English Course Descriptions

ENGL1101 Writing Workshop

This course provides students with the opportunity to refine their college writing skills and address issues of organization, focus and grammar. Emphasis is placed on drafting and revising assignments. Students also meet individually with instructors to discuss essays. Admission is based on foundation skills assessment.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits

ENGL1103 Critical Inquiry

This course concentrates on developing expository writing skills using critical thinking that empower students. Writing assignments based on readings and on basic research are designed to develop strengths in interpretation, logical sequences, coherence, organization, analysis, and synthesis. While conducting critical inquiries into a variety of visual and printed text, students will be introduced to college writing conventions and then use those conventions to demonstrate an understanding of the ideas within the collection. Readings serve as models to deepen students' understanding of good writing and thinking as well as primary sources of inquiry.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits

ENGL1105 Introduction to Literature (A)

This course introduces students to the major literary genres of poetry, fiction, and drama. Readings will combine classical and modern literature. The emphasis will be on learning how to think and write critically about literature.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits

ENGL1207 Critical Speech Communication

This course emphasizes theory and analysis in the study of oral discourse in culture. The primary goal of the class is to prepare students to become better orators by studying three distinct areas: speech delivery, communication theory, and rhetorical analysis of argument, as illustrated in a forensic debate. Students will learn to maximize verbal effectiveness by controlling and enhancing non-verbal elements of their communication style and achieving "proper delivery." Students will also learn how communication theory enhances our understanding of effective speaking in a variety of settings (public speaking, interpersonal relationships, small groups, organizations, etc.). Students will use rhetorical analysis to construct oral arguments aimed at a variety of audiences, focusing specifically on a debate format. Finally, students will learn to distinguish between the expectations for written and oral discourse. Part of this analysis will include an understanding of how audiences' needs differ from readers' needs.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits

ENGL1208 Persuasive Strategies and Rhetorical Traditions

Rhetoric, or the ancient art of persuasion, is the foundation for study in communication, literature, and writing. Students apply their knowledge of the historical, social and political roots of rhetoric to the analysis of a variety of contemporary media and texts, including advertising, television, music lyrics, journalism, classical and popular literature, and entertainment. Students learn that all texts function as instances of persuasion. This is a writing-, reading-, and speaking-intensive course and particular emphasis is placed on the development of ability in these areas. This course is required of all majors in the English department.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits

ENGL2103 Literary Mirrors: Introduction to World Literature (A)

Embark on a literary journey to Africa, Europe, Asia, and Central and South Americas with major world authors who treat in short novels the triumphs and tragedies of the human condition. This course is designed to foster critical thinking and to improve writing skills. All readings are in English.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2008. 4 credits
(Cross-referenced with LANG2103)

ENGL2105 Contemporary Latin American Fiction (A)

Conducted in English, this literature in translation course introduces students to major contemporary authors from the Latin American Boom to the present. Students will engage in literary analysis of representative prose from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico. Reading selections will expose students to literary styles characteristic of Latin American writers as well as to the sociopolitical reality of the Americas.
Spring semester. 4 credits
(Cross-referenced with LANG2105)

ENGL2106 Irish Identities: Literature and Culture (A)

This course explores the formation of national, religious, regional, gender, and class identities through the study of the literature and culture of Ireland in the 20th century. Students will examine Irish culture from the Revival to Field Day, looking at the diverse impacts on the formation of individual and group identities in the successive historical contexts of the struggle for independence, the period of post-independence, the "troubles" of sectarian violence and the British occupation of Ulster, and the rise of the "Celtic Tiger" in the contemporary globalized world economy. This course will study poets such as W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and Eavan Boland; prose writers such as James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Roddy Doyle, and Edna O'Brien; and playwrights such as Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, and Brian Friel. Films such as The Commitments, Sunday and The Crying Game will be viewed and the global interest of Irish contemporary music will be considered.
Spring semester, expected spring 2009. 4 credits

ENGL2124 History Through Fiction: Event and Imagination

History and literature question and illuminate one another as the imagined world of the political novel is read against, and as part of, historical events. How do such works as The Heart of a Dog, The Victory, or Nervous Conditions present politics and society? How, in reading them, do we gain a greater understanding of power relations and human relations in times of crisis and stasis? Works will be placed in context and then discussed in terms of perspective, ideology, style and impact. When last offered, the theme of the course was Jewish history through fiction; upcoming themes include ancient and early modern history through fiction, imperialism and colonialism in fiction, and history through detective and mystery stories.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2009. 4 credits
(Cross-referenced with HIST2124)

