Department of English and Literary Arts

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS—Spring 2020

*Fulfillment of DU and Departmental requirements is listed after each description. All English

courses, except those used to fulfill DU Common Curriculum requirements, can also count for

English Elective credit. Please note, no more than 12 credit hours of 1000-level coursework--

including ENGL 1010 and any transfer credit--can count towards our major requirements.

ASEM 2403

CRN 5370

Versions of Egypt

Brian Kiteley

Tuesday 4-7:50 PM

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will study what led up and what has followed the recent

Egyptian Revolutions. We will read Alifa Rifaat’s Distant View of the Minaret, Amitav Ghosh’s

In an Antique Land, Alaa al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, Wael Ghonim’s Revolution 2.0,

and excerpts of Peter Hessler’s The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution. Students

will write both critical and creative essays for this seminar.

Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Advanced Seminar. ASEM 2422

CRN 3871

Textual Bodies: Discourse and the Corporeal in American Culture

Tayana Hardin

Tuesday, Thursday 2-3:50 PM

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course explores how bodies acquire meanings, and how those

meanings are created, represented, disseminated, or contested through discursive and embodied

means. More specifically, this seminar equally privileges the book and the body as sites that, when

studied jointly, invite thoughtful consideration of power and privilege, and the discursive and

material consequences of race and gender and their intersections with other categories of social

identity. Course practices include close readings of literary, philosophical, and visual texts by

Sandra Cisneros, Judith Butler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others; creative and critical writing

exercises; robust in-class participation; and a final class project.

Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Advanced Seminar. ENGL 1000 Section 1

CRN 1027

Introduction to Creative Writing

Evelyn Hampton

Monday, Wednesday 8-9:50 AM

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this reading--and writing--intensive course, we’ll explore different

genres of creative writing and consider different modes of creativity. Assigned readings and

writing prompts will ask students to consider how they understand and interpret texts, and whether

and how they then act in the world on their interpretations. Through this process, students will

engage with works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and hybrid texts and gain a better understanding

of creativity as a socially engaged process.

**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or

advanced creative writing courses.

Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.

ENGL 1000 Section 2

CRN 1479

Introduction to Creative Writing

Cassandra Eddington

Tuesday, Thursday 8-9:50 AM

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Basic techniques of fiction and poetry.

**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or

advanced creative writing courses.

Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.

ENGL 1000 Section 3

CRN 5384

Introduction to Creative Writing

Justin Wymer

Wednesday, Friday 12-1:50 PM

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Creative writing is, at its core, a core-emptying enterprise: we write to

empty ourselves of emotion, story, anecdote, inspiration, frustration, anxiety, daydream, and

nightmare. We write to express ourselves in manners more intangible than those that purely

academic writing requires. In this class, we will be sure to fill our wellsprings so that they do not

run by drinking in the language particular to prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction as we play, take

risks, and challenge and question ourselves. Most important, we will practice experimenting with

words and forms as we come to understand the magical things we create.

In this generative-writing course, student scholars will be introduced to a variety of genres of

creative writing to whet their literary appetites and begin developing their personal sensibility

about language. They will learn various prompts, techniques, and jumping-off points to help them

generate writing. They will also learn revision techniques in workshop. The course will culminate

in a final portfolio and classroom exhibition of revised student work.

**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or

advanced creative writing courses.

Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.

ENGL 1000 Section 4

CRN 1973

Introduction to Creative Writing

Blake Guffey

Monday, Wednesday 10-11:50 AM

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this introductory creative writing class we will read and write across

a wide variety of works – poetry, the novel, short story, theater, and film – with an eye toward how

form and content work together to manifest the creative impulse. Students will be directed through

the quarter with multiple creative writing exercises and participate in both small group and full

class workshops of your original writing.

**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or

advanced creative writing courses.

Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.

ENGL 1006 Section 1

CRN 3398

Art of Fiction

Elijah Null

Tuesday, Thursday 8-9:50 AM

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine how American authors writing in the 1940s,

50s, and 60s engage with and modify continental existentialist ideas in their writing. We will look

at works by writers such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison,

Walker Percy, and others.

Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: English elective.

ENGL 1007 Section 1

CRN 1974

Art of Poetry

Taylor Wesley

Tuesday, Thursday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will introduce us to strategies for reading, analyzing, and

discussing poetry.

Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: English elective.

