Upcoming Course Offerings
click here for Summer 2025 Course Descriptions
click here for Fall 2025 Course Descriptions
Sample Course Offerings (previous semesters)
ENG 212 - Topics in Modern American Literature: Evolving
As the title indicates, this is a literature survey course: that means significant amounts of reading. You should count on several hours of reading for each class meeting. But the assigned readings for this course should be pleasurable and stimulating, in a whole variety of ways. This is an American literature survey course, so a good deal of time will be spent thinking about what constitutes American identity, as well as racial, ethnic, religious, and intellectual/aesthetic identity. These issues are not peripheral or extraneous to the creation of literary meaning; they are often deeply embedded in the very structure of literature, in ways that we will probe. We will also be looking at how American literature changes and repeats over time.
ENG 341 - Writing Liberation: African American Women Writers
What does it mean to be free? What does liberation look like for Black women writers speaking back to and against centuries of oppression based on race, gender, class, and more? In this course, we will seek to answer these questions by engaging with various genres of African American women’s writing. We will sit at the feet of Black women writers, as they imagine and journey toward myriad visions of liberated identities.
ENG 412 – Digital Literacies
In this course, we will investigate digital technologies, the communication methods they enable, and the electronic environments in which that communication takes place. Meaning what, now? Sure! Glad you asked. We’ll be analyzing various digital objects and concepts, including avatars and other online personae, anonymous and pseudonymous communication, virtual worlds and cyberspaces, videogames, social media, electronic devices, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI). “Literacy” is closely associated with one’s ability to read and write, and has been for a long, long time. “Literacy” has always been closely tied to identity, which in turn is shaped by one’s context (environment, time, cultural practices and beliefs), perspective (one’s own and that of others), and use of and exposure to language and various discourses. When the “electronic” or “digital” age emerged, “digital literacy,” like traditional literacy, began to describe an ability – to locate, access, comprehend, assess, and create information, identities, and environments. But this time, it was by using digital tools (devices, the Internet) and methods (email, texting, social media posting). Studying “digital literacy” quickly reveals that communication itself is inseparable from the medium in which it takes place.
ENG 471 Provoking and Professing Shakespeare
In this course, we’ll think about the considerable challenges of teaching Shakespeare in the 21st century classroom. We’ll consider the provocative questions that Shakespeare’s works raise and we’ll pose new ones of our own. Participants in the course will re-read the classic “high school” standards and other plays with considerable cultural afterlives with an eye toward disrupting standard readings and uncovering those elements that are frequently buried or ignored in scenes of teaching. We’ll tackle texts that may be alternately ridiculous, uncomfortable, painful, offensive, or brilliant, without shying-away or glossing-over. Ultimately, we’ll ask why, after over 400 years, Shakespeare is still so present on our stages, in our classrooms, and in our media. Hopefully, we’ll find ways of reading and teaching Shakespeare that are socially aware, thoughtful, active, outspoken, and exuberant. Students will be responsible for weekly responses as well as longer thesis-driven essays and lesson plans. Graduate students in the course will give an in-class presentation and complete a longer seminar paper.
