Department of English Courses
Spring 2027
| Course | Title | Day | Time | Instructor | Room | Syllabus | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ENG 105 M002 | Intro to Creative Writing | MW | 9:30 - 10:25AM | Chanelle Benz | HBC KITT | This course will introduce students to three types of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and mixed literary forms. The course will focus on inspiration (why write a poem or a story or an essay?) as well as the techniques of evocative, compelling writing across all literary genres (e.g., point of view, concrete detail, lyricism, image, voice, tone, structure, dialogue, and characterization). Students will examine work by authors from various traditions and produce creative work in each genre. ENG 105 prepares students for upper-level creative writing courses in fiction and poetry. | |
| ENG 107 M002 | Living Writers | W | 3:45-6:30PM | Matt Grzecki | MSQ 208A | This class gives students the rare opportunity to hear visiting writers read and discuss their work. The class is centered on six readings and question-and-answer sessions. Students will be responsible for careful readings of the writers’ work. Critical writing and detailed class discussions are required to prepare for the question-and-answer sessions with the visiting writers. | |
| ENG 113 M001 | British Literature to 1789 | MW | 3:45-5:05pm | Nathan Keckley | HBC 213A | Knights, monsters, devils, witches – these figures fill British literature. Sometimes they’re terrifying forces of nature; sometimes they’re embodiments of a feared and hated Other; and sometimes they’re symbols of environmental and political struggle. In this course, we will explore the origins of British literature, from its beginnings before English or literature as we know them even existed. We will read, recite, and decipher Anglo-Saxon riddles, Arthurian romances, and Renaissance drama, and trace the idea of a united Britain, from King Arthur to the modern age. And we will see how literature and language were used to construct the fantasy of a United Kingdom and justify the world’s largest empire. | |
| ENG 114 M001 | British Literature Since 1789 | MW | 3:45 - 5:05PM | Chris Forster | BH 105 | This course surveys British literature from 1789 to the present, spanning the Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Contemporary periods. We will read works from across Great Britain and its empire, exploring how writers responded to, and helped shape, historical transformations including revolution, slavery and its abolition, industrialization, imperialism and its aftermath, the world wars, and the rise of modern mass media. Our readings will cover major literary genres such as the novel, lyric poetry, and drama, as well as a broader range of cultural texts. Authors include Olaudah Equiano, Jane Austen, John Keats, Emily Brontë, Robert Browning, Virginia Woolf, Derek Walcott, and Zadie Smith. | |
| ENG 115 | Topics in British Literature | TTH | 3:30-4:50PM | Magnolia Murphy | MSQ 205A | This course will explore the various ways in which popular scientific discourse has shaped British literature throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The course will begin with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein– often considered the first science fiction novel in English– and will also include works from British modernism (Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway), postmodernism, and the contemporary dystopian fiction of Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go). In addition to novels, course material will include short fiction, poetry, popular science publications, and podcasts that provide a survey of evolving science discourse and corresponding literature. In considering literature as a cultural response to shifting paradigms of science, we will explore questions such as: how does scientific discourse make its way into literature? To what extent do various works and authors take the implications of scientific discourse seriously as a description of reality? Where is the dividing line between ‘science fiction’ and science-in-fiction, and what purposes do these categories serve? How does scientific discourse shape British conceptions of the self and “others”? How are existing power dynamics reinforced or undermined through science in fiction? No previous science experience is required or assumed. | |
| ENG 119 M001 | Topics in U.S. Literature: Post-1945 American Fiction | TTH | 2:00-3:20PM | Susan Edmunds | This course offers a survey of U.S. fiction from the 1940s to the present. We will read a selection of short stories and novels alongside a range of other literary and nonliterary genres, including the autobiographical essay, the memoir, New Journalism, poetry, the political manifesto and the literary preface. We will interpret the fiction through a sociohistorical lens, and place particular emphasis on investigating the interconnections between literary form and social change. After an initial survey of fiction written in direct response to World War II and its aftermath, we will read texts associated with or influenced by the counterculture, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Arts Movements, Second Wave Feminism and its critique by women of color, and the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. We will also read contemporary fiction that engages social struggles around racism, border policy and climate change. The two novels we will read are Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. | ||
| ENG 119 M002 | Topics in U.S. Literature | MW | 12:45-2:05PM | Antonio Tiongson | TOLLEY 104 | ||
| ENG 122 M001 | Introduction to the Novel | MW | 3:45-5:05PM | Finn Smith-Ruttan | HL 115 | This course offers an introduction to the histories, properties and powers of the novel, with a particular emphasis on the novels of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will identify and interpret the particular qualities of the form - narrative and plot, setting, character, point-of-view, style, genre, mood - and examine how the texts use these elements to converse with their contemporaneous sociopolitical conditions, addressing issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, colonialism, and humanity. We will observe how novels construct their worlds, how they make sense of past and present, and how they participate in shaping the future. Questions we will attempt to answer in this course include: What makes a novel a novel? What kinds of stories is the novel called upon to tell? How have the demands of the publishing industry shaped the novel over time? What is the place of the novel in the contemporary media landscape? Authors read in this course may include James Baldwin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Williams, and Yuri Herrera. | |
| ENG 125 M001 | Science Fiction | MW | 11:40AM-12:35PM | Katherine Kidd | FALK 100 | The origins and definition of Science Fiction or speculative fiction are debated by fans and scholars all over the world. Likewise, scholars continue to debate the value of the genre as Literature with a capital L. In this course, we will take the genre and its capacities for uniquely powerful social commentary seriously as we explore possible beginnings, movements, subgenres and shifts within Science Fiction short stories and novels, as well as some television and film. We will look primarily at U.S. American and British texts, but we will expand beyond the West somewhat. This course features opportunities for creative work, as well as critical reading and writing. | |
| ENG 140 M001 | Reading the Environment | TTH | 5:00-6:20PM | Elena Selthun | MSQ 202A | We often imagine “nature” and “the environment” as separate from our human lives and spaces (cities, houses, classrooms, etc.), accessible only in protected parks or remote wilderness. In this course, we will think through this distinction of what “counts” as nature/the environment, particularly in the context of anthropogenic climate change, evolution and extinction, industrial pollution and disturbance, and the relationship of humans to other species. By closely reading various forms of media, including historical and contemporary literature like On the Origin of Species and Forest Euphoria, films like Wolfwalkers, poems like “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” video games like Palia, and the environment itself, we will analyze, write about, and discuss how these texts imagine human relationships to nature and how we impact and participate in various ecologies. Throughout this course, we will critically reflect on the local ecology of Syracuse as well as more global ecologies, and we will discuss how reading the environment can change our relationships with it, as well as potentially shaping future ecologies. | |