ENGL2133 Crisis and Creativity: Artistic and Literary Responses to Historical Events

This course will examine the ways in which artists and writers of the 19th and 20th centuries have responded to pivotal events in history. Through the integrated study of art, literature, and history, students will develop an appreciation for the works of authors and artists such as Coleridge, Dostoyevsky, Maupassant, Allende, Chagall, Rivera and Nevelson, and an understanding of the relationship of works of art and literature to their times.
Spring semester, as needed. 4 credits

ENGL2303 Modern American Writers (A)

This course introduces students to some of the key aesthetic and cultural concerns of modern American literature. Students read and discuss some well-known as well as some lesser-known works from the late 19th century to the present, exploring each text for its own literary qualities, as well as in relationship to American history and the American literary tradition. The goal of the course is to acquaint students with a range of literary responses to some of the dramatic historical and aesthetic developments of the modern era and to begin to analyze with care these texts and the diverse histories they represent and imagine. Writers may include Fitzgerald, Larsen, Faulkner, Hemingway, O'Connor, Morrison, Alexie, and DeLillo.
Fall Semester, alternate years, expected fall 2007. 4 credits

ENGL2304 American Voices in Fiction and Non-Fiction (A)

This course charts the course of American fiction and non-fiction from the age of exploration through the early part of the 20th century, with particular emphasis on influential concepts such as Puritanism, individualism, transcendentalism, sentimentalism, realism, naturalism and modernism.
Spring semester. 4 credits

ENGL2305 Writing Women (A)*

This course surveys the role of women in British and/or American literary culture, as both creators and subjects of literary and cinematic expression. Readings include a range of poetry, short stories, novels and visual texts such as paintings and film.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2010. 4 credits
*Accepted toward Women's Studies minor.

ENGL2306 Survey in American Drama (A)

Students read and analyze dramatic literature from the Colonial period to the modern era. The course combines readings of plays with a performance element.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2009. 4 credits

ENGL2307 Making It New: Poetry from Bradstreet to Bishop (A)

This course concentrates on influential concepts in American Life and thought as they are represented in American poetry. Such concepts as Puritanism, individualism, transcendentalism, naturalism, realism, and modernism will be included in this survey course that moves from the colonial period to the middle of the 20th century.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2008. 4 credits

ENGL2309 The Haves and the Have-Nots: American Authors on Money, Class and Power (A)

Since Puritan times, Americans have linked material wealth and economic success with self-worth and identity. This course explores how writers have grappled with the issues of money, class and power and traces the theme of consumerism throughout the American literary canon. The readings are drawn from a variety of American writers from the 17th through the 21st centuries and may include texts by Franklin, Howells, Fitzgerald and Wharton as well as lesser-known works by women, African-American and Native American authors.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2007. 4 credits

ENGL2321 Love and Gender in Film and Literature (A)

This course studies how the performance of gender roles impacts representations of love and romance in narrative, dramatic, and visual texts. The readings include a wide range of poetry, plays, short stories, and novels from 16th century Europe to 20th century America. Readings are combined with the careful study of depictions of love in paintings, avant-garde film, and traditional Hollywood cinema. Authors and directors may include Sir Phillip Sidney, Lady Mary Wroth, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Raymond Carver, Pablo Neruda, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, and Amy Heckerling.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2008. 4 credits

ENGL2323 Short Fiction (A)

This course introduces students to the intensive study of short fiction. Students read a wide array of short stories and analyze them in relation to aesthetic and cultural issues, including race, class, and gender. Writers may include Sherwood Anderson, Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Amy Tan, Raymond Carver, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Fall and spring semester, as needed. 4 credits

ENGL2325 Spirituality and the Literary Imagination (A)

The recent widespread popularity of bestsellers and television shows dealing with angels, the soul, and other religious topics suggests that God is anything but dead in the 21st century. Spirituality has always been a topic of great intellectual interest to artists and writers, from St. Augustine and Julian of Norwich to modern-day writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Thomas Merton and Kathleen Norris. This course examines the ways in which Christian and non-Christian writers have grappled with their faith and relationship with a higher beingover the course of centuries. Readings cover both fiction and non-fiction, with a special emphasis on Catholic writers.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2009. 4 credits