ENGL 1200 Section 1

CRN 3401

International Short Fiction

Ben Caldwell

Wednesday, Friday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Here in Denver, mountains might represent day hikes and weekend

ski trips, but approximately one-eighth of the global population calls a mountain region home.

Across the world, mountain communities are treated as both isolated backwaters and pockets of

thriving rural diversity and richness. In this class, we will explore the tensions between these two

views of mountain communities by looking at fiction from five countries known for their

mountainous geography: China, Pakistan, Morocco, Haiti, and Chile. We will also discuss the

economic and cultural difficulties facing mountain communities, and occasionally turn our eyes to

mountains much closer to home by comparing the realities of international mountain life with

communities in the Rockies and Appalachians. This class is recommended to students planning on

studying abroad.

Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: English elective.

ENGL 2003 Section 1

CRN 2241

Creative Writing-Poetry

Sarah Sheiner

Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this class, we will talk about what we write, why we write it, and

who we are writing it for. We will do this through the reading and discussion of books that are

doing the work of making art while also trying to speak to/affect the public sphere. These

discussions will inform the art we make in class (from poems to collages) and the feedback we

give in workshops. Enrollment in this class means that you are ready to be receptive and to speak

with empathy toward all people, perspectives, and texts introduced and discussed.

**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing required for enrollment.

Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: Intermediate creative writing.

ENGL 2013 Section 1

CRN 2242

Creative Writing-Fiction

Kelly Krumrie

Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will investigate how (and perhaps why) writers tell stories

in order to practice (and experiment) writing our own. We will read critically to tease out elements

of fictional craft (e.g., character, setting, plot, dialogue, etc.). We will also read widely, from a

range of primarily contemporary writers working in different forms, including work by Carmen

Maria Machado, Steven Dunn, Ho Sok Fong, Ted Chiang, Joy Williams, and others. Alongside

reading and discussion, students will write short creative and critical responses. In the second half

of the term, students will workshop and revise their own stories. The class will allow writers to

practice writing short fiction while reflecting on how (and again perhaps why) a story can be told.

**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing required for enrollment.

Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: Intermediate creative writing.

ENGL 2021 Section 1

CRN 5710

Business Technical Writing

Kelly Krumrie

Tuesday, Thursday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, students will learn and practice forms of writing used

in professional environments, both individual and collaborative, such as PowerPoint presentations,

memos, proposals, executive summaries, and job application materials. We will focus on how to

craft information in an efficient, organized, and logical manner from brainstorming and problem-

solving to final copy. As this is a cross-disciplinary topic, students will be encouraged to tailor

course assignments to their fields of study and interests so that the work is both relevant and

practical. Students will come away from the course with tools and techniques to improve their

professional writing as well as a cover letter and résumé.

Fulfills English major requirement: does not count towards major credit.

ENGL 2035 Section 1

CRN 5386

History of Genre-Poetry

Lindsay Turner

Tuesday, Thursday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: When we think of famous English-language forms in poetry, we think

most often of the forms that have been associated with certain “big-name” authors: Dante’s terza

rima, Petrarch and Shakespeare’s sonnets, Spenser’s eponymous stanzas, Milton’s blank verse,

W.B. Yeats’s ottava rima, Agha Shahid Ali’s ghazal. Yet there’s a form at the very center of poetry

in English that is associated not with a particular author but, at its origin, with anonymity, with the

absence of authorship: the ballad. (Indeed, the ballad is the source of the meter that underpins

much of our poetry, not to mention our songs: ballad meter, so common that it is called common

meter.) In ballad versions from the traditional to the literary, from early specimens to innovative

forms produced by contemporary poets, we’ll think together about what this basis in anonymity

permits the ballad. We’ll consider what it means for poetry to be rooted in “folk” traditions, and

what powers this proximity to the “people” lets the poem do. We’ll use the ballad as a focus to

think about tradition and authorship, poetry and the news, borders, identity and political relevance.

Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; English Elective (for majors entering the

program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 2221 Section 1

CRN 3019

Shakespeare Seminar

R.D. Perry

Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: The idea of a “problem play” has a long history in Shakespeare

criticism, but it does not really have a stable meaning. Plays become “problems” for a variety of

different reasons: some are hard to categorize into established genres like tragedy or comedy, some

cover material that modern audiences find culturally problematic, some seem to be collaborations

with other writers, and some just seem poorly done. This class is devoted to these unusual—and

often unloved—works of Shakespeare, many of which are seldom studied, and even more

seldomly performed. Some of these plays, however, represent Shakespeare’s highest

achievements; so, for every Timon of Athens or Pericles, Prince of Tyre we will also read Othello

or The Tempest. This class should leave you wondering whether Shakespeare is at his most

interesting when he is addressing this or that “problem.”

Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; British literature, before 1789 (for majors

entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 2300 Section 1

CRN 5472

English Literature III

Nichol Weizenbeck

Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course completes the final third of the English Literature Survey.

We will examine poetry and prose fiction from 1789 to 1945. The intent of this course is to trace

the arc of British authors beginning with the Romantic period, moving to the Victorian period, and

ending with the Modern period and enable a general understanding of the literary movements and

literary works of the differing periods, as well as the historical, political, social, and cultural

contexts surrounding the texts. To enhance our understanding of the historical and cultural context

regarding the literature of the time, both major and minor works will be explored.

Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; British literature, after 1789 (for majors

entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 2544 Section 1

CRN 3403

Globalization and Cultural Texts

Eric Gould

Monday, Wednesday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course combines fiction and film about India/Indian Diaspora,

South Africa, and Japan with readings in sociological and other theories of globalization. We focus

on the impact of globalization on culture—an important and ongoing effect even in this age of

economic deglobalization. We examine how this shapes postcolonial identity, the morally

ambiguous (and at times negative) effects of westernization and modernization, and the way

cultural hybridity complicates nationalism and internationalism.

Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Analytical Inquiry: Society; Honors, Intercultural

Global Studies, FOLA substitution. English major requirement: Core studies; Course is primarily

for University Honors. Others by permission of instructor.

ENGL 2709 Section 1

CRN 5473

Topics: The Picturesque

Nichol Weizenbeck

Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course seeks to examine the genre of the English Picaresque

from Geoffrey Chaucer to Henry Fielding. Specifically, we will explore the early origins and their

influence on the rise of the picaresque novel in the eighteenth century. Eighteenth-century England

witnessed the rise and development of the novel, which would become the dominant and privileged

genre of the Victorian era. We will scrutinize the Picaresque and its impact on Realism and the

Realist novel. From its humble and uncertain birth to the beginning of its rise into “high culture,”

we will read authors who tremendously affected the development of the English novel. The intent

of this course is to trace the arc of English interest in the rogue figure and the authors who

manipulated her/him, as well as the historical, political, social, and cultural contexts surrounding

the texts. Lastly, we will question the resilience and longevity of the both the picara/picaroon and

the Picaresque.

Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; British literature, after 1789 (for majors

entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 2709 Section 2

CRN 5482

Topics in English: Reading Nature through American Poems

Bin Ramke

Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: The making of poems is a continuing feature of all cultures, and

curiosity about the world in which those poems is made is necessary to the making and the reading

of poems. Curiosity and poetry are also at this moment in history necessary if we are to “save” that

world. This course will involve reading a large number of individual poems by a wide range of

individuals, but what all the readings will have in common are questions—what is the substance

of the world we find ourselves in, and what is my relationship to it? Poems are made of words, and

words are made of the world, as are human and other animals, and their plant companions.

All members of the class will need to read and think about the poems as each is assigned, and to

be willing to discuss these readings with each other, but they will also have to think about their

own individual connections to the “art” of the poem, not just the “content,” and their connections

to the living world to which the poems point. Eventually, each individual will have to formulate

ideas in the form of an essay (which may also involve pictures, sounds, objects) about their own

connections to the physical word, and how poetry helps illuminate such connections. We will

clarify this assignment as the class proceeds. There will also be brief quizzes and short writing

assignments throughout. Selected course texts will include: Elizabeth Alexander Dungy’s Black

Nature, Donald Revell’s White Campion, and Ann Fisher Worth’s The Ecopoetry Anthology.

Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; American literature after 1900 (for majors

entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 2742 Section 1

CRN 5483

Modern Hebrew Literature in Translation: Against All Odds

Adam Rovner

Tuesday, Thursday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course offers a survey of significant works of modern Hebrew

literary fiction by major authors in translation covering the twentieth to early twenty-first centuries.