| ENG 145 M001 | Reading Popular Culture | MW | 2:15 - 3:10PM | Crystal Bartolovich | GRANT AUD | This class examines mass cultural forms such as advertising, television and movies as well as everyday practices (shopping or using social media), to try to understand how we learn to make sense of a globalizing world and live a particular culture—or cultures—in the U.S. today. To this end, we will explore the pleasures of becoming thoughtful readers of a variety of cultural texts. We will ask why characters such as Sherlock Holmes keep enticing readers and viewers in new forms, and how Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics engage fans. We will read Spiegelman’s Maus to think about “comics” and explore the significance of “popular” tv shows, such as Survivor and The Sopranos. We will consider why some movies are “blockbusters” and explore the various appeals of sci-fi and horror, while taking account of their relation to our own identity formation: how do you become “yourself” in a particular culture? As the course progresses, you should become a more sophisticated, creative and engaged reader of the many different cultural forms that help make the world meaningful to ourselves and others. This course satisfies the A&S Core Critical Reflection requirement as well as the university IDEA requirement. | |
| ENG 151 M001 | Interpretation of Poetry | MW | 2:15 - 3:35PM | Sarah Harwell | HL 114 | The course will consist of discussions of poems from the various traditions of poetry: from anonymous ballads to spoken-word poetry. We’re interested in what makes the poem memorable and moving, how it is a vehicle for the intellect and the emotions, how it’s “the act of establishing communication between the mind and the heart.” We are interested, too, in what ways the poem provokes and challenges us, what gives the poem its power to seduce and trouble and soothe, what gives it its music and voice as distinct from speech. | |
| ENG 153 M001 | Interpretation of Fiction | MW | 3:45-5:05PM | Silvio Torres-Saillant | EGGERS 111 | Interpretation of Fiction studies literary texts representative of the literary form known as “fiction.” Humans have told stories (tales, myths, parables, fables, riddles, legends, anecdotes, and legends, etc.) since time immemorial. Stories have served to instill moral values in young people, preserve the community’s historical memory, promote positive values, maintain the stability of a group’s culture, or serve as pastime. Storytelling may precede the birth of language as can be surmised from the archeological record of the Prehistoric Period (from roughly 2.5 million years ago to 1200 B.C.). The vivid scenes inside the Altamira and the Lascaux caves during the Paleolithic era provoke us to think of the painters (engravers/carvers) as narrating experiences worth remembering. We read an ancient Greek novel and a fair sampling of short fiction from modern times. Our course will delve into why and how fiction matters and what is at stake in reading it. We cover Aethiopica (or An Ethiopian Romance in our translation calls it) written in the 3rd or 4th century AD by Heliodorus of Emesa. Besides its inherent value, this is a text that served as a stepping stone to the rise of the European novel. | |
| ENG 154 M001 | Interpretation of Film | TTH | 11:00AM-12:20PM | Meghan Healy | TOLLEY 104 | ||
| ENG 164 M002 | Children's Literature | MW | 2:15-3:35PM | Maja Grey | LYMAN 115B | Children’s literature has a history of engaging with the same historical, sociopolitical, and cultural dilemmas as other genres of literature, but often in more subtle and fun—but no less meaningful—ways. As such, these texts, which are among the first we encounter in our lives, have the power to shape not only how we think and feel, but, ultimately, who we become—all in a short period of time before being relegated to our past. In this course, we will focus primarily on works of British and American children’s literature to examine key questions including: How and why does children's literature use a fantastical bent to tackle real-world problems? Why are so many works of children’s literature stories wherein the children must save themselves (and everyone else too)? And the age-old question: is children's literature really just for children? Additionally, in considering film and tv adaptations of children’s literature, we will examine how, when, and why these texts are adapted and often changed for a new audience. Specific novel-length texts may include The Bad Beginning, The Chronicles of Narnia, Elatsoe, Magyk, The Mysterious Benedict Society, A Wrinkle in Time, and/or their adaptations; more stereotypically canonical texts will also be examined. | |
| ENG 170 M001 | U.S. Cinema, Beginnings to 2000 | MW | 12:45 - 1:40PM | Will Scheibel, Summer Mohrmann, Olivia Dunbar-Miller | LYMAN 132 | This course traces the history of U.S. cinema from the late nineteenth-century to the year 2000. We will look at individual films not as ends in themselves, but as windows into cinema technologies, industrial practices, and cultures of film viewing at particular historical moments. Learning this history will introduce you to various cinematic modes—fiction and non-fiction, narrative and the avant-garde, Hollywood and independent production—and how they function. Course topics will include the following: the rise of cinema as an institution and the standardization of U.S. film genres; the studio and star systems of Classical Hollywood cinema; Hollywood during the outbreak of the Cold War; the post–World War II shift to realism, on the one hand, and escapist spectacle, on the other; the counter-culture and, later, the restoration of the establishment; the “Film School Generation”; and independent cinemas of the late twentieth-century (the L.A. Rebellion, the New Black Film Wave, New Queer Cinema, and “Indiewood”). ENG-170 serves as one of the gateway-course options for the Film and Screen Studies track in the English and Textual Studies major. | |
| ENG 171 M001 | Wolrd Cinema | TTH | 2:00-3:20PM | Hyejun Kim | SMITH 337 | This course offers a critical exploration of world cinema across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By exploring German expressionism, French New Wave, Chinese Melodrama, Mexican Golden Age cinema, Bollywood, Postcolonial African Cinema, political Iranian cinema, Hong Kong New Wave, Japanese anime, Thai art cinema, Indigenous horror cinema, transnational blockbusters and more, we will examine how film has functioned as a global medium shaped by the intertwined histories of modernity, colonialism and globalization. Moving beyond Hollywood- and Eurocentric models of analysis, the course investigates how these regional film cultures and movements have developed through dynamic exchanges between local traditions and transnational flows of capital and ideas. By surveying the sociocultural, aesthetic, and industrial dimensions of cinema in these regions, we will consider how films negotiate questions of identity, genre circulation, gender politics, history, and sovereignty. | |
| ENG 171 M002 | World Cinema | MW | 2L15-3:10PM | Tasneem Hamead | SOM 302 | Cinema has often been called a universal language, and it is certainly made all over the globe. But world cinema has a richness and complexity that defies a single model, despite the cultural dominance and economic power of Hollywood cinema. This course examines how the international history of film has been shaped by the larger historical dynamics of modernity, colonialism, postmodernism and globalization. We will explore the diverse pleasures, politics and aesthetics of cinema from around the world, including German Expressionism, post-revolutionary Soviet cinema, Chinese melodrama, French New Wave, Bollywood, postcolonial African cinema, Japanese anime, Iranian neorealism, contemporary indigenous cinema and transnational blockbusters. We will trace how aesthetics, technologies and economies of cinema have mutually influenced filmmaking traditions in diverse regions of the world. Moreover, we will investigate how cinema contributes to our understandings of the world, our places within it, and our relations to other parts of it. In sum, we will discover how world cinema is always both local and global. | |
