Undergraduate Courses

AML 3311-0002

Major Figures in American Literature: The American Gothic

Peyton Wahl
MWTTh, 4:50-6:25, WMS 0204

This course centers on an exploration of major figures in American Gothic literature, focusing on the key authors who have shaped and defined the American Gothic tradition. Through close textual analysis and by situating the texts within their socio-political context, students will gain insight into how American Gothic literature reflects and responds to broader cultural anxieties, tensions, and shifts.

The course will survey a range of authors spanning different historical periods, highlighting their unique contributions to the development and evolution of American Gothic literature. From early Puritan narratives to contemporary horror fiction, students will analyze how authors employ Gothic tropes and motifs to interrogate the complexities of the American experience. Featured authors may include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, and Toni Morrison, among others.

AML 3682

Multiethnic Literature: Transnational Crossings

Savannah Trent
T/Th, 9:45-12:55 p.m., WMS 201

This course invites reflections on how transnational crossings shape our understanding of America and our idea of citizens and “aliens”. The word transnational highlights the movement and exchange of bodies and ideas across nation-state boundaries, but also, as Lisa Yoneyama writes, encompasses “insurgent memories, counterknowledges and inauthentic identities that exceed those boundaries” (7). Our class will take Yoneyama’s definition as a starting point in order to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of home, community, embodiment, and kinship. We will engage with a wide range of literary and cultural productions as well as theoretical scholarship that includes but is not limited to critical race theory, settler colonialism, ecocriticism, queer theory, and much more. Over the course of the “mini” semester students will produce either literary and or creative projects that chart their understanding of the themes of the course.

CRW 3110

Fiction Technique

Sarah Destin
MoTuWeTh 3:05PM - 4:40PM, Williams 0002

This introductory fiction workshop will expose students to a wide range of literary voices and teach students to read like a writer. Students will compose short creative exercises addressing elements like point-of-view, characterization, dialogue, and conflict to help prepare them to write their own full-length stories. Our emphasis will be on experimentation as well as on developing skill and craft. Students will be required to workshop their own full-length creative work and provide quality feedback on their peers’ writing.

CRW 3110

Fiction Technique: The Literary Short Story

Marcie Alexander

This introductory creative writing class focuses on the craft of the short story. We will read craft essays and published stories to study many of the core elements of fiction, including character, narration, setting, dialogue, and conflict. By engaging with work that spans the 20th and 21st century, you'll gain an understanding of the development and form of the short story, and the ways that contemporary short fiction, including your own work, engages with and subverts this tradition. You'll apply this knowledge as you write and revise your own short fiction over the course of the semester, receiving feedback from your instructor and peers in a workshop setting.

CRW 3110-0003

Fiction Technique

Esther Okonkwo
Tu/Thurs 11:35am - 12:50pm

“The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” – Flannery O Connor

In this course, we will focus on the voice and hearts of our creative works: what stories are worth telling? What speaks to us and why? We will think about writing as an art separate from us and yet part of us. We will learn to read like writers, with an eye for detail and nuance. We will look at characterization – what makes a well-realized character? How do we write characters who are widely different from us with empathy and depth? We will analyze emotions and learn ways to avoid frigidity and sentimentality. We will read short stories by William Trevor, Anton Chekhov, Jamel Brinkley, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Ada Zhang, and Danielle Evans.

And then we will write! You will workshop a short story no less than fifteen pages and no more than twenty pages. You’ll have two weeks to revise and resubmit for another round of workshop.

It will be disingenuous to say that you would’ve found your voice as a writer at the end of this course, but it is certain that you would be many steps ahead in this crazy, crazy writerly journey.

CRW 3311

Poetic Technique: Contemporary Poetics

Landis Grenville
TuTh 11:35AM - 2:45PM; WMS 0217

This course will focus on 20th and 21st century poetry written by a diverse range of poets. Students will learn to read with an attention to the subtle elements of craft that produce complex and arresting poems. The class will provide a foundational vocabulary and understanding in the basic elements of craft including narrative vs. lyric, the poetic line, musicality, poetic structures, etc. In addition to the study of contemporary poets, students will write and revise their own poems towards a portfolio of original work. This class is a mixtures of literature readings, craft readings, writing activities, and group workshop.