ENGL2402 Shakespeare: Tragedies, Comedies, Histories and Romances (A)

Students read and analyze plays from each of the four dramatic genres. Intensive study of the literary and dramatic elements of plays such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Cymbeline", "King Richard III", and "Othello" will be combined with an examination and questioning of the boundaries used to identify genre.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits

ENGL2404 Major British Poetry (A)

A survey of poetry in English from Chaucer to Eliot, the course will introduce students to the genre of poetry through examples drawn from major British poets such as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Yeats.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2009. 4 credits

ENGL2406 The Rise of the British Novel (A)

A survey of the 18th and 19th century British novel with an emphasis on its development from the cultural margins to literary preeminence, and the way that this rise intersects issues of class, gender, and empire. Novelists may include Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Austen, the Bronte sisters, Eliot, Dickens, and Hardy.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2008. 4 credits

ENGL2408 The Modern British Novel: Empire and After (A)

This course surveys major British fiction from the early 20th century to the present with particular emphasis on how the novel and short story give narrative shape to issues of class, gender, race, nationality in the period of the British Empire's decline and fall. Writers may include James Joyce, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, V.S. Naipaul, and Jeannette Winterson.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2009. 4 credits

ENGL2409 The Political Novel (A)

This course studies the representation of political figures and movements in fiction. The course examines the creative and subversive strategies writers use to call into question a coherent, stable, and empirically "true" vision of political history. Readings will vary by semester but authors may include Sir Thomas More, Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Voltaire, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Harper Lee, Clifford Odets, and Gore Vidal.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2007. 4 credits

ENGL2413 African American Literature: A Tradition of Resistance (A)

This course traces the African American literary traditions from its origins to the present, focusing in particular on ways that African American narratives have challenged and changed American literary, political, and historical discourses. Readings will include folktales, fugitive slave narratives, and political writings, as well as fiction, poetry, and drama from the Harlem Renaissance to the contemporary moment. Writers may include Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Dubois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits

ENGL2417 Literature of the Black Atlantic (A)

This course surveys the literatures and cultures of the Black world-including Africa, the Caribbean, and Black Britain-in the 20th century. Through an examination of representative works of prose fiction, drama, poetry, film, and music by major figures of Black Africa and its Atlantic diaspora (including, for example, Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, Jamaica Kincaid, "dub" poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, and reggae musician Bob Marley), the course explores how Black culture and consciousness have been shaped by their engagements with issues of race, class, nationality, and gender in the successive historical contexts of colonialism, anti-colonial resistance, and the postcolonial, "globalized" world.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2007. 4 credits

ENGL2501 Journalism

Taught by a professional journalist, this course introduces the roles, responsibilities, and habits of print and online journalists in order to consider the place of journalism in an age of increased technology and media influence. Students receive practice in selected assignments typical of contemporary journalistic writing and research, such as beat reporting, investigative journalism and interviewing, with opportunities to revise their work for possible publication in the College's student publications.
Fall and Spring semesters. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1208

ENGL2504 Prose Writing

This course explores selected types of writing often associated with the term "literary nonfiction," giving students the opportunity for active reading as well as frequent practice in composing and revision. Besides personal essays and magazine feature articles, versions of this course may focus on genres including written argumentation, profiles and documentaries, or writing about specific topics such as sports, entertainment, food, travel, science, spirituality or the environment. The course also helps students develop research strategies appropriate to various nonfiction genres.
Fall semseter, alternate years, expected fall 2007. 4 credits

ENGL2505 Autobiographical Writing

This course considers selected issues, genres, and composing strategies associated with writing about the "self," based on the notion that identity arises in part from our use of language and the process of recording experience in writing. Students encounter these themes through reading and practice writing and revising in selected genres of autobiographical and biographical prose, such as memoirs, journals, diaries, letters, and remembrances. The course also provides guidance in research techniques appropriate to personal writing, such as oral history, archival research and interviewing.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2009. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1102

ENGL2506 Poetry Writing

This course is an overview of the craft of poetry writing in a workshop format. Students will read and discuss the work of a broad selection of contemporary poets. Various exercises will be assigned to demonstrate the relationship between form and content. Students will be introduced to basic figures of speech and concepts in poetic form (sonnet and ballad, for example), rhyme, and meter. Students will compose portfolios from daily journals and class workshops.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2009. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1102

ENGL2507 Fiction Writing (A)

