School of Humanities
English Undergraduate Course Descriptions
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Fall 2025
**This is not a complete list of course offerings. Please use the Course Catalog in SOAR for accurate advising.**
ENG 221
Fiction Writing I
M/W 1:00 – 2:15 PM
TBA
In this class, you will write your own original fiction. Class sessions will be organized
around craft topics, which will include assigned outside readings and writing exercises.
You will also write one short story or novel chapter. Craft topics will include: character,
dialogue, setting, structure, style, revision, and more.
ENG 222
Poetry Writing I
T/TH 1:00 – 2:15 PM
Dr. Michael Aderibigbe
English 222/322/422 will encourage you to write and workshop your own poems. You will
explore many forms and themes. In addition, you will read and discuss poems by writers
across different generations. You will also participate in several other writing activities.
ENG 223
Creative Writing (Mixed Genre)
T/TH 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Michael Aderibigbe
ENG 223 will introduce you to the fundamentals of creative writing. You will read
a wide range of literary works (poetry and prose—literary fiction and personal essays)
by poets and writers from different generations. In addition to this, you will submit
new poems and stories. Your peers and I will provide honest and respectful feedback
on your work. You will then revise the submitted pieces based on our class discussions.
You will also participate in several other writing activities.
ENG 223
Creative Writing (Mixed Genre)
T/TH 4:00 – 5:15 PM
Dr. Olivia Clare Friedman
In this course, you will write your own original fiction and poetry. Class sessions
will be organized around craft topics, which will include assigned readings and writing
exercises. We’ll begin with fiction. Craft topics will include: character, dialogue,
setting, structure, revision, and more. For poetry, craft topics will include: the
line, sound, imagery, and more.
Recommended Text:
Imaginative Writing, Janet Burroway
Short stories and poems to be distributed in class
ENG 301
Advanced Grammar
T/TH 8:00 – 9:15 AM
Mrs. Amy Carey
A study of the structures, origins, power, and rhetorical nature of language and the
effects of different approaches to grammar. This course is designed for both English
and English Education students and will fulfill the language elective requirement
for licensure students. Students will analyze standard and rhetorical features of
English language and grammar, also considering how history, culture, and systems of
power have traditionally defined grammatical standards and how those linguistic standards
are continually changing and adapting. Participants will gain confidence in their
own mastery of advanced English grammar; they will also deepen their ability to analyze
its rhetorical effects and communicate that analysis to others through Field Notes
assignments and a final research project. This course will use a rhetorical framework
for studying both prescriptive and descriptive grammar structures and apply that framework
to students’ own writing.
This course counts towards the optional English major concentration in Professional
Writing and Public Discourse.
ENG 301
Advanced Grammar
T/TH 1:00 – 2:15 PM
Dr. Rebecca Powell
**GULF PARK CAMPUS**
This course counts towards the optional English major concentration in Professional
Writing and Public Discourse.
ENG 311
Survey of Contemporary Literature
T/TH 9:30 – 10:45 am
Dr. Emily Stanback
Illness and disability memoirs have become incredibly popular in recent decades, offering
a first-hand perspective experiences of everything from depression to autism to cancer
to paralysis. In When Breath Becomes Air, for example, neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi
describes the shift from doctor to patient after his diagnosis with stage IV cancer
in his late 30s. In Girl, Interrupted, Susannah Kaysen uses medical documents and
reconstructed memory to scrutinize her time in McLean Institution and her diagnosis,
at 18 years of age, of borderline personality disorder.
Why have these authors—and countless others—turned to the written word to articulate
their embodied experiences? Why have countless readers returned again and again to
memoirs such as these? Why has this genre become so popular at this particular moment
in literary history?
ENG 311/489
Survey of Contemporary Literature
W 6:00 – 9:00 PM
Dr. Damon Franke
**GULF PARK CAMPUS**
This course will explore the life, music, literary writings, and cultural context
of Bob Dylan, a recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The course will examine
this iconic figure and his evolution of self from the folk era seen in the recent
film A Complete Unknown through his rock stardom in the 1960s to the songwriter’s
continued reinvention of American popular music. We will look not only at Dylan's
albums, but at Dylan’s social, historical, and artistic influences, including the
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the Bible, modernism, contemporary cinema, and Delta Blues.
Students will watch films portraying Dylan's career and some starring him, and we
will discuss his topical songs, concert performances, covers of his songs and his
folk, rock, Christian, and more recent albums. The ENG 489 section satisfies the
400-level elective requirement for the English major (and for minors). The ENG 311
section of the course satisfies the new "Contemporary Literature" requirement for
the major and similar requirements for the minor, but is not writing intensive.
ENG 321/421
Fiction Writing II & III
M/W 9:30 – 10:45 AM
Dr. Joshua Bernstein
In this workshop, we’ll practice writing new fiction. We’ll also read and discuss
stories from classmates and outside authors, hone our skills at giving feedback, and
develop our craft as fiction writers, especially with characterization, dialogue,
pacing, plot, description, perspective, and tone. Both short stories and novel excerpts
are welcome. Ours is a supportive space, and students of all backgrounds, majors,
and abilities are welcome, provided that they’ve satisfied the prerequisite.
