Current Course Offerings
Spring 2025
ENGL 1363-001—Myths of the American West
TTh 3:30-4:50. Dallas Hall 306. Levy. 2012: CA1, HC1 2016: CA, HC CC: LAI, HD
This course explores ideas of the West as they first appeared in European culture during the so-called “age of discovery.” It then uses these ideas to focus more specifically on the American West as a zone of cross-cultural exchange between those groups peopling North America. The course raises questions about the primary myths that accompanied this peopling, including native American creation stories, European sagas of conquest and the idea of the “New World” as “Virgin Land,” Turner’s “Frontier Thesis,” “Custer’s Last Stand,” and the many stories and histories that sought to justify Manifest Destiny as a national policy of accumulation by dispossession. In other words, this course is about way more than “Cowboys and Indians,” although we explore the literary genre of “The Western” and the social dynamics that led to its creation.
Readings and films: Wister, The Virginian; Austin, The Land of Little Rain; Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” ; Everett, God’s Country; Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus; Portis, True Grit; Ford, The Searchers; Hawks, Red River.
Other assignments: In-class reading quizzes, midterm, and final exam.
ENGL 1380-001— Introduction to Literature: Monsters and Magic
MWF 10:00-10:50. Fondren Science 153. Shields. 2012: CA1 2016: CA CC: CA, CAA, LAI
Literature was full of magical and monstrous beings well before Harry Potter came along. This course will introduce you to some of the most famous of them, from Shakespeare’s Caliban to Mary Shelley’s nameless creature, whom we’ve come to know as Frankenstein. As we explore a range of literary genres and forms from Arthurian romance to speculative fiction, we will examine literature’s role in distinguishing the monstrous from the human, and the natural from the supernatural. We’ll pay particular attention to how the monstrous reflects anxieties about various forms of human difference, including gender, race, sexual orientation, social class, and disability.This course is suitable for those who haven’t previously studied literature at the college level; however, it does require a willingness to engage with complex texts.
Readings: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Shakespeare, The Tempest; Shelley, Frankenstein; Butler, Parable of the Sower, short stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Christina Rosetti, Tennyson, among others.
Other assignments: short written exercises (1-2 paragraphs each); three exams.
ENGL 2102-001—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
W 3:00-3:50. Dallas Hall 152. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
An introduction to Excel as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required.
Software for spreadsheet assignments used: ExPrep ()
ENGL 2102-002—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
M 3:00-3:50. Dallas Hall 152. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
An introduction to Excel as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required.
Software for spreadsheet assignments used: ExPrep ()
ENGL 2302-001—Business Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Virginia-Snider 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2012: IL, OC, W 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including a variety of writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and will conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not be counted toward requirements for the English major, and that laptops are required. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written.
Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 12th ed.
ENGL 2302-002— Business Writing
TTh 2:00-3:20. Virginia-Snider 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2012: IL, OC, W 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including a variety of writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and will conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not be counted toward requirements for the English major, and that laptops are required. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written.
Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 12th ed.
ENGL 2311-001—Poetry: Lifting the Veil
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 157. Condon. 2012: CA2, W, OC 2016: LL, W, OC CC: LAI, W
A famous stereotype of poetry suggests that the genre doesn’t reveal anything without a lot of decoding on a reader’s part—that the poem is a kind of veil that hides a complicated message. In this course, we will explode this stereotype by learning about poetic characteristics and devices that are intended to delight readers, not confuse them. Each week we will focus on a different poetic technique or form—image, repetition, the sonnet—and discuss how poets across the centuries have used them to bring us pleasure, making something as mundane as grass seem suddenly breathtaking and strange.
Readings (to be provided on Canvas): poems by Emily Dickinson, Terrance Hayes, John Keats, Rita Dove, William Wordsworth, and Eileen Myles.
Other assignments: two short papers, midterm & final exam, poetry presentation, and regular participation in class.
ENGL 2311-002—Poetry: American Poetry Since 1970
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 138. Rivera. 2012: CA2, W 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Immerse yourself in the innovative works of acclaimed poets who challenge conventional notions of poetry. Through journal responses, quizzes, essays, digital humanities tools, and technical presentations, you’ll investigate poets’ backgrounds as they relate to their aesthetics; annotate poems from online literary journals; create a digital archive of underrepresented poets; explicate poems for general audiences; craft video analyses, and review a collection of poems for a podcast.
Text: McClatchy, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
Other assignments: five quizzes, five journal responses, five campus events analyses, two group technical presentations, one poetry recitation, one creative project, and a substantially revised and edited portfolio with a process statement.
ENGL 2311-003—Poetry
TTH 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 102. Wilson. 2012: CA2, W, OC 2016: LL, W, OC CC: LAI, W
Poetry can sometimes seem bewildering or, indeed, purposefully abstruse and difficult. In this course we will learn the specific technical tools and methods that poets use, and in doing so we will aim to demystify the poetic process so that we can become comfortable with poetry. We will read short selections of a wide range of poetry, from wild ancient epics and stomping dramatic declamations to transcendent sonnets about the meaning of life, devastating World War One poems, and more. We will revel in the pleasure that great poetry (or sometimes even bad poetry!) can bring.
Written work: 2-3 short papers, plus a podcast and work on a public exhibit about poetry at SMU.
ENGL 2312-001— Fiction: Going Native
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 157. Cassedy. 2012: CA2, W 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
This course is about two related narratives that have proven very popular over the past three centuries: the narrative of being taken captive, and the narrative of “going native.” Stories along these lines have taken many different forms, including stories of white people abducted by Indians, women imprisoned by nefarious men, free people kidnapped into slavery, and sailors stranded in strange lands and waters. Some of those captives resist captivity. Others embrace it, “going native” and finding that their solitude or captivity allowed them to access parts of themselves that their home societies do not.
Readings: Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Aubin, Charlotta Du Pont; Winkfield, The Female American; Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Thoreau, Walden; possible others TBA.
Other assignments: Three essays and a final exam.
ENGL 2312-002— Fiction: The Gothic Novel
TTh 2:00-3:20. Clements Hall 325. Sudan. 2012: CA2, W, OC 2016: LL, W, OC CC: LAI, W
Gothic novels were wildly popular in nineteenth-century Britain. Starting with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, and continuing almost unabated until about 1820, the Gothic novel, characterized by gloomy landscapes, graveyards, secrets, ghosts, damsels in distress, mysterious heroes, bleeding nuns, and the like, became the most eagerly consumed of its genre. Not necessarily restricted by gender—almost as many (and arguably more) women published gothic novels as men—these novels represent not only the taste of the literate public but also reflect with an uncanny exactitude the social and cultural milieu of the late-eighteenth through late-nineteenth centuries. We will explore these contexts and, in the process, will learn about the process of textual and cultural analysis.
ENGL 2312-003— Fiction
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 137. Sae-Saue. 2012: CA2 2016: LL CC: LAI, W
This Fiction emphasizes U.S. ethnic novels. Students will learn to recognize a range of narrative elements and see how they function in key texts. We will ask: how does fiction articulate political, social, and cultural dilemmas? And how does it structure our understandings of social interaction? As these questions imply, this course will explore how fiction creates and then navigates a gap between art and history in order to remark on U.S. social relationships.
Readings: Diaz, This is How You Lose Her; Plascencia, The People of Paper; Fajardo-Anstine, Sabrina & Corina: Stories; others TBD.
Other assignments: Quizzes, midterm, short response papers, final essay.
ENGL 2312-005— Fiction: Imagining America
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 156. Barber 2012: CA2, W 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
What is America? What are Americans? This course focuses on texts that depict changing conceptions of “America” in fictional works. Together we will consider how writers negotiate what “America” is—both theoretically and in practice—and who is considered part of the American body politic. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss how contemporary social, political, and historical debates about immigration, race, gender, and sexuality inform how texts depict what it means to be American. We will also consider how authors continue to speculate about how ideas of the nation will shift in the future, criticizing or reasserting normative understandings of “America” and “Americans.”
Likely texts: Paredes, George Washington Gómez; Highsmith, The Price of Salt; Morrison, Home; Chan, The School for Good Mothers.
Other assignments: Two short papers, a final project, and a final exam.
ENGL 2312-006— Fiction: The Campus Novel
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 157. Hermes, R. 2012: CA2, W, OC 2016: LL, W, OC CC: LAI, W
What is “the true nature of the university?” asks a brilliant but cynical graduate student in John Williams’ 1965 novel Stoner. It’s a question that literary fiction has taken up time and again, often in satirical fashion. In this class, we’ll ask what the “campus novel” says about the changing nature of the modern university, as both the center and frequent subject of literary production. We’ll also ask how literary representations of college life reflect dynamics of social class, gender, sexuality, race, and economic mobility in society at large.
With these questions as our starting point for discussion, we’ll build a set of tools for writing about literature, including close reading, awareness of genre, and familiarity with the elements of fiction. We’ll think deeply about not just what texts say, but how they say it.
Readings/other works: novels by Don DeLillo, Julie Schumacher, and Sarah Henstra; the films Dead Poets’ Society, Dear White People, and The Holdovers; and the TV series The Chair.
Other assignments: a presentation, regular reading responses, a literary analysis essay, and a final exam.
ENGL 2312-007— Fiction: Fiction and Beliefs
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 138. McClure. 2012: CA2, W 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
We will explore the various ways authors have grappled with varieties of “belief” in their fictions. We will consider what it means to “believe in” something. We will also consider what it means for something to be a “fiction.” What is the relationship between believing and knowing? What is the relationship between fiction and reality? How can we understand belief itself, a concept so capacious that it encompasses physical, philosophical, and spiritual perception?
Probable readings: Stoker, The Snake’s Pass; Corelli, A Romance of Two Worlds; Yan, Life and Death are Wearing Me Out; Orwell, 1984; Butler, The Parable of the Sower; a selection of shorter works.
Other assignments: weekly short written responses; two papers (one shorter, one longer); one project; one presentation.
ENGL 2312-008— Fiction: Adaptation and Storytelling
MWF 12:30-12:50. Dallas Hall 156. Morrow. 2012: CA2, W 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
We will explore fiction by studying adaptations from one mode of storytelling to another, such as a novel made into a film, or a play performed on stage, or a board game. We will ask about the differences between versions of the same basic story, about why these changes might be necessary. We will also consider the role that we play as the audience or reader in making sense the stories we read, watch, or otherwise enjoy.
Readings: Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Zoboi, Pride; Agatha Christie, Appointment with Death (play and novel versions); Conan Doyle, various Sherlock Holmes stories; a board game from the Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective line.
Other assignments: Four short response papers, a short research project, and an in-class presentation.
ENGL 2390-001H—Introduction to Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction Writing
M 2:00-4:40. Dallas Hall 137. Rubin. 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
An introductory workshop that will focus on the fundamentals of craft in the genre of fiction writing. Students will learn the essential practice of "reading like a writer" while developing their own work and discussing their classmates'.
ENGL 2390-002—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 105. Smith. 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This workshop-heavy course focuses on the craft, structure, and thematic elements of developing short stories. Students will create and critique short literary narratives focused on the elements of fiction. By the end of the semester, students will complete a portfolio including two short stories.
ENGL 2390-003—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 105. Smith. 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This workshop-heavy course focuses on the craft, structure, and thematic elements of developing short stories. Students will create and critique short literary narratives focused on the elements of fiction. By the end of the semester, students will complete a portfolio including two short stories.
ENGL 2390-004—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 138. Hermes, R., 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the fundamentals of creative writing in poetry and fiction. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own short stories and poems. We’ll also discuss your original writing in a whole-class review (that is, a workshop). Students will benefit from these conversations as both writer and reader, because each story or poem will present challenges that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we’ll sharpen our creative, critical, and communication skills.
Readings: chapters from the textbooks Writing Fiction and The Poet’s Companion, plus stories and poems by Danielle Evans, Julie Orringer, Mary Gaitskill, Sharon Olds, Kevin Young, and Porsha Olayiwola.
Major assignments: a short story, a portfolio of poems, regular workshop response letters to your peers’ work, and a final portfolio of revisions with a reflection essay on your own process.
ENGL 2390-005—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Hermes, R., 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the fundamentals of creative writing in poetry and fiction. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own short stories and poems. We’ll also discuss your original writing in a whole-class review (that is, a workshop). Students will benefit from these conversations as both writer and reader, because each story or poem will present challenges that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we’ll sharpen our creative, critical, and communication skills.
Readings: chapters from the textbooks Writing Fiction and The Poet’s Companion, plus stories and poems by Danielle Evans, Julie Orringer, Mary Gaitskill, Sharon Olds, Kevin Young, and Porsha Olayiwola.
Major assignments: a short story, a portfolio of poems, regular workshop response letters to your peers’ work, and a final portfolio of revisions with a reflection essay on your own process.
ENGL 2390-006—Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry - The Creative Act
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 153. Rivera. 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
Students will learn to craft poems that create meaning from subtle images and moments rather than relying on explanation. They will build a portfolio of original poems, refining their aesthetic and critical voices through workshops, recitations, digital annotations, and close readings of contemporary and classical poets. Maintaining a craft journal, a tool to help students reflect on their creative process and track their growth as poets will be an integral part of the course. Students will use poetic forms to sharpen their ability to "show, not tell," developing a more nuanced creative writing practice.
Texts: Gonzalez and Shapiro, The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry; Ruben, The Creative Act
Other assignments: at least ten original poems created during the semester, ten critical journal responses, five campus events analyses, two digital humanities presentations, a craft journal, and a substantially revised portfolio with an artist statement.
ENGL 2390-007—Introduction to Creative Writing: Telling it Slant in Creative Nonfiction
TTh 3:30-4:50. Dallas Hall 120. Farhadi. 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
To write nonfiction means to write the truth. But creative nonfiction does not simply present a list of facts; it borrows techniques from fiction in order present the reader an experience grounded in the author’s perspective or “slant” on the truth. In this course, we’ll develop our own “slant” by reading and writing a mix of creative nonfiction subgenres—the personal essay, the lyric essay, the research-based essay, etc.
Readings: a contemporary anthology TBD.
Other assignments: a series of short writings; a twelve-page workshop essay; and a final revision.
ENGL 2390-008—Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry - The Triggering Town
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 357. Rivera. 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
We will investigate how imagery serves not merely as a visual device but as a “trigger”—the spark that ignites layers of meaning, emotion, and intellectual discovery. Closely reading both contemporary and canonical poems, we will explore the way an image can evolve, expand, and transform into something beyond itself, challenging the poet to explore what lies beneath the surface and within the self. Students will keep a craft journal to grapple with questions of voice, identity, and imagination as they develop a poetic practice that engages both the personal and the universal.
Readings: Poulin et al, Modern American Poetry; Hugo, The Triggering Town.
Other assignments: a minimum of ten original poems created during the semester, ten critical journal responses, five campus events analyses, two digital humanities presentations, a craft journal, and a substantially revised edited portfolio with an artist statement.
ENGL 2390-009—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 2:00-3:20. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 225. Hawkins. 2012: CA1, W 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This introductory workshop in the art of fiction emphasizes the craft (the how more so than the what of a short story--though we’ll certainly discuss the what [theme, plot, etc.] as well!). We will read and discuss contemporary short fiction by writers like George Saunders and Ottessa Moshfegh. We’ll also complete several in class creative writing activities that should help inspire you when you sit down to write your own short stories later in the term.
