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2000-Level Course Descriptions

FALL 2023 | FALL WINTER 2023-24 | WINTER 2024

ENGL-2002-001 | The Creative Process | A. Leventhal
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Where do ideas come from? How do I cultivate a writing habit? How can I give and receive feedback in a productive way? What factors should I keep in mind when thinking about publication? These are some of the questions we'll consider in this course, which takes creative writing to be a practice rather than a product. We'll look at how a diverse range of contemporary writers have approached these questions, and students will identify and practice skills that are key to a healthy writing habit, with a particular focus on revision and peer review. Alongside essays, interviews, and craft books, we'll read an assortment of contemporary short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, in order to develop an ear for a variety of voices and techniques. In addition to analytic work, this class will require you to write creatively, think critically about your work, and submit it for peer review.

ENGL-2102-001 | Intro Creative Writing | J. Ball
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

The focus of this course is on introducing students to the fundamentals of creative writing in preparation for a professional career. The basic contention of this course is that creative writing is a form of work, which requires the development of analytical and compositional skills, alongside the cultivation of strong professional habits.

Students will learn to divest themselves of the “inspiration model” and manufacture inspiration. Students will analyze model texts to determine how they work and how to recognize and reproduce particular literary tactics. Students will learn and practice various compositional tactics, including traditional methods and experimental new methods.

Emphasis will be placed on revision, both structural and stylistic, and refining work through successive drafts. The basics of preparing and submitting creative work for publication will be discussed. The fundamentals of a creative career will be addressed. This course assumes that students have professional ambitions as creative writers.

ENGL-2102-002 | Intro Creative Writing | J. Scoles
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Students will concentrate on developing a significant portfolio of creative writing, including poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. The course will introduce students to frameworks and strategies for developing creative work through improvisational writing exercises, close reading, and critical analysis. Key writing concepts—Voice, Plot, Setting, and Character, for example—will be explored in depth, and emphasis will be placed on the skills involved in drafting, self-editing, peer-reviewing, and work-shopping creative work, as well as the professional preparation and submission of manuscripts suitable for publication. This course is recommended for students who plan on taking further creative writing courses at the undergraduate level, as well as those who have an interest in pursuing creative writing as a profession.

ENGL-2102-003 | Intro Creative Writing | J. Wills
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

“My proposal is that we tell stories. In particular, we must tell the many stories that make up the great cosmic story. This storytelling activity may be the most important political and economic act of our time.” – Brian Swimme, cosmologist

During this Fall 2022 semester, we will take advantage of these extraordinary times to re- examine some of our most cherished assumptions and beliefs about writing creatively. Why do we write in the first place? What is the role and responsibility of the writer in these times?

This seminar-style course is an introduction to the impulse, process, and act of writing creatively. We will read what selected established writers have to say about the challenges and pleasures of imaginative writing, and we’ll explore the idea that “all writing is rewriting.” We’ll also read and discuss the work of selected writers in varied cultural and geographical contexts to discover how they’ve made use of sounds, rhythms, meanings, and diction to create literary art, including creative nonfiction (specifically personal essays), short fiction, and poems.

All our explorations will be grounded in writing prompts (in-class) and creative assignments (done outside of class). You will be actively encouraged to participate in both full-class and small-group discussion throughout the course. We will also practise close reading of original writing done by members of the class.

You will participate in small-group workshops to respond to your fellow students’ original writing, learning to develop your abilities and vocabulary as an editor, which in turn will develop your ability to edit and revise your own work. By the end of term you will have written several pieces of creative work, including both prose (fiction/creative nonfiction) and poetry. In lieu of a final exam, you will be asked to submit a portfolio of revised work chosen from the pieces written as drafts during the course. Revisions will likely involve comprehensive rewriting, which will be based in part on the responses to your work, both written and verbal, from your fellow students and from me.

Recommended for students who plan to enroll in further creative writing courses at the undergraduate level.

