Fall 2018 Courses | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

ENG 100: ORIENTATION TO THE ENGLISH MAJOR

Instructor: Pearl James

001: F 10-10:50am

002: F 11-11:50am

Freshman Only

All incoming freshmen with a declared English major should take this course, which serves as an introduction and orientation to the major. You will meet professors, discover our various fields and the Creative Writing Option learn about honors, internships, and study abroad options for English majors. This class will put you on a track to excel and get the most out of your major. The major assignments are attendance, participation, and a custom-designed 4-year plan.

ENG 107: INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING

Instructor: DaMaris Hill

001: MW 10-10:50am; Discussion F 9-9:50am

002: MW 10-10:50am; Discussion F 11-11:50am

003: MW 10-10:50am; Discussion F 10-10:50am

004: MW 10-10:50am; Discussion F 10-10:50am

This is an introduction to the craft of imaginative writing and to three of its genres: fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Students will read and practice writing in those genres, and work frequently in small groups to develop and critique the writing. Small group work and frequent exercises aside, this is primarily a large lecture class. Our main text will be Burroway's Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft (4th ed.). This course fulfills the UK Core requirement for Intellectual Inquiry in Arts & Creativity.

ENG 107: INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING

Instructor: Janet Eldred

005: MW 12-12:50pm; Discussion TBD

An introduction to the genres and craft of creative writing, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Students will study and practice writing in various modes through composition, peer critique, and research. This section meets for lecture on Mondays and Wednesdays. There is a mandatory online component as well. Offers credit for the UK Core requirement in Intellectual Inquiry in Arts & Creativity. Fulfills ENG pre-major requirement and provides ENG minor credit.

ENG 107: INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING

Instructor: Erik Reece

006: MW 1-1:50pm; Discussion F 12-12:50pm

007: MW 1-1:50pm; Discussion F 2-2:50pm

008: MW 1-1:50pm; Discussion F 1-1:50pm

009: MW 1-1:50pm; Discussion F 1-1:50pm

This course in an introduction to three genres of creative writing: fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Students will first learn the tools of the trade--image, character, story, etc.--then apply what they have learned to their own poems, essays and short stories. This course fulfills the UK Core requirement for Intellectual Inquiry in Arts & Creativity.

ENG 107: INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING

Instructor: Michael Carter

010: TR 12:30-1:45pm

This introductory course in creative writing will explore the various genre: we will play with poetry, fiddle with fiction and nonfiction, as well as grace our souls with other genre. The class will read and discuss literature in various delightful forms to help us understand technique and voice, and practice writing and critiquing our own writing. We will often work in small groups (depending on the number enrolled) as a workshopping method for finding our voices as writers, and for helping our classmates find theirs. By the semester’s end, we will have a mini portfolio of writing. This course fulfills the UK Core requirement for Intellectual Inquiry in Arts & Creativity.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: American Road Narratives

Instructor: Andrew Doolen

001: TR 9:30-10:45am

This course explores the significance of the road narrative in American culture. Experiences of travel have provided writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians with many opportunities to test themselves, to remake their identities, and to imagine new futures unencumbered by the past. The road narratives that we will study are essentially about a journey towards self-discovery, but this pervasive theme is inspired by the author's irresistible desire to break free from society's restraints-from poverty, racial segregation, and stifling hometowns, to sexism, geographical isolation, and the moral prohibitions of an older generation. Stories about the road often dream of freedom and possibility, even as the author, ironically enough, is being forced into exile. We will pay close attention to how the unique experiences of race, class, gender, and citizenship influence the themes and issues of road narratives. The course will examine a range of texts, including literature, film, photography, art, and music.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: Bible as Literature

Instructor: Frederick Bengtsson

002: TR 11-12:15pm

The collection of sacred texts known as the Bible has a long and complex history. Written and shaped over millennia by different people and in different languages, it has played a central role in Western and Judeo-Christian history and culture, not only as a religious text, but as a literary one as well. While religion is central to the Bible, religious interpretation and theology are not our main focus in this class. Instead, we will take a textual approach to these books, exploring them in literary and historical terms: what kinds of techniques, devices, and genres do the writers of these texts employ? how do earlier books and writers influence later ones, and how in turn do these later works reflect and innovate on earlier ones? how are the various historical periods and cultures that produced these books reflected within them? what issues are raised by the history of translation and re-translation of these texts? By asking (and trying to answer) these kinds of questions, we will gain a richer understanding of the literary complexities of these texts, and of their cultural and historical importance.