CRW 4120

Fiction Workshop

Skip Horack
MoWe 5:20-8:30pm; WMS 0002

Fiction Workshop (CRW 4120) is a course on the craft and art of fiction writing, only available for students who have satisfactorily completed Fiction Technique (CRW 3110). This course assumes you have a serious interest in writing, reading, and discussing fiction. Our concerns are both practical and craft-based: where you as author wish to go with a particular draft, and how we, as readers and writers engaged in a common cause, might help you get there.

In class we will examine how various craft points are at work in a number of published stories, and very often these texts will serve as templates for imitation and inspiration. However, this course will primarily follow the workshop model, and therefore student writing, and the discussion of same, will be our main focus. To that end, over the course of the session students will be required to produce and share a flash fiction piece of between 500-750 words, as well as one short story draft (8-15 pages).

CRW 4120

Fiction Workshop

Russ Franklin
Summer B WMS201

In this course you will write short stories and workshop your short stories. The course provides you with an audience for your stories—an audience of both writing peers and a teacher/writer. All your work is public and at times you will be required to read your work out loud. My role will be that of teacher/editor, teaching you techniques and also trying to suggest changes for revision of your work. Texts: Best Short Stories 2023, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023, Flash Fiction Forward.

ENC 2135

Reseach, Genre and Context

Gabriel Ayomide Festus
Summer A

N/A

ENC 3021

Rhetoric: Difference, Depth, Symbols, Change

Kyle Bond
MoTuWeTh 9:45AM - 11:20AM ; WMS 0108

ENC 3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) track, and as such, the course works to provide a foundation for the major. Studying the history of rhetoric provides students with foundational rhetorical principles and building blocks, crucial for writers, editors, and evolving scholars. This course introduces students to key concepts in the study of rhetoric; to frameworks useful for the analysis of texts, events, communication, and other phenomena; and to the principles of rhetoric in contexts across media and cultures.

Rhetoric has many definitions. Dr. Keith Lloyd once defined rhetoric as “How we say what we say.” Among the many ways that the concept can be defined, cultures and people have many ways of knowledging where rhetorical practices can be seen. “Rhetoricity,” Dr. Tarez Graban said, “is how something is historically made actual.” Dr. James Crosswhite wrote, “Rhetoric is a form of human transcendence, a way we open ourselves to the influence of what is beyond ourselves and become receptive, a way we participate in a larger world and become open to the lives of others, a way we learn and change” (Deep Rhetoric 17). Among exploring the historical and methodological components, this course emphasizes rhetorical difference, depth, symbols, and change.

ENC 3021-0002

Rhetoric: Global Rhetorics; Non-Western ways of meaning-making; Race studies

Sam Kronforst
MoTuWeTh 1:20PM - 2:55PM; WMS 0121B

ENC 3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) major, and as such, the course works to provide a foundation for the major. Studying the history of rhetoric provides students with foundational rhetorical principles and building blocks, crucial for writers, editors, and evolving scholars.

Although we will start in Egypt and with African rhetoric, we will trace many different rhetorics across the world throughout distinct eras to emphasize and appreciate the differences in rhetorical knowledge and meaning making processes. During our exploration, we will study non-Western knowledge, histories, and identities while reminding ourselves of our ever-present, Western upbringing and preferences. We will also consider how visual methods of delivery factor into and evolve meaning making processes. Although you may not have had experience with visual rhetoric in previous courses, this class will encourage you to expand your understanding and appreciation of rhetoric to include visual modes of delivery, interpretation, and understanding. Lastly, we will frequently (re)define rhetoric and its intersection with concepts like epistemology, truth, belief, identity, social interaction, and social justice.

ENC 3021-0003

Rhetoric: Global Rhetorics; Non-Western ways of meaning-making; Race studies

Sam Kronforst
MoWe 4:50PM - 6:05PM; WMS 0319

ENC 3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) major, and as such, the course works to provide a foundation for the major. Studying the history of rhetoric provides students with foundational rhetorical principles and building blocks, crucial for writers, editors, and evolving scholars.