ENGL-2220-001 | English Literature and Culture 700-1660 | Z. Izydorczyk
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course invites students to read and consider early English literature (700 – 1660) in the context of significant political, religious, and philosophical movements of the medieval and early modern periods in England. It offers glimpses of the past and reflections on the ways the past has shaped our culture today. Engaging with such works as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Spenser’s Amoretti, and Marlow’s Dr. Faustus, students explore the changing views about the language and about the production, reception, and role of literature in society across this vast time frame. Literary readings are combined with selected historical, theoretical, and critical texts from each literary period, enabling students to appreciate each period’s continuities and discontinuities as well as its “otherness” and impact our culture today.

This course will be taught in person though a combination of lecture-discussions, practical exercises and assignments, quizzes, and a research paper. If necessary, the textbook will be supplemented by additional readings available online.

ENGL-2603-001 | Short Fiction | J. Scoles
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This is a course in short fiction and its forms—specifically, modern and contemporary fiction from Asia, Europe, North and South America, and from writers like Haruki Murakami, James Joyce, Alice Munro, Louise Erdrich & Gabriel Garcia Marquez—and students will be introduced to structures and strategies fiction writers use in the art of storytelling. Important fiction concepts—Narrative Voice, Conflict, Tension, Setting, and Character, for example—will be explored in depth, and emphasis will be placed on the skills involved in close reading and critical analysis of stories. Cultural, social, and historical aspects of stories will also be explored, as well as the lives and influences of the authors. Students will develop creative work—various forms of short fiction—through improvisational writing exercises and by emulating the published work of master storytellers. This course is recommended for students who plan on taking further literature courses at the undergraduate level, as well as those who have an interest in writing short fiction.

ENGL-2612-001 | Science Fiction | C. Fawcett
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Science Fiction extrapolates from our current world, drawing complex subjects into imagined spaces. This distance from the real offers an opportunity to engage with contemporary issues of politics, society and justice. Examining texts from the late nineteenth century onward that contend with issues of justice and power, we will discuss trends and movements in SF along with the texts’ address of issues such as social and economic imbalance, racism and racial violence, rights and citizenship, environmental destruction and capitalism. We will read different forms of sf, including the short story, novel, graphic fiction, film and video game. We will look at how texts offer a way forward, as dystopian narratives may offer an optimistic turn and utopian texts speculate on paths to a more just world. 

ENGL-2613-001 | Fantasy Fiction | P. Melville
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course analyzes literary works within the fantasy genre in light of feminist, postcolonial, Marxist, and other cultural theories. While it considers the history of the fantasy genre and the “fantastic” as a literary mode, the course focuses primarily on the poetics and politics of “world-building,” a term that refers to fantasy’s production of imaginary “secondary” worlds whose historical, geographical, ontological, and cultural realities substantially differ from the world(s) inhabited by fantasy’s various readerships. The course covers a variety of fantasy subgenres, including epic fantasy, urban fantasy, and fantasy for young people. The selection of texts for this section of the course is based on a sample of recent novels that have won awards conferred by institutions such as the World Fantasy Convention, the World Science Fiction Society, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and Locus magazine. Accordingly, the course also considers how historical and cultural pressures influence the administration of such awards and how these awards in turn shape the future of the fantasy genre.

ENGL-2922-001 | Topics in Women Writers: Afrofuturism and Black Women’s Writers | I. Adeniyi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course examines Afrofuturism through the works of Black women writers. Afrofuturism, as a term that describes a complex body of global Black cultures, aesthetics, and imaginations of the future, has emerged as an important concept. Afrofuturism articulates the histories and cultures of racism, colonialism and science/technology vis-à-vis the past, present, and future of the modern world. It is, for some, an emergent Black philosophy and cultural expression of the future. In the course, we will explore the multiple emergences of Afrofuturism and some of the conversations that shaped contemporary understandings of the concept. We will examine the selected works of Black women from Africa, North America, and the Caribbean to consider their articulations of such themes as Black freedoms, Black decoloniality and Black liberation struggles in their texts, particularly in response to regimes of colonialism, neocolonialism, patriarchy and global capitalism that target black bodies. We will also consider some of the major artistic strategies and approaches common and distinct to our selected Black women’s works. By so doing, we will also examine the different projects of futurity that these women are advancing as an affirmative response for Black (and Black women’s) liberation. The goal of the course is to introduce students to Afrofuturism, some Black women’s Afrofuturist works, and some of the major Afrofuturist themes in Black women’s Afrofuturism.

