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Department of English and Literary Arts
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS—Spring 2020
*Fulfillment of DU and Departmental requirements is listed after each description. All English
courses, except those used to fulfill DU Common Curriculum requirements, can also count for
English Elective credit. Please note, no more than 12 credit hours of 1000-level coursework--
including ENGL 1010 and any transfer credit--can count towards our major requirements.
ASEM 2403
CRN 5370
Versions of Egypt
Brian Kiteley
Tuesday 4-7:50 PM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will study what led up and what has followed the recent
Egyptian Revolutions. We will read Alifa Rifaat’s Distant View of the Minaret, Amitav Ghosh’s
In an Antique Land, Alaa al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, Wael Ghonim’s Revolution 2.0,
and excerpts of Peter Hessler’s The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution. Students
will write both critical and creative essays for this seminar.
Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Advanced Seminar. ASEM 2422
CRN 3871
Textual Bodies: Discourse and the Corporeal in American Culture
Tayana Hardin
Tuesday, Thursday 2-3:50 PM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course explores how bodies acquire meanings, and how those
meanings are created, represented, disseminated, or contested through discursive and embodied
means. More specifically, this seminar equally privileges the book and the body as sites that, when
studied jointly, invite thoughtful consideration of power and privilege, and the discursive and
material consequences of race and gender and their intersections with other categories of social
identity. Course practices include close readings of literary, philosophical, and visual texts by
Sandra Cisneros, Judith Butler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others; creative and critical writing
exercises; robust in-class participation; and a final class project.
Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Advanced Seminar. ENGL 1000 Section 1
CRN 1027
Introduction to Creative Writing
Evelyn Hampton
Monday, Wednesday 8-9:50 AM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this reading--and writing--intensive course, we’ll explore different
genres of creative writing and consider different modes of creativity. Assigned readings and
writing prompts will ask students to consider how they understand and interpret texts, and whether
and how they then act in the world on their interpretations. Through this process, students will
engage with works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and hybrid texts and gain a better understanding
of creativity as a socially engaged process.
**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or
advanced creative writing courses.
Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.
ENGL 1000 Section 2
CRN 1479
Introduction to Creative Writing
Cassandra Eddington
Tuesday, Thursday 8-9:50 AM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Basic techniques of fiction and poetry.
**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or
advanced creative writing courses.
Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.
ENGL 1000 Section 3
CRN 5384
Introduction to Creative Writing
Justin Wymer
Wednesday, Friday 12-1:50 PM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Creative writing is, at its core, a core-emptying enterprise: we write to
empty ourselves of emotion, story, anecdote, inspiration, frustration, anxiety, daydream, and
nightmare. We write to express ourselves in manners more intangible than those that purely
academic writing requires. In this class, we will be sure to fill our wellsprings so that they do not
run by drinking in the language particular to prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction as we play, take
risks, and challenge and question ourselves. Most important, we will practice experimenting with
words and forms as we come to understand the magical things we create.
In this generative-writing course, student scholars will be introduced to a variety of genres of
creative writing to whet their literary appetites and begin developing their personal sensibility
about language. They will learn various prompts, techniques, and jumping-off points to help them
generate writing. They will also learn revision techniques in workshop. The course will culminate
in a final portfolio and classroom exhibition of revised student work.
**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or
advanced creative writing courses.
Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.
ENGL 1000 Section 4
CRN 1973
Introduction to Creative Writing
Blake Guffey
Monday, Wednesday 10-11:50 AM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this introductory creative writing class we will read and write across
a wide variety of works – poetry, the novel, short story, theater, and film – with an eye toward how
form and content work together to manifest the creative impulse. Students will be directed through
the quarter with multiple creative writing exercises and participate in both small group and full
class workshops of your original writing.
**Prerequisite: This course (or equivalent) is required before enrolling in intermediate or
advanced creative writing courses.
Fulfills DU major curriculum requirement: Introduction to creative writing.
ENGL 1006 Section 1
CRN 3398
Art of Fiction
Elijah Null
Tuesday, Thursday 8-9:50 AM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine how American authors writing in the 1940s,
50s, and 60s engage with and modify continental existentialist ideas in their writing. We will look
at works by writers such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison,
Walker Percy, and others.
Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: English elective.
ENGL 1007 Section 1
CRN 1974
Art of Poetry
Taylor Wesley
Tuesday, Thursday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will introduce us to strategies for reading, analyzing, and
discussing poetry.
Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: English elective.
