Notes:
- There are no prerequisites for 200- and 300-level English courses
- 300-level course topics marked with an asterisk [*] have the option of being taken in the 430-433 range to fulfill a 400-level English major requirement. Students enrolled in the 400-level versions of these courses will, as part of their coursework, conduct independent research appropriate to an advanced-level seminar. Students should consult the descriptions below and myPugetSound for the ENGL 400-level number that corresponds to each designated topic.
ENGL 220 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES
Priti Joshi - TuTh 2:00-3:20 p.m.
Do you love to read fiction or poetry? Do you write it? Of course, you do – that’s why you’re here! In this course, the introduction to the major/minor, we will build on that love and deepen it. Our entry into the study, analysis, and practice will be framed around the idea of "revision" or "rewriting.” Focusing on a range of poetry (lyric, dramatic monologue, sonnet, etc.), fiction (short stories, novel), drama, and a graphic text, we will consider the ways writers and texts reexamine and reformulate issues – formal, as well as thematic - from multiple perspectives. Throughout, we will pay close attention to the craft and analysis of literary texts, always considering the relation between formal choices and thematic content. Student writing will consist of analytic papers and their own creative work.
Attributes: Required of all English majors and minors
ENGL 226 INTRODUCTION TO JOURNALISM
Laura Behling - MoWe 3:30-4:50 p.m.
This course immerses students in the craft of journalism to develop the skills and critical discernment required for journalists. Introduction to Journalism is designed to equip students with an understanding of what journalism is, and help students develop key journalism skills of reporting and writing news and feature stories, as well as crafting editorials. Throughout the course, we’ll read local and national news media publications, practice effective writing strategies, consider key moments in journalism history, and think about the impact of different types of media in which today’s journalists work. In addition, the course will engage students in critically examining journalists’ responsibilities in reporting and shaping public understanding and opinion. Students will gain an appreciation for an understanding of the fundamentals of journalistic writing, interviewing, researching, and editing, as well as journalism ethics and law. The course requires writing on deadline and writing with revision, attention to current events, and attendance at some campus events in the evening or on weekends.
Attributes: Media and Non-Literary Analysis
ENGL 228 INTRODUCTION TO WRITING POETRY
William Kupinse - TuTh 11:00 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
“A line will take us hours, maybe,” writes W. B. Yeats on the craft of poetry. “Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” This creative writing workshop takes seriously Yeats’s idea that what seems offhand spontaneity in poetry is actually the result of careful attention and sustained effort. By stitching and unstitching multiple drafts of our poems, we develop the imagination and critical skills that enable us to grow as poets. Assignments in this course emphasize writing as a process and include the study of canonical and contemporary poems, weekly exercises, in-class discussions, and critiques of peer writing. Each workshop member will produce a collection of approximately six poems by the semester’s end, which will culminate in a public reading by the workshop members.
Attributes: Creative Writing; IHE Pathway, “The Artist as Humanist”
ENGL 236 MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Laura Behling - TuTh 9:30-10:50 a.m.
“Going from knowing who you are to not knowing who you are--that is the American story."
- Gish Jen
Imagined and illuminated. Resisted and rejected. Challenged and celebrated. American literature has responded to all of the personal, social, economic, political, intellectual, and artistic upheaval and change that has characterized America in the last 100 years. It’s done so in new modes and styles of expression, and with readers–you and me–eager to discover the riches in its stories. This course reads key American literary texts from multiple genres from the early 20th century through today’s contemporary moment and sets them within their cultural contexts. We’ll read and write, judge books by their covers, dive into the contemporary literary prize and publishing worlds, and witness new author-artists emerge. And throughout our examination of American literary history-in-the-making since the early 20thcentury, we’ll discover the interconnections of literature and culture and determine if American author Gish Jen is right—that “Going from knowing who you are to not knowing who you are” is, in fact, “the American story.”
Attributes: Literature; IHE Pathway, “Issues of Race and Ethnicity”
ENGL 238 AFROFUTURISM
Regina Duthely - MoWe 2:00-3:20 p.m.