ENGL-2981-001 | History of the Book | Z. Izydorczyk
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, first edition, 1499. Public This course introduces students to the history of the book, the material basis of literate/literary culture, by exploring the writing and reading technologies from the papyrus scroll to the digital screen. It briefly traces the history of producing, reading, preserving, exploiting, and controlling material texts in Western culture. Students are invited to reflect on writing as handwork, the ideologies of writing and reading, the production of a manuscript / printed codex, the development of mise-en-page and paratexts, the rise of the reading public, the economics of book production and trade, and the digital revolution. The course highlights the importance of writing for the emergence of the modern sense of selfhood and affords a historical and material perspective through which to engage the culture of the past and the present.

This course will be taught in person though a combination of lecture-discussions, practical exercises and assignments, quizzes, and a research paper. The textbook will be supplemented by additional readings available online.

FALL/WINTER 2023-24

ENGL-2003-001 | Field of Children’s Literature | H. Snell
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course explores the characteristics of children's literature, unusually named for its readers rather than its producers. Students study reading strategies; cultural assumptions about children and childhood; the economic and political contexts of the production, consumption, and marketing of texts for young people; and popular culture and media for young people. Texts from a range of genres, including nursery rhymes, poetry, picture books, novels, short stories, and films are considered. Broader subjects of discussion include cultural phenomena such as the production of different versions of the same text for different demographics and the popularity of young-adult novels among adults. Students are also introduced to histories of diversity (or the lack thereof) in children's literature and important online venues of discussion. They are invited to think about diversity in relation to censorship, literary prizes, and transmedia storytelling. Relevant theory supplements readings of primary texts in offering a sense of the debates that take place among children's literary and cultural studies scholars. Texts covered include L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud, Not Buddy, and Tanaz Bhathena's A Girl Like That.

ENGL-2114-001 | Fairy Tales and Culture | C. Tosenberger
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

In this course we will study fairy tales, focusing not only on collected source material, but on literature written specifically for children based on these borrowed forms. We will trace the history of fairy tales from their origins in oral narrative to their impact on contemporary culture today. Students read and write critically about these tales and engage in comparisons on multiple fronts, exploring major themes and characteristics of these tales as well as the social and psychological aspects of them. The goal is to enrich our appreciation of these tales by strengthening our critical understanding of them as well as to gain insight as to how these tales function in our selves and our society. 

ENGL-2142-001 | Field of Lit & Text | K. Ready
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This particular section of Field of Literary and Textual Studies (subtitled “Things of Beauty, Solitary Poets, and Dead Authors: A History of Ideas about Art”) will explore a variety of questions related to art, including literature, drawing on both literature (poetry, drama, and fiction) and criticism that has addressed the purpose and meaning of art, the requirements for great art, and the relationship between different kinds of art, as well as questions around genius, creativity, and artistry and authorship. Course materials will range from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the twenty-first century, encompassing such intellectual and aesthetic movements as Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Aestheticism, Decadence, Modernism, and Postmodernism, with some attention paid to other critical developments such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, and gender, race, and queer politics.