ENG 130: HONORS LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: TWICE TOLD TALES: Twice Told Tales

Instructor: Marion Rust

003: TR 11-12:15pm

Every narrative act begins in response, but only a few acknowledge the debt. This course examines contemporary narratives (both prose and poetry) that rewrite other works, along with the works that they rewrite. Focusing on late 20th- and early 21st-century publications in tandem with their points of departure, our reading list will look something like this: Michael Cunningham’s The Hours with Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway; Kate Tempest’s Hold Your Own with accounts of the ancient Greek mythological figure Tiresias; Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me with James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric with videos such as In Memory of Trayvon Martin, created in collaboration with her husband John Lucas. We will also view Kate Tempest’s hip-hop performances, the film The Hours (starring Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf), and other relevant media. Literary appropriation invites the following questions, among others. What do Sophocles, Baldwin and Woolf offer their posthumous collaborators as a point of departure? What aspects of the original does the twice-told tale highlight, what does it obscure, and why? Does its commentary extend to stylistic mimicry, amplification or echo? These are a few of the issues we will explore in the service of becoming ever more self-aware, informed and articulate readers. In addition, we will use the twice-told tale to reflect upon the myriad forms that criticism can take. In that spirit, one of the written assignments offers you the option of writing a twice-told tale of your own in response to an assigned text. Students leaving this course can expect to have developed greater sensitivity to the act of narrative interpretation and an enhanced ability to reflect upon that act. They will also be fully aware of the importance of intertextuality: the explicit or implicit indebtedness of any single literary work to the world of words that swirls around it. Finally, they will have improved their skill at both spoken and written literary and cultural analysis.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: The Founding Narrative from Pastoral to Parody

Instructor: Lisa Zunshine

004: TR 12:30pm-1:45pm

What do Luke Skywalker, Hercules, Moses, Oedipus, and Superman have in common? They are all fictional "foundlings” brought up by people other than their parents and discovering that their fate (glorious or ignominious) is bound up with their true heritage. This course will introduce students to literary analysis by following the development of the "foundling narrative" in fiction, from Longus's Daphnis and Chloe and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Instructor: Michael Trask

005: TR 2-3:15pm

Apocalypses are hot these days. From TV and film audiences to readers of fiction both high and low, no one can get enough of the end of the world. Apocalypses essentially fall into two categories: human-made and providential (including divinely or extraterrestrially ordained). This class will look at a variety of recent novels that take up apocalypse and related themes like dystopia in contemporary culture. We will look first at why apocalypse has been a prevalent concern in science fiction as a genre and then proceed to recent novels that preoccupy themselves with life at or after the end of the world. How does society look after the collapse of civilization? Is there a society to speak of? Why are novelists (both genre writers and literary figures) drawn to the apocalypse? Our focus will be five novels: Margaret Atwood's ORYX AND CRAKE, Colson Whitehead's ZONE ONE, Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, Emily St. John Mandel's STATION ELEVEN, Max Brooks's, WORLD WAR Z. Assignments will include short response papers 2(pg), a take-home midterm, and a final project on a post-apocalyptic text of your choosing in any medium (film, TV, print, gaming).

