English Major Courses
Introductory Course
Contemporary Literature | ENG 10223 (3 credit hours)
Consists of analytical and reflective reading of contemporary (since 1945) American fiction, poetry and drama. Attention to developing techniques for critical reading and writing. Basic course for literature majors and study in the humanities and liberal arts.
English Survey Courses (two required)
Ancient to Medieval | ENG 26023 (3 credit hours)
Engages in primary analysis and response to significant literature from antiquity through the Renaissance.
Renaissance to Romantics | ENG 27023 (3 credit hours)
The second of the three English Department survey courses, this class aspires to provide students with an introduction to some of the major literary works and ideological movements of the Western world during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the course of the semester, we will gain an understanding of a variety of texts as well as an appreciation for the social, historical, political, religious, and ideological currents of each era.
Victorians to Moderns | ENG 28023 (3 credit hours)
Engages the student in primary analysis and response to significant literature from late nineteenth century Modernism through post-colonial and post-modern configurations.
The Postmoderns | ENG 29023 | (3 credit hours)
Engages the student in primary analysis and response to significant literature from late nineteenth century Modernism through postcolonial and post-modern configurations.
Dedicated Writing Courses (one required)
Advanced Expository Writing | ENG 31023 (3 credit hours)
Refinement of expository writing skills through analysis of models and writing practice.
Creative Writing | ENG 32723 (3 credit hours)
Course development skills in writing drama, poetry and fiction. Develops critical skills and encourages students to develop tools to refine expression.
Theme-Based Courses (three required)
IDS: Reading Relationships | ENG 30223 (3 credit hours)
This course unpacks the theme of human relationships -- romantic, filial, obsessive, and otherwise -- through the reading of such works as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, and Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name, viewed through the lens of history and shifting cultural values. Cross-listed with LAS 30223 IDS: Reading Relationships.
IDS: Image and Text | ENG 33023 (3 credit hours)
Explores how image and text work together to make meaning in contexts such as illustrated literature, film, advertising, visual poetry, performance art, and graphic novels. Readings from fields such as visual cultural studies, semiotics, art history, film criticism, postmodernism, and psychoanalytic theory will illuminate the relationships between image and text, language and representation.
IDS: Environmental Literature | ENG 33523 (3 credit hours)
An examination of a variety of literary works from several genres, focusing on the portrayal of physical environments and the connections between these environments and human spheres of influence. This course will explore how human beings relate to the natural world, and how that relation influences the way we read texts and the world around us, Authors to be studied might include Leopold, Thoreau, Defoe, the Brontes, Wordsworth, Merwin, Snyder and Kingsolver. Cross-listed with LAS 33523 IDS: Environmental Literature.
IDS: Protest Literature | ENG 34023 | (3 credit hours)
A study of the literature of social protest, emphasizing the relationship between aesthetics and politics, or the political purposes of literature. This course will examine how various authors assault the status quo of an often inhumane, brutal, and repressive society. Readings might include works by Richard Wright, Upton Sinclair and Nelson Algren.
IDS: Literature of Personal Discovery | ENG 49950 (3 credit hours)
Questions of identity and self-definition, from agonizing to liberating, in the work of such writers as Dante, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Kate Chopin, Simone de Beauvoir, Ralph Ellison and Anne Sexton.
English Seminar Courses
Literary Criticism | ENG 40123 (3 credit hours)
Identifies major trends in the history of critical thought from Plato to Derrida. Seeks to discover the position of literary criticism and to apply various critical theories. Library research and writing. Prerequisite: 30000-level English course.
Seminar: American Literature | ENG 45023 (3 credit hours)
Analyzes major American literature with emphasis on genre, period or author, to gain understanding of the critical approaches necessary for a thorough investigation of literature.
Seminar in British Literature | ENG 45123 (3 credit hours)
Analyzes major British literature with emphasis on genre, period or author, to gain understanding of the critical approaches necessary for a thorough investigation of literature.
English Capstone Course
Integrative Seminar in Criticism | ENG 49201 (4 credit hours)
Capstone course that guides student in development of an integrative project that demonstrates achievement of the learning outcomes in the English major. Course is organized around the major trends in critical thought and application of literary criticism theories within and across periods and genres.
Full Degree Catalog