| ENG 172 M001 | The Literature of War and Peace | TTH | 12:30-1:50PM | Patricia Roylance | MAX 108 | This course examines artistic representations of American war and peace, studying how art reflects and also reimagines violent conflict. Ranging from the inspirational to the darkly satirical, and including fiction, reportage, poetry, film, television, graphic novels and songs, the texts covered in this course show the varying responses of artists to the aesthetic, political and moral provocations of war. The course is not arranged chronologically, but we will study texts that deal with major conflicts in American history, such as the U.S. Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II and Vietnam, as well as armed conflict between European Americans and Native Americans and the wars of the post-9/11 era. | |
| ENG 175/ LIT 200 M001 | World Literature Since 1000 C.E. | MW | 12:45 - 2:05PM | Christopher Brunt & Harvey Teres | HL 114 | This course will introduce you to some of the most highly valued literary works of the past thousand years. Starting with the West African epic Sunjata and Dante’s Inferno (Italy), we will read two of the formative geniuses of the Renaissance Miguel de Cervantes (Spain) and William Shakespeare (England), as well as the inventor of the essay Michel de Montaigne (France) and the extraordinary Marguerite de Navarre (France). We will proceed in roughly chronological sequence to enjoy 16th-19th-century works, including the lively novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en (China), the haiku poetry of Matsuo Bashō (Japan), Voltaire’s Candide (France), Nguyen Du’s Vietnamese classic The Tale of Kieu, and poetry by Ghalib (India). We will then read the following masters of modern and contemporary literature: fiction by Rabindranath Tagore (India), Anton Chekhov (Russia), Lu Xun (China), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt), Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt), and Hanan Al-Shaykh (Lebanon); lyric poetry by T. S. Eliot (U.S.), and Anna Akhmatova (Russia); and drama by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria). We will consider these remarkable works with several questions in mind: How do the language, the form, and the values of these texts serve to challenge or confirm your own values and way of life? How have the writers mastered their craft in such a way as to evoke your thoughts and feelings? How does literature work as “equipment for living”? This course is a prerequisite for the new minor in world literature. | |
| ENG 181 M002 | Class and Literary Texts | MW | 3:45-5:05PM | Soham Sinha | TOLLEY 104 | Social class shapes nearly every story we tell, yet literary studies often discuss it the least. Cultural blind spots, critical dismissal, and the deliberate suppression of working-class histories have kept class at the margins of literary canons, social histories, and classrooms. This course brings it to the center. Through a selection of literary texts and visual media, we will examine how social class is represented, who gets to represent it, and what is at stake in those representations. Our guiding questions include: Who counts as working class or middle class, and what counts as labor? Are working-class texts produced by, for, or about working-class people? Are their representations fair, productive, and accessible, and what obstacles stand in the way of representing class experience at all? What emerges when we consider class alongside race, gender, and other identity categories? Why, finally, do we need to talk about social class? Readings and viewings may include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. This course satisfies the writing-intensive course requirement. | |
| ENG 182 M001 | [Race and Literary Texts]: Indigenous Futures & Literary Nationalism | TTH | 2:00 - 3:20PM | Ethan Madarieta | MSQ 205B | We often refer to the original peoples of a given territory as Native, Indian, First Nations, or Aboriginal, but what are these identities? Are they racial, ethnic, cultural, political, territorial, national, temporal? What is indigeneity and who is Indigenous? And what can literature tell us about these questions? In this class we will consider these and other questions through analysis of literary, cinematic, critical, and historical texts and story as literary presentations of Indigenous sovereignty, autonomy, and futurity. We will read a variety of literary forms and genres – oral, textual, and oraliteral – that may include novels such as Ceremony by Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko, A Grain of Wheat by Gĩkũyũ writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Chilco by Daniela Catrileo of the Mapuche, and Waanyi aboriginal writer Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book, as well as films, comic books, short stories, and more. | |
| ENG 184 M001 | Ethnicity & Literary Texts | TTH | 11:00AM-12:20PM | Arianna Taylor | LSB 156 | ||
| ENG 192 M003 | Gender & Literary Texts | TTH | 12:30-1:50PM | Coran Klaver | TOLLEY104 | What is gender? What does it mean to say that gender is a social construction? How does gender intersect with other social formations like race, class, sexuality, and (dis)ability? How do gender and texts work to represent and create bodies? This course will explore textual representations of gender and sexuality and their cultural, historical, and social implications. Through an examination of novels, short stories, and poetry, we will address these questions and think about the ways that literary texts construct, rewrite, and interrogate gender as a social category. We will think about how literary texts represent and challenge ideological and social structures like heteronormativity, marriage, feminism, racism, citizenship, and patriarchy. | |
| ENG 195 | Arab American Literature | TTH | 3:30-4:50PM | Serene Masri | HUNTN 100 | In this course, we will examine an expansive array of Arab American literary and cultural productions that reflects its origin in the early 20th century to its ongoing flourishment in recent decades, with a more intensive focus on contemporary literatures and cultural productions. We will examine how different historical, social, and political movements (such as WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, 9/11, the ongoing War on Terror, and the current bombardment of Gaza/Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, and Iran) historically and contemporarily shape Arab American identities, experiences, works, and revolutionary movements. In doing so, we will study texts such as short stories, novels, memoirs, poetry, music videos, films, tv shows, stand-up comedy, etc. In discussing and analyzing these diverse range of texts, we will come to know the multiplicities and complexities of what is today called “Arab America” and how the heterogeneity of this identity is personally and socially understood, experienced, and mobilized. | |
| ENG 215 M002 | Introductory Poetry Workshop | TH | 6:30 - 9:15PM | Izabella Brown-Sparks | MARLEY 407 | Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in their best order.” In this introductory workshop, we will help each other find the best words to put in their best order. You will be required to write both creatively and critically as you compose your own poems, work on imitations, revise, and analyze and critique the poems of others. There will be a variety of creative prompts, exercises, and assigned readings to deepen your knowledge of poetry, as well as contribute to your growth as a creative writer. All poetic souls welcome. Participation and attendance are necessary. | |
| ENG 215 M004 | Introductory Poetry Workshop | M | 9:30AM - 12:15PM | Vasiliki Gkoulgkountina | HL 105 | Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in their best order.” In this introductory workshop, we will help each other find the best words to put in their best order. You will be required to write both creatively and critically as you compose your own poems, work on imitations, revise, and analyze and critique the poems of others. There will be a variety of creative prompts, exercises, and assigned readings to deepen your knowledge of poetry, as well as contribute to your growth as a creative writer. All poetic souls welcome. Participation and attendance are necessary. | |