Although we will start in Egypt and with African rhetoric, we will trace many different rhetorics across the world throughout distinct eras to emphasize and appreciate the differences in rhetorical knowledge and meaning making processes. During our exploration, we will study non-Western knowledge, histories, and identities while reminding ourselves of our ever-present, Western upbringing and preferences. We will also consider how visual methods of delivery factor into and evolve meaning making processes. Although you may not have had experience with visual rhetoric in previous courses, this class will encourage you to expand your understanding and appreciation of rhetoric to include visual modes of delivery, interpretation, and understanding. Lastly, we will frequently (re)define rhetoric and its intersection with concepts like epistemology, truth, belief, identity, social interaction, and social justice.

ENC 3310

Article and Essay Technique: Writing Creative Nonfiction

Sarah Robinson
MoTuWeTh 4:50–6:25, WMS 108

This course is designed for upper-level undergraduate students interesting understanding and constructing creative nonfiction (personal essays, memoir, literary reportage, cultural criticism, and more!). Our goals for the course are to develop a solid writing practice, to explore basic craft concepts and apply them to our own work, to experiment with different types of creative nonfiction, and to familiarize ourselves with a supportive workshop process. Classwork will include reading and discussing published essays, writing exercises, the completion and revision of a full draft of a short piece of creative nonfiction, and participating in workshop.

ENC 3310

Article & Essay Technique: Creative Nonfiction Workshop

Gwen Niekamp
MoTuWeTh 9:45AM - 11:20AM; Williams 0217

This section of ENC 3310 is an introductory course in the craft of creative nonfiction, a genre that includes a miscellany of forms aimed at the artful presentation of truth, fact, experience, and memory. Situated within this genre are essays of all kinds (personal, lyric, meditational, etc.); works of reportage (literary journalism, profiles, science writing, nature writing, travel writing, etc.); works that tell life stories (autobiography, biography, memoir, etc.); works of cultural, literary, and political criticism; and more. Some works of nonfiction will fit comfortably within one of these subgenres, but many will resist easy categorization. In this class, we will explore the many possibilities of the genre by reading and discussing published work and by writing original pieces of creative nonfiction, two of which will be workshopped (read, critiqued, and discussed) by the class.

ENC 3310

Article & Essay Technique

Amanda Ayers
MTWR 9:45-11:20am, WMS 002. Summer B

This section of ENC 3310: Article and Essay Technique introduces students to the study and writing of creative nonfiction and personal narrative in a variety of modes. As such, this course places an emphasis on studying the elements and craft of storytelling as an expression of identity, a site of activism, and a mode of inquiry. Throughout the course, undergraduate students will learn the craft of composing nonfiction prose in a variety of modes (e.g. writing character, setting, sensory detail, narrative, point of view). Readings and writing assignments include “traditional” forms like memoir, personal essay, flash nonfiction, lyric essays, and literary journalism. However, we also immerse ourselves in multimodal and hybrid storytelling, such as: performance nonfiction, performance essays (e.g. narrative-driven comedy specials), podcasts, and photo essays.

ENC 3416

Writing and Editing in Print and Online: Students in this course will compose written, visual, and/or auditory texts, using a variety of technologies.

Bridgette Sanders
TuTh 11:35 am-2:45 pm WMS 120

Students in this course will compose written, visual, and/or auditory texts, using a variety of technologies, and they will be expected to create and edit in different modes and media while appealing to specific audiences. Students will conclude the course by creating a digital portfolio.

ENC 3416

Writing and Editing in Print and Online

Shelby Ramsey
T/TH 11:35-2:45 Williams (WMS) 120

ENG 3416 (WEPO) is one of three core courses for Editing, Writing, Media (EWM), and it helps provide a foundation for the major. As part of this foundation, this course introduces you to the principles of composing and editing across different media environments, paying special attention to how each new composing environment has its own audience, context, and purpose to consider along with affordances and constraints. We will also focus on how your composing process changes and the challenges that you face as you compose across spaces.