Workload: read 3-4 short stories and prepare 3-4 pages of critical and/or creative writing per week, resulting in two original short stories of 7-15 pages apiece. In lieu of a final exam, a revision of one of your short stories and a 2-page reflection letter.
ENGL 3310-001—Research and Critical Writing
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Pergadia.
Note to English majors: this course is intended to prepare you for 4000-level courses. Please do not put this off if you have taken your 2000s and the time works for you.
This course introduces students to some of the central debates in cultural and literary studies through foundational texts that formulate our understanding of research methods. It is geared towards developing skills of close-reading and critical writing. Students will learn how to write and speak about theoretical texts and how to recognize the theoretical assumptions that underlie acts of interpretation. Theoretical approaches include structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial theory, and affect theory. We will ground our analyses within particular literary, visual, and theoretical works, learning how to read cultural production as theory, rather than merely applying theory to selected texts.
Likely primary texts: Eliza Haywood’s “Fantomina,” Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif,” Shailja Patel’s migritude, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out.
Other assignments: in-class workshops, mid-term exam, group presentations, and final essay.
ENGL 3318-001—Literature as Data
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 102. Wilson. 2012: W 2016: LL, TM, W CC: LAI, W
What does it mean to think about literature as a type of data? How can we breathe new life into renaissance writing by using computational approaches? During the semester we will work hands-on with rare archival materials to create our own digital edition of a book which used to be insanely popular when it was first published but which hasn't been printed in over 250 years! We will take a field trip to the Harry Ransom Center Library in Austin, TX, to work directly with unique rare books for this project, and we will think carefully about the best practices when working with literary texts in a digital environment. You will learn several digital methods for analyzing literary texts, from social network analysis to digital mapping, and in keeping with the public spirit of digital humanities you will share your new skills through an educational outreach event. You will also meet some experts joining us in guest class sessions who will help you bring your work to life in this new research arena.
Primary texts: epic poetry by John Milton and his contemporaries, plus some short works from the period. Secondary readings: modern scholarship about the theoretical, social, and ethical issues raised by digital work in literary studies.
Required work: one theoretical essay, a digital edition of an otherwise-unavailable renaissance book, a final digital project shared via roundtable presentation.
Note: for English majors, this course will satisfy, by petition, one of the two required courses for literature before 1775.
ENGL 3331-001— British Literary History I: Chaucer to Pope: Invention and Experimentation
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 101. Roudabush. 2012: CA2, HC2, W 2016: HFA, HSBS, W CC: LAI, W
This course will survey early British literature from Medieval England to the Enlightenment. We will read texts in the context of historical and technological inventions, such as the printing press and the commercial theater, as well as inventions and innovations in literary forms, such as the sonnet and mock epic. We will also experiment ourselves by writing in imitation of, and in response to, the authors we study.
Readings: drawn from Geoffrey Chaucer; Philip Sidney; Mary Sidney; William Shakespeare; Christopher Marlowe; John Donne; George Herbert; Lady Mary Wroth; Andrew Marvell; John Milton; Aphra Behn; Olaudah Equiano; Jonathan Swift; Alexander Pope.
Other assignments: creative writing exercises in specific literary forms; an interpretive essay; midterm and final exams.
ENGL 3362-001—African American Literature: The Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Eras
MWF 11:00-11:50. Junkins Engineering Building 112. Dickson-Carr, D., 2012: CA2, HD, W 2016: HFA, HD, W CC: LAI, HD, W
We will focus on two important periods in African American Literature. The Harlem or "New Negro" Renaissance spanned the period from the end of World War I through the 1930s, and the course is part of current celebrations of the movement's centennial. We will then turn to the modern Civil Rights Era, from the 1950s through the early 1970s, when African American literature and culture were undergoing a second transformation. We will conclude with some recent works by major authors. Most of our attention will be on essays, short stories, poems, and novels, but we will also listen to the music that defined these eras, and review some of the artwork and films produced within them. Complex and often controversial, the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Eras nevertheless transformed Black art for the twentieth century and beyond, and continue to inspire.
Readings drawn from the following authors: Baraka; Cullen; Du Bois; Ellison; Garvey; Giovanni Hughes; Hurston; Helene Johnson; JW Johnson; Jones; Larsen; A. Locke; Lorde; Madhubuti; Marshall; Morrison; Reed; Schuyler; Thurman; Wright.
Other assignments: Regular in-class writing; three papers, including a final collaborative project; a midterm, and a final exam.
ENGL 3376-001—Literature of the Southwest
MWF 2:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 156. Sae-Saue. 2012: CA2, W 2016: HFA, W
“For any dweller of the Southwest who would have the land soak into him, Wordsworth's ‘Tintern Abbey,’ ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality,’ ‘The Solitary Reaper,’ ‘Expostulation and Reply,’ and a few other poems are more conducive to a ‘wise passiveness’ than any native writing.”
- J. Frank Dobie, A Guide To Life and Literature of the Southwest
Long regarded as the pre-eminent expert of Southwest culture, J. Frank Dobie has emerged as a controversial figure because of his tendencies to underestimate the power of “native writings” to generate meaningful expressions of local life. Whereas Dobie suggests that residents of the Southwest may properly regard this geography by reading the Anglo European canon (what he calls “good literature”), this class seeks to understand how local writers have used narrative forms in order to structure their own perceptions of social and cultural life in the region. This course will also locate how key southwestern texts challenge their common categorization as a “provincial literature.” We will examine how local writers cognitively map the Southwest and the regions of the US-Mexico border as a transnational cultural geography that engages historical and social dilemmas on both hemispheric and global scales. As such, we will investigate how literatures of the border generate competing visions of cultural identity, national history, and how they constitute a transnational sense of space while also engaging issues of regional memory, race, citizenship, gender, and globalization.
Readings: McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Paredes, George Washington Gomez; Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek; Valdez Quade, The Five Wounds, and others TBD.
Other assignments: quizzes, midterm, final essay, final exam
ENGL 3390-001—Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop: The Art of the Voice
MWF 10:00-10:50. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 225. Condon. 2012: CA2, W 2016: HFA, W CC: W
Find your voice! the old writer says to the young writer, as if a signature artistic sound were as simple to locate as a spare house key hidden inside of a ceramic toad. But what if I told you that it is that easy? In this course, we think of poetic voice, quite simply, as a poem’s personality. Throughout the semester, we will experiment with voices that range from colloquial to authoritative with the goal of creating speakers who are interesting enough to captivate our audience.
Text: Hoagland, The Art of Voice
Assignments: 3-4 reading responses, workshop participation, final portfolio.
ENGL 3390-002— Creative Writing Workshop: Screenwriting Workshop
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Rubin. 2012: CA2, W 2016: HFA, W CC: W
In this course students will present their own screenwriting as well as critique that of their classmates. Alongside these workshops we will analyze exemplary models of the form and study film clips to understand the ways compelling dialogue is written and satisfying scenes are structured. Readings will include such classics as Casablanca and Chinatown as well as newer scripts like Lady Bird and Get Out.
ENG 2390 is a prerequisite for this course although Meadows students with a background in dramatic arts are encouraged to seek the permission of the instructor.
ENGL 4332-001—Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the 18th Century
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 115. Sudan. 2012: IL, OC 2016: IL, OC
In September of 1666, a few short years after the restoration of Charles II to the throne in England, the Great Fire destroyed four-fifths of the commercial and topographical center of London in three days, and, in the process, destroyed everything that had represented London to Londoners. The social, historical, commercial, cultural, and physical city that had been in place for them was simply gone, and the task of rebuilding, re-imagining, and re-conceptualizing the “city” became the major task of Restoration London. Among the many tasks of social reconstruction Londoners had to face was the changing face of sexual identity: building the modern city on the ruins of the medieval city worked in tandem with building a modern sense of self, including a sexualized and gendered self, on older forms of social and national identity. Charles II, fresh from the French court in Paris, brought with him an entirely different concept of fashion, sense, sensibility, and sexual identity. This course examines the ways in which concepts of sexual—or, perhaps, more accurately, gendered—identities developed as ideologies alongside the architectural and topographical conception of urban life in England. And although the primary urban center was London, these identity positions also had some effect in shaping a sense of nationalism; certainly, the concept of a rural identity and the invention of the countryside were contingent on notions of the city. Urbanity, in both senses of the word, is an idea that we will explore in various representations stretching from the late seventeenth-century Restoration drama to the Gothic novel of the late eighteenth century.
ENGL 4349-001—Transatlantic Studies II: The White Whale
MWF 2:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 152. Cassedy. 2012: IL, OC 2016: IL, OC
This course is about obsessive pursuits of elemental evil hidden in plain sight. It’s about characters who become convinced that something must be hunted out and excised from the world: characters who cannot tolerate a world in which that thing exists, and who drive themselves to increasingly extreme ends to root it out. The course will center on two large-scale narratives about such quests: Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick (1851) and Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO teledrama, True Detective (2014). Other readings will help us place Moby-Dick and True Detective within pertinent historical, generic, and thematic contexts: southern gothic, noir, detective fiction, gender, buddy narratives, seduction and captivity narratives, Mardi Gras, procedurals, horror, and cults.
Other assignments: Weekly response papers and a final project.
ENGL 4360-001—Studies in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Contemporary African American Novels and Stories
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 137. Dickson-Carr, D., 2012: CA2 2016: HFA
The contemporary period in African American literary history is rich and diverse, reflecting a broad transformation of the literature after the modern Civil Rights Era. Black authors writing since the 1970s have pushed creative boundaries and tackled subjects that challenge and delight their audiences. Contemporary authors comment on the Civil Rights Movement’s legacy, on the breadth of African American history, and on issues of region, gender, sexuality, cultural differences, new struggles for Civil Rights, speculation about the future; and more. This course will look at a selection of short stories and novels by contemporary Black writers, with most published in the last thirty years.
Readings from Octavia Butler; Samuel R. Delany; Tananarive Due; Percival Everett; Gayl Jones; Mat Johnson; Audre Lorde; Toni Morrison; Claudia Rankine; Danzy Senna; Jesmine Ward; Colson Whitehead; John Edgar Wideman; and more.
Other assignments: In-class writing (journaling; discussion boards), three papers, including Other final collaborative project; regular quizzes, and a short final exam.
ENGL 6310-001—Advanced Literary Studies
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Pergadia.
This professionalization seminar prepares doctoral students for advanced work in literary studies. We will evaluate various genres of professional writing – the book review, the journal article, the conference paper, the abstract, the fellowship proposal, the CV, the book proposal. We will also grapple with some current debates around the methods and objectives of literary study: the archival turn, the digital humanities, postcritique, the environmental humanities. Students will produce and workshop genres of academic writing, gaining experience in the collegial art of giving and receiving editorial feedback. The course will culminate in a mini graduate conference and an article draft.
ENGL 6340-001—British Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Reimagining Romanticism
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Shields.
Although the Romantic era (roughly 1770-1830) is associated with revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the field of Romantic literary studies for a long time centered on the work of six relatively elite English poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Blake). However, in the past 10-15 years, a new generation of Romanticists have drawn on ecocritical, transnational, decolonial, disability studies, indigenous studies, and critical race theory methodologies to questions the central place of the Big Six, and the model of autonomous, individual genius on which their fame rests. The introduction of these perspectives and methodologies into Romantic literary studies has facilitated new readings of canonical works and drawn attention to previously overlooked authors and genres. Through these new methodologies and perspectives, literary scholars have begun to reimagine what Romanticism is, as well as when and where it happened.
This class will introduce you to some of the methodologies, authors, and works that have re-imagined the field of Romanticism. We will also take the transformation of Romanticism as a case study to explore some of the questions and challenges facing literary studies as a discipline. What work does the organization of literary study into historical periods and movements (like Romanticism) do for us? What other forms of organization might we use, and how might they facilitate different ways of thinking? Must the discipline of English literature necessarily center upon Anglo-American writing and Eurocentric ideologies? If not, how do we responsibly equip ourselves to challenge these disciplinary tendencies? How can each of us most effectively address our own positionality in relation to our fields of study?
Don’t worry if you’re not very familiar with old-school Romanticism, let alone recent trends in the field. We will be exploring some of Romanticism’s grand narratives and canonical works along with the new research that challenges them. You don’t need extensive prior knowledge of Romantic literature to succeed in this class, and there will be opportunities to connect what you learn to your intended field(s) of specialization. Assignments for the course will vary somewhat depending on students’ goals and interests but will include several short response papers, an annotated bibliography, and a 12–15-page final project.
ENGL 7350-001—Seminar in American Literature: The Forms of Contemporary American Poetry
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. Caplan.
This class will consider the forms that contemporary American poets choose and transform. To gain a sense of the field, we will examine ten recent collections that primarily use an old form (the sonnet) or a new one (erasure) or feature a variety of forms (such as the villanelle, sestina, ballad, nonce forms, and free verse).
Five of the assigned authors will discuss their work with us. Terrance Hayes will visit our class. (He will also give a campus poetry reading and participate in a creative conversation with Rita Felski.) We will enjoy Zoom conversations with Henri Cole, Ange Mlinko, and Megan Pinto. Via Zoom, the class also will discuss the art of poetry reviewing with Stephanie Burt. (A sixth assigned poet, Srikanth Reddy will visit the campus for the 2026 SMU Symposium on Poetic Form).
Finally, we will study the art of writing about poetry, including the modes of poetry reviewing and scholarship. Pleiades will provide the students with a selection of recent poetry collections the editors would like to be reviewed. Each student will submit a review of one of these books, participate in a mock conference, and write a final essay, an expansion of the mock conference presentation.
ENGL 7376-001—Seminar: Special Topics: The Business of Literature: Publishing as Art and Practice
T 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. Evans.
What does publishing mean in the digital 21st century? This course delves into the rapidly evolving publishing industry, and offers students hands-on experience within publishing industry roles through Deep Vellum.
In this course, we will look at what publishing means in the broadest sense, examine what the publishing industry is, how it has evolved, and how it works today, while drilling down into the specifics of how Deep Vellum publishes literary books. We will discuss the digital revolution in reading, writing, printing, and distribution technologies that have shaken up the publishing industry in the past two decades, and how these advances shape the reading public and the broader world. By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with a range of publishing issues and processes—editing, marketing, intellectual property, copyright, financing, business models, bookselling, future literary and book technologies—and how these issues all contribute to the hundreds of career paths available within the publishing industry.
With readings that complement the hands-on work of publishing, we will examine how books are conceived, made, sold, and discussed. Students will acquire and hone some of the basic skills demanded by the publishing industry: editing and copyediting, technical and copy writing, industry history, design and production, ethical and artistic and financial choices, and more. The course is tailored to each student’s personal goals within the class, complementing their major and their vision for life post-university, offering an in-class experience that will contribute to their prospective careers, no matter what field.
Grade will be determined by 25% attendance, 50% participation (weekly responses and attending 2 literary events in DFW through the semester), and 25% final project.
ENGL 7376-002—Seminar: Special Topics: A History of Metatheater in Three Acts
F 12:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 120. Moss.