In addition, we will discuss the translation of Hebrew. To flesh out the historical context, a number

of documents, essays, excerpts may also be provided during the course of the quarter. Students

will consider how the development of Hebrew literature has contributed to the formation of

contemporary Israeli identity, and how the conflicts that define the turbulent history of Israel are

treated in works of prose fiction by canonical authors. The selection of diverse literary materials

exposes students to the social, political, and historical changes wrought by the rise of modern day

Israel. Through lectures, close-reading, and exercises, students will gain an appreciation for some

of the fundamental tensions that define Hebrew literature and Israeli culture: (1) collective vs.

individual identity, (2) Jewish particularism vs. universalism, (3) the concept of Diaspora vs. Zion.

Our study aims to reveal the historical and ideological context of these tensions to offer a nuanced

perspective on an area of the world in conflict. Readings are roughly chronological. Students will

be coached on various interpretive strategies, the intent of which is to make their time spent reading

more valuable. While helpful, no knowledge of Hebrew, Jewish tradition, or Israeli history is

necessary.

Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies with International literature attribute--

diversity/distribution; International literature, (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn

2017).

ENGL 2751 Section 1

CRN 5747

American Literature Survey II

Tayana Hardin

Tuesday, Thursday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course focuses on American literature and culture from the mid-

19th century through the early-20th century. Our examination is bracketed on one end by the

upheaval of the Civil War, and, on the other end, by the impact and consequences of interwar

industrialism. This time period demanded new considerations of what it meant to be an

“American,” who had rights to that honorific, and by what means these rights were acquired. As

we will see through our examination of novels, short stories, poetry, and criticism by this period’s

canonical and marginalized writers, literature writ large served as a site to interrogate, censure,

and even praise the ever-shifting terrain of American identity.

Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; American lit., after 1900 (for majors entering

the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 3003 Section 1

CRN 5475

Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry

Bin Ramke

Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Usually class meetings will consist of a discussion period followed by

in-class writing and/or presentations of work by class members. This seminar will involve intense

reflective reading and writing. Some work is to be turned in during or shortly after class (in-class

writing), other work to be turned in every other week: a poem by you, possibly a rewrite; or a

page of comment on work from the texts (or elsewhere, with a justification for your choice); or a

1 page commentary on the previous week’s class discussion, including student poems. The class

sessions will include extra-literary contexts and sources (videos, images of various sorts, non-

literary books...) as an aid to our thinking (about poems but about other things, too).

I am asking that you keep a journal dedicated to this writing seminar, in whatever form you choose.

During the term I ask that you make at least one appointment with me to discuss writing. At the

end of the term you will need to turn in a portfolio of your own work (edited and possibly rewritten)

plus careful and generous discussion of your classmate’s work.

**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing, and 8 credits of intermediate creative

writing required for enrollment.

Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced creative writing

ENGL 3003 Section 2

CRN 5476

Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry

Graham Foust

Tuesday, Friday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In addition to composing several of their own poems and assembling

a final, revised portfolio to be turned in at the end of the quarter, students will read and discuss one

book on the making of poems (James Longenbach’s How Poems Get Made), five books of

contemporary North American poetry (Susan Howe’s Debths, Sandra Lim’s The Wilderness,

Wayne Miller’s Post-, Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ The Ground, and Shannon Tharp’s Vertigo in

Spring), and one book of contemporary British poetry (Oli Hazzard’s Blotter). Several non-

contemporary poems will be read and discussed as well.

**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing, and 8 credits of intermediate creative

writing required for enrollment.

Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced creative writing

ENGL 3402 Section 1

CRN 5477

Early Romantics: Early Romantic Literature and the Invention of Poetic Experiment

Rachel Feder

Monday 12-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we’ll explore what it might mean to call poetry

“experimental” and work to historicize this category. In the service of this goal, we will explore

the work of Romantic poets including William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor

Coleridge, and John Clare. Pairing Romantic-era texts with very recent poetry will allow us to

bring early Romantic innovations into conversation with the experiments of our own literary-

historical moment.

Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies; British literature, after 1789 (for majors

entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 3731 Section 1

CRN 5603

Topics in English: Theory and Practice of Creative Writing

Catherine Noske

Tuesday, Thursday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course combines the consideration of critical discourses with

creative writing workshopping to interrogate the ways literary theory and creative practice are

intertwined. It will move through a series of theoretical contexts related to contemporary writing

practice. Our focus across the whole will be on the production of literary fiction and poetry, and

the complex cultural and social discourses in which we inherently involve ourselves when

producing such writing. In class, we will move across three basic activities: discussing theoretical

approaches offered within literary studies; critiquing published literary texts; and engaging in

creative exercises designed to support the refinement of fiction and poetry written for or during

the workshop.

Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Advanced creative writing

ENGL 3732 Section 1

CRN 3405

Topics in English: The African Imagination

Maik Nwosu

Friday 12-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Focusing mainly on Africa, this course explores and connects aspects

of the African imagination. These aspects include oral performances, thought systems, literature,

art, cinema, and critical discourses in different eras and in various places. Studied together, these

existential and intellectual signposts provide an expanded insight into African aesthetics from a

continental and an interdisciplinary perspective.

Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies with International literature attribute--

diversity/distribution; International literature, (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn

2017).

ENGL 3733 Section 1

CRN 3021

Topics in English: Postmodern Fiction

Eric Gould

Tuesday, Thursday 2-31:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In the years following the Second World War until today, literary

fiction has been on a steady course of wildly exhilarating experimentation, with dramatic changes

in form and content and some entertaining and socially relevant story-telling. This course will

focus on important examples of this in American short fiction, along with three powerful

international novels: Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know, Juan Rulfo’s Pedro

Paramo, and Amos Oz’s Judas.

Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies with International literature attribute--

diversity/distribution; International literature, (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn

2017).

ENGL 3733 Section 2

CRN 5478

Topics in English: Posthumanism

Billy J. Stratton

Monday, Wednesday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be

bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely

will not stop . . . ever, until you are dead!

--Kyle Reese, The Terminator, 1984

I am the astro-creep,

a demolition style,

hell American freak, yeah

I am the crawling dead,

a phantom in a box,

shadow in your head

. . .

More human than human

--White Zombie, 2000

Emerging in the latest stage of postmodernist literature and philosophy as advanced by writers,

critics, and philosophers such as Philip K. Dick, N. Katherine Hayles, and Donna Harraway,

posthumanism engages with pressing questions in the wake of advances in robotics, computer

technology and artificial intelligence, along with genetic modification, transgenic art, and

astrobiology. With the term having reference to both 'beyond' or 'after' the human, posthumanist

discourse has roots as far back as the futurist movement of the early twentieth century, Karel

Čapek's, 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti), and back to Julien Offray de La

Mettrie's 1747 philosophical treatise, L'homme Machine (Man a Machine). More recently,

considerations of the ethical and moral implications of the application of emerging technologies

in human society in manufacturing, surveillance, and warfare, as well as in culture, sexuality, and

spirituality have become compelling topics of recent literary and philosophical discourse. And

while advances in computing and technology may offer the promise of effective solutions to some

of our world's most pressing challenges, in many cases the thoughts on imagined impacts focus on

catastrophic, if not, apocalyptic scenarios. These sorts of nightmarish visions are depicted in stories

and novels such as Ray Bradbury's "The Long Years," Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (with the 2004 film

adaptation), Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the related Bladerunner

franchise, to other Sci-Fi films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Robocop, The

Matrix, Her, Ex Machina, and Chappie. This course will explore a range of artistic approaches and

reactions inspired by relevant issues through a selection of texts and films (both canonical and

genre) read through an array of interdisciplinary perspectives. Finally, our investigations will seek

to address questions about the nature of emotion, life, and thought in relation to technology and

the future of our shared existence.

Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies; American literature after 1900, Literary

Theory (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 3733 Section 3

CRN 5479

Topics in English: Latinx Sexuality and Textuality

Kristy Ulibarri

Tuesday, Thursday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will explore literary and cultural texts that question and

challenge concepts of gender and sexuality. We will begin by scrutinizing how gender roles and

expectations are constructed, disciplined, and sold. Then we will turn to textual productions of the

body and sexuality to examine pleasure/desire, subject-object dynamics, and shapeshifting. We

will supplement our literary and cultural texts with articles/excerpts from important gender and

sexuality theory from a broad range of critics and scholars. We will pay particular attention to texts

and theories that intersect the questions of gender and sexuality with questions of race, ethnicity,

and marginalized subjectivities.

Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies with Ethnic literature attribute--

diversity/distribution; American literature after 1900, Ethnic literature, Literary Theory (for

majors entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 3900 Section 1

CRN 3064

Senior Seminar: Moby Dick

Clark Davis

Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will read, completely and carefully, Herman

Melville’s great novel. Primary attention will always be on the text itself, but we will also sample

and discuss some of Melville’s stronger literary influences (Shakespeare, Robert Burton, Owen

Chase, others) to help get a sense of how the text was constructed and how it operates in its mid-

19th century context.

