An introduction to major literary types including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Course themes and readings vary by section. The writing component consists of three to five essays of analysis and an emphasis on the writing process.
FYS 110 or a transfer Composition I course
In this course, students will learn the fundamental principles that underpin the creation of literary art. What does it mean to think like a writer? How do you create stories and poems that reach out and grab a reader? Through the study of four different genres—poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction—students will write their own work while also exploring issues of craft that include, character development, dialogue, plot, point of view, stanza formation, line breaks, scene setting, and narrative voice. Through lectures, class workshops, and reading assignments, students will learn the basics of creative writing.
Bodies house the essence of identity and represent that identity to the world. Bodies are also written on by that world; they are marked by such things as disease, trauma, and societal expectations of gender, race, and class—the symptoms of life’s circumstances. In this course, we will consider the representation of bodies in literature from the 19th century to the present and examine how social, cultural, historical, and scientific expectations prescribe our responses to the marked body. Although not a scientific study itself, this course will encourage students to encounter scientific thought and medical practices through the narrative imagination.
Because this is a 200-level literature course, it is also an introduction to major literary types including short fiction, novel, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and film. We will consider works in each of these categories, paying particular attention to the ways in which they intertwine with and inform one another as well as to how they distinguish themselves from each other. Throughout the term you should expect to gain confidence in your approach to a literary text—and, therefore, any text—as well as in your analytical and critical thinking and writing skills.
Conducted as a workshop, this course considers the theory and practice of sports writing for print media. Students will learn how to write a variety of sports stories while studying and critiquing sports writing at a local and national level.
A survey of world literature from 2500 BC to 1650 AD, with special emphasis given to the Mediterranean region. Texts will include drama, fiction, and both narrative and lyric poetry.
Reading and discussion from the 17th to the 21st century and expanding the scope further outside the European tradition.
An introductory overview of British literature and authors. Emphasis is placed on issues of literary history. Students become familiar with the standard scheme of periodization and learn to think about literature in relation to the currents of history. In addition, they explore such subjects as literary influence, changes in literary technology and the consumption of the written word, changes in identity and colonialism and changing theories about the nature and value of literature.
This course will consider public affairs through coverage of events such as school board and city council meetings. Additional emphasis will be placed on beat reporting, including but not limited to in-depth coverage of issues emerging from areas such as government, science, and health, the economy, religion, and the legal system. Emphasis will be given to creating and using multi-media components to deliver information. Students will advance their philosophy of freedom of the press through the study of various philosophical orientations.
An overview of the literatures written in the region we now know as the United States from the time of European colonization until the present. Course readings will represent literary periods and movements from the Colonial and Revolutionary periods, to contemporary Postmodernism. Lectures and discussion will consider both the development of American literary traditions and the connections between literature and social phenomena such as first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans, slavery, industrialization, social reform, and the women's movement.
In this course students will study the principles of a theory of empathy and will cultivate and practice an ethic of empathy. In order to live fully and deeply human beings must bring all of their human capacities to bear in their daily lives, professional and personal. As students gain a deeper understanding of empathy as an innate human ability, they will find ways to understand better both themselves and others. Students will read and discuss works of nonfiction and will practice empathy through the act of interviewing individuals whose lives or ways of being they believe significantly different from their own.
An in-depth study of how English sentences are constructed and how that knowledge can aid in other endeavors such as writing or the study of literature. Structural grammar will be emphasized with comparison to traditional and transformational grammars. The history of the language, morphology, and semantics are included.
What happens when we read literature? How does a literary work come to "mean"? What do literary texts tell us about the nature of language? What do they tell us about the culture they're part of? Many literary critics and theorists have pondered these questions lately, and we'll explore them too, by studying primary texts in 20th- and 21st- century criticism and theory. The particular focus of the course will vary but will typically involve discussion of structuralism and post-structuralism, feminist criticism, and cultural studies.
Students on an F-1 visa are eligible to work off campus to provide additional experience so long as the employment relates directly to the student's major area of study. The practical experience gained outside the traditional classroom supplements the theoretical and/or applied knowledge as a part of the student's coursework. The registration process for this course must be completed every term (including summers), as students must have their work authorization reissued each term to ensure continued enrollment. Jobs must be approved and verified by the International Programs Office before work may begin.
Special Topics in English.
An intensive study of an author or of a period on a semi-tutorial basis.