Why does stage-drama, that most expressive of genres, so often and so obsessively prove introspective? Why is so much theater devoted to showing us how theater is made? We might expect playwrights to reflect on their own art, of course, as Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Beckett routinely do, but what drives theater troupes or for that matter theater audiences to commit to metatheatrical display? Indeed, what are we to make of metatheater, since after all it is a dramatized account of dramatic production, never dramatic production itself? To what extent is metatheater merely a version of the self-regard we find in all the arts, or does drama’s fundamental obsession with performativity and audience response generate a distinct variety of aesthetic introspection? Which of the many critical and theoretical approaches to dramatic authorship, performance, and reception best suit this odd but persistent tendency of the stage to stage itself?
Our efforts to answer this question will not be confined to any particular literary-historical period, dramatic genre, or national origin (though the plays studied are Western, primarily European). Instead, we will approach issues of metatheater or dramatic introspection through three of its aspects: plotting, staging, and acting. Each phase of the course will proceed roughly chronologically, though we will not be bound by chronology; rather, the first few class sessions of each phase provide a necessarily partial history/genealogy (with Shakespeare featuring prominently in each instance) of theatrical self-regard according to that phase’s aspect. The penultimate class in each phase treats 20th-century experimental approaches to the metatheatrical aspect under discussion, while each of the three final classes reflects on theatrical making via an alternative genre (novels and film). Key theoretical texts and secondary readings will be scattered through the course, but the emphasis will be on primary reading (two or three plays per week) to encourage our own accounts of the phenomena of metatheater.
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
1363 |
001 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
TTh |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DALL 306 |
2012: CA1, HC1 |
LAI, HD |
1380 |
001 |
Introduction to Literature: Monsters and Magic |
Shields |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
FOSC 153 |
2012: CA1 |
CA, CAA, LAI |
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
DALL 152 |
|
|
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
DALL 152 |
|
|
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TTh |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2012: IL, OC, WRIT |
W |
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
VSNI 203 |
2012: IL, OC, WRIT |
W |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry: Lifting the Veil |
Condon |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DALL 157 |
2012: CA2, OC, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2311 |
002 |
Poetry: American Poetry Since 1970 |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2311 |
003 |
Poetry |
Wilson |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 102 |
2012: CA2, WRIT, OC |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: Going Native |
Cassedy |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DALL 157 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction: The Gothic Novel |
Sudan |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
CLEM 325 |
2012: CA2, WRIT, OC |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction |
Sae-Saue |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DALL 137 |
2012: CA2 |
LAI, W |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Imagining America |
Barber |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 156 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel |
Hermes |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DALL 157 |
2012: CA2, WRIT, OC |
LAI, W |
2312 |
007 |
Fiction: Fictions and Beliefs |
McClure |
TTh |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2312 |
008 |
Fiction: Adaptation and Storytelling |
Morrow |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DALL 156 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2390 |
001H |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction Writing |
Rubin |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 137 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
002 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 105 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
003 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TTh |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DALL 105 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
004 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
005 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 120 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
006 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry - The Creative Act |
Rivera |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DALL 153 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
007 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Telling it Slant in Creative Nonfiction |
Farhadi |
TTh |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DALL 120 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
008 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry - The Triggering Town |
Rivera |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DALL 357 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
009 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Hawkins |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ASCH 225 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Critical Writing |
Pergadia |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DALL 120 |
|
|
3318 |
001 |
Literature as Data |
Wilson |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 102 |
2012: WRIT |
LAI, W |
3331 |
001 |
British Literary History I - Chaucer to Pope: Invention and Experimentation |
Roudabush |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 101 |
2012: CA2, HC2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
3362 |
001 |
African American Literature: The Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Eras |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
JKN 112 |
2012: CA2, HD, WRIT |
LAI, HD, W |
3376 |
001 |
Literature of the Southwest |
Sae-Saue |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DALL 156 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
|
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop: The Art of the Voice |
Condon |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
ASCH 225 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
W |
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Screenwriting Workshop |
Rubin |
Th |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
W |
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the 18th Century |
Sudan |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 115 |
2012: IL, OC |
|
4349 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies II: The White Whale |
Cassedy |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DALL 152 |
2012: IL, OC |
|
4360 |
001 |
Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature: Contemporary African American Novels and Stories |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DALL 137 |
2012: CA2 |
|
6310 |
001 |
Advanced Literary Studies |
Pergadia |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 138 |
|
|
6340 |
001 |
British Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Reimagining Romanticism |
Shields |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 138 |
|
|
7350 |
001 |
Seminar in American Literature: The Forms of Contemporary American Poetry |
Caplan |
Th |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 137 |
|
|
7376 |
001 |
Seminar: Special Topics: The Business of Literature: Publishing as Art and Practice |
Evans |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 137 |
|
|
7376 |
001 |
Seminar: Special Topics: A History of Metatheater in Three Acts |
Moss |
F |
12:00 |
2:50 |
DALL 120 |
|
|
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
2311 |
003 |
Poetry |
Wilson |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 102 |
2012: CA2, WRIT, OC |
LAI, W |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Imagining America |
Barber |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 156 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2390 |
005 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 120 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
3331 |
001 |
British Literary History I - Chaucer to Pope: Invention and Experimentation |
Roudabush |
TTh |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DALL 101 |
2012: CA2, HC2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
1380 |
001 |
Introduction to Literature: Monsters and Magic |
Shields |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
FOSC 153 |
2012: CA1 |
CA, CAA, LAI |
2311 |
002 |
Poetry: American Poetry Since 1970 |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Critical Writing |
Pergadia |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DALL 120 |
|
|
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop: The Art of the Voice |
Condon |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
ASCH 225 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: Going Native |
Cassedy |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DALL 157 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2390 |
002 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 105 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
004 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
008 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry - The Triggering Town |
Rivera |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DALL 357 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
3318 |
001 |
Literature as Data |
Wilson |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 102 |
2012: WRIT |
LAI, W |
3362 |
001 |
African American Literature: The Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Eras |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
JKN 112 |
2012: CA2, HD, WRIT |
LAI, HD, W |
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the 18th Century |
Sudan |
TTh |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DALL 115 |
2012: IL, OC |
|
2312 |
003 |
Fiction |
Sae-Saue |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DALL 137 |
2012: CA2 |
LAI, W |
2312 |
008 |
Fiction: Adaptation and Storytelling |
Morrow |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DALL 156 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2390 |
006 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry - The Creative Act |
Rivera |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DALL 153 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
7376 |
001 |
Seminar: Special Topics: A History of Metatheater in Three Acts |
Moss |
F |
12:00 |
2:50 |
DALL 120 |
|
|
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TTh |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2012: IL, OC, WRIT |
W |
2312 |
007 |
Fiction: Fictions and Beliefs |
McClure |
TTh |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
LAI, W |
2390 |
003 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TTh |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DALL 105 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry: Lifting the Veil |
Condon |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DALL 157 |
2012: CA2, OC, WRIT |
LAI, W |
4360 |
001 |
Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature: Contemporary African American Novels and Stories |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DALL 137 |
2012: CA2 |
|
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
VSNI 203 |
2012: IL, OC, WRIT |
W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction: The Gothic Novel |
Sudan |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
CLEM 325 |
2012: CA2, WRIT, OC |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel |
Hermes |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DALL 157 |
2012: CA2, WRIT, OC |
LAI, W |
2390 |
001H |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction Writing |
Rubin |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 137 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
009 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Hawkins |
TTh |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ASCH 225 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
3376 |
001 |
Literature of the Southwest |
Sae-Saue |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DALL 156 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
|
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Screenwriting Workshop |
Rubin |
Th |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 138 |
2012: CA2, WRIT |
W |
4349 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies II: The White Whale |
Cassedy |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DALL 152 |
2012: IL, OC |
|
6310 |
001 |
Advanced Literary Studies |
Pergadia |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 138 |
|
|
6340 |
001 |
British Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Reimagining Romanticism |
Shields |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 138 |
|
|
7350 |
001 |
Seminar in American Literature: The Forms of Contemporary American Poetry |
Caplan |
Th |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 137 |
|
|
7376 |
001 |
Seminar: Special Topics: The Business of Literature: Publishing as Art and Practice |
Evans |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DALL 137 |
|
|
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
DALL 152 |
|
|
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
DALL 152 |
|
|
1363 |
001 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
TTh |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DALL 306 |
2012: CA1, HC1 |
LAI, HD |
2390 |
007 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Telling it Slant in Creative Nonfiction |
Farhadi |
TTh |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DALL 120 |
2012: CA1, WRIT |
CA, CAC, W |
Fall 2024
ENGL 1330-001—World of Shakespeare
MWF 2:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 306. Moss. 2016: LL CC: LAI
Time to (re-)introduce yourself to our language’s greatest writer. In this course, you will meet Shakespeare’s princes, tyrants, heroes, villains, saints, sinners, lovers, losers, drunkards, clowns, outcasts, fairies, witches, and monsters. You’ll watch and listen as they love, woo, kiss, charm, hate, curse, mock, fool, sing to, dance with, get drunk with, sleep with, fight with, murder, and haunt each other. You will visit Renaissance England, a place and time as strange, troubled, exciting, delightful, fearful, thoughtful, prejudiced, political, magical, bloody, sexy, and confused as your own. You will read poetry you will never forget.
Texts: 6 plays covering all of the major Shakespearean genres—comedy, tragedy, history, and romance—as well as a dozen sonnets.
Assignments: frequent short quizzes, midterm and final exams, four posts to a discussion board, and a recitation. No papers.
ENGL 1363-001—Myths of the American West
W 6:00-8:50. Dallas Hall 306. Levy. 2016: CA, HC CC: LAI, HD
This course explores ideas of the West as they first appeared in European culture during the so-called “age of discovery.” It then uses these ideas to focus more specifically on the American West as a zone of cross-cultural exchange between those groups peopling North America. The course raises questions about the primary myths that accompanied this peopling, including native American creation stories, European sagas of conquest and the idea of the “New World” as “Virgin Land,” Turner’s “Frontier Thesis,” “Custer’s Last Stand,” and the many stories and histories that sought to justify Manifest Destiny as a national policy of accumulation by dispossession. In other words, this course is about way more than “Cowboys and Indians,” although we explore the literary genre of “The Western” and the social dynamics that led to its creation.
Texts and films: Wister, The Virginian; Austin, The Land of Little Rain; Proulx, Brokeback Mountain; Reed, “Yellow Radio Broke-Down”; Hawthorne, “The Maypole of Merry-Mount”; Buntine, Dime Novels; Didion, The White Album; Ford, The Searchers; Hawks, Red River; possible others.
Assignments: Frequent quizzes; midterm and final exams.
ENGL 2102-001—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
M 3:00-3:50. Owen Fine Arts 1050. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2102-002—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
W 3:00-3:50. Owen Fine Arts. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2302-001—Business Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed. or later.
ENGL 2302-002— Business Writing
TTh 2:00-3:20. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed. or later.
ENGL 2311-001—Introduction to Poetry: Serious Word Games
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 152. Bozorth. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Now carbon-neutral: how to do things with poems you never knew were possible, and once you know how, you won’t want to stop. You’ll learn to trace patterns in language, sound, imagery, feeling, and all those things that make poetry the world’s oldest and greatest multisensory art form, appealing to eye, ear, mouth, heart, and other bodily processes. You will read, talk, and write about poems written centuries ago and practically yesterday. You will learn to distinguish exotic species like villanelles and sestinas. You’ll understand the difference between free verse and blank verse and be glad you glad. You’ll impress your friends and family with metrical analyses of great poems and Christmas carols. You’ll argue (politely but passionately) about love, sex, roads in the woods, the sinking of the Titanic, teen-age rebellion, God, and Satan, and learn the difference between “cliché” and “cliched.” You’ll satisfy a requirement for the English major and a good liberal-arts education.
Assignments: 15-20 pages of graded analytical writing taking various forms; oral presentation; leading discussion; midterm; final exam.
ENGL 2311-002—Introduction to Poetry: Finding The Greatest Inventors
TTh 8:00-9:20. Dallas Hall 101. Wilson. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Poetry can sometimes seem bewildering or, indeed, purposefully abstruse and difficult. But by understanding our poems as “inventions” that are created with specific technical tools and techniques, and learning how to identify those tools and techniques and to talk about them, over the course of the semester we will become comfortable and familiar with our poets and the things they have invented for us. We will get to know these inventors, to understand and appreciate their ingenuity and their methods, and to revel in the pleasure that great poetry (or sometimes even bad poetry!) can bring.
It wouldn’t be a very good course about making poetry if we didn’t do some of that ourselves, so we will imitate a variety of the poetic forms and to recite. And we live in a digital age, so to add in some workplace skills we will create an exhibition about “Inventing Poetry.”
ENGL 2311-003—Introduction to Poetry: Contemporary American Poets
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 120. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Typically, most students in the United States view legitimate poetry as that of fixed forms or the work of established writers accepted into the traditional canon of American literature. However, contemporary American poetry continues to inundate readers with an ever-widening corpus that includes and celebrates writers from the margins, writers within academia, and workaday journey poets who experiment with form and content to document myriad lyrical impulses. These poetic efforts form a type of call-and-response dialogue that widens concepts of inclusiveness—which many view as threatening. In this course, we will annotate, read, discuss, and argue the merits and failures of the poems and acquire a system of shared language with which to discuss poets and their work. As we engage with the unending font of American poets, we will attempt a radical reimagining of what we consider poetry. We will embrace these newer voices—as we look for a more extensive understanding of the exigencies of the human condition.
Text: Polin and Waters, Contemporary American Poetry.
ENGL 2311-004—Introduction to Poetry
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 138. Caplan. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
“Poetry is language that sounds better and means more,” the poet Charles Wright observed, adding: “What’s better than that?” This class will train the students to hear the many sounds and meanings that great poems articulate. We will gain the skills and the vocabulary to analyze poems more precisely by reading and discussing a wide range of poetry. Assigned poets will range from Renaissance sonnets to Maggie Millner’s Couplets: A Love Story, published in 2023. Finally, we will have the pleasure of hearing two leading poets visit our class, one in person and one via Zoom. In short, we will spend the semester considering language that sounds better and means more, and, as the poet put it, what’s better than that?
Texts: two recent poetry collections and a course pack provided by the professor.
Assignments: three in-class exams and a take-home final exam; several reading responses and formal imitations.
ENGL 2312-001—Introduction to Fiction: Introduction to Ethnic U.S. Fiction
TTh 11:00-11:20. Dallas Hall 120. Sae-Saue. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
The primary goals of the class are that students learn to recognize a range of narrative elements by seeing how they function in key U.S. fictions. At the same time, it asks: how does a text construct a cultural identity, comment on a determinate historical moment, and organize human consciousness around social history? How does literature articulate political, social, and cultural dilemmas? And how does it structure our understandings of social interaction? As these questions imply, this course will explore how fiction creates and then navigates a gap between art and history. We will investigate how literary mechanisms organize our perceptions of the complex worlds that they imagine. Themes include: Citizenship; Migration; Capitalism; Race and Ethnicity; Feminism; Dictatorship; Labor; Patriarchy.