An overview of the craft of fiction writing and the creative process, study will focus on story-telling structure, use of narrative and scene, the importance of conflict, sensory details, the revelation of character through dialogue and action, and the paramount importance of point-of-view to literary technique. Students will read and discuss published short fiction, write assigned exercises, and read/hear the completed manuscripts of class members.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1102

ENGL2521 Public Relations Writing

This course introduces students to the professional world of public relations by concentrating on the writing, research, and oral skills required of entry-level PR practitioners. In particular, the course focuses on the basic grammar skills, effective prose styles, and professional presentation approaches that are critical for success in the field. In addition, students will practice working as a member of a collaborative team and communicating ideas effectively with a range of clients.
Fall semester. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1208

ENGL2523 Introduction to Advertising

How are advertisements created? Why are some ads so memorable while others barely make a dent in our collective consciousness? What are some of the issues surrounding the placement of a particular ad? This course introduces students to the creative processes behind an advertising campaign, while also helping them better understand the role advertising plays in their own lives as well as the modern economy. In addition, students will learn about the strategic identification of markets and targets and the relationship between advertising agencies and the media.
Spring semester. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1208

ENGL2603 Studies in Drama: Ritual and Social Reality (A)

This course is a survey of dramatic literature from the classical period to the modern era, with an emphasis on drama's fundamentally communal character. The playwrights considered may include Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus, Shakespeare, Behn, Moliere, Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, and Beckett, as well as medieval and renaissance genres such as the mystery and morality plays and the commedia dell'arte.
Spring semester, alternate years. expected spring 2008. 4 credits
(Cross-referenced with SPCH2107)

ENGL2605 Stages of the Modern (A)

This course analyzes selected plays by British, European, American, and world dramatists of the 20th century, with close attention to the evolving methods and sensibilities associated with the cultural movements of naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism. Writers may include Ibsen, Shaw, Wilde, Brecht, Beckett, O'Neill, Soyinka, Churchill, Kushner, Friel, and Wilson.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits
(Cross-referenced with SPCH2105)

ENGL2607 Major British Drama (A)

A survey of British drama from the medieval period through the late 19th century and the dawn of modernism, the course will introduce students to the genre of drama through the plays of major British dramatists such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Congreve, Sheridan and Wilde. This course combines reading of plays with a performance component.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2008. 4 credits

ENGL2609 Playing Shakespeare: From Study to Stage (A)

The course combines the reading of a small selection of Shakespeare's plays with a performance component in which students prepare scenes for class presentation. Students also consider staging and performance issues by attending live performances and by analyzing film versions of the plays. By adding a theatrical dimension to the traditional study of texts, the course translates the written word into that complex of speech and action that brings drama to life.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits
(Cross-referenced with SPCH2103)

ENGL2701 Literature and Film (A)

This course focuses on investigating the relationships between different media, specifically traditional forms of literature and film, with special attention to understanding the cultural significance of these texts. Students will read literature from a variety of genres, including poetry, short stories, plays, and novels. Films to be viewed will include direct adaptations of these works; alternative representations of the work's plots, themes, or characters; and cinematic renderings of literary figures and the literary imagination.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2009. 4 credits

ENGL3301 The American West in Film and Literature (A)

Poet Derek Walcott tells us that the poet is the voice of the landscape, suggesting a dynamic interplay between our inner and outer landscapes. This course concentrates on the influence of the American landscape on the lives and thoughts of European colonial settlers to the cowboys and cowgirls of the Wild West to contemporary writers and visual artists. Using the lens of the landscape of the West, the class examines the literature of tolerance, democracy, and ambition.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status.

ENGL3303 Images of Masculinity

This course will explore the construction of masculinities in twentieth-century literature and film, concentrating on whether masculinity is conceived as natural and immutable or culturally and historically determined. Primary material may include Gertz, Foster-Wallace, Roth, and Eugenides as well as films.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2007. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status.