This course examines the theoretical foundations and aesthetics of Afrofuturism. The term Afrofuturism was coined in 1993 by scholar Mark Dery and is an all-encompassing term used to describe science fiction work (literature, music, art, etc.) that focuses on Afro-diasporic ways of being and knowing. Afrofuturist authors speak into the legacies of colonialism and slavery as well as persistent inequality to examine their impact on imaginings of future worlds and the ongoing technological age. We will examine the contours of the field of Afrofuturism and decenter traditional science fiction perspectives that erase the existence of people of color in their visions of future worlds. Scholar Alondra Nelson states, “Afrofuturism can be broadly defined as ‘African American voices’ with ‘other stories to tell about culture, technology and things to come’” (Nelson 9). Our course will explore these other stories of things to come, and complicate images of the future. Together we will read science fiction texts produced by Afrofuturist authors to study the ways that they reimagine the future from the perspectives of Black people in the New World.
Attributes: Centering Marginalized Voices; Knowledge, Identity, and Power; African American Studies; Honors; IHE Pathways, “The Artist as Humanist” and “Issues of Race and Ethnicity”
ENGL 297 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDITING
Tiffany Aldrich MacBain - TuTh 11:00 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
The course familiarizes students with three types of professional editing: copy, line, and developmental. In each unit, students practice improving the “4 Cs” of a manuscript—clarity, coherency, consistency, and correctness—in service of the “Cardinal C”: communication. To support that work, the course teaches skills that build proficiency in each area, including basic grammar, and allows students to identify individual strengths and interests within the editorial field. Topics of study include levels of editing; the editing process; basic rules of grammar and usage; narrative structure and style; and tools, practices, and philosophies of editing. The course is suitable for students interested in exploring editing as a career or in improving their own writing.
Attributes: Media and Non-Literary Analysis
ENGL 327 ADVANCED FICTION WRITING
Laura Krughoff - MoWe 3:30-4:50 p.m.
In this advanced fiction workshop, we will consider what it means for a writer to develop a body of work. While we will continue to practice and hone the fundamental skills and techniques used in narrative prose, the expectation in this course will be that you are ready to produce complete works of short fiction and are beginning to explore your own voice, aesthetic, subjects, and themes as a writer. To this end, our work will be two-fold: we will read selections from collections of short fiction to examine how important contemporary short story writers in English pursue particular themes, return to and re-examine various topics, and develop a recognizable style or aesthetic. You will simultaneously produce three complete short stories, each of which will be workshopped either as a full class or in a small group. Additionally, toward the end of the semester you will participate in the production of a class anthology that explores a particular theme, genre or subject. Each student will write an introduction to the anthology, exploring the points of connection and resonance among the stories and the editorial choices that went into creating the anthology.
Attributes: Creative Writing
ENGL 344 AMERICAN VISIONARIES: FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND WALT WHITMAN
Tiffany Aldrich MacBain - TuTh 12:30-1:50 p.m.
Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman were among the most celebrated and influential writers of the nineteenth-century United States. Douglass’s distinction as the most photographed person of the time attests to his celebrity, and Whitman’s ongoing and public play with representation speaks to his. The lives of these two giants of American literary history overlapped almost precisely and spanned nearly the full century. Douglass (1818 – 1895) was a formerly enslaved abolitionist and accomplished orator and activist, and Whitman (1819 – 1892) a self-fashioned “kosmos” who in his poetry claimed to contain, and dared to represent, all of America. Both men revised their key texts throughout their lives, continually reconsidering and refashioning the past, present, and imagined future.
Through the study of these writers’ work and biographies, students learn about major concerns of the nineteenth century, including the unconscionable practice of enslavement; shifting ideas about gender and sexuality; the possibilities and limitations of American ideals like freedom, equality, and self-reliance; and the role of narrative, oratory, and poetry in the formation of national culture. Assignments allow for comparative textual analyses of the authors’ retellings; the application of contemporary theoretical or critical concepts to the texts; student-led discussions; informed self-reflection; and creative engagement with either oratory or poetry.
* Students who wish to study this topic in order to satisfy a 400-level requirement for the English major must enroll in the appropriate section of ENGL 431. This will not overlap with or repeat a previous section of ENGL 431 if taken with a different topic.
Attributes: Centering Marginalized Voices; KNOW
ENGL 348 ILLNESS AND NARRATIVE: DISCOURSES OF DISEASE
Laura Behling - MoWe 2:00-3:20 p.m.
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit—Life!