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: Weird Books

Instructor: Matthew Giancarlo

006: TR 3:30-4:45pm

This is a course in "Weird Books," what might otherwise be called "experimental fiction" but including narratives that are, in some sense, just weird: startling, unexpected, strangely humorous or different. We will read works from several genres (plays, novels, short stories, poetry) that play with conventions and expectations, or that violate basic assumptions about perception and narrative. Authors may include Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O'Connor, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Martin Amis, and others. Our goals will be: 1) to read and enjoy these stories; 2) to reflect upon how they work; and 3) to write both critically and creatively under their influence. We may screen a few movies that fit with the general themes of the course.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: Tales of Villainy

Instructor: Michael Genovese

007: MWF 11:00am-11:50am

How often have you been reading a book and the bad guy seems so much more appealing than the forces of good? Or how often have you wondered whether the villain in the book is really so guilty of wrongdoing? Is the "good guy" really so clearly beyond reproach? In this course we will explore plays, novels, short stories, and poems in which villains clearly emerge, but our goal will be to look beyond good and evil. What is the nature of the villainy? What is its significance? Does the bad character represent something bigger than himself, or is he an anomaly? Is evil always some version of the same thing, or does it work differently depending on the context? How does the literature contain the threat he or she poses, and are you buying it? Readings will be drawn from British and American sources from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. The class will feature a few papers as well as a midterm and final exam.

ENG 168: JAZZ AND DEMOCRACY

Instructor: DaMaris Hill

001: MW 3:00pm – 4:15pm

This course is designed to be a hybrid cultural studies seminar and creative composition course that explores jazz theory as a philosophical artistic practice rooted in American democracy. This course will explore jazz aesthetics as a literary, visual, and musical art form. It will also examine theories of jazz composition as philosophical statements that are in direct conversation with the principles of US democracy. Jazz has been a source of inspiration for a variety of twentieth-century literatures and theoretical practices. The readings will be selections of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays with emphasis on jazz literary modes, creative trends, and political connotations specific to African American literature and culture.

ENG 180: GREAT MOVIES: The American 70’s

Instructor: Dan Howell

001: MW 12-12:50pm; Discussion TBD

The decade of the 70s was certainly one of the greatest -- if not the greatest -- in American film history. This course will feature a dozen movies from that amazing decade, ranging from familiar hits like The Godfather and Chinatown through lesser-known early masterpieces by directors such as Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman, as well as wonderful work from Terence Malick, Steven Spielberg and others. Obviously you’ll need to know some historical context for the films -- the emergence of youth counter-culture and the war in Vietnam, e.g. -- as well as some film history, and you’ll need to learn some basic terms of film art. But primarily we’ll be watching great movies, and talking about what we’re seeing, and thinking about how and why the movies work as they do. Class attendance and participation; weekly short quizzes and short responses. Final Exam. [Friday ONLINE]

ENG 180: GREAT MOVIES: Man Vs. Machine

Instructor: Matthew Godbey

002: MW 2-2:50pm; Discussion F 12-12:50pm

003: MW 2-2:50pm; Discussion F 2-2:50pm

004: MW 2-2:50pm; Discussion F 2-2:50pm

005: MW 2-2:50pm; Discussion F 1-1:50pm
This semester, we’re going to explore one of the most popular storylines in movies, and one that is incredibly relevant to life today: humans and their relationships to machines. Technical marvels themselves, movies provide filmmakers with a perfect medium for telling stories about our relationship to technology, whether in the form of machines, computers, robots, cloning, etc. Over the course of the semester, we’ll explore this rapidly evolving relationship by watching a variety of films drawn from diverse time periods and genres. Whether its movies dealing with artificial intelligence and the nature of humanity or our emotional attachment to man-made marvels, we’ll travel far and wide through the history of cinema and see what these movies can tell us about the ever-changing and always-complicated world of man and machines.