ENGL 1200 Section 1
CRN 3401
International Short Fiction
Ben Caldwell
Wednesday, Friday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Here in Denver, mountains might represent day hikes and weekend
ski trips, but approximately one-eighth of the global population calls a mountain region home.
Across the world, mountain communities are treated as both isolated backwaters and pockets of
thriving rural diversity and richness. In this class, we will explore the tensions between these two
views of mountain communities by looking at fiction from five countries known for their
mountainous geography: China, Pakistan, Morocco, Haiti, and Chile. We will also discuss the
economic and cultural difficulties facing mountain communities, and occasionally turn our eyes to
mountains much closer to home by comparing the realities of international mountain life with
communities in the Rockies and Appalachians. This class is recommended to students planning on
studying abroad.
Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: English elective.
ENGL 2003 Section 1
CRN 2241
Creative Writing-Poetry
Sarah Sheiner
Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this class, we will talk about what we write, why we write it, and
who we are writing it for. We will do this through the reading and discussion of books that are
doing the work of making art while also trying to speak to/affect the public sphere. These
discussions will inform the art we make in class (from poems to collages) and the feedback we
give in workshops. Enrollment in this class means that you are ready to be receptive and to speak
with empathy toward all people, perspectives, and texts introduced and discussed.
**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing required for enrollment.
Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: Intermediate creative writing.
ENGL 2013 Section 1
CRN 2242
Creative Writing-Fiction
Kelly Krumrie
Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will investigate how (and perhaps why) writers tell stories
in order to practice (and experiment) writing our own. We will read critically to tease out elements
of fictional craft (e.g., character, setting, plot, dialogue, etc.). We will also read widely, from a
range of primarily contemporary writers working in different forms, including work by Carmen
Maria Machado, Steven Dunn, Ho Sok Fong, Ted Chiang, Joy Williams, and others. Alongside
reading and discussion, students will write short creative and critical responses. In the second half
of the term, students will workshop and revise their own stories. The class will allow writers to
practice writing short fiction while reflecting on how (and again perhaps why) a story can be told.
**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing required for enrollment.
Fulfills English major curriculum requirement: Intermediate creative writing.
ENGL 2021 Section 1
CRN 5710
Business Technical Writing
Kelly Krumrie
Tuesday, Thursday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, students will learn and practice forms of writing used
in professional environments, both individual and collaborative, such as PowerPoint presentations,
memos, proposals, executive summaries, and job application materials. We will focus on how to
craft information in an efficient, organized, and logical manner from brainstorming and problem-
solving to final copy. As this is a cross-disciplinary topic, students will be encouraged to tailor
course assignments to their fields of study and interests so that the work is both relevant and
practical. Students will come away from the course with tools and techniques to improve their
professional writing as well as a cover letter and résumé.
Fulfills English major requirement: does not count towards major credit.
ENGL 2035 Section 1
CRN 5386
History of Genre-Poetry
Lindsay Turner
Tuesday, Thursday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: When we think of famous English-language forms in poetry, we think
most often of the forms that have been associated with certain “big-name” authors: Dante’s terza
rima, Petrarch and Shakespeare’s sonnets, Spenser’s eponymous stanzas, Milton’s blank verse,
W.B. Yeats’s ottava rima, Agha Shahid Ali’s ghazal. Yet there’s a form at the very center of poetry
in English that is associated not with a particular author but, at its origin, with anonymity, with the
absence of authorship: the ballad. (Indeed, the ballad is the source of the meter that underpins
much of our poetry, not to mention our songs: ballad meter, so common that it is called common
meter.) In ballad versions from the traditional to the literary, from early specimens to innovative
forms produced by contemporary poets, we’ll think together about what this basis in anonymity
permits the ballad. We’ll consider what it means for poetry to be rooted in “folk” traditions, and
what powers this proximity to the “people” lets the poem do. We’ll use the ballad as a focus to
think about tradition and authorship, poetry and the news, borders, identity and political relevance.
Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; English Elective (for majors entering the
program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 2221 Section 1
CRN 3019
Shakespeare Seminar
R.D. Perry
Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: The idea of a “problem play” has a long history in Shakespeare
criticism, but it does not really have a stable meaning. Plays become “problems” for a variety of
different reasons: some are hard to categorize into established genres like tragedy or comedy, some
cover material that modern audiences find culturally problematic, some seem to be collaborations
with other writers, and some just seem poorly done. This class is devoted to these unusual—and
often unloved—works of Shakespeare, many of which are seldom studied, and even more
seldomly performed. Some of these plays, however, represent Shakespeare’s highest
achievements; so, for every Timon of Athens or Pericles, Prince of Tyre we will also read Othello
or The Tempest. This class should leave you wondering whether Shakespeare is at his most
interesting when he is addressing this or that “problem.”
Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; British literature, before 1789 (for majors
entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 2300 Section 1
CRN 5472
English Literature III
Nichol Weizenbeck
Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course completes the final third of the English Literature Survey.
We will examine poetry and prose fiction from 1789 to 1945. The intent of this course is to trace
the arc of British authors beginning with the Romantic period, moving to the Victorian period, and
ending with the Modern period and enable a general understanding of the literary movements and
literary works of the differing periods, as well as the historical, political, social, and cultural
contexts surrounding the texts. To enhance our understanding of the historical and cultural context
regarding the literature of the time, both major and minor works will be explored.
Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; British literature, after 1789 (for majors
entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 2544 Section 1
CRN 3403
Globalization and Cultural Texts
Eric Gould
Monday, Wednesday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course combines fiction and film about India/Indian Diaspora,
South Africa, and Japan with readings in sociological and other theories of globalization. We focus
on the impact of globalization on culture—an important and ongoing effect even in this age of
economic deglobalization. We examine how this shapes postcolonial identity, the morally
ambiguous (and at times negative) effects of westernization and modernization, and the way
cultural hybridity complicates nationalism and internationalism.
Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Analytical Inquiry: Society; Honors, Intercultural
Global Studies, FOLA substitution. English major requirement: Core studies; Course is primarily
for University Honors. Others by permission of instructor.
ENGL 2709 Section 1
CRN 5473
Topics: The Picturesque
Nichol Weizenbeck
Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course seeks to examine the genre of the English Picaresque
from Geoffrey Chaucer to Henry Fielding. Specifically, we will explore the early origins and their
influence on the rise of the picaresque novel in the eighteenth century. Eighteenth-century England
witnessed the rise and development of the novel, which would become the dominant and privileged
genre of the Victorian era. We will scrutinize the Picaresque and its impact on Realism and the
Realist novel. From its humble and uncertain birth to the beginning of its rise into “high culture,”
we will read authors who tremendously affected the development of the English novel. The intent
of this course is to trace the arc of English interest in the rogue figure and the authors who
manipulated her/him, as well as the historical, political, social, and cultural contexts surrounding
the texts. Lastly, we will question the resilience and longevity of the both the picara/picaroon and
the Picaresque.
Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; British literature, after 1789 (for majors
entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 2709 Section 2
CRN 5482
Topics in English: Reading Nature through American Poems
Bin Ramke
Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: The making of poems is a continuing feature of all cultures, and
curiosity about the world in which those poems is made is necessary to the making and the reading
of poems. Curiosity and poetry are also at this moment in history necessary if we are to “save” that
world. This course will involve reading a large number of individual poems by a wide range of
individuals, but what all the readings will have in common are questions—what is the substance
of the world we find ourselves in, and what is my relationship to it? Poems are made of words, and
words are made of the world, as are human and other animals, and their plant companions.
All members of the class will need to read and think about the poems as each is assigned, and to
be willing to discuss these readings with each other, but they will also have to think about their
own individual connections to the “art” of the poem, not just the “content,” and their connections
to the living world to which the poems point. Eventually, each individual will have to formulate
ideas in the form of an essay (which may also involve pictures, sounds, objects) about their own
connections to the physical word, and how poetry helps illuminate such connections. We will
clarify this assignment as the class proceeds. There will also be brief quizzes and short writing
assignments throughout. Selected course texts will include: Elizabeth Alexander Dungy’s Black
Nature, Donald Revell’s White Campion, and Ann Fisher Worth’s The Ecopoetry Anthology.
Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; American literature after 1900 (for majors
entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 2742 Section 1
CRN 5483
Modern Hebrew Literature in Translation: Against All Odds
Adam Rovner
Tuesday, Thursday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course offers a survey of significant works of modern Hebrew
literary fiction by major authors in translation covering the twentieth to early twenty-first centuries.
In addition, we will discuss the translation of Hebrew. To flesh out the historical context, a number
of documents, essays, excerpts may also be provided during the course of the quarter. Students
will consider how the development of Hebrew literature has contributed to the formation of
contemporary Israeli identity, and how the conflicts that define the turbulent history of Israel are
treated in works of prose fiction by canonical authors. The selection of diverse literary materials
exposes students to the social, political, and historical changes wrought by the rise of modern day
Israel. Through lectures, close-reading, and exercises, students will gain an appreciation for some
of the fundamental tensions that define Hebrew literature and Israeli culture: (1) collective vs.
individual identity, (2) Jewish particularism vs. universalism, (3) the concept of Diaspora vs. Zion.