ENGL-2145-770 | Field of Cultural Studies| B. Cornellier
Course Delivery: ONLINE

This course is an introductory survey of cultural studies. The course starts with a historical genealogy of the field of cultural studies in post-war Britain. It first introduces students to the field’s particular critical focus on questions related to social class, mass culture, and everyday life as sites where power is negotiated, reproduced, and contested. The course then examines how cultural studies traveled and evolved beyond the British context, and how it offered new ways to critically examine a constantly shifting cultural field in which issues of class, race, gender, sexuality, geography, nationality, Indigeneity, etc., constantly intersect. The course includes readings in theory and criticism and the study of cultural forms and practices, such as literature, film, television, visual and performance art, music, print and electronic media, as well as the institutions that shape them. Issues covered may include: mass culture and popular culture; subjectivity, identity, class, and agency; ethnicity and race; postcolonialism and settler colonialism; diaspora, and globalization; sex, gender, and sexuality; film texts and audiences; digital media culture; and the politics of representation.

ENGL-2146-770 | Screen Studies | A. Burke
Course Delivery: ONLINE LIVE ZOOM

This course introduces students to the history, development and contemporary proliferation of screen media. It will examine the ways in which the modern world is mediated by screen representations and think about the consequences of such mediation. The course will primarily focus on that most mythologized of screens: the cinema. From its earliest days, film has been self-reflexive about the power, the possibilities, and the pitfalls of cinematic representations. We will watch and discuss a series of films that set their sights on the silver screen itself, representing the film-going or film-making experience. But in addition to feature films, the course will also examine other forms of film-making, from government and sponsored films to home movies.

The fall term will feature an overview of the history of cinema and of movie-going. Focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on Hollywood, the course will investigate the grip cinema has had on audiences, thinking about film in terms of its industrial production, commercial circulation, and ideological force. The winter term is broken into modules that will invite different ways of thinking about the history of the screen. First, the course asks what happens if we refocus film history to focus on women directors. Following that, it thinks about non-feature film production, looking at the output of the National Film Board of Canada and examining home movie making. The course ends with two open weeks, the topics for which will be crowdsourced, that will enable us to dig deeper into the history of movie-going and other screen practices.

Films will be accessible online via the UW Library and students are expected, with a few exceptions, to watch the films at home in advance of each class. I have minimized the readings for the course on the basis of this. We will treat the films themselves as primary texts. Students need not have any prior experience studying film or other screen media! Part of the work of the course will be developing the basic skills to watch and write about moving images.

ENGL-2180-001 | Popular Literature and Film: Detection and Mystery | C. Fawcett
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

The appeal of the unknown and the draw of a mystery has always appealed to readers and audiences. From the earliest detection fiction to modern tales of mystery, the genre of mystery fiction has a broad appeal and impact. This class will consider the development of the mystery genre, and its many modern iterations across the page, picture and screen. We will discuss the form of the mystery, the function of the detective, and the different forms of the modern mystery, from legal thrillers, forensic-detection, history mystery and the cozy murder. We will address shifting conceptions of law, order and justice, crime and criminality, and the tools of puzzles and fair play. This course will work with a range of texts, from short stories and novels, comics and graphic fiction, television episodes and films.

ENGL-2311-760 | Shakespeare | B. Christopher
Course Delivery: ONLINE

This course offers students the chance to study in depth a selection of the dramatic works of William Shakespeare.  In it, we will read a representative sample of his plays, from the range of genres in which he wrote.  Students will be invited to think about these works in a variety of ways – aesthetically, theoretically, and historically, for example – both as individual plays and as part of a body of work.  In addition to reading and writing about the plays, students will have the opportunity, in groups, to edit and to adapt a scene from one of the plays studied this year.  Other assignments include quizzes, essays, writing workshops, and brief response papers.

NOTE: This is a hybrid class, with 2 hours/week offered asynchronously through Nexus and 1 hour/week offered in-person through scheduled lab sections (ENGL-2311L). The total time commitment is equivalent to other 2000-level English courses.