ENG 180: GREAT MOVIES: The Greatest

Instructor: Randall Roorda

006: TR 12:30-1:45pm

This class is meant for people who’d like to fulfill the UK Core in Arts and Creativity by staring at a screen. Staring at a screen would seem to be the most passive, least creative activity around, surpassed even by staring at a blank wall, since with a wall you might be moved, in your head, to fill in the blank. Watching a movie reputed to be great can be especially passive, as you’re expected mainly to take in its greatness. In this class, this expectation will itself be great, as the movies we’ll watch are reputedly the greatest every so designated in a poll of film critics run every ten years by the magazine Sight and Sound, the most influential in film studies. We’ll watch the top ten or so films on this list, counting down to Vertigo, the current greatest-of-all-time (overtaking Citizen Kane, the former champ). We’ll run smack into what makes for greatness in a picture, what qualities conduce to such quality, how “greatest” compares with most popular or lucrative or even enjoyable, how you as viewers apprehend or bask in or quail before their glory. Considering the requirement the course fulfills, we won’t study and analyze so much as talk back to, take off from, and make something of what we watch, with activities each week prompting you to do this: to get creative in some manner of speaking, while also taking stock of what’s so creative about what’s so great about the greatest in this art form, the greatest or at least most popular around. No exams, no formal papers: these activities (including on-the-spot efforts as well as creative projects) will comprise the work of the class.

ENG 207: BEGINNING WORKSHOP CREATIVEW WRITING: Fiction

Instructor: William Ewell

001: TR 11-12:15pm

This course is an introduction to fiction writing and to the workshop environment. Our ambitions stem from the assumption that good readers make good writers. We’ll read published stories, compose creative writing exercises as well as complete short stories, and provide an audience for each other’s work. You’ll leave with an appreciation for the rewards and challenges of writing fiction, exposure to a number of the short story’s finest practitioners, familiarity with the techniques and terminology of the writer’s craft, and a portfolio of original work.

ENG 207: BEGINNING WORKSHOP CREATIVE WRITING: Poetry: Writing on Art

Instructor: Julia Johnson

002: TR 2-3:15pm

This class is devoted to poetry writing by you and others. It is a workshop-based, introduction to poetry, course. You will be given writing assignments and readings designed to unleash your creativity and spark your powers of observation, imagination, and memory. You might know that we have a first-rate Art Museum on our campus but have you ever spent much time there? Signing up for this course is your chance not only to write poems but also to write ekphrastic poems inspired by visual art. We will visit the UK Art Museum’s current shows as well as its permanent collection several times during the semester. We will collaborate and think about how we, along with our fellow peers in the workshop, enter, explore, and take inspiration from visual art in unexpected and fruitful ways. We will read, as examples, a selection of poems from various early and contemporary poets (including international poets) who have used art as subject and together we will consider the endless possibilities. We will cover key poetic terms and devices by reading an extensive amount of work by modern and contemporary poets. We will discuss the art and craft of writing poetry, and we will learn the art of the workshop, discussing and critiquing one another's work with enthusiasm and care.

ENG 207: BEGINNING WORKSHOP CREATIVEW WRITING: An Ancient Art

Instructor: Gurney Norman

003: T 5-7:30pm

English 207 Autobiography is an introductory creative writing class designed to offer the student a laboratory situation in which she or he may develop autobiographical writing skills. The premise of the course is that every person has stories to tell about her or his experiences of life. It is assumed that each member of the class is self-motivated to write his or her individual life-stories. Many will want to write their stories from personal need as part of their journey of self-discovery. Others will be more interested in making a record of their lives and thoughts for future publishing, and for use by family members as part of the family's collective memory. Perhaps the writer will simply want to record long-held feelings, emotions, facts, secrets and other forms of self-expression. Students are encouraged to maintain a journal or notebook to record thoughts, ideas, memories for later use. Class members provide a sympathetic audience for each student's work-in-progress. During the semester students are asked to write three to four pages a week of autobiographical writing. There will be in-class exercises, usually taking ten or fifteen minutes to complete, which result in about two pages or six hundred words of "practice" writing. Counting the exercises, typically a student will produce 50 or more pages of original work during a semester. At semester's end, the student will assemble his or her collected writings as a manuscript to be submitted to the professor.

ENG 207: BEG WKSHP CRTV WRT: FICTION

Instructor: Andrew Milward

004: TR 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm

This is an introductory course on the art and craft of fiction writing. Over the course of the semester students will learn the building blocks of fiction through the exploration of core craft elements in our textbook, as well as through in-class writing exercises. Being a good writer starts with being a good reader, so we will also carefully study stories by professional writers. Students will compose their own works of fiction, beginning with full-length short stories and moving on to more compressed—and some would argue more difficult—forms like flash fiction and microfiction. This class follows the workshop model, so students can expect to have their work discussed and critiqued by the class in both small and large groups.