Our study aims to reveal the historical and ideological context of these tensions to offer a nuanced
perspective on an area of the world in conflict. Readings are roughly chronological. Students will
be coached on various interpretive strategies, the intent of which is to make their time spent reading
more valuable. While helpful, no knowledge of Hebrew, Jewish tradition, or Israeli history is
necessary.
Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies with International literature attribute--
diversity/distribution; International literature, (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn
2017).
ENGL 2751 Section 1
CRN 5747
American Literature Survey II
Tayana Hardin
Tuesday, Thursday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course focuses on American literature and culture from the mid-
19th century through the early-20th century. Our examination is bracketed on one end by the
upheaval of the Civil War, and, on the other end, by the impact and consequences of interwar
industrialism. This time period demanded new considerations of what it meant to be an
“American,” who had rights to that honorific, and by what means these rights were acquired. As
we will see through our examination of novels, short stories, poetry, and criticism by this period’s
canonical and marginalized writers, literature writ large served as a site to interrogate, censure,
and even praise the ever-shifting terrain of American identity.
Fulfills English major requirement: Core studies; American lit., after 1900 (for majors entering
the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 3003 Section 1
CRN 5475
Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry
Bin Ramke
Monday, Wednesday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Usually class meetings will consist of a discussion period followed by
in-class writing and/or presentations of work by class members. This seminar will involve intense
reflective reading and writing. Some work is to be turned in during or shortly after class (in-class
writing), other work to be turned in every other week: a poem by you, possibly a rewrite; or a
page of comment on work from the texts (or elsewhere, with a justification for your choice); or a
1 page commentary on the previous week’s class discussion, including student poems. The class
sessions will include extra-literary contexts and sources (videos, images of various sorts, non-
literary books...) as an aid to our thinking (about poems but about other things, too).
I am asking that you keep a journal dedicated to this writing seminar, in whatever form you choose.
During the term I ask that you make at least one appointment with me to discuss writing. At the
end of the term you will need to turn in a portfolio of your own work (edited and possibly rewritten)
plus careful and generous discussion of your classmate’s work.
**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing, and 8 credits of intermediate creative
writing required for enrollment.
Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced creative writing
ENGL 3003 Section 2
CRN 5476
Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry
Graham Foust
Tuesday, Friday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In addition to composing several of their own poems and assembling
a final, revised portfolio to be turned in at the end of the quarter, students will read and discuss one
book on the making of poems (James Longenbach’s How Poems Get Made), five books of
contemporary North American poetry (Susan Howe’s Debths, Sandra Lim’s The Wilderness,
Wayne Miller’s Post-, Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ The Ground, and Shannon Tharp’s Vertigo in
Spring), and one book of contemporary British poetry (Oli Hazzard’s Blotter). Several non-
contemporary poems will be read and discussed as well.
**Prerequisite: 4 credits introductory creative writing, and 8 credits of intermediate creative
writing required for enrollment.
Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced creative writing
ENGL 3402 Section 1
CRN 5477
Early Romantics: Early Romantic Literature and the Invention of Poetic Experiment
Rachel Feder
Monday 12-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we’ll explore what it might mean to call poetry
“experimental” and work to historicize this category. In the service of this goal, we will explore
the work of Romantic poets including William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and John Clare. Pairing Romantic-era texts with very recent poetry will allow us to
bring early Romantic innovations into conversation with the experiments of our own literary-
historical moment.
Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies; British literature, after 1789 (for majors
entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 3731 Section 1
CRN 5603
Topics in English: Theory and Practice of Creative Writing
Catherine Noske
Tuesday, Thursday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course combines the consideration of critical discourses with
creative writing workshopping to interrogate the ways literary theory and creative practice are
intertwined. It will move through a series of theoretical contexts related to contemporary writing
practice. Our focus across the whole will be on the production of literary fiction and poetry, and
the complex cultural and social discourses in which we inherently involve ourselves when
producing such writing. In class, we will move across three basic activities: discussing theoretical
approaches offered within literary studies; critiquing published literary texts; and engaging in
creative exercises designed to support the refinement of fiction and poetry written for or during
the workshop.