We’ll read and discuss one novel, Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes (1911), which
is about a troubled college student and, despite being over a century old, seems especially
apt for our times. Other, shorter readings will be made available to you on Canvas.
If we have time, and weather-permitting, we may also take excursions as a class to
write outside.
ENG 322/422
Poetry Writing II & III
T/TH 1:00 – 2:15 PM
Dr. Michael Aderibigbe
English 222/322/422 will encourage you to write and workshop your own poems. You will
explore many forms and themes. In addition, you will read and discuss poems by writers
across different generations. You will also participate in several other writing activities.
ENG 332
Advanced Composition
T/TH 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Jennifer Brewington
From the quiet calm of the sunrise to the majestic chaos of Africa’s great migration,
the natural world is full of wonder. We are uniquely positioned to address conservation
and environmental concerns with innovative techniques and technologies. Yet, with
the noisy buzz of modern life, we often neglect to nurture a personal connection with
nature that leads to meaningful action. Using An Immense World by Ed Yong as our primary
reading, we will build research projects that examine the ways in which re-connecting
with our common natural heritage creates a healthier and happier society. This course
seeks to collaborate with like-minded researchers to explore connections with nature
and to discover the ways in which we can build that connection to adapt and evolve
economic, political, and social systems. Our class will focus on a variety of research
methods and projects that emphasize writing, research, and documentation skills needed
for joining professional and scholarly/academic conversations.
This course counts towards the optional English major concentration in Professional
Writing and Public Discourse.
ENG 340
Analysis of Literature
T/TH 9:30 – 10:45 AM
Dr. Alexandra Valint
The primary goal of this course is to make you more confident, adept, and sophisticated
readers of literature and writers of literary analysis. Our core pieces of literature
will be two classic gothic Victorian texts: Christina Rossetti's poem "Goblin Market"
and Bram Stoker's vampire novel Dracula. This course gives you critical tools—literary
terms, theoretical approaches, and close reading—to enrich and strengthen your engagement
with literature. A series of writing assignments, in addition to in-depth discussions
of the writing and research processes, will enable you to strongly articulate and
support an argument about one of our core texts in a culminating research paper.
ENG 340
Analysis of Literature
M/W 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Eric Tribunella
ENG 340 is designed to introduce or review the methods of research in literary studies,
the conventions of scholarly conversations about literary works, the critical approaches
to literary analysis, and the components and mechanics of literary-critical essays.
In this section, we will study several foundational critical approaches to literature
and read a small selection of literary works on which to practice analysis, such as
Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now, Marcus Sedgwick’s Midwinterblood, and M.T. Anderson’s
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing.
ENG 340
Analysis of Literature
M/W 4:00 – 5:15 PM
Dr. Ery Shin
This course is an introduction to the discipline of literary criticism. The art of
reading can be both a leisurely pastime and a venerated practice that hones the individual’s
ability to appreciate a text’s nuances in many different situations. Much of reality
can, indeed, be likened to a text to begin with: the subtexts underlying our everyday
conversations, the value judgments inculcated by particular words and turns of phrase,
the language informing our legal and penal codes, and the miscommunications accrued
through verbal ambiguities. To read well is to understand such subtleties and master
the ability to potentially rewrite them.
ENG 340
Analysis of Literature
M/W 4:00 – 5:15 PM
Dr. Damon Franke
**GULF PARK CAMPUS**
ENG 350
British Literature I
T/TH 1:00 – 2:15 PM
TBA
ENG 350
British Literature I
M 6:00 – 9:00 PM
Dr. Damon Franke
**GULF PARK CAMPUS***
ENG 370
American Literature I
T/TH 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Luis Iglesias
Survey of American Literature I surveys the development of American literature from
roughly 1600-1865, charting the emergence of a national literary and cultural consciousness.
The works read move from the exploration literature of John Smith to the expression
of American experience in the works of the American Renaissance writers up to the
poetic and literary effects of the Civil War. Toward that end, the course will survey
the broad range of literary forms used by Anglo-American and national writers: political
tract, sermon, autobiography, travel writing, belles lettres, poetry, short story,
and the novel.
Assigned Texts:
Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volumes A & B, 10th Edition
ENG 370
American Literature I
M/W 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Whitney Martin
**GULF PARK CAMPUS**
ENG 400
Senior Capstone
M/W 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Craig Carey
Poe & Popular Culture
Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe. Quoth the Raven, “Edgar Allan Poe.” “Had a thousand
lives hung upon the movement of a limb or the utterance of a syllable,” we could neither
stir nor speak a name whose echo resonates with so many mysteries, horrors, and ghosts.