ENGL 2312-002H—Introduction to Fiction: Weird & Wonderful
TTh 9:30-10:50. Hyer Hall 102. Dickson-Carr, D. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
This course is dedicated to learning how narratives function in all of their complexities: characters; plots; identities; ideologies; strategies. Our material will consist of mostly 20th- and 21st-century American stories and novels that are weird and wonderful. These works take turn conventions on their head in their approaches in their narrative elements, will instilling a sense of wonder at strange worlds, unusual readings of the past, and speculation about possible futures. We will read a mix of postmodern fiction, avant-garde works, speculative fiction (science fiction, historical fiction, horror, fantasy), and satire. How do these narratives shape themselves and therefore shape us? Likely authors: Butler; Delany; DeLillo; Everett; Jemisin; Major; Morrison; Nguyen; Pynchon; Reed; Sterne; Toomer; Ward. Requirements: Reading quizzes; weekly responses; two short papers; one research paper/project.
ENGL 2312-003—Introduction to Fiction: Literary Novellas by Women
TTh 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
This reading-intensive contemporary literature course introduces students to novellas by women through the paradigm of intersectionality. Through consistent, classroom-based dialogue, students will situate their feminist interrogations of novellas by Dura, El-Saadawi, Erdrich, Ferrante, Keegan, Lessing, Moore, Morrison, Okorafor, Otsuka, Rhys, and Winterson. Via journal responses, class-curated annotated bibliographies, close reading, literary analysis, and comparative literary synthesis, students will chart the throughlines of how women writers create fictive realities in this condensed narrative form as one possible mode of social commentary. We will attend to conventions and tropes of this genre—while we evaluate the centrality of one or two complex characters, the narrowing of conflict, the broad strokes used to structure aesthetic pacing, and the limitations of chronological locality. Further, students should expect to both consider and discuss the complex psycho-social beliefs and motives intrinsic to the identity politics of race, gender, class, ability, religion, gender, gender identity, sexuality, orientation, class, age, education, religion, and national origin vis-à-vis the historicity of women’s lives as we contextualize the aesthetic choices of these writers and the specific use of their voices to question and challenge the socio-political exigencies and oppressions of community.
Assignments: four quizzes, twelve analytical writer responses, four technical presentations, and a substantially revised portfolio.
ENGL 2312-004—Introduction to Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 152. Hermes. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
What is “the true nature of the university?” asks a brilliant but cynical graduate student in John Williams’ 1965 novel Stoner. His answer may not be palatable to most academics. But with the increased importance of the university in American life since the 1950s and the explosion of creative writing programs over the same period, it’s a question that literary fiction has taken up time and again, often in satirical fashion. In this class, we’ll ask what the “campus novel” says about the changing nature of the modern university, as both the center and frequent subject of literary production. We’ll also ask how literary representations of college life reflect dynamics of social class, gender, sexuality, race, and economic mobility in society at large.
With these questions as our starting point for discussion, we’ll build a set of tools for writing about literature, including close reading, awareness of genre, and familiarity with the elements of fiction. We’ll think deeply about not just what texts say, but how they say it. Texts will be drawn from both fiction and film, including novels by Don DeLillo, Julie Schumacher, and Sarah Henstra, episodes from the TV series The Chair and Dear White People, and the film Dead Poets’ Society. Required work includes a presentation, regular reading responses, a literary analysis essay, and a final exam.
ENGL 2312-005—Introduction to Fiction: Season’s Hauntings
MWF 9:00-9:50. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 225. McClure. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
What do Halloween and Christmas have in common? If you’d asked 150 years ago, a common answer would have been ghosts. While ghost stories are (lamentably) no longer a popular element of Christmas celebration, they flooded the papers and magazines that circulated the Western world in the nineteenth century, a turbulent period of religious doubt and renewed interest in folkloric practices. Christmas ghost stories gesture toward a broader phenomenon of holidays with ancient, pagan significance accruing Christian and moral layers of meaning, resulting in an often strange mix of symbols and festivities. We will explore literary works in which various holidays and supernatural forces mingle. We will consider the relationship between the natural world and human communities and the ways in which stories—either written or spoken aloud to a gathering of listeners—have molded our beliefs and customs. We will reflect on the celebratory practices, by turns strange and comforting, ghastly and cozy, that make us human.
Likely texts: Dracula, by Bram Stoker; Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë; A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens; Dubliners, by James Joyce; a selection of shorter works
Assignments: weekly responses; reading quizzes; two short essays; one longer research paper; one class project (choice of creative, critical, performative)
ENGL 2312-006—Introduction to Fiction: Race and Gender in U.S. Fiction
CANCELED
ENGL 2312-007—Introduction to Fiction: Film and Fiction
MWF 8:00-8:50. Dallas Hall 102. Morrow. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Almost from the beginning of film developing as a staple of entertainment, pre-existent novels have served as a vast source of inspiration for this other story-telling medium. Instead of flattening the narratives these films and books share, the transition from the one medium to the other is filled with differences. These differences are what will be the interest of the course. This course will explore why these differences happen; what changes in stories with changes in medium; and, of course, is the book actually better? The class will be made up of four units with one novel, two films, and a brief reflection PER UNIT. In addition to this work, there will also be a short, independent research project that will serve as the course final and a brief (10 minute) class presentation.
ENGL 2312-008—Introduction to Fiction: Race and Gender in U.S. Fiction
MWF 9:00-9:50. Dallas Hall 120. Barber. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
This course will consider how we can read gender and race together in contemporary novels and short fiction written by multiethnic women. How do normative ideas around masculinity and femininity shift over time? How do narratives use race and gender as a means of responding to and critiquing their contemporary moment? Where, how, and why do race and gender matter? Students will learn to closely read and analyze our assigned texts to craft their own claims about the purpose, meaning, and significance of various texts.
Texts drawn from the following: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Toni Morrison, Sula; Leslie Marmon Silko. Ceremony; Emma Pérez, Forgetting the Alamo; R.F. Kuang, Yellowface, and various short fiction.
Assignments: weekly responses, quizzes, two short essays, one longer essay, and a final.
ENGL 2312-009—Introduction to Fiction: Southern Novels 1930-Present
MWF 2:00-2:50. Fondren Science 157. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Embark on a captivating literary exploration in this reading-intensive course that traces the tapestry of Southern fiction from 1930 to the present. Rooted in the distinctive cultural, historical, and social contexts of the American South, our journey will unfold through works by renowned authors such as Dorothy Allison, Flannery O'Connor, Jesmyn Ward, Yaa Gyasi, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, and Ernest Gaines. These novels will serve as a lens to scrutinize broader themes encompassing identity, morality, race, and societal change. As we analyze this literary landscape, we will unravel how these narratives intricately blend complex characterizations with the nuances of place, lyricism, and allusions to culture and collective memory. Through these texts, we will challenge stereotypes, weaving together themes of race, class, gender, and orientation to illuminate a Southern landscape that transcends clichés and offers a nuanced perspective on its complexities.
Assignments: four quizzes, twelve analytical writer responses, four technical presentations, and a substantially revised portfolio.
ENGL 2313-001—Introduction to Drama: All the World's a Stage
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 156. Moss. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
From Antigone to Hamilton, the most memorable reflections on human nature and the most provocative critiques of social and political life have taken dramatic form, presented onstage before mass audiences. This trans-historical success is largely the result of the unique nature of drama, which alone fully unites the arts: writing, speech, gesture, and costume at a minimum, but often incorporating song, dance, and related arts, as in ancient Greece or the modern musical. Theaters and the troupes acting in them have always been at the heart of Western culture, from the choruses of the Festival of Dionysus to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in London’s Globe to Broadway and its stars. At the same time, drama has lent its powerful voice to social protest and revolution, especially in the twentieth century.
The course is divided into three “Acts”: the rise of comedy and tragedy in ancient Greece, the ascendance of Shakespeare and his company in Renaissance England, and the radical left-wing theater of the mid-twentieth century. Smaller “Interludes” provide short introductions to medieval and eighteenth-century English drama, and we conclude with a brief glimpse of contemporary theater and film.
Assignments: weekly posts to the class discussion board, one shorter paper with a required revision, one longer paper incorporating secondary research, a review of a stage or film production, and a brief oral presentation or performance.
ENGL 2315-001—Introduction to Literary Study: Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence
TR 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 105. Dickson-Carr, D. 2016: CA, W CC: LAI, CAA, W
ENGL 2315 is an introduction to the pleasing art of literary study and to the English major. We will read, contemplate, and discuss poetry, essays, plays, short stories, and novels from different nations and literary traditions to enjoy their many rich complexities. We will begin with different ways of defining literature and literary study, then proceed to examine how and why we read various genres. We will discuss frequently the roles that literature may play in shaping our world. In addition, we will discover and discuss a few of the more prominent issues in contemporary literary studies. By the end of the course, the student should be able to read and write critically about literary works. This skill will serve each student well in other courses in English, but will apply equally well in other disciplines. Our topic, “Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence,” refers to the many moments in our readings in which individuals—whether poets, kings, fools, heroes, or villains—wrestle with and confront the same issues that we will discuss: the sublime; the gap between what we perceive and reality; facts versus fantasy, illusion, or delusion; the eternal and pleasurable challenge of interpretation. Assignments: regular writing (in class and on your own); two critical papers; several short benchmark reading exams. NOTE: We will watch a few selected films outside of regular class time.
Tentative texts: James, The Turn of the Screw; Best American Essays of the Century, ed. Joyce Carol Oates; Shakespeare, King Lear; Wisława Szymborska, Poems: New & Collected, 1957-1997; Derek Walcott, Omeros; selected poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Caroline Crew, Kay Ryan, et al.
ENGL 2315-002— Introduction to Literary Study: Love Stories
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 357. Newman. 2016: CA, W CC: LAI, CAA, W
Who doesn’t love a good love story? We will read representations of different kinds of love, straight and queer, romantic and otherwise, in at least three genres—prose fiction, dramatic literature, and poetry. The point will be less to learn about love than to learn something about how literature works: how to think and write intelligently about it; how to use the terminology that helps us do so; and perhaps even how to love it.
Texts: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice or Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (to be decided later, perhaps with your input?); short stories by James Joyce, Curtis Sittenfeld, Junot Diaz, and other modern and contemporary writers; poetry drawn from Shakespeare’s sonnets, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and a variety of other poets, canonical and contemporary. Also required: Hamilton, Essential Literary Terms, 2nd edition.
Assignments: 3-4 short papers (between 750 and 1250 words); occasional quizzes and exercises involving skills and terminology; midterm and/or final exam covering terminology.
ENGL 2318-001— Literature and Digital Humanities
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 101. Wilson. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
What are digital humanities? What is the relationship between technology and the humanities? How can technology advance our understanding of language, literature, and culture? These are some of the large-scale questions that we will explore in this course. At the same time, we will become familisr with technologies such as digital maps, e-books, search engines, and databases, which we will use to analyze literature. These skills will also be valuable in other academic work and on the job market.
ENGL 2390-001—Introduction to Creative Writing: Introductory Poetry Writing
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 106. Brownderville. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that poetry “purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel what we perceive, and to imagine that which we know.” Ezra Pound, more succinctly, instructed his fellow poets to “make it new!” Pound believed that poets should make the world new—and make poetry new—by presenting life in bold, original verse.
In this course, students will write and revise their own poems, respond both verbally and in writing to one another’s work, and analyze published poems. In-class workshops will demand insight, courtesy, and candor from everyone in the room, and will help students improve their oral-communications skills. The textbook, Writing Poems (Boisseau and Wallace), will be provided by the instructor. As this is an introductory course, prior experience in creative writing is not necessary.
ENGL 2390-002—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 120. Rubin. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
An introductory workshop that will focus on the fundamentals of craft in the genre of fiction. Students will learn the essential practice of "reading like a writer" while developing their own work and discussing their classmates'.
ENGL 2390-003—Introduction to Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice
TTh 11:00-12:20. Prothro Hall 205. Condon. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
Writing poetry has the potential to render our attention to the world more acute. This poetry writing workshop will teach you to notice how you notice the world as well as the essential craft tools needed to translate your perceptions to the page. To learn these tools, we will read and discuss the work of poets (such as Joy Harjo, Anne Carson, and Kevin Young) who have mastered them, focusing on how their formal decisions communicate something fundamental about the ways we perceive our world. In-class writing and homework prompts will help you generate your own original poetry. As the semester progresses you will be expected to discuss and analyze your peers’ poems and poetic choices, as well as your own. Requirements include a final portfolio of revised poems, weekly reading responses, and weekly creative assignments. All reading supplied on Canvas.
ENGL 2390-004—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 102. Smith. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This workshop-heavy course focuses on the craft, structure, and thematic elements of developing short stories. Students will create and critique short literary narratives focused on the elements of fiction. By the end of the semester, students will complete a portfolio including short stories.
ENGL 2390-005—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 138. Hermes. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the fundamentals of creative writing in poetry and fiction. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own short stories and poems. We’ll also discuss your original writing in a whole-class review commonly referred to as a workshop. Students will benefit from these conversations as both writer and reader, because each story or poem will present challenges that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we’ll sharpen our creative, critical, and communication skills.
Readings will include chapters from the textbooks Writing Fiction and The Poet’s Companion, as well as individual stories and poems. Authors include Danielle Evans, Julie Orringer, Mary Gaitskill, Sharon Olds, Kevin Young, and Porsha Olayiwola. Major assignments include a short story, portfolio of poems, regular workshop response letters to your peers’ work, and a final portfolio of revisions with a reflection essay on your own process.
ENGL 2390-006—Introduction to Creative Writing: Telling it Slant in Creative Nonfiction
MW 3:30-4:50. Dallas Hall 157. Farhadi. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
To write nonfiction means to write the truth. But creative nonfiction does not simply present a list of facts; it borrows techniques from fiction in order present the reader an experience grounded in the author’s perspective or “slant” on the truth. In this course, we’ll develop our own “slant” by reading and writing a mix of creative nonfiction subgenres—the personal essay, the lyric essay, the research-based essay, etc. Students will use our readings as a springboard for their own work, which they’ll share with their peers in workshop.
ENGL 2390-007—Introduction to Creative Writing: Nature Poetry
CANCELED
ENGL 2390-008—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 138. Smith. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This workshop-heavy course focuses on the craft, structure, and thematic elements of developing short stories. Students will create and critique short literary narratives focused on the elements of fiction. By the end of the semester, students will complete a portfolio including short stories.
ENGL 2390-009—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 138. Hermes. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the fundamentals of creative writing in poetry and fiction. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own short stories and poems. We’ll also discuss your original writing in a whole-class review commonly referred to as a workshop. Students will benefit from these conversations as both writer and reader, because each story or poem will present challenges that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we’ll sharpen our creative, critical, and communication skills.
Readings will include chapters from the textbooks Writing Fiction and The Poet’s Companion, as well as individual stories and poems. Authors include Danielle Evans, Julie Orringer, Mary Gaitskill, Sharon Olds, Kevin Young, and Porsha Olayiwola. Major assignments include a short story, portfolio of poems, regular workshop response letters to your peers’ work, and a final portfolio of revisions with a reflection essay on your own process.
ENGL 3310-001—Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies
MWF 2:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 152. Newman.
Note: this course is one of the English core courses and is intended especially for sophomore and junior English majors.