Overall, this course attempts to help you: 1) Understand principles of composing and rhetoric, especially the ways they function across different composing spaces; 2) Compose for three spaces—print, screen, and network; 3) Edit and revise appropriately the texts created in each space; 4) Understand the ways technologies build upon their predecessors as well as inform the composing and circulation of texts.

To accomplish these goals, we'll engage with multiple kinds of texts: we’ll read some, write some, talk about some, and create remediated forms of some. As there are multiple career paths for an EWM major, this course is designed specifically to introduce you to professional contexts you may encounter after leaving Florida State.

ENC 4218

Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World

Michael Neal
MoWe 9:45AM - 12:55PM, WMS 317 Summer B

This course begins with the assumption that visual language is one of many available modes of discourse that neither displaces nor functions in isolation from other modalities. By studying visual rhetoric in various contexts, we will explore how rhetorical frameworks are applicable to some discussions and insufficient for others when studying the visual. Visual messages are present in print as well as in digital form, in film and television as well as on pages and signs, and in layout and design as well as in illustrations and photographs. Visual rhetoric is equally relevant in the Rembrandt exhibit at the MET as it is on the t-shirts of the patrons who visit each day.

This course will be divided into three modules beginning with defining key terms questions central to visual rhetoric: (e.g., How do we “read” or “make meaning of” visuals? How trustworthy are images? What kinds of argument can visuals make?) The second module will look at social implications of visual culture as they relate to power, surveillance, and various gazes. The third module looks at various sites of visual rhetoric that will give the class a chance to explore earlier theories in an array of meaningful contexts. Each module will include readings and smaller assignments that enact principles from the section. Students will work on a larger multimodal essay or documentary video throughout the semester that will be accompanied by a critical reflection as the culminating project.

ENG 2610-0001

Graphic Novel

Bronson Mahrt
MoTuWeTh 1:20PM - 2:55PM WMS 0204

This course is designed to serve as an introduction to the graphic novel and the study of literature. We will investigate the practice of close reading and analysis by reading a wide variety of graphic novels that all take the medium in unique directions. Additionally, students will learn how to give thoughtful responses to a text based on its social, political, and economic contexts. Throughout the semester, we will read graphic novels that wrestle with a plethora of different issues and anxieties from the varying perspectives of writers and illustrators who have vastly different lived experiences and identities.

ENG 3110

Film Genres: Global Horror

Christina Parker-Flynn
TTh 11:35-2:45/ WMS 110 Summer A

This course explores horror films within various national cinemas, tracing the genre’s literary foundations and further exploring horror’s psychological underpinnings, cultural contexts, and universal appeals/repulsions. We will focus on classic to contemporary horror films from around the world—may include film noir, German Expressionism, kaiju, Italian giallo, avant-garde horror, contemporary post-apocalyptic, etc.—and students will attend to aesthetic and formal elements of film study.

ENG 3600

Hollywood Cinema: Visions and Revisions

Steven Rybnicek
TuTh 3:50PM - 7:00PM WMS 0120

This course introduces students to the history and language of cinema, tracking its evolution over time. Students will explore the key Hollywood genres—such as Crime/Noir, Comedy, Western, Horror, etc.—as well as their revisionist modes through the New Hollywood movement. Through critical discussion, students will learn to recognize the formal techniques and specific choices of directors, as well as to analyze their resultant effects, particularly in view of a film’s thematic content. Special attention will be given to the overall conventions of the medium and the development of those conventions, as well as the myriad frames of "seeing/being" unique to cinema alone (as opposed to the devices of literature, for instance).

ENG 3803

History of Text: Medieval Manuscripts

Jessica Bates
TuThur 11:45-2:45 WMS0201

When it comes to medieval texts, the words upon them are only half the story, the rest lies within the scribbles of bored scribes, faint text long scraped away, and beautiful illuminations. Within this course we will be zooming into the history, creation, and secrets of these texts within the Middle Ages. We will touch upon palimpsest, illuminations, maps, and other such works as well as delve into the writing itself and what it tells us about the text it belongs too. This course will work with the textbook Introduction to Manuscript Studies and include visits to Special Collections.