Fulfills English major requirement: Senior seminar; American literature before 1900 (for majors

entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).

ENGL 4150 Section 1

CRN 4205

Special Topics in Medieval Lit

Donna Beth Ellard

Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this experimental class, we will read medieval poetry, grammatical

texts, and scientific literature in order to consider writing as a field upon which bird-human

relationships manifest in the early middle ages, are symptomized in the early modern period, and

unconsciously “worked out” in the disciplinary practices of contemporary arts and sciences.

We will begin with a robust discussion about the rise of the quill pen as the primary writing

technology in early medieval Britain. We will read scientific literature that discusses the long-term

impacts (motor, cognitive, and metaphorical) of prolonged tool use on human perceptions of their

bodies and their immediate environments; and we will read early medieval poems, metrical

treatises, and grammatical texts that evidence the tremendous impact (both explicit and unthought)

of the quill on scribes and poets. We will couple these discussions about quills and the humans

who use them with lots of in-class and out-of-class exercises, in which students learn how to write

with a quill and thereby think more carefully about our reading materials.

While the first half of the course focuses on quills as tools, the second half of class tacks

in a different direction, entering into a conversation about the evolutionary relationship between

birds and humans as it unfolds in scientific literature. It considers bird-human comparative

anatomy as it is first introduced by Pierre Belon in his 1555 L’Historie de la Nature des Oiseaux

and the pre- Linnean bird taxonomies of Volker Coiter in Gabriele Falloppio’s 1575 De Partibus

Similaribus Humain Corporis. Then we will fast forward to Richard Owen’s 1863 discussion of

the Archaeopteryx; Charles Darwin’s 1871 Descent of Man; biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch’s oeuvre

on birds, humans, and evolution; and the explosive sub-field of evolutionary linguistics, bird-

human comparative anatomy, and bird experimentation. As we think about what the sciences have

to say about birds (and how they organize bird bodies), we will track changes in quill use and

writing technology; and we will reconsider the shared figures of bird, poet, and writing in poetic

environments. Underwriting all of these readings and in-class conversations is the key fact that,

for over a millennium, almost all of the writings we read in this seminar—whether they are classed

as poetic, grammatical, or scientific—have been penned with a bird’s feather. For 1000 years, we

have literally been writing with birds as we write about them.

Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills Period Requirement pre 1700

ENGL 4650 Section 1

CRN 3022

Special Topics: 20th Cent Lit

Aleksandr Prigozhin

Wednesday 4-7:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine a range of fiction and social, political, and

literary theory dedicated to the problem of the many in literature and politics. By “common life,”

I mean the intractable problem of collective coexistence indicated by the question, “how we are to

live together?” The question has always been a matter of struggle;

but it became especially pressing for literature in the early 20th century, once mandatory public

education made nearly everyone in Great Britain a reader. Those who had been ignored for

centuries could no longer be left out of account. Literature sought and created new imaginative

resources for understanding the consequences of this fundamental shift.

Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills Period Requirement: 20th-21th Centuries

ENGL 4660 Section 1

CRN 5481

The Black Imagination

Maik Nwosu

Monday 4-7:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Focusing mainly on Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas

(especially the USA and the Caribbean/Latin America), this course explores and connects aspects

of the black imagination. These aspects include oral performances, thought systems, literature, art,

cinema, and critical discourses in different eras and in various places. Studied together, these

existential and intellectual signposts provide an expanded insight into black (African and African

diasporic) aesthetics from an intercontinental and an interdisciplinary perspective.

Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills 20th-21st century Period Requirement

ENGL 4702 Section 1

CRN 3408

Topics in English: Virginia Woolf and the Victorians

Eleanor McNees

Thursday 4-7:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Though critics have tended to view Woolf as a thorough modernist,

they forget how much she learned from her father-tutor Leslie Stephen, a major Victorian editor

and founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. This class redresses that imbalance by

reading the primary Victorian novelists about whom both Stephen and Woolf wrote: Charlotte

Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. In addition to specific novels by these

Victorian authors, we will read Stephen’s and Woolf’s essays on them and investigate theories of

intertextual influence. We’ll conclude with Mrs. Dalloway and The Years, two of Woolf’s novels

that contrast the Victorian and Modern worlds and demonstrate the power of an inherited history.

Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills either 1700-1900 or the 20th – 21st century period

requirement depending on the focus of students’ reports and final seminar papers.