This course, which is required of all majors, explores several key questions: What is a text? What is the canon, and why does it provoke controversy? What are some of the approaches that thoughtful critics and scholars have brought in recent years to the analysis of texts and, more generally, to the literary studies as a discipline? How do we as readers make sense both of texts and of their critics? How, in practice, do we progress from the reading to the written analysis of texts?
We will explore these questions through three or four central texts (still to be determined), two shorter papers, and one longer essay or project that employs secondary sources.
Texts: Parker, How to Interpret Literature; Hamilton, Essential Literary Terms, plus 3-4 literary texts TBD.
Assignments: two shorter papers; occasional exercises and/or discussion-board posts; longer (8-10 pages) final essay or project employing secondary sources.
ENGL 3329-001—Courtly Cultures & King Arthur
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 156. Wheeler.
Study of Britain’s greatest native hero and one of the world’s most compelling and enjoyable set of narratives from the Middle Ages to the current day: the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Weekly written comments, in-class debates, final paper.
ENGL 3347-001—Topics in American Lit Age Rev
TR 2:00-3:20. Dedman Life Science 132. Levy. 2016: HFA, W CC: LAI, W
This course considers “revolution” in several senses: social, political, economic, and technological. We will read canonical and non-canonical literature that reflects and confronts revolutionary moments in American life through form as well as content. Periods covered include the Early Republic, 1840’s through the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, the rise of American imperialism, the Progressive Era, the Harlem Renaissance and the Depression. Authors include Hannah Foster, George Lippard, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne. Margaret Fuller, George Lippard, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Jacobs, Rebecca Harding Davis, Edward Eggleston, Zora Neale Hurston, Waldo Frank Twelve Southerners, Floyd Dell and others.
Assignments will include 2 papers, a final exam and weekly journals.
ENGL 3355-001C—Transatlantic Encounters III: Possible Futures: Feminist Theory and Speculative Theory
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 106. Boswell. 2016: HFA, HD, GE CC: LAI, HD, W
Combined with WGST 3370
This course examines a variety of speculative texts alongside works of feminist theory and explores the underlying systems that have shaped the concepts of sex, gender, race, and other categories. By making our world and assumptions strange to us, these speculative fictions offer a testing ground for many ideas in feminist theory.
ENGL 3362-001—African-American Literature
MWF 1:00-1:50. Clements Hall 126. Donkor. 2016: HFA, HD, W CC: LAI, HD, W
ENGL 3364-001—Women and the Southwest
CANCELED
ENGL 3377-001—LGBT Writing Before and After Stonewall
CANCELED
ENGL 3384-001—Literature and Medicine
TTh 3:30-4:50. Dallas Hall 152. Pergadia. 2016: HFA, HD, W CC: LAI, W
This course surveys the interdisciplinary field of the medical humanities through an exploration of the relationship between literature and medicine. How do medical genres of writing – from differential diagnosis to case studies – adopt literary forms? How might literary genres, such as the cancer memoir, inform medical practices? Students will gain familiarity with key debates in the field, including the distinction between the medical model of disability and illness and the social model.
Likely readings: Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, Ann Boyer’s The Undying, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, Ling Ma’s Severance, Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats, Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake, Zakiyyah Jackson’s Becoming Human.
Required work: discussion posts, in-class group presentation, and final project.
ENGL 3390-001—Creative Writing Workshop
T 3:30-6:20. Dallas Hall 149. Rubin. 2012: CA2, W 2016: HFA, W CC: W
Discussing the work of Katherine Porter, the writer Mary Gaitskill names an important advantage the form of the short story has over visual media: "Film, both movies and television," Gaitskill writes, "may accomplish something like this [moment in Porter's work], or try to. But it is precisely the medium's felicity to the seen world that so often makes its attempts to portray the unseen world buffoonish."
This class will explore the way great fiction evokes the world of the unseen. How is such a thing done? And what can make evocations of this unseen place so thrilling, consoling, and spooky? This course is a fiction-writing workshop with an emphasis on reading and craft.
ENGL 3390-002— Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 343. Brownderville. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
In this workshop-intensive course, students will write, revise, and analyze poems. Each student will accumulate ideas in a journal and will write ten to fifteen pages of poetry. Readings will include three or four recent volumes of verse (e.g. A Church in the Plains by Rachel Rinehart and Portrait of Us Burning by Sebastián Paramo). This course will invite students to imagine how their own voices might contribute to the exciting, wildly varied world of contemporary poetry.
ENGL 3390-003— Creative Writing Workshop: Lyric Address & Apostrophe (Listen Up, I’m Talking to You!)
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 137. Condon. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
In this course we will study and write poetry that employs lyric address and apostrophe. We will discover how directly addressing our worst enemy or our secret crush, the West Wind or a Wendy’s drive-thru, transforms poems from monological recollections into active dialogues. We will practice the poetic forms that spotlight lyric address and apostrophe, such as odes, elegies, and epistles. You will be expected to discuss and analyze your peers’ poems and poetic choices, as well as your own.
Texts: All reading supplied on Canvas
Assignments: a final portfolio of revised poems, weekly reading responses, and weekly creative assignments.
ENGL 4323-001— Chaucer: Chaucer’s Experimental Poetry
TR 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 156. Wheeler. 2016: IL, OC
Encounters with the shorter poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer> Its pathos, philosophical depth, and humor is seen in relation to historical contexts and experimental poetics. Weekly written comments, in-class presentations, final paper.
ENGL 4332-001— Studies in Early modern British Literature: Shakespeare’s Contemporaries
CANCELED
ENGL 4339-001— Transatlantic Studies I: The Archives Workshop
TTh 11:00-12:20. Fondren Science 157. Cassedy. 2016: IL, OC
Archives are where people put stories that they want to preserve. They’re also where they bury stories that they hope will be forgotten. What could we learn about the past if we looked at literature alongside diaries, love letters, scrapbooks, and the other textual remains that ordinary people leave behind? This course is a hands-on workshop on using archival resources in literary studies. We’ll dig into the lives of obscure and not-so obscure individuals from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. We’ll try to see what the past looks like through their eyes, and we’ll compare that with what it looks like through the eyes of several canonical authors. Each student will undertake an archival research project, culminating in a narrative essay that uses archival evidence to understand cultural and literary history anew.
Archives are where people put stories that they want to preserve. They’re also where they bury stories that they hope will be forgotten. What could we learn about the past if we looked at literature alongside diaries, love letters, scrapbooks, and the other textual remains that ordinary people leave behind? This course is a hands-on workshop on using archival resources in literary studies. We’ll dig into the lives of obscure and not-so obscure individuals from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. We’ll try to see what the past looks like through their eyes, and we’ll compare that with what it looks like through the eyes of several canonical authors. Each student will undertake an archival research project, culminating in a narrative essay that uses archival evidence to understand cultural and literary history anew.
ENGL 4346-001— American Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Spirits of Resistance in Nineteenth Century African American Literature
MW 3:00-4:20. Dallas Hall 120. Donkor.
African American resistance to enslavement and the denial of Black personhood in the nineteenth century is most commonly associated with armed and violent rebellion. The plots of Nat Turner and David Walker are hallmark cases of conspired violent resistance and get represented in early texts like The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) and David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829). But what about the more quotidian, subversive, and creative stratagems African Americans employed to resist racism and assert their humanity—how are these varieties of resistance represented in literature?
This course will trace dynamic forms of Black resistance present in African American writing. While we will read resistance in tales that reimagine classic slave revolts in fiction like Martin Delaney’s Blake or the Huts of America, we will also uncover more nuanced forms of resistance enacted through children’s play, sexual subversion, race play, and paranormal adventures in the work of authors including, but not limited to, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, and Pauline Hopkins. Finally, we will be attentive to resistance at the narrative level, studying how nineteenth century texts challenge conventions of genre and push against classic literary tropes, all while establishing the African American literary tradition, which itself, is a mode of Black resistance.
Assignments: Peer-guided discussion, periodic close reading annotations, midterm exam, two shorter literary analysis essays, one longer research paper. Shorter papers in this course will undergo revision.
ENGL 4360-001—Studies in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Postmodern American Fiction
CANCELED
ENGL 4360-002—Studies in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Contemporary American Poetry
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dedman Life Science 132. Caplan. 2016: HFA, IL, OC
We will read the most interesting poetry written by contemporary American poets. Five of the assigned poets will visit our class via Zoom to discuss their work. A sixth will visit our class in person. In addition to these meetings with poets, we will discuss their work, compose formal imitations, and recite an assigned poem of our choice.
Our goal is twofold. First, we will develop our ability to read poetry carefully and attentively. We will learn to appreciate the art of poetry. Second, we will see how contemporary American poets understand our historical moment. Reading closely, we will examine the ambitions, doubts, and debates that inspire the poetry.
will include six recently published poetry collections. The students will take three in-class exams and a take-home final exam and write short reading responses and formal imitations.
ENGL 4397-001—Distinction Seminar
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 105. Pergadia
Open by invitation.
This course is required for students pursuing Distinction in English, and its purpose is to help you envision and design a critical or creative project that you will undertake in the spring semester to complete the Distinction program. Your Distinction project is the most extensive and ambitious project that you are likely to undertake in college — and whether a creative writing project or a literary critical project, it will involve considerable planning, research, and preparatory writing. This course will introduce you to advanced research and project management strategies employed by professional writers and critics; provide frequent opportunities for you to share your ideas in progress and draw on your classmates’ collective insights; and yield a detailed plan for the research and writing that you will undertake in the spring with a faculty member of your choice. The syllabus will be partly student-generated, using scholarship and creative writing located by members of the class and relevant to their projects
ENGL 6310-001—Advanced Literary Studies
CANCELED
ENGL 6311-001—Survey of Literary Criticism and Theory
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. González.
This course serves as an introductory survey of literary criticism and theory, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary ideas and critiques. Theoretical approaches include: structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial theory; critical race studies, and posthumanism. The purposes of the course are to provide the theoretical background necessary for understanding the discipline of literary study, and to provide students with an opportunity to engage in theorizing literary objects. The course will require regular critical responses analyzing both our theoretical materials and primary literary texts. Although this course is a reading survey, we will engage heavily in theoretical application and literary interpretation, mainly during the tail end of the course.
ENGL 6312: Teaching Practicum.
F 12:00 – 2:50. Dallas Hall 120. Stephens
This course prepares graduate students in English seeking a Ph.D. to teach first-year writing at the college level and, in a larger sense, to design, prepare for, and teach college English classes at any level. During the fall semester, in addition to all of the texts assigned on the WRTR 1312 syllabus, students will read and write critical responses to composition theory and the classroom (excerpts from Lindemann’s A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers). Students will also read and discuss Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom; Kirschbaum, Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference; and excerpted chapters from Naming What We Know. These texts provide students with an overview of the history of rhetoric and methods for fostering critical thinking and writing. Students will also critically assess, review, and present contemporary criticism of rhetorical pedagogy. Finally, students will keep abreast of current issues in Composition Studies and Academia by reading recent online articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
ENGL 7340-001— Seminar in British Literature
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Sudan
We will identify and analyze the material and figurative implications of “enclosure” from the late seventeenth century through to the virtual demise of the second British empire (including the effects of the idea that this demise is “virtual”). I have purposely used the plural form in order to engage the myriad of meanings this term evokes, particularly its oppositional definitions.
ENGL 7372-001— Seminar in Trans-Atlantic Literature: Archives Workshop
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Cassedy.
Archives are where people put stories that they want to preserve. They’re also where they bury stories that they hope will be forgotten. What could we learn about the past if we looked at literature alongside diaries, love letters, scrapbooks, and the other textual remains that ordinary people leave behind? This course is a hands-on workshop on the theories, practices, and methods of using archival resources in literary studies. Designed to be useful to students working in any national, period, or genre specialization, this course will survey recent work being done with archives by literary and cultural historians, introduce students to a variety of archival resources, and provide practical training in working with physical and digitized materials. Each student will develop and undertake an archivally driven research project, culminating in a narrative essay that uses archival evidence to understand cultural and literary history anew.
ENGL 7350-001— Seminar in American Literature: “US Ethnic Narratives and the Borderlands of Desire”
T 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. Sae-Saue
This course examines the textual politics of the US-Mexico border. With a particular focus on ethnic novels, students will explore how narrative forms communicate shifting cultural politics of the region. This means that the class will examine how the formal principles of ethnic narratives articulate the raw material of historical life in the area on one hand, and how they imagine political fantasies of national and cultural futures on the other. The class will also locate “desire” (understood broadly) as a key register in which ethnic narratives communicate political and cultural values. Students will also familiarize themselves with key works of literary criticism of borderlands theory and politics that form the basis of the field.
ENGL 7376-001—Seminar: Special Topic: Representing History in Queer Writing Since Wilde
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 152. Bozorth.
This seminar will examine some “canonical” and (“precanonical”?) works by LGBTQ+ people that share preoccupations with queer history and queer literary history. We will also consider how these preoccupations are embodied in a variety of written and visual media: theater (Wilde’s Salome, Kushner’s Angels in America), coming-of-age novel (Forster’s Maurice, Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits), historical fiction (Woolf’s Orlando, Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library, Merlis’s An Arrow’s Flight), memoir (Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Bechdel’s Fun Home), and film adaptation (Isherwood’s A Single Man, Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain). Among our concerns: how and why the era of queer culture that began in the late 19th century, with what Foucault famously called “the invention of homosexuality” was as interested in recovering a lost queer past as in imagining a queer future; how the past signifies differently for lesbians and queer people of color; and how the advent of HIV-AIDS in the 1980s and its legacy have shaped perceptions about queer history and the ways it can be embedded in literary and other forms. Leading discussion; conference paper-style presentation; seminar paper.