ENG 4020

Rhetorical Theory and Practice: Multiple Ways to Understand

Ronisha Browdy
Monday/Wednesday 1:20pm-4:30pm Room: WMS 0204

This course offers a survey of multiple rhetorical theories and traditions, including western rhetorical theory, feminist rhetorical theory, and cultural rhetorical theory. The purpose of the course is to engage diverse rhetorical theories and then use those theories to conduct analyses of texts from various media and socio-cultural contexts. For example, after gaining an understanding of feminist rhetorical theory, we may use this lens to analyze the rhetorical messages about gender discrimination, misogyny, and sexism in the 2023 film Barbie. At the completion of this course, students should have a broad understanding of the many histories, meanings, and functions of rhetoric, as well as how to employ multiple theories when interpreting texts and situations.

ENG 4815-01

What Is a Text: Film as Text

Leigh Edwards
asynchronous online

This course for the EWM track investigates concepts of textuality, which refers to how "texts" make meaning by being understood in context. We will test out key scholarly ideas by discussing some vibrant films as case studies. Our reading includes scholarship on textuality as well as on film. As we explore different ideas about what counts as a "text" and where the meaning of a text resides, we will assess debates about the relationship between the text and vital contexts. These contexts include the socio-historical context, audience reception, and the "paratext," which refers to associated material surrounding the text but that is separate from the text itself. In addition to scholarly debates about how to define "text" and "textuality," we will study concepts of paratextuality, intertextuality, adaptation, interactive textuality, and remediation. We will consider, for example, films that have been adapted from literature and how to unpack the meanings of different kinds of texts. We will ponder what contexts can influence our reading of these texts, ranging from associated material like a film trailer to fan reactions to larger discourses like the cultural expectations of different mediums and genres. Assignments include frequent Canvas discussion posts, two shorter essays, and the longer final essay. In a final project involving both theory and practice, students will get the chance to produce their own multimedia text and to analyze how their own work engages issues of textuality.

ENG 4934-0002

Senior Seminar: Caribbean Gothic

Candace Ward
MW 11:35-2:35, WMS 217

As Markman Ellis observes in History of the Gothic, Great Britain’s position as the dominant slave trading nation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries exerted a clear influence on the development of gothic fiction. In this course, we will read a variety of texts demonstrating the intersections between the gothic and the “horrors” of slavery and its legacies—works published before AND after British abolition. Texts covered include “Isle of Devils” by Matthew Lewis, author of one of the most famous eighteenth-century gothic novels, The Monk, and heir to two large Jamaican sugar estates and the enslaved people who labored on them; writings by the Jamaican-born radical preacher and anti-slavery activist Robert Wedderburn; The White Witch of Rosehall (1929), a persistently popular twentieth-century Jamaican gothic potboiler; Guyanese novelist Edgar Mittelholzer’s My Bones and My Flute (1955), a mid-century “Ghost Story in the Old-Fashioned Manner”; Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys’s re-writing of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and its famous madwoman in the attic; Erna Brodber’s Myal (1988), a depiction of early twentieth-century village life and the struggle against zombification; Anthony Winkler’s The Duppy (1997), an iconoclastic, irreverent satire on the Jamaican “post”colonial condition; and, interspersed throughout the semester, stories from Pauline Melville’s Migration of Ghosts, a collection whose gothic overtones reflect the haunting legacy of slavery and colonialism. We’ll also examine examples of gothic cinema about and from the Caribbean.

This course meets the Senior Seminar Capstone requirement.

ENG2012-0002

Introduction to English Studies

Laura Smith
MTWTh 10:40-1:15, WMS 121

This course helps students think about what it means to be an English major and the different types of work and learning that happen within the discipline. Students will develop skills used in different areas of the English discipline and in the humanities more broadly, including close reading, annotation and analysis, drafting, workshopping and revision, concepts of thesis and argumentation, and key vocabulary. This class is intended to prepare students to be English majors, to show how English studies can be used both in college and in their career choices, and to expose them to the sheer pleasure of reading, writing, and critical thinking.