| ENG 215 M801 | Introductory Poetry Workshop | ONLINE ASYNC | ONLINE ASYNC | Jules Gibbs | - | Practice in writing poetry. | |
| ENG 216 M001 | Introductory Literary Nonfiction Workshop | W | 9:30AM - 12:15PM | Caio Major | HL 205 | This course will introduce students to the non-fiction workshop. Students will practice writing, reading, and critiquing various genres within non-fiction writing, such as the personal essay and memoir, the experiential essay and the lyric essay. In class, we will discuss student work as well as published work. Students will learn to use fictional devices such as setting, point of view, character, dialogue, plot construction, and metaphor to craft factually accurate essays about real observed or experienced events. Participation and attendance are mandatory. | |
| ENG 217 M001 | Introductory Fiction Workshop | M | 9:30AM - 12:15PM | Jenny Chen | HL 201 | This class will introduce students to the fiction workshop. Participants in the workshop will learn the elements of story, how to read closely, and how to critique one another's stories. You will also learn how to revise your own work. We will discuss student work in addition to published work from established writers. We will do in-class writing exercises, and each student will write two stories and revise one. Participation and attendance are mandatory. | |
| ENG 217 M002 | Introductory Fiction Workshop | W | 9:30AM - 12:15PM | Flose Marie Yardley LaPierre | HL 202 | This class will introduce students to the fiction workshop. Participants in the workshop will learn the elements of story, how to read closely, and how to critique one another's stories. You will also learn how to revise your own work. We will discuss student work in addition to published work from established writers. We will do in-class writing exercises, and each student will write two stories and revise one. Participation and attendance are mandatory. | |
| ENG 217 M003 | Introductory Fiction Workshop | T | 6:30 - 9:15PM | Santiago Wilson Heredia | EGGERS 012 | This class will introduce students to the fiction workshop. Participants in the workshop will learn the elements of story, how to read closely, and how to critique one another's stories. You will also learn how to revise your own work. We will discuss student work in addition to published work from established writers. We will do in-class writing exercises, and each student will write two stories and revise one. Participation and attendance are mandatory. | |
| ENG 217 M800 | Introductory Fiction Workshop | ONLINE ASYNC | ONLINE ASYNC | Jules Gibbs | - | Practice in writing fiction. | |
| ENG 230 M001 / JSP/LIT/REL 239 | Jewish Humor and Satire / Ethnic Literary Traditions | TTH | 2:00 - 3:20PM | Ken Frieden | HL 211 | Comedy in Three Acts Act 1: Theories of humor, illustrated by Freud’s Jewish and Yiddish jokes from Vienna. Act 2: Reading Yiddish monologues and studying stand-up comedy performances. Act 3: Writing and performing Jewish stories and stand-up comedy. On the night before every Tuesday class, students post analyses of an assigned text or performance and write a short draft in the style of that source. For every Thursday class starting in week 4, students write, revise, post, and perform their own material. Throughout the semester, we read Stephen Rosenfield's Mastering Stand-Up and use it as a guide to researching, writing, and performing stand-up comedy. Students learn about specific genres (e.g., anecdotal, observational, self-deprecating) and techniques (e.g., act-outs, figures of speech, misdirect) that are used by stand-up comedians. After the Spring Break, students will compile and revise their drafts into a stand-up comedy set and prepare for the final performance. To succeed in this marathon of more than 26 writing tasks and courageous stand-up performances requires stamina and ongoing commitment! | |
| ENG 230 M002 / NAT 200 M003 | (Re)Writing Residential Schools | TTH | 2:00 - 3:20pm | Vanessa Evans | TOLLEY 104 | In 2022, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the Indian Residential School System as an act of genocide. While the US government has yet to issue a similar resolution, Indigenous authors from across North America have been telling the stories of residential and boarding schools for more than a century. As such, this course centers the work of Indigenous writers whose texts respond to, resist, and expose residential and boarding schools for what they were: institutions of assimilation and extermination. By focusing on residential and boarding school stories, we will consider how Indigenous authors are representing the reclamation, recovery, and continuance of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Together, we will contemplate the following questions and many more: Why does (re)writing and (re)storying residential school matter? What might it mean to write and rewrite the school story genre from an Indigenous perspective? What alliances or connections exist or can be built across seemingly disparate Indigenous North American (con)texts impacted by residential and boarding school systems? | |
| ENG 242 M001 | Reading and Interpretation | TTH | 3:30-4:50PM | Patricia Roylance | SMITH 330 | ENG 242 introduces students to the discipline of English and Textual Studies, stressing not what is read but how we read it—and the difference that makes. Its goal, in other words, is not only to show how meanings are created through acts of critical reading but also to demonstrate the consequences of pursuing one mode or method of reading over another. This course is designed to enhance your ability to read and interpret contextually as well as closely, to help you to articulate your understanding effectively and to draw connections through reading and writing. Through close, deep and thoughtful reading of literary and non-literary texts as well as essays by critics and theorists, we will explore the ways texts mean and the ways readers produce meaning. Each section of ENG 242 takes up issues of central concern within contemporary literary and cultural studies. These include representation; author/ity, textuality, and reading; subjectivity; and culture and history. | |
| ENG 242 M005 | Reading and Interpretation | MW | 12:45-2:05PM | Silvio Torres-Saillant | MAX 110 | Reading and Interpretation covers the academic study of English by focusing on reading practices, varied analyses, and approaches to theory and criticism. The course explores the relation between how we read and what we gain from reading. It compels us to recognize the baggage we bring to our reading of a given text, our preconceived critical or theoretical stance. Students acquire tools with which to examine their reading practice vis-à-vis that of others. Honing their skills as interpreters of texts enables students to grasp the meaning (s) that literary works convey along with the socio-historical locus (context) that both texts and readers inhabit. We review iconic views by critics and theorists Ancient and Modernity while sampling key literary works old and new. Readings for the course will include lyric verse by living US sonneteer Rhina P. Espaillat, the dramatic trilogy The Oresteia by ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, the play The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare, and the 1900 novella The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, a native of Chittenango, NY, about a half hour ride from Syracuse. | |
| ENG 300 M001 | Topics in Creative Writing: Read 4 Novels, Learn How to Write One. | MW | 12:45-2:05PM | Sarah Harwell | TBD | Randall Jarrell said, “The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.” In this class we will study four contemporary novels, analyze how they were written, and begin one of our own. Each novel will have a distinct style, genre and tone and will serve as models for our own attempts. We will consider questions such as: how does one create an entire new world out of words? Why would someone read a 300-page novel and wish it would never end? Are the flaws in a novel the element that makes it compelling? Possible titles include: The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, The Known World by Edward P Jones, An American Marriage by Tayori Jones, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout, and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Additional readings on the structure of novels and novel-writing habits will be provided. | |