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
1330 |
001 |
World of Shakespeare |
Moss |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
1363 |
701 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
W |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: CA, HC |
LAI, HD |
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Literacy: MS Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
OFAC 1050 |
||
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Literacy: MS Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
OFAC 1050 |
|
|
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C |
TR |
2:00
|
3:20
|
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry: Serious Word Games |
Bozorth |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
002 |
Poetry: Finding The Greatest Inventors |
Wilson |
TR |
8:00 |
9:20 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
003 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poets |
Rivera |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: Introduction to Ethic U.S. Fiction |
Sae-Saue |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
002H |
Fiction: Weird & Wonderful |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
HYER 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: Literary Novellas by Women |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film |
Hermes |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Season’s Hauntings |
McClure |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
||||||
2312 |
007 |
Fiction: Film and Fiction |
Morrow |
MWF |
8:00 |
8:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
008 |
Fiction: Race and Gender in U.S. Fiction |
Barber |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
009 |
Fiction: Southern Novels, 1930 - Present |
Rivera |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
FOSC 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LL, W |
2313 |
001 |
Drama: All the World's a Stage |
Moss |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
001 |
Introduction to Literary Studies: Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence |
Dickson-Carr, D |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
002 |
Introduction to Literary Study: Love Stories |
Newman |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2318 |
001 |
Introduction to Digital Lit |
Wilson |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
001 |
Creative Writing: Introductory Poetry Writing |
Brownderville |
M |
2:0 |
2:50 |
DH 106 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
002 |
Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
003 |
Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice |
Condon |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
PRTH 205 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
004 |
Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
005 |
Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
006 |
Creative Writing: Telling it Slant in Creative Nonfiction |
Farhadi |
MW |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
007 |
Creative Writing (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
||||||
2390 |
008 |
Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
009 |
Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies |
Newman |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 152 |
|
|
3329 |
001 |
Courtly Cultures & King Arthur |
Wheeler |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 156 |
|
|
3347 |
001 |
Topics in American Lit Age of Rev |
Levy |
TR |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DLSB 132 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3355 |
001C |
Transatlantic Encounters III: Possible Futures: Feminist theory & Speculative Theory |
Boswell |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 106 |
|
|
3362 | 001 |
African American Literature |
Donkor |
MWF |
1:00 | 1:50 | CLEM 126 |
HD, HFA, W |
LAI, HD, W |
3364 |
001 |
Women and the Southwest (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
||||||
3377 |
001 |
LGBT Writing Before and After Stonewall (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
||||||
3384 |
001 |
Literature and Medicine |
Pergadia |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction Workshop |
Rubin |
T |
3:30 |
6:20 |
DH 149 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
3390 |
003 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Lyric Address & Apostrophe (Listen Up, I’m Talking to You!) |
Condon |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 137 |
2016: IL, OC |
W |
4323 |
001 |
Chaucer: Chaucer’s Experimental Poetry |
Wheeler |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Lit (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
|||||
4339 | 001 |
Transatlantic Studies I: The Archives Workshop
|
Cassedy |
TR | 11:00 | 12:20 |
FOSC 157 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4346 |
001 |
Amer Lit in Age of Revolutions: Spirit of Resistance |
Donkor |
MW |
3:00 |
4:20 | DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4360 |
001 |
Studies in Modern & Contemporary American Literature (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
|||||
4360 |
002 |
Studies in Modern & Contemporary American Literature: Contemporary American Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DLSB 132 |
2016: HFA, IL, OC |
|
4397 |
001 |
Distinction Seminar |
Pergadia |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
|
|
6310 |
001 |
Advanced Literary Studies (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
|
||||
6311 |
001 |
Survey of Literary Criticism and Theory |
González |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
6312 |
001 |
Teaching Practicum |
Stephens |
F |
12:00 |
2:50 |
DH 120 |
|
|
7340 |
001 |
Seminar in British Literature |
Sudan |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
7350 | 001 |
Seminar in American Literature: “US Ethnic Narratives and the Borderlands of Desire" |
Sae-Saue |
T | 2:00 |
4:50 | DH 137 |
||
7372 | 001 |
Seminar in Trans-Atlantic Literature: Archives Workshop |
Cassedy |
R |
2:00 | 4:50 |
DH 138 |
||
7376 | 001 |
Seminar: Special Topic: Representing History in Queer Writing Since Wilde |
Bozorth |
TR | 11:00 |
12:20 | DH 152 |
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
2312 |
007 |
Fiction: Film and Fiction |
Morrow |
MWF |
8:00 |
8:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Season's Hauntings |
McClure |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
008 |
Fiction: Race and Gender in U.S. Fiction |
Barber |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: Literary Novellas by Women |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
005 |
Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3364 |
001 |
Women and the Southwest (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
||||||
2311 |
003 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poets |
Rivera |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
002 |
Introduction to Literary Study: Love Stories |
Newman |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
009 |
Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
4360 |
002 |
Studies in Modern & Contemporary American Literature: Contemporary American Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DLSB 132 |
2016: HFA, IL, OC |
|
2313 |
001 |
Drama: All the World's a Stage |
Moss |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film |
Hermes |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
3362 |
001 |
African-American Literature |
Donkor |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
CLEM 126 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, HD, W |
1330 |
001 |
World of Shakespeare |
Moss |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
2312 |
009 |
Fiction: Southern Novels, 1930 - Present |
Rivera |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
FOSC 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LL, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies |
Newman |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 152 |
|
|
2390 |
006 |
Creative Writing: Telling it Slant in Creative Nonfiction |
Farhadi |
MW |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
4346 |
001 |
Amer Lit in Age of Revolution: Spirit of Resistance |
Donkor |
MW |
3:00 | 4:20 | DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
2390 |
001 |
Creative Writing: Introductory Poetry Writing |
Brownderville |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 106 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
6310 |
001 |
Advanced Literary Studies (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
|
||||
6311 |
001 |
Survey of Literary Criticism and Theory |
Gonzalez |
M |
2:00 | 4:50 | DH 138 |
||
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Literacy: MS Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M |
3:00: |
3:50 |
OFAC 1050 |
|
|
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
7340 |
001 |
Seminar in British Literature |
Sudan |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Literacy: MS Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
OFAC 1050 |
|
|
1363 |
701 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
W |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: CA, HC |
LAI, HD |
6312 |
001 |
Teaching Practicum |
Stephens |
F |
12:00 |
2:50 |
DH 120 |
|
|
2311 |
002 |
Poetry: Finding the Greatest Inventors |
Wilson |
TR |
8:00 |
9:20 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
|||||
2312 |
002H |
Fiction: Weird & Wonderful |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
HYER 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2318 |
001 |
Intro to Digital Lit |
Wilson |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
004 |
Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
4323 |
001 |
Chaucer: Chaucer's Experimental Poetry |
Wheeler |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
3355 |
001C |
Transatlantic Encounters III: Possible Futures: Feminist theory & Speculative Theory |
Boswell |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 106 |
|
|
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: Introduction to Ethnic U.S. Fiction |
Sae-Saue |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
001 |
Intro to Literary Studies: Pomp And Circumstantial Evidence |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
003 |
Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice |
Condon |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
PRTH 205 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3377 |
001 |
LGBT Writing Before and After Stonewall (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
||||||
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Lit (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
FOSC 157 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
|||
4339 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies I: The Archives Workshop |
Cassedy |
TR | 11:00 |
12:20 |
FOSC 157 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
7376 |
001 |
Seminar: Special Topics: Representing History in Queer Writing Since Wilde
|
Bozorth |
TR | 11:00 |
12:20 | DH 152 |
||
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2390 |
002 |
Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
008 |
Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3329 |
001 |
Courtly Cultures & King Arthur |
Wheeler |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 156 |
|
|
4397 |
001 |
Distinction Seminar |
Pergadia |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
|
|
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry: Serious Word Games |
Bozorth |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
3347 |
001 |
Topics in Am Lit in the Age of Rev |
Levy |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DLSB 132 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3390 |
003 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Lyric Address & Apostrophe (Listen Up, I’m Talking to You!) |
Condon |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 137 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
4360 |
001 |
Studies in Modern & Contemporary American Literature (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2390 |
007 |
Creative Writing (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
|||||
3384 |
001 |
Literature and Medicine |
Pergadia |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, W |
7350 |
001 |
Seminar in American Literature: "US Ethnic Narratives and the Borderlands of Desire" |
Sae-Saue |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction Workshop |
Rubin |
T |
3:30 |
6:20 |
DH 149 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
7372 |
001 |
Seminar in Trans-Atlantic Literature: Archives Workshop |
Cassedy |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
Summer 2024
MAY & SUMMER SESSION 2024 COURSES
Cat # |
Sec |
Session |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Day |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC |
CC |
1380 | 011A | June A |
Introduction to Literature | McConnell |
M-F | 9:00 | 12:50 |
DH 149 |
||
2302 |
0011 |
S1 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M-F |
2:00 |
3:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2311 |
0011 |
S1 |
Poetry |
Condon |
M-F |
10:00 |
11:50 |
|
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
0011 |
S1 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Hermes |
M-F |
12:00 |
1:50 |
|
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC. W |
2390 |
0012 |
S2 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems (CANCELED) |
CANCELED |
|
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC. W |
|||
3362 |
0011 |
S1 |
African-American Literature |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
M-F |
11:00 |
12:50 |
|
|
|
MAY & SUMMER 2024 SESSION
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ENGL 1380-0011A—Introduction to Literature
ENGL 2302-0011— Business Writing
M – F: 2:00 - 3:50. VSNI 203. Dickson-Carr, C. 2016: IL, OC, W. CC: W
ENGL 2311-0011— Poetry
M – F: 10:00 - 11:50. Condon, Katie. 2016: IL, W. CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2390-0011— Introduction to Creative Writing
M – F: 12:00 - 1:50. Hermes, Richard. 2016: CA, W. CC: CA, CAC, W
ENGL 2390-0012— Intro to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems
CANCELED
ENGL 3362-0011— African-American Literature
M – F: 11:00-12:50. Dickson-Carr, D.
Spring 2024
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 306. Dickson-Carr, D., 2016: LL CC: LAI
This introductory survey of selected novels and short stories emphasizes both ideas of modernity and the historical or cultural contexts that generate these ideas. We study speculative fiction, which comprises such genres as science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and post-apocalyptic fiction, among others. All of the works we study either imagine possible futures or reimagine the past. We will look at speculative fiction’s history, place the works we read and their authors in historical contexts, and examine how different authors build worlds that allow us to understand our own. Tentative authors: Asimov, Bradbury, Butler, Delany, Philip K. Dick, Gibson, Jemisin, LeGui, H.G. Wells, selections from anthologies.
Required coursework: regular quizzes, written midterm and final exams, 2-3 short response papers, and participation.
ENGL 1363-001—Myths of the American West
W 6:00-8:50. Dallas Hall 306. Levy. 2016: CA, HC CC: CA, HC
This course explores ideas of the West as they first appeared in European culture during the so-called “age of discovery.” It then uses these ideas to focus more specifically on the American West as a zone of cross-cultural exchange between those groups peopling North America. The course raises questions about the primary myths that accompanied this peopling, including native American creation stories, European sagas of conquest and the idea of the “New World” as “Virgin Land,” Turner’s “Frontier Thesis,” “Custer’s Last Stand,” and the many stories and histories that sought to justify Manifest Destiny as a national policy of accumulation by dispossession. In other words, this course is about way more than “Cowboys and Indians,” although we explore the literary genre of “The Western” and the social dynamics that led to its creation.
The course focuses on novels, short stories, essays and films, including, The Virginian (Owen Wister), The Land of Little Rain (Mary Austin), Brokeback Mountain, (Annie Proulx), “Yellow Radio Broke-Down” (Ismael Reed), “The Maypole of Merry-Mount” (Nathaniel Hawthorne), Dime Novels (Ned Buntline), The White Album (Joan Didion), The Searchers (John Ford), Red River (Howard Hawks), and possible others.
Assignments: Frequent quizzes; midterm and final exams.
ENGL 2102-001—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
M 3:00-3:50. Hyer Hall 106. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2102-002—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
W 3:00-3:50. Hyer Hall 106. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2302-001—Business Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed.
ENGL 2302-002— Business Writing
TTh 2:00-3:20. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed.
ENGL 2311-001—Introduction to Poetry
TTh 3:30-4:50. Umphrey Lee 233. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2311-002—Introduction to Poetry
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 357. Caplan. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
“Poetry is language that sounds better and means more,” the poet Charles Wright observed. “What’s better than that?”
This class will train the students to hear the many sounds and meanings that great poems articulate. In addition to taking in-class exams, we will compose formal imitations, write brief analyses of particular elements of the assigned poetry plus one longer essay, and perform a poem from memory. Also, we will have the pleasure of hearing the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown read his work and discuss it during his visit to the SMU campus. In short, we will spend the semester considering language that sounds better and means more, and, as the poet put it, what’s better than that?
Texts: two recent poetry collections and a course packet provided by the professor.
ENGL 2311-003H—Introduction to Poetry: A Poet-Guided Tour
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 102. Moss. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
In this course, the poets themselves guide us through the formal elements and literary-historical evolution of English and American poetry. During the first half of the semester, each week will emphasize a different technical or generic aspect of poetry, focusing on a representative poet in each case. We will learn rhythm with William Blake, rhyme with Emily Dickinson, sonnet-form with William Shakespeare, persona with Langston Hughes, free verse with Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg. The second half explores perennial themes: poets addressing and questioning God; poets protesting social injustice; poets in love; poets struggling with age and loss; poets pondering nature, art, and poetry itself. Guest speakers include John Donne, Aphra Behn, John Keats, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Seamus Heaney, and many more. Who knew there were so many poets? Come meet them.
Text: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 6th edition.
Required work: two papers (one short, one longish), regular posts to an online discussion board, midterm exam, final exam, recitation, and the dreaded-at-first-later-beloved creative exercise.
ENGL 2311-004—Introduction to Poetry: Contemporary American Poetry Since 1970s
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 157. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Immerse yourself in the innovative works of critically acclaimed poets hailing from underrepresented backgrounds, poets who challenge conventional notions of poetry with their diverse perspectives and experimental forms. This course invites you to develop crucial analytical skills, engage in lively discussions, and foster a shared language for dissecting poets and their creations. Through hands-on digital humanities tools and captivating assignments, you'll map the rich tapestry of poets' backgrounds, annotate poems online, create a digital archive of underrepresented poets, perform poetic analysis on Twitter, craft video analyses, and even produce captivating poetry reviews via podcasts. Engage with the dynamic voices and ideas that shape contemporary American poetry while honing your digital skills for a comprehensive exploration of this ever-evolving literary landscape. Attendance, participation, and discussion are mandatory, but your journey through the vibrant world of contemporary American poetry will be worth every moment. The two required texts are Contemporary American Poetry (Poulin, et al.) and The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Gonzalez and Shapiro).
ENGL 2312-001—Introduction to Fiction: The Gothic Novel
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 157. Sudan. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Gothic novels were wildly popular in nineteenth-century Britain. Starting with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, and continuing almost unabated until about 1820, the Gothic novel, characterized by gloomy landscapes, graveyards, secrets, ghosts, damsels in distress, mysterious heroes, bleeding nuns, and the like, became the most eagerly consumed genre. Net necessarily restricted by gender—almost as many (and arguably more) women published gothic novels as men—these novels represent not only the taste of the literate public but also reflect with an uncanny exactitude the social and cultural milieu of the late-eighteenth through late-nineteenth centuries. We will explore these contexts and, in the process, will learn about the process of textual and cultural analysis. We will also consider contemporary twentieth-century associations with this genre in Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, thinking through the symptomatic changes that turn the gothic into something that reflects our current cultural and political climate.
ENGL 2312-002—Introduction to Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 105. Hermes. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2312-003—Introduction to Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Hermes. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2312-004—Introduction to Fiction: Getting to Know Characters
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 156. Ryberg. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
We are surrounded by characters. They fill our television screens, populate our books, and appeal to our desires through advertisements and social media. In others’ eyes, we ourselves are something like characters: We are always being “read,” often being slotted into types or categories. How do novels, short stories, and other media make characters seem real? What techniques produce this illusion, and how do our experiences inform how we co-create characters alongside their authors? What do we do with works containing characters who seem implausible to us? In this course, we will try to answer these and other questions by reading a wide variety of texts and coming to know a vast array of characters, both major and minor. Overall, I hope that the course will help us better understand fictional beings, both in terms of their historical particularity and their continuing appeal for us today.
Readings will be drawn from the following: Haywood, Fantomina; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe;Dickens, Oliver Twist; Larsen, Passing; Disch, Camp Concentration; Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness; McCarthy, Blood Meridian; other short readings.
Required work: 4 essays (one written in class), weekly discussion posts, and in-class exercises.