ENG 207: BEGINNING WORKSHOP CREATIVEW WRITING: Screenwriting

Instructor: John D Howell

005: W 5:00-7:30pm

Through the study of screenplays, films, and textbook readings, students will develop a working familiarity with screenplay format, narrative structures, characters, settings, writing narrative action, and dialogue. Much of that familiarity will be generated through the writing you will do both in and out of class. That writing will include such specialized forms as loglines, treatments, and -- necessarily -- a screenplay for a short film or a portion of a feature-length film. The class will also require cooperative activities such as group-work on various pieces of writing as well as workshopping. Grades will be based on writing assignments, occasional brief quizzes, timely submission of assignments, participation, and the final draft.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: Life, Death, and Mourning

Instructor: Emily Handy

001: MWF 9-9:50am

002: MWF 10-10:50am

We often accept that life, death, and grief are all connected, but sometimes it is useful to question how the stories we tell maintain, complicate, or challenge these connections. In this class, we will look at literature by authors of various nations, eras, and backgrounds to investigate how we think about death and its many meanings. If life and death are so intertwined, how do we recognize their borders? How do fiction and nonfiction bleed into each other when we deal with the intimate and personal process of grief? Are works about death and mourning always sad, or can they be witty, funny, and playful? Is death the only thing we mourn? I’m thinking about these questions and more, we will read a variety of texts from an assortment of genres. Students will be expected to complete all readings, attend class regularly, participate in class discussion, and complete several writing assignments as well as one collaborative project.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT

Instructor: Emily Handy

001: MWF 9-9:50am

002: MWF 10-10:50am

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: Literature of the Metropolis

Instructor: Benjamin Wilson

003: MWF 11-11:50

004: MWF 1-1:50pm

Although today most people in the United States live in cities, this was not always so. Prior to the 1800s, almost everyone lived and died in villages, small towns, or the countryside. The rise of the modern metropolis in the late 18th and early 19th centuries had a profound effect on the rural peasantry and urban bourgeoisie alike, and continues to shape our own time. This course focuses on how poems, stories, novels, and plays have portrayed the city in the last 200 years. From William Blake’s poetic vision of the “dark Satanic mills” of London, to the lonely lives of alienation in James Joyce’s stories in Dubliners, to the hope that rises out of ghettoized poverty in Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, each work we study in this course explores different facets of the endlessly renewing nature of the modern city. Alongside these and other authors, we will consider the historical, cultural, and material development of the metropolis from its origins down to the present.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: MONSTERS, FREAKS, GEEKS: Tales of the Strange and Wondrous

Instructor: Michelle Sizemore

006: TR 11-12:15pm

This semester we’ll be gripped by texts that turn the spotlight on individuals who, by either choice or force, inhabit the margins of mainstream society. Through an ensemble of texts that mix horror, fantasy, tragedy, and humor, we will explore how writers over the past two centuries have used stories of monsters, freaks, and geeks to ask profound questions about differences among humans, as well as differences between humans and other beings: What are the limits and excesses of the human? How have bodies been markers of otherness? How are feelings of strangeness and wonder connected with social othering? In this class we will pay special attention to how cultures have constructed anomalous social categories in order to define or secure membership in a common group. We will be equally concerned with how race, class, sexuality, gender, and disability factor into these designations and divisions. Along the way we will carefully consider similarities and differences among those who have been disparagingly categorized as monsters, freaks, and geeks.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: Identity and Belonging in Literature