ENGL-2601-001 | The Novel | C. Manfredi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course surveys a selection of Victorian novels (1832-1901). During the Fall term we will try to read like the Victorians did: serially. We will read a single novel: Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Published in 1852-53, Bleak House appeared in serial form over the course of nineteen months and represents a complete narrative vision. We will be reading it slowly, carefully, and with a close attention to detail. We will discuss two installments per week. I recommend that you set out a realistic reading schedule for yourself: for example, if you read 2 chapters per day you will never fall behind. I have estimated that reading one installment (3-4 chapters) requires approximately 1-1.5 hours; however, I would suggest that you keep track of your own reading speed so that you can allot the appropriate amount of reading time per day.

In the Winter term we will turn our attention to three significant novels from the period: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, and Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge.

ENGL-2933-001 | Survey of Women Writers: Visions and Visionaries | S. Asselin 
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This full-year class provides a survey of women's writing from the medieval period to the present. This year, the theme is “Visions and Visionaries”. We will ground women’s writings in the social and historical circumstances of their production but also places an emphasis on the power of female creators to imagine alternate and empowering circumstances for their sex and gender, as detailed in religious, political, and fantastic writing. This class will examine the way women (a category we will read intersectionally and interrogatively) elaborated and revised traditional stories—classical and religious—to showcase a feminine perspective, often critiquing from within the institutions that oppressed them. We will also read works from women about the creative process itself and the limitations—external and internalized—that prevented them from either writing or sharing their works with a broader public. Texts covered in this class will include poetry, drama, short fiction, novels, and prose non-fiction, and for each of these forms we will introduce and engage with the relevant formal features of that medium. The class will feature multiple writing assignments over the course of the year designed to help you become more skillful and confident essay-writers. The class culminates in a Build-Your-Own-Utopia exercise, a creative project in which you will choose your own medium to detail what a feminist utopia would look like to you, taking inspiration from the utopian writings we have encountered over the breadth of the class.  

WINTER 2024

ENGL-2102-004 | Intro to Creative Writing: Developing a Portfolio | A. Leventhal
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

The purpose of this course is to provide a space and structure for students to develop a portfolio of creative work, with the guidance of the instructor and their peers. With craft books, essays, and published work as our guides, we will explore some of the fundamentals of creative writing, including voice, structure, form, and diction. Students will experiment with fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, and, in addition to writing creatively, will engage in peer critique and revision of their own creative work. This course is recommended for students who plan to enroll in further creative writing courses at the undergraduate level.

ENGL-2102-005 | Intro to Creative Writing: Developing a Portfolio | I. Adeniyi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course provides theoretical and practical approaches to developing a portfolio of creative writing. We will focus on short fiction and poetry. We will study and practice some strategies of writing in both genres. The course has two main objectives. The first is to help students think, imagine, and construct stories and poems strategically; in other words, to be mindful and intentional about writing techniques and approaches. The second is to facilitate students’ experience and practice of the beautiful WORK involved in writing (creating) and rewriting/revising (recreating) drafts of creative work. Accordingly, students taking this course should be prepared to commit time to writing.

ENGL-2102-006 | Intro to Creative Writing: Developing a Portfolio | J. Ball
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

The focus of this course is on introducing students to the fundamentals of creative writing in preparation for a professional career. The basic contention of this course is that creative writing is a form of work, which requires the development of analytical and compositional skills, alongside the cultivation of strong professional habits.

Students will learn to divest themselves of the “inspiration model” and manufacture inspiration. Students will analyze model texts to determine how they work and how to recognize and reproduce particular literary tactics. Students will learn and practice various compositional tactics, including traditional methods and experimental new methods.

Emphasis will be placed on revision, both structural and stylistic, and refining work through successive drafts. The basics of preparing and submitting creative work for publication will be discussed. The fundamentals of a creative career will be addressed. This course assumes that students have professional ambitions as creative writers.