| ENG 300 M002 | Topics in Creative Writing: Transformations and Metamorphoses in Literature | TTH | 12:30 - 1:50PM | Dylan Hoffman | HL 111 | Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis opens: "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." One of the most famous, and most audacious, first lines in literary history. As readers in this class, we will explore what Kafka and other skilled fabulists reveal about the human condition by morphing their characters into a different body. As writers, we will ask on a craft level: how do they get away with it? How do they take preposterous, surreal premises and weave them into emotionally devastating and completely enchanting tales? We will survey the modern(ish) history of transformation and metamorphosis in literature, starting with 17th and 18th century fairytales, before reading Gogol's satirical and absurd fables and Kafka. We will end by looking at how contemporary queer, Black, and writers of color use metamorphosis and transformation to imagine new modes of liberation and/or (and sometimes in the same text) to highlight existing injustices and inequities. Writers/filmmakers we will likely cover include: Hans Christian Andersen, Angela Carter, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka, Mohsin Hamid, Han Kang, Sam Cohen, Mona Awad, Alexandra Kleeman, Eloghosa Osunde, Octavia Butler, Virgina Woolf, Andrea Lawler, and David Cronenberg. | |
| ENG 300 M003 | Topics in Creative Writing: American Poetry of the Last Five Years | MW | 2:15 - 3:35PM | Katy Gilmore | MSQ 206B | In this course, we will explore the true contemporary state of poetry, narrowing our scope to a very recent window. Each week, we will read collections and select poems from poets making names for themselves presently, covering a wide range of disciplines, styles, and backgrounds. Possible poets include Kaveh Akbar, Gabrielle Bates, Danez Smith, Leila Chatti, Tiana Clark, Saeed Jones, and Edgar Kunz. Our discussions will be both thematic and concerned with craft, and students will have the opportunity to write and workshop poems inspired by the poets we read together. In her essay, “Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry,” former US poet-laureate Ada Limón writes, “When clarity is hard to come by, when language has morphed into a tool for confusion, I put my faith in poetry.” This course will ask you to question how poetry can save and service us in the present era. | |
| ENG 300 M004 | Topics in Creative Writing: Literary Misfits | TTH | 12:30 - 1:50PM | Molly Gorevan | MARLEY 306 | What does it mean to be an outsider—and who gets to decide? From loners to obsessive and so-called “unhinged” narrators, we’ll examine characters who don’t fit social expectations. We’ll read stories and novels by authors including Carmen Maria Machado, Mieko Kawakami, James Baldwin, Jean Rhys, and Carson McCullers to explore how unconventional perspectives give rise to inventive literary forms. This class invites you to experiment with ways to make your own fiction wilder, stranger, and more uniquely your own. | |
| ENG 301 M001 | Reading and Writing Prose | MW | 2:15-3:35pm | Keith Stahl | HL 115 | All creative disciplines depend on the study and modeling of the particular art form for mastery of its elements. In this course, you will read and analyze a number of iconic creative essays, across historical periods and in various genres, in order to deepen and broaden your understanding of the essay form. We will attempt to answer the questions: How have authors generated emotions, interest, and power in creative texts? How do various prose writers engage readers? How do they transform and translate experience into narrative? What technical elements are at work to produce a satisfying reading experience? You will be required to demonstrate your inquiry into these issues by producing creative and analytical responses to the works studied, discussing peer work and other written texts in a thoughtful and constructive manner, and writing emulative essays. | |
| ENG 303 M001 | Reading and Writing Fiction | TTH | 9:30-10:50AM | Hannah Nash | SMITH 227 | All creative disciplines depend on the study and imitation for mastery of its elements. In this course, students will read and analyze short stories to in order to deepen their understanding of a variety of concerns in storytelling, including voice, style, image, story, and character. We will attempt to answer the question: how have authors generated emotions, interest, and power in creative texts? Students will be required to display an understanding of these issues by producing creative and analytical responses to the texts studied. Possible authors include James Baldwin, Lucia Berlin, Anton Chekhov, Denis Johnson, Edward P. Jones, Ottessa Moshfegh, Lorrie Moore, Samanta Schweblin, and Joy Williams. | |
| ENG 311 M001 | ENG 311 (M001) (British Literary Periods Before 1900): Romanticism and the Environment | T TH | 12:30-1:50PM | Mike Goode | LINK 156 | The modern environmental movement found early expression in British poetry, novels, and painting between 1770-1845. This course examines how British artists in this period responded to various dramatic environmental developments—both how they tried to counter-act these developments and how they understood the challenges of representing them. We will also be tracing certain recognizably “Romantic” relationships to nature into a variety of contemporary artistic efforts to represent environmental crisis and change, including works that will be on display in the Syracuse University Art Museum for its Spring show Assembly, which explores intimate ecologies. Historical topics covered in the course will include: the Industrial Revolution and the privatization of public lands; the notions of “geologic time” and “extinction” and the challenges they presented to traditional religious beliefs; new religious movements fueling conservation efforts by promoting the idea of nature’s divinity; new aesthetic tastes for landscape contributing to nature tourism and to new media; and politicians turning “nature” into a political football through debates over “natural rights” and “natural law.” Assignments will include a traditional five-page critical essay, a photo essay with 5-page reflection, and a curatorial final project. | |
| ENG 315 M001 with JSP 300 M002 | Ethnic Literatures and Cultures—The Holocaust in American Literature | MW | 3:45-5:05PM | Harvey Teres | LYMAN 115B | This course will explore the representation of the Holocaust (or “Shoah,” or “Khurban”) in the literature of the United States since WWII. We will begin by familiarizing ourselves with the history of the Holocaust according to the account published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Ken Burns’ excellent documentary. We will then explore the history of the changing American response to the Holocaust throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. Authors will include W.E.B. Du Bois, Hannah Arendt, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Jerzy Kosinski, and many others. Students will have the option of producing a traditional final essay or preparing a collaborative presentation to a local high school class on a Holocaust-related topic. | |
| ENG 315 M003 with JSP/REL 300 | European & American Jewish Literature (Ethnic Literatures and Cultures) | TTH | 11:00AM - 12:20PM | Ken Frieden | HBC 200 | We begin by reading Franz Kafka’s texts, which often seem to be mysterious allegories. Influenced by Hasidic tales, Kafka brought that world in contact with European modernism. Arthur Schnitzler’s play Professor Bernhardi shows the fragile position of Jews in Vienna around 1900. After analyzing the representation of anti-Semitism in that play, we will turn to works by Stefan Zweig. Primo Levi’s stories provide a post-Holocaust perspective. These European precedents serve as background to discussions of fiction by American-Jewish writers. Works by Abe Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Henry Roth, I. B. Singer, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, and Philip Roth, and Irena Klepfisz refer to issues including assimilation, displacements from Europe and Yiddish, and contemporary American-Jewish life. The Norton Anthology of American Jewish Literature provides a wide selection of short fiction and poetry. Stories and poems by Yiddish authors show psychological and theological repercussions of war and the Nazi genocide. We will also watch clips from pertinent films such as His People, The Jazz Singer, The Imported Bridegroom, Hester Street, and Brainwashed (The Royal Game). Students write short posts, due before every class session, and participate in a group project. | |
