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Summer Session I: June 3 – July 1, 2024
ENGL 25000
Introduction to Literacy Study
Sec. 1AA Tyson Ward M TU W TH 8:30am – 11:05am
Class number: 1159
(Note: the class meets online synchronously)
This course offers an introduction for beginning English majors to the practices and concepts in the study of literature. We will think carefully about literature as a form of representation – about what literary texts mean as well as how they mean. The course will help students to develop a critical vocabulary and method for reading and writing about literature, as well as introduce them to the cultural contexts and backgrounds of various literary traditions. Our readings will explore a variety of genres and styles – short fiction, the novel, narrative poetry, lyric poetry, and forms of drama. Above all, this is a class in reading and (frequent) writing which will emphasize close reading techniques, interpretive approaches, the making of arguments, and the development of individual critical voices in order to prepare students to succeed in advanced English elective courses.
300- Level Literature Courses
Please note: 300-level classes assume some background and prior experience at the 200-level. Students should complete two 200 level courses before embarking on 300 level work. Generally, these classes require two shorter essays and one longer assignment or final paper involving research or reference to secondary materials.
ENGL 36410
Abolitionist Literature
Sec. 1LL Michael Druffel M TU W TH 11:30am – 2:05pm
Class number: 2139
(Note: on TH the class meets online synchronously)
Building on a long tradition of transatlantic thought, contemporary abolitionists ask important social questions like: What would a society without prisons look like? What does it mean to defund the police? Can the United States’ criminal justice system be reformed? “Abolitionist Literature” works backwards to uncover the philosophical, literary, and cultural currents that birthed the abolitionist movement today. In exploring abolitionism’s literary history, we’ll better understand the successes and failures of different abolitionist strategies, how contemporary abolitionism developed, and what an abolitionist future might look like. We’ll begin by reading contemporary non-fiction writers including Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis, moving backwards to examine abolition in twentieth-century fiction by examining writers such as John Edgar Wideman and Chester Himes, before finally exploring the nineteenth-century roots of abolitionism through writers such as Frederick Douglass, James Williams, David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. We’ll supplement these primary sources with short, contemporary readings from scholars including Cedric Robinson, Saidiya Hartman, Sylvia Wynter, and Katherine McKittrick. By the end of the course, we’ll have better understood how literature responded to and shaped abolition, how history influenced transatlantic writing, and the complicated relationship between capitalism and race. Class sessions will focus both on understanding course reading through discussion and ungraded, in-class written assignment and learning to make our own arguments about the literary history of abolition through writing.
ENGL 37603
New Black American Drama (1940-2020)
Sec. 1MM Robert Yates M TU W TH 2:30 – 5:05pm
Class number: 10794
(Note: on W TH the class meets online synchronously)
This course surveys modern and contemporary works by Black playwrights and critical theorists. The course investigates how drama and theatrical performance influence the relationship between American public(s) and articulations and embodied experiences of race and racism. We will explore the strategies that playwrights use to represent, categorize, know, and speak of and for racialized subjects.
In this course, we will attend closely to primary texts. It is important to be able to speak about a text—ideas it expresses, how it is structured, its relationship to other texts within its genre or form, its relationship to historical events, its material history—with precision and concision. We will engage with texts through weekly seminar discussions, critical readings, and—perhaps—short written assignments.
Scholarly essays, articles, book chapters, and the occasional book will invite us to consider how the dramatic texts continue to live within works of history, theory, literary criticism, and popular culture. More particularly, we will investigate how scholarship forms objects of study—such as race, family, home, community, and care—by analyzing how critics engage with the primary texts we are reading.
Dramatic works might include A Raisin in the Sun, Clybourne Park, The Homecoming, The White Card: A Play, Slave Play, Pass Over, Fairview, American Moor, and Fat Ham. The theoretical texts underpinning our inquiry are Barbara Christian’s “The Race for Theory,” Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, and Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study.
Creative Writing Course
ENGL 22000
Introduction to Creative Writing
Sec. 1LL Kayle Nochomovitz M TU W TH 11:30am – 2:05pm
Class number: 1160
Introductory Creative Writing will be an intensive exploration of writing between and beyond the spectrum of poetry and prose. Students will be introduced to contemporary texts and devices to inform their own developing writing practice, which will culminate in a hand bound book in print.
Summer Session II: July 8 – August 2, 2024
300- Level Literature Courses
Please note: 300-level classes assume some background and prior experience at the 200-level. Students should complete two 200 level courses before embarking on 300 level work. Generally, these classes require two shorter essays and one longer assignment or final paper involving research or reference to secondary materials.
ENGL 36906
#HotLaborSummer: Labor Movement/Working Class Rhetorics
Sec. 2AA Olivia Wood M TU W TH 8:30 – 11:05am
Class number: 1255
(Note: on TU and TH the class meets online synchronously)
The U.S. labor movement is experiencing a surge of new growth. Workers at major companies like Amazon and Starbucks are unionizing. Summer 2023 saw strikes from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, hotel workers in LA, and a very near strike by UPS Teamsters. Higher education itself is one of the labor movement hot spots. Will 2024 bring a new #HotLaborSummer?
This surge presents a series of critical rhetorical situations with high and immediate stakes: how can workers convince their coworkers to unionize, or to go on strike? How can workers convince others to support their strikes? During an organizing drive or a contract campaign, workers and employers wage rhetorical battle with one another during class struggle. An enormous amount of writing is produced: press coverage, social media posts, bargaining updates, emails, and more. In this class, we’ll examine the different rhetorical strategies and genres that organized workers use to achieve their goals, with a focus on contemporary movements and current events, alongside key historical works of working class rhetoric and rhetorical scholarship. Students will choose a particular labor struggle at the beginning of the summer term and analyze the rhetorics at play in a series of scaffolded activities culminating in a final project.
ENGL 37610
How to Watch Movies
Sec. 2LL Chester Kozlowski M TU W TH 11:30am – 2:05pm
Class number: 1883
(Note: the class meets online synchronously)
This course examines film-watching from a literary and technical perspective. What are the eras’ limitations? How are scenes constructed? What is the effect of lighting and music? How did film go from a “magic trick” to becoming a tentpole of popular culture. The course also delves into storytelling and compares some movies to the literature that inspired it. Films and excerpts include Charlie Chaplin’s silent comedies, Rebel without a Cause, The Godfather, Fight Club, Tår, and digital breakthroughs in special effects.
Creative Writing Course
ENGL 23000
Writing Workshop in Prose
Sec. 2AA TBA M TU W TH 8:30am – 11:05am
Class number: 1156
In this course the varieties of prose writing, excluding fiction, will be practiced. The class is devoted to exploring such nonfictional forms as personal essay writing, reportage, memoir and biographical writing, sketches and opinion pieces. Throughout the semester students will read exemplary works from each area of nonfiction and will also spend considerable time practicing the genre through continuous exercises given by the instructor each week. Students will also learn to revise their works, respond to their peers’ writing, and work toward one to two major papers assigned for the semester.