Fulfills DU Common Curriculum requirement: Advanced creative writing
ENGL 3732 Section 1
CRN 3405
Topics in English: The African Imagination
Maik Nwosu
Friday 12-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Focusing mainly on Africa, this course explores and connects aspects
of the African imagination. These aspects include oral performances, thought systems, literature,
art, cinema, and critical discourses in different eras and in various places. Studied together, these
existential and intellectual signposts provide an expanded insight into African aesthetics from a
continental and an interdisciplinary perspective.
Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies with International literature attribute--
diversity/distribution; International literature, (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn
2017).
ENGL 3733 Section 1
CRN 3021
Topics in English: Postmodern Fiction
Eric Gould
Tuesday, Thursday 2-31:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In the years following the Second World War until today, literary
fiction has been on a steady course of wildly exhilarating experimentation, with dramatic changes
in form and content and some entertaining and socially relevant story-telling. This course will
focus on important examples of this in American short fiction, along with three powerful
international novels: Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know, Juan Rulfo’s Pedro
Paramo, and Amos Oz’s Judas.
Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies with International literature attribute--
diversity/distribution; International literature, (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn
2017).
ENGL 3733 Section 2
CRN 5478
Topics in English: Posthumanism
Billy J. Stratton
Monday, Wednesday 10-11:50 AM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be
bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely
will not stop . . . ever, until you are dead!
--Kyle Reese, The Terminator, 1984
I am the astro-creep,
a demolition style,
hell American freak, yeah
I am the crawling dead,
a phantom in a box,
shadow in your head
. . .
More human than human
--White Zombie, 2000
Emerging in the latest stage of postmodernist literature and philosophy as advanced by writers,
critics, and philosophers such as Philip K. Dick, N. Katherine Hayles, and Donna Harraway,
posthumanism engages with pressing questions in the wake of advances in robotics, computer
technology and artificial intelligence, along with genetic modification, transgenic art, and
astrobiology. With the term having reference to both 'beyond' or 'after' the human, posthumanist
discourse has roots as far back as the futurist movement of the early twentieth century, Karel
Čapek's, 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti), and back to Julien Offray de La
Mettrie's 1747 philosophical treatise, L'homme Machine (Man a Machine). More recently,
considerations of the ethical and moral implications of the application of emerging technologies
in human society in manufacturing, surveillance, and warfare, as well as in culture, sexuality, and
spirituality have become compelling topics of recent literary and philosophical discourse. And
while advances in computing and technology may offer the promise of effective solutions to some
of our world's most pressing challenges, in many cases the thoughts on imagined impacts focus on
catastrophic, if not, apocalyptic scenarios. These sorts of nightmarish visions are depicted in stories
and novels such as Ray Bradbury's "The Long Years," Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (with the 2004 film
adaptation), Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the related Bladerunner
franchise, to other Sci-Fi films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Robocop, The
Matrix, Her, Ex Machina, and Chappie. This course will explore a range of artistic approaches and
reactions inspired by relevant issues through a selection of texts and films (both canonical and
genre) read through an array of interdisciplinary perspectives. Finally, our investigations will seek
to address questions about the nature of emotion, life, and thought in relation to technology and
the future of our shared existence.
Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies; American literature after 1900, Literary
Theory (for majors entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 3733 Section 3
CRN 5479
Topics in English: Latinx Sexuality and Textuality
Kristy Ulibarri
Tuesday, Thursday 2-3:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will explore literary and cultural texts that question and
challenge concepts of gender and sexuality. We will begin by scrutinizing how gender roles and
expectations are constructed, disciplined, and sold. Then we will turn to textual productions of the
body and sexuality to examine pleasure/desire, subject-object dynamics, and shapeshifting. We
will supplement our literary and cultural texts with articles/excerpts from important gender and
sexuality theory from a broad range of critics and scholars. We will pay particular attention to texts
and theories that intersect the questions of gender and sexuality with questions of race, ethnicity,
and marginalized subjectivities.
Fulfills English major requirement: Advanced studies with Ethnic literature attribute--
diversity/distribution; American literature after 1900, Ethnic literature, Literary Theory (for
majors entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 3900 Section 1
CRN 3064
Senior Seminar: Moby Dick
Clark Davis
Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will read, completely and carefully, Herman
Melville’s great novel. Primary attention will always be on the text itself, but we will also sample
and discuss some of Melville’s stronger literary influences (Shakespeare, Robert Burton, Owen
Chase, others) to help get a sense of how the text was constructed and how it operates in its mid-
19th century context.