ENGL 2312-005—Introduction to Fiction: Fake Fakes & Surreal Realism
MWF 2:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 156. Hennum. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
What is the difference between fiction and non-fiction? Though the distinction might seem clear cut, this question has frustrated writers of both fiction and non-fiction for centuries. We will investigate this problem by reading work that has intentionally blurred these categories. We will read a diverse array of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Roberto Bolano, Franz Kafka, and Vladimir Nabokov, and watch films by Abbas Kiarostami, William Greaves, and Orson Welles, in order to think extensively and intensively about this problem in an effort to unpack it and its significance for readers and writers alike.
Required work: a podcast, some short essays (including take-home midterm and final), and weekly responses.
ENGL 2312-006—Introduction to Fiction: Short Fiction from The New Yorker
MWF 2:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 152. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
In this writing-intensive course, we delve into the short stories of literary luminaries such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, George Saunders, Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Salman Rushdie, and Lorrie Moore, all prominently featured in The New Yorker. Unlike traditional lecture series, this dynamic and participatory experience emphasizes attendance, the Socratic method, group participation, and discussion board postings. So, students are expected to read, annotate, and listen to each narrative. Beyond traditional close readings—we will also explore the fusion of creative and technical responses that can enrich literary analysis while collaborative, peer-editing sessions provide a platform for exploring writing risks and creativity. Terminology and application quizzes ensure we all share a common language for dialogue. This community-centered course invites you to study and actively participate, explore diverse voices, and refine your critical thinking about contemporary short fiction and how our lives also embody storytelling.
ENGL 2315-001—Introduction to Literary Study: Metamorphosis
TTh 9:30-10:50. Clements Hall 325. Roudabush. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
For over 2000 years, Ovid’s Metamorphoses has inspired poets, playwrights, musicians, sculptors, painters, and artists of all kinds to read, repurpose, and recreate his enduring poem. It remains a classic for its ability to stay modern. Our own modern obsessions with self-transformation, narcissism, idealized beauty, challenges to power, and the mythic status of artists attests to the sustained relevance of not only Ovid’s poem, but also the idea of metamorphosis itself. As we survey literary transformations from the first to the twenty-first century, we will discuss metamorphosis as a principle of the artistic process and of literary study; transformations in literary form, style, and cultural preoccupations; translation, adaptation, and imitation; power and authority; identity and selfhood; gender and performance; and voice and artistry.
Readings will likely include selections from Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a sampling of sonnets old and new, and modern Ovidian adaptations and revisions by authors such as Denise Levertov, Margaret Atwood, and Nina MacLaughlin.
Required work: most likely, two essays; a creative exercise; and midterm and final exams.
ENGL 2315-002— Introduction to Literary Study: Modern Enchantments: Literature of Science, Religion, and the Spectacular
MWF 9:00-9:50. Dallas Hall 115. Bax. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1829 “Sonnet—To Science” claimed that science strips life of wonder, excitement, and enchantment. His poem participates in a long history of laments about the disenchantment of the world, the idea that new forms of knowledge, social arrangements, and political relations in modernity have sapped meaning and wonderfrom our lives. But writers have also responded by imagining new ways of thinking about science, religion, and enchantment. This course explores poetry, prose, drama, and film from the nineteenth century to the present that addresses the enchantment (or the lack thereof) in modern life. We’ll develop strategies for interpreting and analyzing these texts, considering what exactly “enchantment” means, the extent to which it is actually real or desirable, and the ways literary artists have imagined recapturing it—including through literature itself.
Likely texts: short fiction by Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Chesnutt; poetry by William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson and Tracy K. Smith; two to three novels including Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude; and the 2022 film, Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Required work: three papers and a final.
ENGL 2315-003—Introduction to Literary Study: The Absurd
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 153. Fanning. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
This course approaches the question of absurdity through a selection of literary, philosophical, and critical texts, which may include works by Swift, Kafka, Borges, Camus, Beckett, and Flann O’Brien.
Required work: probably weekly discussion posts, two analytical papers, and a literature review.
ENGL 2315-004—Introduction to Literary Study: Being at Home in America
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 105. Dinniene. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
When you think of home, do you think of a building, a person, a nation, or something else? American literature and film show us that home can be many things, including a place of freedom or of confinement, a solid reality or a fragile, tormenting dream. This course will examine texts that complicate notions of home, including Ira Levin's novelThe Stepford Wives, Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, and Spike Lee’s filmDo the Right Thing. We will work together to understand how authors formally attend to and complicate representations of home, and how these representations engage us, trouble us, and make us question what we think we know. What does “home” truly mean? Whatcouldit mean? What can learning to recognize who gets to belong (and who doesn’t) teach us about ourselves and our world?
Required work: several short papers, a midterm exam, and a zine project.
ENGL 2315-005—Introduction to Literary Study: The Writer as the Worldmaker
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 137. Mennella. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
How does do writers, through nothing more than marks on the page, create something we recognize as a coherent, believable “world”? To answer this question we will explore a variety of texts spanning several centuries, all of which experiment with different ways of bringing the phenomenon of “the world” into focus. Readings will range from Shakespeare through Tolkien (The Hobbit) and William Gibson (Neuromancer), with a mix of other short texts of various genres in between.
Required work: three essays (4-5 pages) with opportunities to revise.
ENGL 2390-001—Introduction to Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice
M 2:00-4:50. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 225. Condon. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
ENGL 2390-002H—Introduction to Creative Writing
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Rubin. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
An introductory workshop that will focus on the fundamentals of craft in the genre of fiction writing. Students will learn the essential practice of "reading like a writer" while developing their own work and discussing their classmates'. At the start of the semester, reading will be drawn from Janet Burroway's textbook Writing Fiction. Later on, students will read published works of short fiction.
Required work: (probably) two short stories, a story revision, and various short writing exercises.
ENGL 2390-003—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Fundamentals of Fiction
TTh 12:30-1:50. Umphrey Lee 117. Hawkins. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This introductory course focuses on the theory and techniques of fiction and offers you the opportunity to develop your own short stories. At the start of the term, we’ll familiarize ourselves with foundational elements of craft, such as point of view and narrative structure, by reading contemporary short fiction and evaluating the decisions writers make. In the second half of the term, we’ll shift to a workshop format in which we’ll share drafts of our short stories with the class and offer one another feedback. The course will culminate in a substantive revision, or re-imagining, of one of your short stories and a reflection on your creative process. In addition to two short stories, you should expect to write several informal peer review letters and reader’s responses. By the end of the term, you should feel increasingly confident in your ability to communicate both on and off the page. No previous writing experience is required to be successful in this course, just an open mind.
ENGL 2390-004—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
TTh 2:00-3:20. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 208. Hermes. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the fundamentals of creative writing in poetry and fiction. To prepare ourselves to write our own stories and poems, we’ll begin with readings that provide artistic models and stimulate discussion about craft. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own creative work.
During the second half of the course, we’ll discuss your original stories and poems in a whole-class review commonly referred to as a workshop. Students will benefit from these conversations as both writer and reader, because each story or poem will present particular challenges in writing that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we’ll sharpen our creative, critical, and communication skills.
Readings will include chapters from the textbooks Writing Fiction and The Poet’s Companion, as well as individual stories and poems. Authors include Danielle Evans, Julie Orringer, and Mary Gaitskill in fiction, and such poets as Kim Addonizio, Sharon Olds, Kevin Young, Porsha Olayiwola, Caki Wilkinson, James Wright, Elizabeth Bishop, and others.
Required work: a short story, portfolio of poems, regular workshop response letters to your peers’ work, and a final portfolio of revisions with a reflection essay on your own process.
ENGL 2390-005—Introduction to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems
MW 3:00-4:20. Dallas Hall 152. Lama. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
It is raining in Santiago
my darling one.
-Lorca
So much of who we are is determined by where we are born and live: language, culture, values, lifestyle, body. The notion of “home” is often associated with the land. Simultaneously, the place is shaped and defined by the people who live there. In this class, we will explore the intricate and complex relationship between the place and the people, and using the fundamental concepts of poetry such as image, metaphor, sound, rhythm, and lineation, we will write poems about places that are intimately linked to our identities.
In the first half of the semester, informed and inspired by the great poets that have come before us, we will learn the basic concepts and skills and write the poems. In the second half, we will workshop them, giving and receiving thoughtful and generous feedback, culminating in a final portfolio. The final portfolio will consist of three significantly revised poems, guided by the knowledge that revision is a long and thoughtful form of writing which often results in radical changes and not just fixing of a few grammatical errors. You may have a considerable amount of experience in creative writing or very little to none. The only prerequisite for this class is that you’ve an interest in writing (and reading, of course)—and the willingness to put in a sincere amount of effort into your craft, for in my humble opinion talent alone—without sustained labor and dedication—has rarely, if ever, produced a great artist.
ENGL 2390-006—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 138. Rubin. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
An introductory workshop that will focus on the fundamentals of craft in the genre of fiction writing. Students will learn the essential practice of "reading like a writer" while developing their own work and discussing their classmates'. At the start of the semester, reading will be drawn from Janet Burroway's textbook Writing Fiction. Later on, students will read published works of short fiction.
Required work: (probably) two short stories, a story revision, and various short writing exercises.
ENGL 2390-007—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 351. Smith. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This is an introductory creative writing workshop designed to acquaint students with the various forms of fiction. It also functions as an introductory class in the reading of classic and contemporary short fiction. The class is introductory-level, which means that some people taking it may have no creative-writing experience while others may have significant previous experience writing on their own and/or in-group workshops in high school or elsewhere. There is a large emphasis on revision in the course, since revision is an essential part of the practice of most professional writers. Partly to this end, first drafts of work in the class are never graded. They are expected to be complete and as polished as possible within the time available. About one-third of the class time will be devoted to workshop—i.e., discussions of students’ work—and the other portion to discussion of assigned readings and in-class writing exercises. Each person will have the work critiqued in class during the semester. Each person’s manuscript is up for discussion during workshop.
ENGL 2390-008—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 101. Smith. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This is an introductory creative writing workshop designed to acquaint students with the various forms of fiction. It also functions as an introductory class in the reading of classic and contemporary short fiction. The class is introductory-level, which means that some people taking it may have no creative-writing experience while others may have significant previous experience writing on their own and/or in-group workshops in high school or elsewhere. There is a large emphasis on revision in the course, since revision is an essential part of the practice of most professional writers. Partly to this end, first drafts of work in the class are never graded. They are expected to be complete and as polished as possible within the time available. About one-third of the class time will be devoted to workshop—i.e., discussions of students’ work—and the other portion to discussion of assigned readings and in-class writing exercises. Each person will have the work critiqued in class during the semester. Each person’s manuscript is up for discussion during workshop.
ENGL 2390-009—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction
T 6:00-8:50. Dallas Hall 116. Farhadi. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
In this course, we’ll read a variety of fictional genres and styles to analyze the particular decisions writers use to give their stories shape. While structure will be our entry point, we’ll also focus on the smaller scale choices writers make in order to develop characters, further plot, and stimulate, satisfy, and subvert expectations in the service of providing a compelling read.
Throughout the course we’ll use critical and creative assignments to develop our craft vocabulary. Students will write their own full-length short stories, which we’ll workshop in the second half of the semester.
ENGL 3310-001—Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Pergadia.
Note: this course is intended especially for sophomore and junior English majors.
This course introduces students to some of the central debates in cultural and literary studies through foundational texts that formulate our understanding of research methods. The course is geared towards developing skills of close-reading and critical writing. Students will learn how to write and speak about theoretical texts and how to recognize the theoretical assumptions that underlie acts of interpretation. Theoretical approaches include: structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial theory, and affect theory. We will ground our analyses within particular literary, visual, and theoretical works, learning how to read cultural production as theory, rather than merely applying theory to selected texts.
Likely primary texts: Eliza Haywood’s “Fantomina,” Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif,” Shailja Patel’s migritude, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out.
Required work: in-class workshops, mid-term exam, group presentations, and final essay.
ENGL 3318-001—Literature as Data
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 115. Wilson. 2016: LL, TM, W CC: LAI, W
Note: for English majors, this course will satisfy, by petition, one of the two required courses for literature before 1775.
What does it mean to think about literature as a type of data? What new types of literary interpretation might that open up, and what pitfalls might we need to beware of? In this course we will encounter a range of theories and technologies that treat literature as data, from text mining and digital mapping to methods used in creating digital editions of books. During the semester we will work hands-on with rare archival materials to create our own digital edition of a book, thinking about what the benefits are of doing so, but also all of the factors we need to consider as digital creators and curators of literary data. In the process, you will learn several digital methods for analyzing literary texts, and in keeping with the public spirit of digital humanities you will share your new skills through an educational outreach event.
Primary texts: epic poetry by John Milton and his contemporaries, plus some shorter poems and some prose works from the period that have not been republished since the 1600s, of which we will create digital editions. Secondary readings: modern scholarship that considers a range of theoretical, social, and ethical issues raised by digital work in literary studies.
Required work: one theoretical essay, a digital edition of an otherwise-unavailable renaissance book, a final digital project shared via roundtable presentation.
ENGL 3347-001—Topics in American Literature in the Age of Revolutions: The Self and Nature in American Literature
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 157. Torres de Veneciano. 2016: HFA, HSBS, W CC: LAI, W
This class concerns ideas of the self, not in isolation, but as mediating a world in which nature is divinely conceived. We will study these ideas in the art, literature, and philosophy of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Central movements we will review include Transcendentalism and the American Sublime. The writings of Emerson, Douglass, Fuller, Martí, Whitman, and the paintings of Bierstadt, Church, Homer, Moran and others will enliven our study. Written assignments are designed to elicit analysis through creativity and reportage.
Required work: midterm, final, and short reflection posts.
ENGL 3360-001—Topics in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Modern Poetry
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 157. Caplan. 2016: HFA, HD, OC, W CC: LAI, W
During the last one hundred years, poets have modernized the art of poetry. To understand their achievement, we will read and discuss poetry collections written by eight exemplary poets. Assigned poets will include T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, and Jericho Brown. This class will grapple with the large questions that this poetry raises: What are a poet’s responsibilities during a time of rapid social change? What defines artistic originality? Should a poem resist new technologies or exploit the possibilities that they offer?
We will hear one of the poets read his work on campus and enjoy a Zoom conversation with another.
Required work: Three in-class exams, several writing exercises, and a final paper.
ENGL 3384-001—Literature and Medicine
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 156. Pergadia. 2016: HFA, HD, W CC: LAI, W
This course surveys the interdisciplinary field of the medical humanities through an exploration of the relationship between literature and medicine. How do medical genres of writing – from differential diagnosis to case studies – adopt literary forms? How might literary genres, such as the cancer memoir, inform medical practices? Students will gain familiarity with key debates in the field, including the distinction between the medical model of disability and illness and the social model.
Likely readings: Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, Ann Boyer’s The Undying, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life, Sarah Ruhl’s Smile.
Required work: discussion posts, in-class group presentations, and final project.
ENGL 3390-001—Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. Brownderville. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
In this workshop-intensive course, students will write, revise, and analyze poetry. Discussion will center on the students’ writing and on published work that demonstrates important craft elements. Each student will accumulate and refine ideas for poems in a journal and will present careful first drafts, as well as revisions, of approximately ten to fifteen pages of poetry. In addition, each student will choose a contemporary poet to study intensively and will then conduct a conversation with that poet in the form of text, a podcast, or a video. Readings will include a contemporary poetry anthology such as Gracious (ed. John Poch) and supplementary PDFs provided by the professor. Students will begin to imagine how their own voices might contribute to the exciting, wildly varied world of contemporary poetry.