ENGL3305 Satire

Our specific focus in this course will be satire-a particularly powerful strategy used in literary and popular texts to create or to question the "status quo" in political, religious, corporate, and academic institutions. We will look specifically at the creative and subversive strategies that novelists use to subvert dominant ideologies. Since its "birth" in the eighteenth century, the novel has been theorized as a progressive form that challenges traditional ideas-both literary and political. This semester we will study the origins of the novel, its development, and its relationship to both its predecessors and to contemporary popular texts such as film and television.
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2008. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status

ENGL3307 Survey of Literature for Children and Young Adults

This course provides a historical and critical survey of major writers and illustrators in children's and young adult literature and explores the distinguishing characteristics of literature written for children. Students will read a range of traditional and contemporary literature and explore major authors and illustrators and a variety of genres. Through reading, discussion, in-class writing exercises, written assignments, and a research paper, students will become informed and analytical readers of literature written and illustrated for children and adolescents.
Spring semesters. 4 credits
Prerequisites: PSYCH 1401, ENGL 1105, ENGL 2304

ENGL3309 Characters of the Long 18th Century

This seminar investigates the significance of the different characters one encounters in the textual productions (poetry, prose, and drama) from the "long 18th century." In current scholarship, the definition of this period varies widely, but for the purposes of this class, the time-period begins at the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy to England's throne (1660) and concludes in the chaotic years following the French Revolution (1790s). The characters students will encounter include the fop, the gossip, the intellectual, the rake, the virtuous lady, the slave, the self-made man, the virtuoso, the newsman and woman, the emerging feminist, and the abolitionist. Part of the class will involve coming to terms with the uncomfortable excesses (slavery, misogyny, revolution, etc.) that these characters embody and that pervade this period of English history generally. Primary texts for this class will include John Wilmont, Second Earl of Rochester's poetry, George Etherege's The Man of Mode, Aphra Behn's The Rover, Susanna Centlivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife, Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Tatler and The Spectator, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Jane Collier's An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, and Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Spring Semesters. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000 level courses and junior or senior status.

ENGL3421 Spanish Caribbean Literature (A)

This course will introduce students to the literature of the Spanish Caribbean, engaging them in literary analysis of major authors form Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Special attention will be given to the author's literary style, themes developed and to the ideological content of each piece. Students will also get a glimpse of this region's historical and socio-political conditions. At the end of the semester participants will have acquired an appreciation of the literature of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean as well as a better understanding of the complex issues affecting this interesting region.
Fall semester, expected fall 2009. 4 credits
(Cross-referenced with LANG3421)

ENGL3501 Writing for Electronic Media

Writers who can create effective copy for electronic media will be tomorrow's success stories. News organizations, publishers, and commercial businesses are increasingly seeking writers familiar with new media, especially those who can write for the Internet. In this project-based course, students will master writing for Weblogs, a new creative medium. In addition, they will sharpen their journalistic skills, publish work online and build a professional portfolio that will assist them in finding work in the media business.
Spring semester. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208, ENGL2501 and one other 2000-level course and junior or senior status

ENGL3601 Crime Stories and American Culture

This course will examine crime narrative traditions and their function in American culture. The course begins with the birth of the classic detective story and traces the form through various transformations in twentieth century America, including the emergence of hardboiled "private eye," noir films, police procedurals, and the "true crime" genre. Throughout the semester, we will analyze the social and political implications of each genre and each text, focusing especially on the representation of crime and society, as well as the portrayal of policing, forensic science, law, order, class, race, gender, and justice.
Fall semseter, alternate years, expected fall 2007. 4 credits

ENGL3701 Media Theory

This course investigates how language and visual communication combine in selected media texts, such as advertising, the Internet, journalism, and popular writing, television, film and selected electronic texts. Students apply critical theories drawn from literary, cultural, and media studies to the analysis and interpretation of today's mass media to consider issues of representation raised when language and image are combined. The course will introduce students to key issues and debates around media, culture, and social power. Special emphasis will be placed on developing analytic skills and critical abilities in examining a range of media institutions and productions.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status

ENGL3703 In and Out of the Tower: Critical Theory and the Academy

This course focuses on dominant theoretical approaches to literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Marxism, structuralism, deconstruction, feminist criticism, new historicism, and postcolonial theory. As students learn the particularities of each theoretical perspective, they will also consider how theory "plays" to a more mainstream audience in non-academic texts such as popular novels and films. In addition, they will look at how academics interpret and practice theory outside of traditional academic contexts, especially in more personal, immediate formats such as weblogs. Students will design and maintain weblogs of their own as the major project for the course.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2009. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status

ENGL3705 Monsters, Madness and Mayhem: The Gothic Tradition in Film and Literature