Instructor: Chinwe Morah

007: TR 12:30-1:45pm

Questions about individual and social identity lie at the center of who we are as individuals. We constantly ask of ourselves ‘who are I and how do I know that I belong in this social group?’ Even as we work to determine our personal identity and social place, we regularly evaluate the rights of others to belong to our social group. When new members attempt to join our social groups, we try to determine who they should be, what they should like, what they should worship, and even what they should think. In this section of English 230, through global literature we will examine how personal and social identities are formed, the role of personal choice in the formation of personal and social identities, what happens when personal and social identities are in conflict, how social identity is perpetuated, and how individuals are included and excluded from communities. In addition, we will examine issues of representation in literature, and consider how depiction of identity in literature plays a part in how we see ourselves. We will draw on the works of writers around to globe to scrutinize how they use literature to represent and examine the formation, meaning, and consequences of personal and social identity, belonging, and citizenship. At the same time, as an introduction to literary studies, we will focus on the skills of literary analysis with a special emphasis on close reading and historical context, making original, well-crafted arguments about texts in essay form, using research to support analysis, and mastering many of the fundamental elements of literary study. Attention will be paid to student writing, particularly to devising a thesis, crafting an argument, and learning how to use supporting evidence.

ENG 241: SURVEY OF BRITISH LITERATURE I

Instructor: Joyce MacDonald

001: TR 9:30-10:45
English 241 is a survey of the development of British (not just “English”) literature from its beginnings through the early seventeenth century. Obviously, we will not be able to cover all literary developments in a period of more than a thousand years in equal depth. Instead, the course will have four major goals:

To give students an overview of the major modes of writing, significant texts, and important authors in the English language over this long period
To trace a history of the development of the English language over time
To help students build a critical vocabulary for discussing and analyzing pre-modern literature
To introduce students to important research tools for studying and writing about literature
ENG 241 counts toward the survey requirement for the English major and may fulfill other requirements for other majors in and out of Arts and Sciences.

ENG 252: SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE II

Instructor: Matthew Godbey

001: MW 11-11:50am; Lecture F 12-12:50pm

002: MW 11-11:50am; Lecture F 11-11:50am

This course is designed to tell a story about the development of American literature through a chronological survey of American texts from the Civil War to present day. Though not intended as a comprehensive survey, the course will nonetheless guide students through the key literary, social, and cultural movements that have defined American literature during that time. Beginning with the realism and naturalism movements that developed in the latter half of the 19th century and concluding with a variety of contemporary writers and forms (experimental fiction, memoirs, etc.), the class will examine the intersection between American history and literature. This examination will range widely through works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction by men and women of diverse backgrounds and interests. As we study the multiplicity of voices that constitute American literature, we will address questions such as: What is a literary canon and is it even applicable anymore? What does “American” mean? What role has literature played in the ongoing story of the culture and history of the United States? How do the gender, race, and class of writers and readers affect the creation and reception of a literary text? How are the broad cultural movements of realism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism reflected in literary works and how do those movements shape the writing and reception of literature? What is the ongoing role of literature in a culture that increasingly values the visual and the digital over the verbal? Ultimately, students will leave the course with a foundational understanding of American literature that they can use as a springboard for further study.

ENG 260: INTRODUCTION TO BLACK WRITERS

Instructor: Matthew Godbey

001: MWF 10-10:50am

This course explores African-American literature during the past four decades. We will use works of fiction written since 1975 to examine how authors use literature to explore both contemporary issues related to race and identity and the lingering effects of historical issues such as slavery, Jim Crow, the great migration, and civil rights. Attention will be paid to student writing, particularly to devising a thesis, crafting an argument, and learning how to use supporting evidence. At the same time, as an introduction to literary studies, we will focus on the skills of literary analysis with a special emphasis on close reading and historical context, making original, well-crafted arguments about texts in essay form, using research to support your analyses, and mastering many of the fundamental elements of literary study.

ENG 260: INTRODUCTION TO BLACK WRITERS

Instructor: Claire Lenviel

002: TR 11-12:15pm

003: TR 12:30-1:45pm

DuBois rightly predicted that “the problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the color-line.” Taking up the mantle, Black writers and artists have resisted, (re)invented, (re)imagined, and revolted over and across the color-line, and Black literature captures, among many other things, this tumult in its representations of race. This course provides a survey of twentieth-century canonical Black literature, and through these readings, students will discover diverse representations of race in literature, identify and analyze themes in writing, conduct research on cultural and historical context, and present this research to the class, all with the end-goal of developing our individual and collective knowledge about the relationships between author, reader, culture, text, and race.