ENGL-2102-770 | Intro to Creative Writing: Developing a Portfolio | J. Scoles
Course Delivery: ONLINE

Students will concentrate on developing a significant portfolio of creative writing, including poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. The course will introduce students to frameworks and strategies for developing creative work through improvisational writing exercises, close reading, and critical analysis. Key writing concepts—Voice, Plot, Setting, and Character, for example—will be explored in depth, and emphasis will be placed on the skills involved in drafting, self-editing, peer-reviewing, and work-shopping creative work, as well as the professional preparation and submission of manuscripts suitable for publication. This course is recommended for students who plan on taking further creative writing courses at the undergraduate level, as well as those who have an interest in pursuing creative writing as a profession.

ENGL-2203-001 | Seventeenth Century | K. Sinanan
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Course Description TBA

ENGL-2221-001 | Medieval Lit: Chaucer | Z. Izydorczyk
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Course Description TBA

ENGL-2230-001 | Brit Lit & Cult 1660-1901 | C. Manfredi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course offers a historical survey of a selection of major British authors and genres from the Restoration of King Charles II to the English throne (1660) to the death of Queen Victoria (1901). We begin with Restoration comedy and William Wycherley’s controversial “The Country Wife” (1675) and Richard Sheridan’s comedy of manners “The School for Scandal” (1777). As we near the end of the eighteenth century, we shift our focus to the poetry of John Keats and Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818). The themes of creation, science, and social “progress” will carry through our reading of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854) and selections from Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859).

ENGL-2604-001 | Poetry and Poetic Form | P. Melville
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course is designed to introduce students to various features, forms, and figures of poetic discourse. While historical context informs lectures and class discussion, this section of the course proceeds, for the most part, according to the figural elements of poetry (such as rhythm and rhyme, diction and tone, metaphor and allegory). By engaging in thorough discussions and varied writing assignments, students learn to become more appreciative, alert readers of poetry, and in the process expand the possibilities of their own writing. Please note that there will be no textbook to purchase, as all poems will be available through online links to websites such as poetryfoundation.org and poets.org.

ENGL-2740-001 | African Lits & Cults | C. Anyaduba
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to literatures of the African continent, in English, and the cultures out of which they grew, with an extended focus on the literatures of the African Diasporas. We will explore fictional and non-fictional texts dealing with African migrations from, to, and within the African continent. By so doing, we examine some of the major thematic thrusts of African migration stories from the mid-twentieth century to contemporary times. Some texts we will read in the course deal with the vagaries of exile, transnational migration, and diasporization. These texts present African mobilities as a process of social and psychological dislocation and alienation. A troubling sense of loss – of lost home, innocence, time, intimacy, estrangement, of the search for community – saturates the stories in some of the selected readings. Bearing these themes in mind, we will read selected texts to interrogate the conditions giving rise to African migrations in the contemporary global world order. We will probe the complex moral, emotional, social, political, and cultural dimensions of African journeys as represented in stories. In addition, our reading of the texts may be guided by such concepts as exile, alienation, double consciousness, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and Afropolitanism. 

ENGL-2806-001 | Semantics | H. Tran
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Course Description TBA

ENGL-2922-002 | Topics in Women Writers: Feminist Futures | A. Leventhal 
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

In her introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, feminist science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin writes: "The future, in fiction, is a metaphor." In this course we'll examine how women writers working in sci-fi and speculative fiction have imagined various futures, or alternate presents, and what these "metaphorical" possible worlds reveal about the social and political contexts in which these women wrote. We'll establish some of the tropes and techniques of sci-fi and speculative fiction, and consider how feminist writers have subverted, challenged, or re-imagined these norms, in some cases creating entirely new genres. We'll consider how various streams of feminist thought have been explored in sci-fi and spec fic, and how these texts open onto feminist struggles in the 20th and 21st centuries, paying close attention to the intersections of gender, race, ability, and class. We'll ask what it means to engage in futurism and world-making, and we'll consider its radical potential, as well as its limitations.