| ENG 320 M001 | Authors: James Joyce | MW | 12:45-2:05PM | Chris Forster | SIMS 241 | This class offers an opportunity to read, with an unusual depth of attention and care, the major works of one of the most challenging writers of the twentieth century: James Joyce. We will start the semester by reading a selection of Joyce’s short stories and his semi-autobiographical A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, before beginning a patient, chapter-by-chapter reading of ULYSSES—a novel that regularly appears near or at the top of lists of “greatest” modern novels. Joyce’s work also offers a window onto questions fundamental to twentieth-century literature—questions about literature and difficulty, about how narrative represents consciousness, and about how literary form captures (or fails to capture) experience. Joyce’s fiction also raises questions beyond literature—questions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, of obscenity and literature, of race and empire, of gender and representation. | |
| ENG 320 M002 / WGS 300 M003 | Toni Morrison: Narrating the Black Presence | TTH | 11:00AM- 12:20PM |
Delali Kumavie | LSB 100 | Toni Morrison remains one of the most important Black writers and voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Morrison’s body of work, in her own words, narrates the Black presence that underpins official stories and narratives but is rarely part of “the official story” of the nation-state. But what is this Black presence? And how precisely does Morrison use it to unsettle the official narratives of the U.S.? How does this Black presence contend with race and racializing narratives, gender and sexuality, memory and history, and other conceptual categories? In this class, we will read closely some of Morrison’s most significant works, as well as critical analyses and interpretations to situate the larger literary and cultural landscape. We will read: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, and Recitatif to examine how Morrison’s work interrogates slavery and its legacies, reimagines myths of nation-building, chronicles the complex existence of Black men and women, and unsettles enduring racial mythologies | |
| ENG 330 M001 | Good Life | MW | 3:45-5:05PM | Crystal Bartolovich | LSB 214 | What makes a good life? How do you find “meaning” and “purpose”? What leads to happiness and “goodness”? Can you have one without the other? In the face of seemingly intractable challenges to individual, collective and planetary existence, much less well-being, posed by climate change, war, pandemic, social injustice, work precarity and other crises, such questions can feel anxiety-provoking to consider. And yet many thinkers, for centuries, have taken them to be crucial. We will explore some of the most influential of these earlier formulations from Plato onward, but the bulk of our reading, viewing and discussion will concern the 21st century in a range of media: What does the popularity of “survival” series on television have to tell us about “good life”? How about fiction? Or concepts such as “cruel optimism” and “capitalist realism”? We will explore together a number of attempts to grapple with the question of “good life.” Meanwhile, you will engage in practical activities that have been associated with its pursuit, including inventorying what elements you think build a good life and testing out their potential for success given different definitions of the “good,” journaling, and exploring creative expression. | |
| ENG 332 M001 | Global Indigenous Literatures | TTH | 11:00AM- 12:20PM |
Ethan Madarieta | HL 111 | Indigenous literatures matter. They tell fundamental stories of life, the universe, and everything! As Onondaga and Tuscarora writer Eric Gansworth writes in his novel Smoke Dancing, “[E]veryone knows that at the heart of fiction is where the truth sleeps, waiting to wake up and show itself, but only to those whose vision is sharp enough.” So that we might develop our own “sharp vision” for the truth revealed, in this class we’ll read Indigenous literatures – novels, poetry, plays, films, graphic novels and comic books, music, and so on – by Peoples across Turtle Island (often named North America), Abya Yala (often named South America), Sápmi, Oceania, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and more! Possible literature include Jeff Barnaby, Blood Quantum; Elin Anna Labba, The Drowned World; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat; Stephen Graham Jones, The Bird is Gone; Zacharias Kunuk, Atanarjuat the Fast Runner; Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider; Moira Millan, Train to Oblivion, and more. | |
| ENG 352 M001 | U.S. Immigrant Fiction, 1900-2024 (REC) | TTH | 11:00AM-12:20PM | Susan Edmunds | HBC 213B | Celebrations of the immigrant past are common in the U.S., where we like to talk about the American Dream and the idea of the American Melting Pot. But the fiction of our immigrant writers reveals a much more complex picture. In this course, we will read fiction that portrays immigrant experiences marked by ethnic and racial conflict, struggles over the racial boundaries of whiteness, debates about the value of assimilation, and the traumatic effects of war, dislocation and uncertain legal status. We will also examine literary tropes developed across immigrant traditions during a period in which the United States’ rise to global dominance has not only changed who immigrates to the U.S. and why, but also the stories immigrants tell. We will start with some early- and mid-twentieth-century examples of immigrant writing before focusing on fiction written in the last thirty years. In addition to short stories by various authors, we will read two novels: Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and Jean Chen Ho’s Fiona and Jane. | |
| ENG 361 M001 | Genders and Sexualities: Other Women in Victorian Literature Gender & Sexuality before 1900 | TTH | 3:30-4:50PM | Coran Klaver | LSB156 | Victorian England insisted that a “true” woman belonged at home as a virtuous daughter, wife, and mother, and that any deviation could turn her from “angel” into “demon.” This course explores those “other” women—fallen, odd, evil, or perverse—who take center stage in nineteenth-century narratives and poems and who still trouble the cozy endings meant to contain them. We will also ask how the domestic ideal rested on hidden assumptions about race and class, reading women of color and working-class women writing in and for Victorian Britain, including Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures. As the semester moves further from the home, we will consider disguise, performance, and queer and gender-variant identities. Readings include Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady, and Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novella Carmilla, which predates Dracula, plus poetry by Tennyson, Browning, and Christina Rossetti (including Goblin Market) and short fiction. This is a discussion-based course. Students will give an oral presentation, write two 6–7 page essays, and complete a final project and oral examination, with frequent in-class writing and reading quizzes. | |