Fulfills English major requirement: Senior seminar; American literature before 1900 (for majors
entering the program prior to Autumn 2017).
ENGL 4150 Section 1
CRN 4205
Special Topics in Medieval Lit
Donna Beth Ellard
Monday, Wednesday 12-1:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this experimental class, we will read medieval poetry, grammatical
texts, and scientific literature in order to consider writing as a field upon which bird-human
relationships manifest in the early middle ages, are symptomized in the early modern period, and
unconsciously “worked out” in the disciplinary practices of contemporary arts and sciences.
We will begin with a robust discussion about the rise of the quill pen as the primary writing
technology in early medieval Britain. We will read scientific literature that discusses the long-term
impacts (motor, cognitive, and metaphorical) of prolonged tool use on human perceptions of their
bodies and their immediate environments; and we will read early medieval poems, metrical
treatises, and grammatical texts that evidence the tremendous impact (both explicit and unthought)
of the quill on scribes and poets. We will couple these discussions about quills and the humans
who use them with lots of in-class and out-of-class exercises, in which students learn how to write
with a quill and thereby think more carefully about our reading materials.
While the first half of the course focuses on quills as tools, the second half of class tacks
in a different direction, entering into a conversation about the evolutionary relationship between
birds and humans as it unfolds in scientific literature. It considers bird-human comparative
anatomy as it is first introduced by Pierre Belon in his 1555 L’Historie de la Nature des Oiseaux
and the pre- Linnean bird taxonomies of Volker Coiter in Gabriele Falloppio’s 1575 De Partibus
Similaribus Humain Corporis. Then we will fast forward to Richard Owen’s 1863 discussion of
the Archaeopteryx; Charles Darwin’s 1871 Descent of Man; biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch’s oeuvre
on birds, humans, and evolution; and the explosive sub-field of evolutionary linguistics, bird-
human comparative anatomy, and bird experimentation. As we think about what the sciences have
to say about birds (and how they organize bird bodies), we will track changes in quill use and
writing technology; and we will reconsider the shared figures of bird, poet, and writing in poetic
environments. Underwriting all of these readings and in-class conversations is the key fact that,
for over a millennium, almost all of the writings we read in this seminar—whether they are classed
as poetic, grammatical, or scientific—have been penned with a bird’s feather. For 1000 years, we
have literally been writing with birds as we write about them.
Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills Period Requirement pre 1700
ENGL 4650 Section 1
CRN 3022
Special Topics: 20th Cent Lit
Aleksandr Prigozhin
Wednesday 4-7:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine a range of fiction and social, political, and
literary theory dedicated to the problem of the many in literature and politics. By “common life,”
I mean the intractable problem of collective coexistence indicated by the question, “how we are to
live together?” The question has always been a matter of struggle;
but it became especially pressing for literature in the early 20th century, once mandatory public
education made nearly everyone in Great Britain a reader. Those who had been ignored for
centuries could no longer be left out of account. Literature sought and created new imaginative
resources for understanding the consequences of this fundamental shift.
Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills Period Requirement: 20th-21th Centuries
ENGL 4660 Section 1
CRN 5481
The Black Imagination
Maik Nwosu
Monday 4-7:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Focusing mainly on Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas
(especially the USA and the Caribbean/Latin America), this course explores and connects aspects
of the black imagination. These aspects include oral performances, thought systems, literature, art,
cinema, and critical discourses in different eras and in various places. Studied together, these
existential and intellectual signposts provide an expanded insight into black (African and African
diasporic) aesthetics from an intercontinental and an interdisciplinary perspective.
Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills 20th-21st century Period Requirement
ENGL 4702 Section 1
CRN 3408
Topics in English: Virginia Woolf and the Victorians
Eleanor McNees
Thursday 4-7:50 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: Though critics have tended to view Woolf as a thorough modernist,
they forget how much she learned from her father-tutor Leslie Stephen, a major Victorian editor
and founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. This class redresses that imbalance by
reading the primary Victorian novelists about whom both Stephen and Woolf wrote: Charlotte
Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. In addition to specific novels by these
Victorian authors, we will read Stephen’s and Woolf’s essays on them and investigate theories of
intertextual influence. We’ll conclude with Mrs. Dalloway and The Years, two of Woolf’s novels
that contrast the Victorian and Modern worlds and demonstrate the power of an inherited history.
Fulfills DU English major requirement: Fulfills either 1700-1900 or the 20th – 21st century period
requirement depending on the focus of students’ reports and final seminar papers.