ENGL 3390-002— Creative Writing Workshop: You Are What You Read
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Condon. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
ENGL 4332-001—Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the 18th Century
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 137. Sudan. 2016: IL, OC
In September of 1666, a few short years after the restoration of Charles II to the throne in England, the Great Fire destroyed four-fifths of the commercial and topographical center of London in three days, and, in the process, destroyed everything that had represented London to Londoners. The social, historical, commercial, cultural, and physical city that had been in place for them was simply gone, and the task of rebuilding, re-imagining, and re-conceptualizing the “city” became the major task of Restoration London. Among the many tasks of social reconstruction Londoners had to face was the changing face of sexual identity: building the modern city on the ruins of the medieval city worked in tandem with building a modern sense of self, including a sexualized and gendered self, on older forms of social and national identity. Charles II, fresh from the French court in Paris, brought with him an entirely different concept of fashion, sense, sensibility, and sexual identity. This course examines the ways in which concepts of sexual—or, perhaps, more accurately, gendered—identities developed as ideologies alongside the architectural and topographical conception of urban life in England. And although the primary urban center was London, these identity positions also had some effect in shaping a sense of nationalism; certainly the concept of a rural identity and the invention of the countryside were contingent on notions of the city. Urbanity, in both senses of the word, is an idea that we will explore in various representations stretching from the late seventeenth-century Restoration drama to the Gothic novel of the late eighteenth century.
ENGL 4332-002—Studies in Early Modern British Literature
TR 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 120. TBD. 2016: IL, OC
ENGL 4343-001—Studies in Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century
TR 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 102. Newman. 2016: IL, OC CC: OC
ENGL 4369-001—Transatlantic Studies III: Writing About Fashion: History, Practice, Power
TTh 2:00-3:20. Umphrey Lee 283. Garelick. 2016: HD, IL, OC CC: OC
COMBINED WITH JOUR 5301-001
This course, taught by an SMU professor who is also a Style columnist for The New York Times, is devoted to understanding fashion journalism as first and foremost writing— writing about art, politics, experience, aesthetics, history. Fashion is an integral part of world events, and fashion journalism consists of a multi-faceted world of responses to it. We shall discuss fashion journalism in literature and as literature,
We begin with a look back at the origins of writing about fashion, presumptions about it, some early fashion magazines (dating back to the seventeenth century), and how fashions were presented visually. Then we move on to major themes in fashion journalism, looking at how writers conceive of stories, shape them, create them, and publish them. through fashion reviews, trend pieces, profiles, blogs, vlogs, memoirs, and more. The second half of the term features a series of highly acclaimed guest speakers (writers for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, and more) who will take your questions, discuss their careers, and talk about current events in fashion.
Authors include Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Diana Vreeland, Lynn Yaeger, Alexa Chung, Lindsay Peoples Wagner, and Garance Dore.
Required work: a fashion journal, in which students chronicle their observations weekly, plus write various types of fashion criticism: review essays, article pitches, personal memoir, description, and political and opinion pieces dealing with fashion.
ENGL 4369-002—Transatlantic Studies III: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 102. Newman. 2016: HD, IL, OC CC: OC
ENGL 6330-001— Early Modern British Literature: The Volume of Poetry, 1000 - 2023
T 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Moss
We tend to think of the unit of poetry as the individual lyric, but often there is much more to be gained from perusing the lyric collection, or volume of poetry: from the landmark miscellenies and anthologies that have transformed the way the English language is read, heard, and understood, to the ambitious new poet’s brash self-presentation or the dead poet’s startling reinvention by friends (or frenemies); from volumes that are as much visual art or visionary prose as verse, to collections that seem uncannily to predict the future of literary culture. Then, of course, there are those slim, compact volumes of verse so wise or so cool that you just want to walk around with one of them in the back pocket of your jeans, a new world or second self forever within your reach.
This course, built around one essential volume of poetry per week, is designed to help graduate students gain confidence when working with (and teaching) poetry, with an overall focus on intratextual comparative close-reading—essentially, building constellations of small texts within the larger text of the volume—along with weekly investigations of each volume's peculiar dynamic. Topics covered will include manuscript culture, formal innovation, collaborative composition, aggressive editing and posthumous publication, translation, religious verse, dialect verse, and the axes of interplay between verse and prose, verse and visual art, racial pride and racism, feminism and misogyny, expressive sexuality and homophobia. We’ll read Anglo-Saxon riddles from a 10th-century manuscript, introduce ourselves to the alternate universe of the early modern court masque, design lesson plans around eighteenth-century children’s poems, build a literary genealogy for the world’s greatest villanelle, fall in love with a red wheelbarrow, and discuss Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems while eating a late lunch. Assignments include weekly discussion board posts, one short and one mid-length paper, a creative exercise, a pedagogical exercise, a research portfolio, and a presentation.
ENGL 6370-001—African American Literature: Critical Pasts and the Future
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Dickson-Carr, D.
This proseminar will focus on critical issues and debates within African American literary and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on works that imagine possible futures for people of the African Diaspora, whether in freedom or in the farthest reaches of space and time. We will place these works in conversation with African American critical theory from various scholars and critics. Our goal will be to examine how speculation about the future, from the visions of abolitionists, Civil Rights activists, Black Nationalists, Afropessimism, Afrofuturism, Womanism, and Queer movements have forced readers to rethink Black identities and critical strategies. We will begin in the mid-19th century and end in the present, but imagine the future. In the process, we will have an opportunity to read literature of various genres, movements, and perspectives.
Likely texts (final list TBD): Napier (ed.), African American Literary Theory; Gates and Burton, Call and Response (excerpts); Studies in American Humor Fall 2022 issue; selected works by Baker, Baldwin, Beatty, Bell, Bennett, Butler, Coates, Douglass, Du Bois, Due, Ellison, Everett, Gates, L. Guerrero, Himes, Hurston, Jacobs, Jemisin, Mat Johnson, Jones, King, Malcolm X, Davis-McElligatt, B. Manning, D. Fuentes Morgan, Morrison, Obama, Rankine, Reed, Schuyler, Thurman, Whitehead, C. Wright, R. Wright, Walker.
Required work: weekly critical responses; an oral presentation; two conference presentation-length papers (8-10 pages apiece); regular and vocal participation.
ENGL 6373-001—Hispanic American Literature
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. González
This proseminar is designed to provide graduate students with an opportunity to critically examine a swath of “Hispanic-American” literature within the larger literary tradition of the United States. The course will emphasize the literary and cultural production of Latinos in the US. While this sounds like a relatively straightforward endeavor, studying Latinx literature is as complex an issue as understanding Latinx identity. Indeed, because Latinx literature has historically arisen out of a searching articulation of this group of Americans, it is necessary to take up issues of history, politics, language, and more when attempting to critically examine this body of literature. We will also emphasize formal issues of our selected readings as we strive to investigate how form and content work with and against one another in Latinx literature. Students should plan to engage in and at times lead productive discussions; hone the skills of writing scholarly book reviews, continue to develop conference presentation skills, and write a final seminar paper aimed at publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Tentative texts: The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature ed. Ilan Stavans; Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez; Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” by Héctor Tobar; Selected readings by Alvarez; Aldama; Anzaldúa; Cisneros; Angie Cruz; Junot Díaz; C. González; J.M. González; The Hernandez Bros; Ada Limón; Islas; P. Moya; Paredes; D.R. Perez; Rechy; Richard T. Rodríguez; R. Saldívar; Justin Torres; and more.
ENGL 6380-001—History of Print Culture
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 138. Wilson
In this class, we will be studying methods of renaissance eloquence including rhetoric and logic through the lens of modern Digital Humanities. If you are interested in learning more about the evolution of the teaching of reading, writing, and literary studies, in gaining the experience of doing hands-on archival work with rare materials, and also acquiring marketable digital and management skills and engaging in some public-facing humanities scholarship, you will have the opportunity to do just that in this course.
We will engage in hands-on archival scholarship, working with a rare book about early modern rhetoric or logic which has not been published in over 200 years, and we will use digital techniques to create an interactive digital edition of that book. Alongside the academic skills of archival scholarship, academic writing, and of course rigourous reading techniques, we will engage in core skills for the modern workplace including project management and team management to bring our digital project to fruition. No previous experience is needed or expected in either digital or archival work, everything you need will be acquired during the course.
We will be visited by several people participating in an international rare book symposium which I am running in June 2024, whose specializations span the histories of rhetoric, print culture, education, theology, and music, and we will have the chance to talk with them directly about their latest work to gain both insights into their erudition and expertise, but also into their academic research processes more broadly.
ENGL 7376-001—Seminar: Special Topics: The Professoriate
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. Garelick.
What is the literary professoriate? What are we training for and what are our goals? How do we navigate this career in this moment? A “meta-seminar” on the state of literary scholarship and the “profession”—its past and how it has evolved; the history of “literary criticism” as a field; its social and political uses; theories about how to improve it and where it is going. This seminar combines theoretical and historical readings with practical, ‘workshop’ style readings, exercises, and assignments. It will also feature guest speakers discussing their own approaches to these overarching, even existential questions. We shall discuss how to interpret and approach the so-called “job market;” what constitutes (and how to craft) public-facing humanities scholarship; and more. Students will be asked to research and write about their own role models of scholarship; to do short essays in different styles; and to do at least two different oral presentations –one “conventionally scholarly” and one in a more “general, educated audience” fashion.
Texts: work by John Guillory (who will be visiting SMU in February and will come to our class); Mary Beard; David Damrosch; Rita Felski; Henry Louis Gates; Neil Hertz; Alice Kaplan; Hermione Lee; Jill Lepore; Ngugi wa Thiong’o; Marianna Torgovnick; and more. Other speakers TBA.
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
1362 |
001 |
Speulative Fiction: Utopias and Dystopias |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
1363 |
701 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
W |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: CA, HC |
CA, CAA |
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry |
Rivera |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
ULEE 233 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
002 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
003H |
Poetry: A Poet-Guided Tour |
Moss |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poetry Since 1970s |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: The Gothic Novel |
Sudan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction: The Forms & Functions of the Stories We Tell |
Hermes |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 105 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: The Forms & Functions of the Stories We Tell |
Hermes |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: Getting to Know Characters |
Ryberg |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Fake Fakes & Surreal Realism |
Hennum |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction: Short Fiction from The New Yorker |
Rivera |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
001 |
Intro to Literary Study: Metamorphosis |
Roudabush |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
CLEM 325 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
002 |
Intro to Literary Study: Modern Enchantments: Literature of Science, Religion, and the Spectacular |
Bax |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 115 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
003 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Absurd |
Fanning |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
004 |
Intro to Literary Study: Being at Home in America |
Dinniene |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
005 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Writer as the Worldmaker |
Mennella |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
001 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice |
Condon |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
002H |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
003 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Fundamentals of Fiction |
Hawkins |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
ULEE 117 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
004 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ACSH 208 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
005 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems |
Lama |
MW |
3:00 |
4:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
006 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
007 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 351 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
008 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
709 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction |
Farhadi |
T |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 116 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Writing for Lit Stud |
Pergadia |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
|
|
3318 |
001 |
Literature as Data |
Wilson |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 115 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
3347 |
001 |
Topics in American Literature in the Age of Revolutions: The Self and Nature in American Literature |
Veneciano |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 157 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3360 |
001 |
Topics in Modern and Contemporary Literature: Modern Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: HD, HFA, OC, W |
LAI, W |
3384 |
001 |
Literature and Medicine |
Pergadia |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: You Are What You Read |
Condon |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the Eighteenth Century |
Sudan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4332 |
002 |
CANCELED |
CANCELED |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4343 | 001 |
British Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century |
Newman |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
2016: IL, OC |
OC |
4369 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies III: Writing About Fashion: History, Practice, Power(cross-listed with JOUR 5301-001) |
Garelick |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ULEE 283 |
2016: HD, IL, OC |
OC |
6330 |
001 |
Early Modern British Literature:The Volume of Poetry, 1000 - 2023 |
Moss |
T | 2:00 | 4:50 | DH 137 |
|
|
6370 |
001 |
African American Literature: Critical Pasts and the Future |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
6373 |
001 |
Hispanic American Literature |
Gonzalez |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
6380 |
001 |
History of Print Culture |
Wilson |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
7376 |
001 |
CANCELED |
CANCELED |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
2315 |
002 |
Intro to Literary Study: Modern Enchantments: Literature of Science, Religion, and the Spectacular |
Bax |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 115 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
1362 |
001 |
Speculative Fiction: Utopias and Dystopias |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poetry Since 1970s |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Writing for Lit Stud |
Pergadia |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
|
|
2311 |
002 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: The Gothic Novel |
Sudan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
003 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Absurd |
Fanning |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
005 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Writer as the Worldmaker |
Mennella |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
3384 |
001 |
Literature and Medicine |
Pergadia |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3360 |
001 |
Topics in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
Caplan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: HD, HFA, OC, W |
LAI, W |
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the Eighteenth Century |
Sudan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Fake Fakes & Surreal Realism |
Hennum |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction: Short Fiction from The New Yorker |
Rivera |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
005 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems |
Lama |
MW |
3:00 |
4:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
001 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice |
Condon |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
6370 |
001 |
African American Literature: Critical Pasts and the Future |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: You Are What You Read |
Condon |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
7376 |
001 |
CANCELED |
CANCELED |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
1363 |
001 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
W |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: CA, HC |
CA, CAA |
2311 |
003H |
Poetry: A Poet-Guided Tour |
Moss |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: The Forms & Functions of the Stories We Tell |
Hermes |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: Getting to Know Characters |
Ryberg |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
001 |
Intro to Literary Study: Metamorphosis |
Roudabush |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
CLEM 325 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
008 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction: The Forms & Functions of the Stories We Tell |
Hermes |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
006 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3318 |
001 |
Literature as Data |
Wilson |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 115 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
4343 |
001 |
British Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century |
Newman |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
2016: IL, OC |
OC |
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2315 |
004 |
Intro to Literary Study: Being at Home in America |
Dinniene |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
003 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Fundamentals of Fiction |
Hawkins |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
ULEE 117 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
007 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 351 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
4332 |
002 |
CANCELED |
CANCELED |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
6380 |
001 |
History of Print Culture |
Wilson |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, Carol |
TR |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
2390 |
004 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
3347 |
001 |
Topics in American Literature in the Age of Revolutions: The Self and Nature in American Literature |
Veneciano |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
2016: IL, OC |
OC |
4369 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies III: Writing About Fashion: History, Practice, Power(cross-listed with JOUR 5301-001) |
Garelick |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ULEE 283 |
2016: HD, IL, OC |
OC |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry |
Rivera |
TR |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
6330 |
001 |
Early Modern British Literature:The Volume of Poetry, 1000 - 2023 |
Moss |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
2390 |
009 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction |
Farhadi |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
2390 |
002H |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
R |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
6373 |
001 |
Hispanic American Literature |
Gonzalez |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|