| ENG 400 M001 | Special Topics: Jane Austen in Context | TTH | 3:30-4:50PM | Mike Goode | SOM 306 | This course analyzes Jane Austen’s novels in two sets of cultural contexts: first, the early nineteenth-century British context in which they were written, and, second, the contemporary global context in which they continue to be adapted and read. Through lectures, readings, and discussions, the first half of the course will introduce you to Austen’s novels, examining their participation in early nineteenth-century British concerns over everything from authorship, poetry, Gothic novels, architecture, fashion, garden design, and estate management to rank, class, gender, sexuality, slavery, and imperialism. The last half of the course examines Austen film adaptations, fan culture, and literary tourism in order to understand the significance of the ongoing boom in Austen’s popularity. The two complementary halves of the course are bridged by eight days of on-site study in southern England, where students visit locations associated with Austen and Regency Britain. Class size is limited to 20. Students must enroll in both the Syracuse and England portions of the course. Admission to the course is by application only through Syracuse Abroad. The application process closed in October 2026. | |
| ENG 401 M003 | Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry | M | 3:45- 6:30PM | Chris Brunt | HL 421 | In this class, we will emphasize risk taking and discovery through experiments with language and form. We’ll focus on the ways language, especially in the form of poetry, becomes a record of our ever-evolving engagement with the sensory world. We will proceed with the assumption that the poet must enter into a reciprocal and often destabilizing relationship with their surroundings. The poet must linger longer, ask the more difficult questions; they must, to paraphrase Whitman, put a second eye to the eye, a second ear to the ear, a second brain to the brain. The class will be conducted in the workshop format, which will consist of generative writing prompts, craft and revision strategies, and group discussions centered on your poems, as well as discussions of illustrative poems from our tradition. The aim is to discover the greater possibilities for your writing in a challenging and supportive environment. | |
| ENG 401 M800 | Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry | ONLINE ASYNC | ONLINE ASYNC | Jules Gibbs | - | In this class, we will emphasize risk taking and discovery through experiments with language and form. We’ll focus on the ways language, especially in the form of poetry, becomes a record of our ever-evolving engagement with the sensory world. We will proceed with the assumption that the poet must enter into a reciprocal and often destabilizing relationship with their surroundings. The poet must linger longer, ask the more difficult questions; they must, to paraphrase Whitman, put a second eye to the eye, a second ear to the ear, a second brain to the brain. The class will be conducted in the workshop format, which will consist of generative writing prompts, craft and revision strategies, and group discussions centered on your poems, as well as discussions of illustrative poems from our tradition. The aim is to discover the greater possibilities for your writing in a challenging and supportive environment. | |
| ENG 402 M001 | Advanced Workshop: Literary Nonfiction | T | 3:30PM-6:20PM | Alejandro Varela | EGGERS 012 | This class is for students interested in writing literary nonfiction, including essays, memoir, lyric and experimental essays, and literary journalism. Participants in the workshop will write original literary nonfiction and critique their peers’ attempts. Revision will be required. In addition to student work, we will discuss some published works from established writers. We will do in-class writing exercises. | |
| ENG 403 M002 | Advanced Writing Workshop: Fiction | M | 9:30AM-12:15PM | TBD | HL 115 | This class will focus on how to write effective and engaging short stories and/or novel excerpts, by building on skills introduced in ENG 217. Students will identify strengths and questions within their peers’ texts, and offer written and verbal feedback, so that everyone benefits in the workshop process. We will also discuss some previously published works. | |
| ENG 403 M003 | Advanced Writing Workshop: Fiction | W | 9:30AM-12:15PM | Alejandro Varela | MSQ 206A | This class will focus on how to write effective and engaging short stories and/or novel excerpts, by building on skills introduced in ENG 217. Students will identify strengths and questions within their peers’ texts, and offer written and verbal feedback, so that everyone benefits in the workshop process. We will also discuss some previously published works. | |
| ENG 410 M002 | Superheroes in Comics and Film | MW | 2:15-3:35PM | Will Scheibel | HUNTN 101 | U.S. comic-books have provided the source material for some of the highest-grossing films of the twenty-first century. Entire franchises have been built not only around individual comic-book characters, but also larger story-worlds shared by multiple characters owned by the same rights holder. Among the most iconic of these characters, however, emerged as far back as the Great Depression, World War II, and the first decades of the Cold War, appearing in comic-book series published by what are now DC Comics and Marvel Comics. This course looks at these foundational series alongside films they later inspired, focusing on three DC properties (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) and three Marvel properties (Captain America, The Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man) that have maintained a strong, eminently visible presence in U.S. culture. Reading comics published between the 1930s and 1960s, you will learn the historical origins of the comic-book superhero genre and the distinct formal ways that comics tell stories. Watching films that feature characters from these comics, you will learn how filmmakers have reshaped comic-book stories to accommodate the conventions of cinema, on the one hand, and sought to imitate the conventions of comics cinematically, on the other. | |
| ENG 615 M003 | Open Poetry Workshop | T | 6:30-9:15PM | Brooks Haxton | HL 421 | Students in this workshop will write one poem each week and revise at least four of these into carefully considered versions after workshop response. Reading and writing assignments, if the whole class chooses, may address issues that arise in workshop. There are no prerequisites. Students from the fiction program, or from other departments, may join poetry graduate students. | |
| ENG 617 M001 | Open Fiction Workshop | M | 3:45-6:30PM | Jonathan Dee | HL 401A | This workshop will focus on original fiction writing and the constructive critique thereof. Each student will submit work via email to their colleagues and myself, on dates for which they will sign up in advance. That work will be the basis of class discussion the following week. Written critique of all peer submissions is a requirement for passing this course. Open to all cohorts, though enrollment will, if necessary, be capped at 15. | |
| ENG 630 M001 | Tragedy | T | 9:30AM-12:15PM | Dympna Callaghan | MSQ 206A | Tragedy is not funny, but it is weird. While this class is informed by more august understandings of the genre, we will examine its penchant for the strange, the deviant, and the perverted with a focus—though not always an exclusive one—on early modern manifestations of those phenomena. Among others, we will read about a woman who hires a physically repulsive hit man to kill her fiancé and is then coerced into having sex with him (Thomas Middleton, The Changeling); brother-sister incest (John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore); the tragedy of someone who accidentally brains himself with his axe (Cyril Tourneur, The Atheist’s Tragedy); true-life tragedies based on actual debauchery and depravity that had been in the news (Thomas Middleton, A Yorkshire Tragedy; Anon., Arden of Faversham); women’s self-immolation (Christopher Marlowe, Dido Queen of Carthage); a “snuff” play (Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy); a man who thinks he’s a werewolf (John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi). By way of light relief, we will examine the typically unexamined twistedness of more canonical plays, such as Romeo and Juliet. The material is freely available online via SUL. We will read or watch a play a week (though more canonical works will take more than a week) and consider the cultural work of tragedy. We will do some reading aloud in class every week in order to grasp the quality of the language and/or to explore difficulties in the text. This will be primarily a read-and-discuss class, and 75% of the grade will be based upon that. A final project (a creative piece, a video, a compendium review, or an academic paper) will constitute 25% of the grade. No prior experience is required—just an appetite for some of the most astonishing plotlines ever devised. Along with lit scholars, screen studies students and creative writers are enthusiastically welcome. | |