This course traces the development of the Gothic tradition in both literature and foreign and American cinema. We will examine the historical roots of the genre in British literature, then shift our focus to American writers and their treatment of the Gothic in classic and contemporary fiction. We will also spend time viewing some classic "B" films that use the Gothic as a central cinematic and narrative device, and compare those versions to the literature. However, the central question we will ask of all the texts for the course is "what does the enduring popularity of the Gothic in both literature and film say about us and the genre itself?"
Fall semester, alternate years, expected fall 2008. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status

ENGL3801 Feature Writing

Taught by a professional editor, this course focuses on learning to research, write, and edit feature-length articles for newsletters, newspapers, or magazines. The course explores topics such as research, project management, interviewing, article structure, editing for content and copy, as well as roles and responsibilities of writers and editors working in professional settings.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1208, ENGL2501, one other 2000-level English course and juniors or seniors status

ENGL3803 Writing for the Workplace

This course is organized around extended projects requiring individual and group work and resulting in finished documents such as business letters, memos, project proposals, progress reports, final reports, and oral presentations. Students will be involved with projects related to their career interests. While it is not a technology course, students with a background in desktop publishing, document design or work processing technologies will find these skills relevant to the course.
Spring semester, alternate years, expected spring 2008. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status

ENGL3804 Critical Approaches to Organizational Communication

Critical approaches to organizational communication focuses on how power may be understood and how it informs our daily organizational lives. Students will learn and increase their knowledge of a variety of critical theories and apply these to numerous organizations. Major perspectives on organizational culture and power will be utilized to analyze and inform student understandings of organizations so students are better able to negotiate relationships of power. We will examine how identity is constructed, negotiated, and constrained through everyday communication in and across organizations; how factors such as race, class, and gender inform our everyday workplace actions; how our workplaces provide constraints upon our activities in subtle yet effective ways and how those constraints may be challenged and/or resisted. Special emphasis will be placed on analysis of organizational cultures via critical theory with the aim of achieving a healthy and robust work life.
Spring semester. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 amd two 2000-level coursesand junior or senior status

ENGL3805 Writing Seminar

A consideration of the creative process, craft, and aesthetics in a seminar format. Students who have the rudiments of craft in a specific genre will begin writing projects while relating topics of the course to their work and bringing relevant issues to the seminar. Students, by way of exercises and practice, will find entry into the literary tradition by entering the conversation among writers and theorists of all generations. Students will compile a portfolio of writing using daily journals and individual meetings with the instructor.
Spring semester, as needed. 4 credits
Prerequisite: ENGL1208 and two of the following: ENGL2501, ENGL2503, ENGL2504, ENGL2505, ENGL2506, ENGL2507, or ENGL3501. Open to juniors and seniors only.

ENGL3991 and ENGL3992 Special Topics I and II

This course emphasizes the study and application of theoretical perspectives to literary and media texts, as well as advanced research and writing projects requiring secondary sources. The topic for the course will be determined by the instructor.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits
Prerequisites: ENGL1208 and two 2000-level courses and junior or senior status

ENGL4178 Directed Study

Under the guidance of a faculty member, students select, read, and research a particular literary, writing, or media-related topic.
Offered as needed. 4 credits
Prerequisites: two 3000-level literature or theory courses and senior status

ENGL4991-4992 Independent Study

Only those students who have met the requirements for a Distinction in the Field project and have had their research proposal accepted by the department can enroll in Independent Study. Under the guidance of a member of the English faculty, students complete a 40-page research paper which is the sole requirement for Distinction in the Field of English at graduation.
Offered as needed. 2 credits
Prerequisites: 2 3000-level literature or theory courses and senior status

ENGL4994-4995 Internship I - II

The primary purpose of the internship is to gain practical and professional training and experience in such fields as journalism, broadcasting, advertising, publishing, public relations, and corporate, political or governmental communication. Students work 15-16 hours per week at their placement and meet regularly with other interns and the course instructor while completing several projects related to their internship site.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits
Prerequisites: INT1001, two 3000-level literature or theory courses and senior status

ENGL4999 Senior Seminar

Students will examine how different texts (e.g. popular and classic literature, movies, television, etc.) present and shape a variety of issues such as gender, race, and class throughout all levels of culture. Specific topics and texts will be determined by the instructor, but will include theoretical and critical material as well as primary sources. "Texts" could be all of one kind or a combination of different media, also to be determined by the instructor. Active student participation and a major research project is required.
Fall and spring semester. 4 credits
Prerequisites: Two 3000-level literature or theory courses and senior status