Its mere utterance is enough to set our minds raving into phantasms of madness and
melancholy, shadowy chambers and crypts, sublime visions of beauty and terror, and
mysteries of reason and irrationality. Who hasn’t trembled in response to an image,
memory, sound, metaphor, allusion, trope, or nightmare inspired by Poe and the influence
he’s cast over popular culture for more than a century? Poe haunts popular culture
everywhere and evermore, like a raven never flitting, still sitting on the pallid
bust of our dreams and cultural imaginary.
This seminar explores Poe’s enduring presence in popular culture through his own writings,
his influence on literature, film, and comics, and the many adaptations and reinventions
of his work. We will trace how Poe’s legacy continues to shape the gothic imagination,
modern horror, satire, detective fiction, and other genres. In addition to reading
Poe, we’ll read selections by Charles Baudelaire, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft,
Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates, along with adaptations and re-imaginings of
Poe’s canon including Mat Johnson’s Pym: A Novel (2012), T. Kingfisher’s What Moves
the Dead (2022), Gareth Hinds’ graphic novel adaption of Poe (2017), Poe-inspired
tales by horror manga artist Junji Ito, and screen adaptations including The Raven
(2012), The Pale Blue Eye (2022), and Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher
(2023). As a senior capstone, course requirements will include consistent participation,
a presentation, short writing assignments, and a final seminar paper.
Required Books
Edgar Allan Poe, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (978-0393972856)
Mat Johnson, Pym: A Novel (978-0812981766)
T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead (978-1250830814)
Gareth Hinds, Poe: Stories and Poems: A Graphic Novel (978-0763695095)
ENG 400/419
Reading Comics (Senior Capstone)
T/TH 4:00 – 5:15 PM
Dr. Christopher Spaide
Over the past century and a half, comics have transformed from disposable diversions
to the center of censorship frenzies, from underground acts of subversion to a sophisticated
and acclaimed wing of contemporary literature. In this course, we will become fluent
with the vocabulary and conventions of comics (known, as we’ll learn, by many names—comix,
manga, graphic novels, sequential art), and we will ask what distinguishes comics
from the neighboring media of prose narrative, fine art, animation, and film. What
can the medium of comics do uniquely well? How did comics develop from a receptacle
for “comic” gags to today’s versatile medium, adaptable to the maximalist myths of
superheroes, the explosive disproportions of satire, and the stylized candor of autobiography?
How do cartoonists manipulate line, panel, scale, and sequence to play with our sense
of space and time? Reading full-length works and excerpts from Europe, the Americas,
Asia, and elsewhere, we will also read criticism by comics scholars and cartoonists,
study the history of comics’ formats (from cartoons and strips to books and digital
comics), and—among other creative and critical assignments—script and draw some comics
of our own.
ENG 445/545
Studies in Children’s and Young Adult Literature
M/W 9:30 – 10:45 AM
Dr. Eric Tribunella
This course will focus on the graphic novel for children and young adults. We will
examine the history of graphic literature, including landmark graphic novels for adults,
and the evolution of the form. We will discuss how to analyze works that combine
text and image, and we will survey a variety of sub-genres of graphic fiction for
children and young adults, such as the superhero graphic novel, the graphic memoir,
graphic historical fiction, and gothic graphic fiction. Likely readings will include:
Understanding Comics (1994), McCloud
Maus: Volume I and II (1986/1991), Spiegelman
Watchmen (1987), Moore and Gibbons
Ghost World (1997), Clowes
Black Hole (2005), Burns
Smile (2010) and Drama (2012), Telgemeier
Anya’s Ghost (2011), Brosgol
March: Volume I and II (2013/2015), Lewis, Aydin, & Powell
This One Summer (2014), Tamaki
El Deafo (2014), Bell
New Kid (2019), Craft
Dragon Hoops (2020), Yang
ENG 468/568
British Woman Writers
T/TH 9:30 – 10:45 AM
Dr. Nicolle Jordan
How does female identity vary depending on whether it is depicted in a rural or urban
setting? Is one setting more congenial to the heroine—or the woman writer—than another?
How does a woman’s experience of the country and/or the city vary depending upon her
social status? In this course we will read British poetry and novels that imagine
female characters in an array of settings, from the bucolic English countryside to
the bustling social season of London. We will explore whether a woman’s value, and
her values, change depending on the familiarity or strangeness of her surroundings.
Readings include texts by Anne Finch, Jane Barker, Sarah Scott, Jane Austen, George
Eliot, and Virginia Woolf
ENG 473
African American Literature
M/W 2:30 – 3:45 PM
TBA
ENG 473
African American Literature
M/W 2:30 – 3:45 PM
Dr. Whitney Martin
**GULF PARK CAMPUS**
ENG 475
American Modernism
M/W 1:00 – 2:15 PM
Dr. Charles Sumner
This class will cover topics and writers in American literature during the period
1900-1945. The writers we will read include, among others: Henry James; William Faulkner;
Ernest Hemingway; Djuna Barnes; Sinclair Lewis; and Kay Boyle.