ENG 266: SURVEY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE II

Instructor: Rynetta Davis

001: TR 9:30 – 10:45am

ENG 271: THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE

Instructor: Frederick Bengtsson

001: TR 11-12:15pm

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Good Guys and Bad Girls

Instructor: Valerie Stevens

001: MWF 9-9:50am

002: MWF 10-10:50am

The hero who saves the day. The nice guy who finishes last. The good girl gone bad. The hot mess. The cruel seductress. We have all seen these characters in movies, yet perhaps we have not thought critically about them. This course looks at variations on the archetypes of the good guy and the bad girl as they appear in films in a variety of genres from the 1930s through today. With this theme in mind, we will consider the idealization/condemnation of and the ambivalence towards these figures, the cultural factors to which they respond, and the gendered implications of their recurrence in film. ENG 280 introduces students to the basics of film, active viewing, interpretation, and argument. With this knowledge, we will present thoughtful analyses of films in verbal, written, and digital media.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Capturing 9/11

Instructor: Andrew Beutel

003: MWF 11-11:50am

004: MWF 12-12:50pm

“No visionary cinematic genius could hope to recreate the majestic abjection of that double surrender,” wrote the English novelist Martin Amis regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. These words do more than describe an historical event; they attempt to interpret the meaning of it. Despite Amis’s claim, however, film has also attempted to interpret and, indeed, recreate what happened on that day. This attempt, always made with controversy, has entailed confronting the many troubling questions 9/11 left in its wake: What does it mean? How did it happen? And why? In this section of English 280, we will explore the different ways in which films reckon with the overwhelming reality of 9/11 and interrogate the answers they give to these questions. We will cover a number of critical issues, ranging from the psychological (loss, trauma, and mourning) to the political (national identity, terrorism, and the imperialism). In addition, we will learn how to “read” film by studying its formal elements (mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, editing, film genres, and narrative structure) and developing a theoretical vocabulary with which to interpret it. Films will include 11’09”0, United 93, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Babel, among others.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Michael Carter

005: TR 8-9:15am

This introductory film course will examine the lens through which film making shows us ourselves, our world, and our ever changing culture. Since film’s earliest days controversies have waxed and waned within the cinema (violence, sex, and language anyone?) and various methods of censoring or restricting the medium have been attempted, and still film thrives as a major industry. Perhaps films persist because whether live actors, animation, historical, contemporary, or futuristic, film presents a view of humanity that the writers and directors bring to life visually, aurally, and emotionally. We will consider all parts of the process and product. This class will require out-of-class viewing of films (approximately one a week) through some external means, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, etc. and you will come to class ready to discuss the various means through which the film makers develop their craft: cinematography, sound, editing, narrative structure, and so forth. You will be required to write several critical responses to the films which will be the bulk of your grade for the course. The remainder of the grade will be determined from attendance, quizzes, and a midterm test.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Musical Biopics

Instructor: Justin Roberts

006: TR 9:30-10:45am

007: TR 11-12:15pm

Introduction to Film: Musical Biopics will look primarily at biographical films about musicians, composers, and other musical figures, as well as a few fiction films that take musicians and the music community as their subject to help us more clearly understand what makes the musical biopic what it is. Both the musical and the biopic are established genres, and the musical biopic as we know it has existed essentially from the start of sound film itself, this type of film has become increasingly prominent, celebrating musical figures to fit all tastes. Why this boom? What are the traits of this subgenre, and what makes it continually appealing? In this course we will look at a variety of films from Hollywood’s history, exploring what makes the musical biopic (and having fun talking about our favorite music and musical figures in the process).