| ENG 630 M004 | Global Indigenous Literature | TH | 9:30AM-12:15PM | Vanessa Evans | TBD | Euroamerican narratives have long represented Indigenous Peoples as insular, geographically bounded, and rooted exclusively in local relationships with land. Yet Indigenous Peoples have always been global, sustaining expansive networks of relationships across human, plant, animal, and spirit nations. This seminar explores Indigenous resurgence—the practices through which Indigenous nations are regenerating and reestablishing cultural and political autonomy—as a means of understanding this global relationality. Bringing novels by Indigenous authors from North America, Oceania, and South Asia into conversation, we will explore how literary expressions of storytelling, language, governance, and relationships with land illuminate shared practices of resistance and resurgence. Our readings will be organized into literary constellations: clusters of novels that, like stars in the night sky, reveals stories and relationships not readily visible when considered individually. Through this comparative approach, we will ask what becomes possible when Indigenous literatures are read not as isolated national traditions but as relational constellations of coresistance. Throughout, we will consider questions of relational accountability and the ethical responsibilities of reading, teaching, and writing about Indigenous literatures across different positions of proximity to Indigeneity. By the seminar’s conclusion, students will have developed methodological frameworks and critical vocabularies for comparative Indigenous literary analysis. | |
| ENG 650 M003 | Directions in 21st Century Fiction | T | 12:30-3:15PM | Jonathan Dee | HL 401A | An exploration and critique of current literary practice, as reflected in a survey of post-2000 novels and short stories, and a frank, constructive discussion of one’s proposed voice within it. Some contemporary critical essays will be assigned and discussed as well. Among authors likely to be assigned: Robison, Knausgaard, Nguyen, Jones, Mueenuddin, Lerner, Binnie, Ward, Rooney, Lee. Each student will be required to prepare a 15-20-minute presentation on a post-2000 work of fiction not on the syllabus; the theme of this presentation will be “Why Jon Should Have Put This Book on the Syllabus.” | |
| ENG 650 M004 | Techniques in Poetry | T | 3:30-6:15PM | Brooks Haxton | BH 108 | Graduate students in poetry and fiction are welcome to join this class. Each weekly reading and writing assignment focuses on one feature of writing (rhythm, image, diction, tone, point of view, argument, figurative logic, and so on). After we have considered the student writing in response to the previous week’s reading assignment, we will discuss the technique in the next week’s reading assignment. Though assignments may not generate your best work, they will give you occasion to articulate and practice skills and to note their effects. Most weekly assignments, since they involve features common to poetry and fiction, may be written in prose or verse. In a few classes we will focus on rhythmic organizations in poetry: accentual, metrical, incantatory, and free verse. Assignments focused on accentual and metrical lines will be verse rather than prose. Although our focus will include various verse-writing techniques, and the reading will be poetry, most assignments involve techniques common to verse and prose and may written in either format. The assumption of the course is that all assignments can be revealing and useful even when the pattern does not occur often in the student’s own writing or independent reading. The course has no prerequisites. | |
| ENG 650 M005 | “a moment’s monument” Dante Gabriel Rossetti | T | 3:30 - 6:20pm | Bruce Smith | HL 421 | 1. Students will be asked to experiment with the sonnet form and complete an edited collection of sonnets as the final project of the class. 2. Each week we will spend the first part of the class examining models of sonnets from the different traditions. We will have a conversation about selected sonnets from the text. The Text: The Making of a Sonnet edited by Hirsch and Boland 3. Each week a writing exercise in class based on the reading 4. Each week an appreciative and critical look at your sonnets written [and printed] for class 5. The goal if the course is to familiarize yourself with the sonnet, its history and traditions and possibilities, and to produce a chapbook [from the German, cheap; a chapman is a peddler, one who bought and sold] of sonnets, a sequence, a crown. | |
| ENG 650 M006 | The Theater of The World | T | 9:30AM - 12:15 PM | Chanelle Benz | MARLEY 407 | In this class, we will read plays by writers such as Federico García Lorca, Samuel Beckett, Sarah Ruhl, Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Suzan-Lori Parks. We will explore what the physicality of language in the Theatre can illuminate for us about Storytelling, Character, Dialogue, Voice, and the Mythic. During the course, students will also work on adapting their own novel, story, poem or series of poems into a short theatrical piece, discovering what can be transposed and what must be transformed, and inventing a theatrical language to create something new. | |
| ENG 730 M001 / WGS 700 M001 | Reading Toni Morrison | T | 12:30-3:15PM | Delali Kumavie | HL 504 | By the time of her death in 2019, Toni Morrison was one of the most important Black writers and critics of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Morrison's body of work, in her own words, narrates the Black presence that underpins official stories and narratives but are rarely “truly braided among” the official story of the nation-state. But what is this Black presence? And how precisely does Morrison use it to unsettle the official narratives of the state? In this graduate level course, we will read Toni Morrison’s body of work closely and carefully, situating her in the context she wrote most persistently about, the United States. In addition, it will closely examine Morrison’s investments in language, storytelling, and her insistence on narrating the Black presence that so eludes the American canon. Morrison’s creative and critical works chronicle the variegated and complex lives of Black people focusing on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. To adequately interrogate these intersections, we will situate Morrison’s literary and critical works within ongoing critical conversations in studies of blackness, race, and racialization, gender and sexuality, memory and history, and other conceptual and theoretical categories. In addition to Morrison novels and her short story—The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise and Recitatif—we will chart Morrison’s influence across a range of literary and critical fields including Black Studies, African Diasporic Studies, Studies in Ecologies, Gender and Sexuality studies, and Science and Technology Studies, to mention a few. | |
| ENG 730 M002 | Afrofuturism Seminar | TH | 12:30-3:15PM | Isiah Lavender III | EGGERS 012 | Black culture critic Greg Tate once said that “Black people live the estrangement that science fiction writers imagine.” In this respect, Afrofuturism has quickly become a rich and valuable vein of analysis for science fiction in its brief existence. Since its birth in 1993, Afrofuturism remains one of the most critical, creative, and contested terms in the literary/science fiction community. Afrofuturist thought rethinks race in science fiction and fantasy, reaches new emancipatory mindscapes that will further break apart the false ideal of a colorblind society still reproduced in science fiction’s many visions of a monochrome future where whiteness remains the standard of civilization. Welcome to the Afrofuturism seminar, where we will study comics, films, music, social media, and literature as we learn about the theory and trace Afrofuturism across the twenty-first century cultural landscape in the United States. | |
| ENG 799 | M.F.A. Essay Seminar | F | 12:45 - 3:30pm | Chanelle Benz | PB 105 |