularly regarding containment
of behavior and identities society deems improper or
dangerous. Through critical engagement with literature
across a variety of genres and time periods, this course
will delve into the realm of crime literature as a means
to interrogate the dominant frameworks in which we
live. Students can expect to engage with such works as
Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha
Christie’s The Mousetrap, Truman Capote’s In Cold
Blood, Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, as well as
true crime cases presented in popular podcasts such as
My Favorite Murder (and others.) Our writing
assignments will include some shorter reading
responses/ in-class writing activities, as well as three
major writing projects and a final reflection.
ENGL 105: Honors Introduction to English - World Fair
Instructor: Sonya Lancaster
26358 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 PM | Wescoe 4019
The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, known as the Columbian Exposition, was attended by more than 27 million people during its six-month run. It represents a pivotal moment in the history of the nation, influencing many areas of American life: architecture, sanitation, The Arts, ideas about the West, marketing, race relations, women’s issues, and even electricity. The World’s Fair changed those who participated in it by celebrating consumption and technology., and we will consider the impact of these changes on the U. S. today. We will examine the tensions between those who wanted to represent the ideal city, and those who were ostracized from that city but created their own spaces as critiques of the Fair.
Writing Projects: There will be three writing projects in the class, and a collaborative final project: the first is an examination of a physical space at the fair through maps photographs, films and other materials from digital archives, using these to analyze the space rhetorically; the second project with be a synthesis of archival and newspaper primary sources and secondary sources from the library about controversies at the Fair to represent a controversy from three viewpoints: those who participate in exhibits or work at the Fair, those who have positions of authority at the Fair, and visitors to the fair. The third project will ask you to analyze an artifact or technology from the Fair and write about how it represents the experiences of the fairgoers and ideas about the US as a nation in the late 19th Century. The final project will be the creation collaborative zines to represent ways that the Fair resonates with people living today.
Readings: We will read Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City, both as an overview of the Fair and as an example of a historical non-fiction novel, and the other readings will be in digital archives, newspaper articles from 1893, travel memoirs, journals, petitions, speeches, and secondary sources. All of these will be provided on or accessed from Canvas.
Field trips: A highlight of teaching this class at the University of Kansas, is the ability to see first-hand materials from the Fair: we will go to the Natural History Museum to see the Panorama, which was the Kansas state exhibit for the Fair; we will go to the Spencer Museum of Art to look at artifacts from Sarah Casey Thayer’s Collection, which she purchased at the Fair; and we will go to the Spencer Research library to examine materials in their collection from the Fair, which includes recipe books, guide books, and other materials.
ENGL 105: Honors Introduction to English - Food & Writing
Instructor: Mary Jo Reiff
26361| MW 2:00-3:15 PM | Wescoe 4075
In this course, we will use the lens of food and food studies to practice critical thinking, reading, and writing skills and to meet the KU Core34 Goals of exploring your own experiences and utilizing research to communicate ideas in writing and across varied contexts and mediums. We will begin with overviews of how the metaphor of “cooking” is used to discuss writing processes, drawing comparisons between cooking and writing as generative action and interaction and as activities that are both active and reflective. We will then explore the connection between food, memory, and cultural identity as we read and write food memoirs. Moving from personal to academic writing, we will research and explore food-related issues relevant to our disciplines, with a focus on how food serves as a lens for exploring social/cultural issues (such as the environment/sustainability, health/nutrition, human-animal relationships, labor conditions, food insecurity, food safety, etc.). For the final project, we will turn to the history of cookbooks (with a visit to Spencer Research Library to examine cookbooks in the archives) and will explore the rhetoric of cookbooks and the genre of recipes as we create multimodal projects that contribute to a final collaborative class project: a digital cookbook/website/blog.