Emily Dickinson #156
Illness and Narrative explores how the experiences of illness and health are shaped by language, and how in turn, language shapes the stories we tell about illness and health. The course will focus on a variety of diverse historical and contemporary literary texts, including novels, plays, essays, graphic texts, and film, with some theory to help us think through the narratives. We’ll consider how different cultures imagine health and healing in literary forms, and we’ll investigate and imagine, through metaphor and fact, the meaning of embodied experience. We’ll be challenged in our understanding of illness and health, power and weakness, body and mind. And we’ll think imaginatively, visually, and empathetically through a series of questions including: What influence does illness (epidemic or personal) have on narrative? What is the relationship between social and political attitudes toward disease and the way texts characterize healthy and sick? Who tells the stories of illness and health, and how do they compare as storytellers? This course especially invites students in literary studies and other Humanities disciplines, students interested in Health Studies or the health professions, and any student who wants to be challenged to think about the relationship between illness and narrative.
* Students who wish to study this topic in order to satisfy a 400-level requirement for the English major must enroll in the appropriate section of ENGL 431. This will not overlap with or repeat a previous section of ENGL 431 if taken with a different topic.
Attributes: Literature; Bioethics; IHE Pathway, “Science and Values;” Science, Technology, Health and Society
ENGL 372 GLOBAL ENGLISHES
Julie Christoph - MoFr 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Most Americans are familiar with the notion of English as a lingua franca, but the idea of “global Englishes” is less well known. A wide variety of local variants of English exist in the places around the world where it is used as an official or dominant language. In fact, the majority of people who use English as a language for work, school, and daily communication learned English as a second or foreign language.
In this course, students will learn about how English works in various parts of the world--how it got to be the way it is, how it works differently, and how it enhances and impedes communication in various contexts. Through reading linguistic theory about global Englishes, case studies of how English usage has shaped and been shaped by local cultures, and literary examples of various global Englishes, students will become familiar with the complexity of the language that may seem to come naturally to Americans. Students will leave this course better equipped to navigate situations requiring cross-cultural communication at the university and beyond.
We enrich our understanding of global Englishes through more focused analysis of English in Taiwan, one country where English is rapidly being adopted (and adapted). We will consider Taiwan’s Bilingual 2030 policy and explore what the stories of English in other places in the world suggest might happen in Taiwan. Following the conclusion of the semester, students will have the opportunity to visit Taiwan together May 18-27, 2024 with an associated EXLN summer course. This course fulfills the KNOW requirement.
Attributes: Media and Non-Literary Analysis; KNOW
ENGL 382 IRISH LITERARY REVIVAL
William Kupinse - TuTh 2:00-3:20 p.m.
“Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?” asks Yeats in his poem “Man and the Echo,” musing whether the one-act Cathleen ni Houlihan was responsible for the 1916 Easter Rising. “Certainly not,” Paul Muldoon would answer a generation later, rephrasing the couplet: “If Yeats had saved his pencil-lead / would certain men have stayed in bed?” Whether or not we accept a causal relationship between a single literary text and a given political event, that the literature produced in Ireland from the late nineteenth-century through the end of World War II shaped Ireland’s politics and its sense of national identity is undeniable. This course will examine the development of Irish literature written in English during this period, and our reading will include poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction. We will consider a wide range of writers, but particular emphasis will be given to J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory, W. B. Yeats, and James Joyce. Course requirements include regular participation in class discussion, a seminar presentation, a midterm essay, and a final paper. Note: students taking this course as their senior seminar should register for ENGL432 and will have additional independent research expectations.
* Students who wish to study this topic in order to satisfy a 400-level requirement for the English major must enroll in the appropriate section of ENGL 432. This will not overlap with or repeat a previous section of ENGL 432 if taken with a different topic.
Attributes: Literature
ENGL 397 HUMANITIES IN THE WORLD
Priti Joshi - We 5:00-7:50 p.m.
This class is an experiential seminar in which each student will develop a passion project that translates ideas and critical skills learned in humanities classrooms into a public-facing demonstration of the humanities' potential beyond the university. Our shared readings will focus on concepts of "translation," but the bulk of the semester will consist of each student crafting a project that translates the knowledge, experience, and skills they have learned to the professional or the public sphere, and in communicating the significance of their work. The seminar has two components: fieldwork and classwork. Students work collaboratively with peers and the professor in the classroom to conceive of and hone their projects, and with the campus, local community, or wider world to realize components of it.
Attributes: Media and Non-Literary Analysis; Experiential Learning
Note: Junior or senior standing or instructor permission required to enroll in ENGL 387. Email pjoshi@pugetsound.edu if interested
**All ENGL courses count towards the “Artistic and Humanistic Perspectives” core requirement