LIT 2000

Introduction to Literature: Constructing Identity in Victorian England

Sarah Bliss
TH 12-3:10, WMS 0225

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of reading and critically examining literature. By considering craft, cultural contexts, and thematic elements, it provides a “toolkit” for grappling with complex texts. We’ll be exploring these ideas through the shocking, emotional, and self-conscious literature of the Victorian period. The nineteenth century was a period of immense change on all levels, from the increasing rigidity of gender roles to the unprecedented expansion of England’s power into a global empire. Because of that rapid and sometimes alarming change, we frequently see the Victorians wrestling with big questions about who they were, both on an individual and national level. This course also will encourage us to think about how literature participates in the construction of gender, racial, and class identities. We’ll be considering these concepts in a broad mix of texts, including narrative and lyric poetry, lurid and sensational short fiction, and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847).

LIT 2010

Introduction to Fiction: Literary Fantasy

Laura Biagi
TuTh 1:20PM - 4:30PM, WMS 317

This introductory course focuses on novels of literary fantasy; specifically, novels of folklore, monsters, vampires, deathless men, death herself, magical realism, allegory, literary retellings, alternative societies, and more. Alongside our four primary novels, we will view short films, TV episodes, short stories, and other supplementary texts in class to broaden our discussions. Our goal will be to learn how to interpret fiction through several different lenses: craft analyses, literary analyses, and sociocultural analyses. In the process, we will become better acquainted with how fiction writers accomplish what they do through craft techniques like characterization, point of view, setting, plot, style, tone, and voice. We will become adept at close reading literary passages. We will analyze the ways authors incorporate race, gender, sexuality, class, politics, identity, and community into their fiction. And we will explore how literary fantasy reveals ourselves as humans and the world around us in unique ways that contemporary realism and other genres cannot. We’ll start by reading The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, then continue with Pym by Mat Johnson, Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler, and Death with Interruptions by José Saramago.

This course satisfies the understanding genres distribution elective.

LIT 2030

Intro to Poetry: Studies with Focus on Contemporary Poetry

Haley Laningham
M-Th 12:00-1:35

The contemporary world of poetry is rich as ever. Our inherited history of the art form has given rise to arguably the greatest diversity of styles that has ever existed. In this class, we will study some of the old stuff as a way of reading the new. Mostly, we will aim to read living poets. The class will be divided into special topics which highlight what is going on in the recent world of poetry. If there is interest, and only if there is interest, some assignments could even be of creative response to the contemporary world of poetry, along with the regular academic genres of response.

LIT 3024

Perspectives on the Short Story: Stories That Agitate

Maggie Nye Smith
MoTuWeTh 4:50PM - 6:25PM; WMS 204

We’re often encouraged to identify what delights us in literature: a sympathetic character, a cozy setting, a powerful theme, a clever writing style, etc. While this course by no means excludes delight, you are encouraged in LIT 3024 to really consider what agitates you as a reader.

Agitation, as we’ll conceive of it in this course, does not only mean that which makes us mad—though anger is one of the many possibilities of agitation. We’ll also use agitation to mean: that which excites us; that which gets under our skin; that which obsesses us; that which makes us uncomfortable; and that which moves us to act or think differently. All of these are possible responses to “agitating” literature that we’ll seek to locate in ourselves as embodied readers, by which I mean readers who come to stories with a particular social, political, geographical, and cultural position. We’ll also investigate agitation as a cultural response in the context of the story’s historical moment and its afterlives. All of these considerations will help us think through the question: why am I agitated, and how can that agitation be productive in my understanding of and participation in cultural discourses?

To do this work, we’ll develop the tools of literary analysis—close reading, reflection, historical contextualization, and synthesis—through our reading of an eclectic body of American short stories. We’ll also engage in class discussions, presentations, and thoughtful writing—both creative and critical.

This course meets the distribution requirement for Genre Courses.

LIT 3024

The Short Story: Gothic Secrets

Tiffany Palumbo
T/TH 1:20 - 4:30

The Gothic is not just horror--it's about secrets, and it's themes can pop up in almost any genre--fantasy, science fiction, realism, etc. In this class, we will read short stories that explore gothic themes in several different genres, and try to figure out just what, exactly, makes a story "gothic." Authors we will explore include Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Shirley Jackson, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, and Carmen Maria Machado.