ENGL 209: Introduction to Fiction
Instructor: Spencer Martin
27161 | MWF 11:00-11:50 AM | Fraser 219
27162 | MWF 12:00-12:50 PM | Fraser 219
The purpose of ENGL 209 is to introduce studies to the elements of prose fiction storytelling and the key methodologies of studying the genre. In this class, students will read, critically analyze, and write about various short stories and novels. In this class we will focus on methods of interpreting and analyzing stories, discussing the nature of the prose fiction form(s), and exploring the purpose of both analyzing stories and storytelling more broadly. Required texts may include Nella Larsen’s Passing, Yoss’s A Planet for Rent (trans. David Fyre), N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, and various short stories from the literary to the speculative.
ENGL 210: Introduction to Poetry
Instructor: Brian Daldorph
26271 | MWF 10:00-10:50 AM | Wescoe 4037
26272 | MWF 11:00-11:50 AM| Wescoe 4037
What is poetry? In this online Introduction to Poetry class, we'll try to answer this question by exploring different poetic modes, forms, and styles poets have used throughout history, and we'll also see what poets have to say *about* poetry. We'll read historical examples of poetry, and we'll read more recent examples. Alongside these readings, we'll also be taking a look at poetic essays that help shed light on exactly what and how poets do what they do. Throughout the class we'll regularly discuss poetry using close, critical analysis, and we'll also be writing critical analysis papers of individual poems and of multiple poems. Poetry transforms and, indeed, actively *makes* the world. In this class, we'll learn about how this happens.
ENGL 220: Introduction to Creative Writing
Instructor: Natalie Wolf
27167 | MWF 12:00-12:50 PM | Fraser 207
27168 | MWF 1:00-1:50 PM | Fraser 207
In this course, students will study and engage in the practice of creative writing in four genres: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Through reading (of both creative work and critical texts on creative writing craft), discussion, and creative experimentation, students will gain a strong understanding of each genre’s conventions, strategies, and contexts. Writing assignments will scaffold the creative process, from generating original ideas to developing drafts. At the end of each unit, students will participate in creative writing workshops, where they will practice giving and receiving detailed, constructive feedback in a supportive environment. In lieu of a final exam, students will submit a revision of one of their creative works, along with a short reflection.
Instructor: Meagen Youngdahl
27170 | TuTh 2:00-3:15 PM | Bailey 301
27169 | TuTh 3:30-4:45 PM | Bailey 301
In this course we will closely read examples of creative writing in a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and even hybrid texts that utilize elements from multiple genres. We will analyze these texts through a combination of group discussion and critical writing, paying particular attention to the writers' craft. After developing a strong understanding of a genre's conventions and contexts, students will be asked to put that knowledge into practice and produce original writing. Students will also have the opportunity to have writing workshopped by their peers. Graded work will include informal generative exercises, a reading journal, and original writing in three genres. In lieu of a final exam, students will submit a portfolio of their revised work, along with a reflection paper.
ENGL 300: Introduction to English Studies
Instructor: Jonathan Lamb & Joshua Imken
18243 | MWF 1:00-1:50 PM | Wescoe 4047
Where do texts come from? What kinds of relationships do they have with each other? How do writers relate across texts and across time? English 300 will introduce students to the main areas and methods of English studies—literary studies, creative writing, and rhetoric—by examining how texts relate, how they rewrite, retell, steal from each other. Pondering these relationships will allow us to contemplate the conditions of reading and writing across contexts, genres, and rhetorical situations. They help us think about what it means for a text to be fictional, poetic, persuasive, convincing, creative, engaging, boring, or even true. Students will write three main assignments and as well as several shorter assignments and a final project, comment on readings in Teams, and create a short presentation. Students will finish the course with a fuller sense of what it means to be an English major or minor. Texts include: Jeffrey Nealon & Susan Searls Giroux, 'The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences,' 2nd Ed. (9780742570504); William Shakespeare, 'The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy.' 2nd Ed. (9780312457529); Margaret Atwood, 'Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel' (9780804141312); Frederick Douglass, 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself,' Third Ed. (9781319048897); Harriet Jacobs, 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself' (Norton Critical Edition) Second Ed. (9780393614565)