LIT 3024

Perspectives on the Short Story: African Diasporic Short Fiction

Vince Omni
4:50-6:25 p.m. WMS 120

Story is the foundation of our lives. We all have at least one. More than likely, we have many: how we were born; where we are from; why we study engineering, protest injustice, or teach American Sign Language; what moves us to enroll in a short-story class. A passion? A requirement? Something in between? Story lives in each of these answers. It also lives on the pages of the texts we will read this semester. The breadth of writers we will read, is wide: Octavia Butler, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Ciscernos, Chinua Achebe, Joy Harjo, Jonathan Escoffery, Dionne Irving, Sherman Alexie, and many more. Citing textual evidence, we will examine how each writer deploys craft (tone, pacing, character development, and plot) to move a story forward. We will also discuss the social, political, and cultural backdrop against which these writers create art. In addition to reading, we will deliver presentations, facilitate class discussions, write response papers, complete quizzes, and submit a final project. Through this process, we will sharpen our ability to read and analyze stories that live on the pages of our textbook — and the ones embedded in the fiber of our everyday lives.

LIT 3024-0001

The Short Story: The Architecture of the Short Story

Esther Okonkwo
Tu/Thurs 11:35am - 2:35pm

In this class, we will enroll as apprentices of the short story. The sense here is that you are an architect studying compelling architecture. Why does it move you? How can you reimagine what you’ve encountered? For each week, there will be a focus on an element of fiction: plot, character, setting. These elements bleed into each other, so this focus is loose and serves only to give structure to the course. We will dip into short stories of all genres: speculative, gothic, realism, sci-fi. We will read short stories from a diverse array of 19th and 21st century writers. The components of this course include but are not limited to: writing exercises, weekly responses, in-class discussion of assigned texts.

LIT 3124

Understanding Literary History II

Lindsey Eckert
TuTh 9:45AM - 12:55PM (Room TBA)

This course focuses on literature written in English from the early nineteenth century to the present. Addressing literature across a variety of genres (poetry, novels, essays, etc.), the course encourages students to see literary history at both the level of the tree—the formal attributes of individual texts—and the forest—larger literary movements throughout history. Through in-class discussions and written essays, students will develop skills for detailed literary analysis, and we will work to understand how literature and different literary forms respond to specific socio-historical contexts. While many of the authors studied will be British, this course also seeks to recognize transnational literary trends. Authors will include Jane Austen, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Zadie Smith, and M. NourbeSe Philip.

This course fulfills an LMC Gateway/core requirement.

LIT 3313

Science Fiction

Timothy Welch
WMS 204, TTH 9:45-12:55 Summer B

In this course, we will investigate science fiction in literature and film, attending to the social, cultural, psychological, political, and of course scientific influences within this discursive genre.
Fulfills Understanding Genre requirement.

LIT 3334-0001

Introduction to Shakespeare: Four Plays and the Sonnets

Kris Rafferty
M/W 1:30pm-4:10pm Room WMS 0121

This class is designed to increase your enjoyment and understanding of Shakespeare’s work through a close reading of the texts in relation to their social and historical settings of the Renaissance or the early modern period in England. Throughout the semester, we will cover four of Shakespeare’s plays and his sonnets. In addition to Shakespeare’s texts, we will watch modern renditions of his work on stage and screen, and secondary readings.

This class will be based on class discussions, so students are expected to read assigned texts before coming to class and participate in class discussions. Throughout the semester, students will be required to write weekly (short) critical response papers, a presentation, and a final research paper.

This class satisfies the requirement for coursework in Pre-1800 distribution.

LIT 3383-0001

Women in Literature: Women in Mythology

So Young Koo
MoTuWeTh 9:45AM - 11:20AM/ WMS 0310

This course delves into the portrayal of women in various mythologies, analyzing archetypes, power dynamics, and cultural contexts. Through a comparative approach, students examine female characters' roles as goddesses, heroines, and monsters across different cultures. Topics include gender representation, agency, and the influence of myths on societal perceptions. Engaging with primary sources and contemporary adaptations, participants gain insights into the complexity and relevance of women's roles in mythology to modern discourse on gender and storytelling.