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: WC Foreman

008: TR 12:30-1:45pm

This section of ENG 280 is an introduction to the study of the movies as a narrative art and a cultural document, with emphasis on the former. The movies we will watch will be chosen from a variety of genres, national cinemas, and time periods. The course will develop students' skills in interpretation and analysis of film and in evaluating competing interpretations of films. The "evaluation" of movies we will do will not be about assigning stars or pointing thumbs up or down, nor will the evaluation of interpretations necessarily be designed to accept one and reject its competitors. All the movies for this section will feature an Unexpected Adventure. The central character or characters are going about their "normal" lives when they suddenly find themselves in another story, full of novelty and of danger . . . but also offering an opportunity to grow, to discover their capabilities, to develop relationships with others, that their earlier stories had not. Most of our characters (but not all) seize these opportunities, either by choice or by necessity. The stories will examine their fitness for adventure, their physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual resources and powers, their capacities for collaboration where survival depends on it, their abilities to live in a "new" world, and the consequences of success or failures and how to tell these apart. Offers UK Core credit for Intellectual Inquiry in the Humanities. Does not fulfill ENG premajor requirement. Can be taken for ENG Major Elective credit. Provides ENG minor credit. Credit will not be given to students who already have credit for ENG 281.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Frederick Bengtsson

009: TR 2-3:15pm

This course will introduce students to the study of cinema as a medium, and to the tools and vocabulary of film analysis. By learning about and attending to key elements of film production and form (genre, cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound and lighting, etc.) in a variety of films, we will consider the ways in which filmmakers shape our experience of their work and create meaning within it. We will move beyond watching films passively toward thinking about them analytically, both in artistic and aesthetic terms, and in terms of the ideas and ideologies they articulate, reinforce, and resist.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Family Ties in Film

Instructor: Katherine Whaley

010: M 5-7:30pm

011: T 5-7:30pm

Films about family ask us to consider generational conflicts, the nature of domestic gender roles, aging into new familial roles, and the impact of marriage, divorce, and death on children. As a part of our examination of family relationships in film, we will strive to answer several questions, such as “What characterizes a family film?” “How are the societal roles of mother/father/child shaped by or reinforced in film?” and “If all families are dysfunctional, why do many films seek to dispel the myth of the nuclear family?” We will explore what role nostalgia plays in the desire for idealized versions of family, the nature of chosen families vs. biological families, and how changes in on-screen family relationships stage current cultural debates. As we look at portraits of family life across decades, we will also ask what these films tell us about the cultural moment of their production. Students will learn to identify and employ film techniques to develop interpretations of cinematic meaning, analyze the meaning of family dynamics, and consider how these depictions of the family impact cinema as an artistic medium and cultural document.

ENG 285: HISTORY OF FILM II

Instructor: Dan Howell

001: MW 3-4:15pm

Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course will look in a wide-ranging way at postwar cinema, including examples from movements such as Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave, as well as other films from other countries, while of course addressing American movies primarily (with emphasis on the 1950s, 60s and -- especially -- the 70s). We will examine formal elements such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound and editing, and also narrative structures and genres, with significant attention paid to historical (social, cultural) contexts. Expect some black-and-white films and some foreign films with subtitles. All of our films will be important contributions to the massive history of the most powerful artistic medium we humans have ever known.

ENG 290 INTRODUCTION THE WOMEN’S LITERATURE: Difficult Women

Instructor: Megan Pillow Davis

001: MWF 11:00am – 11:50am

In a January 2017 interview in The Chicago Review of Books, Amy Brady asked Roxane Gay why she titled her newly-released short story collection Difficult Women. “As I considered the women in this collection, I realized they would be termed “difficult” because that’s a catch-all term for women who don’t shut up and look pretty,” Gay said. “The women in my stories are messy and complicated. They face difficult situations and make difficult choices. Difficult Women felt like the perfect title to hold the spirit of these stories.” “Difficult women” is, in fact, an apt description of many of the female characters who populate the landscape of American literature. In this course, we’ll examine literary representations of “difficult women” in twentieth century literature produced by women whose intersectional identities make this categorization particularly fraught. From Nella Larsen’s adrift outsider Helga Crane to Toni Morrison’s independent, unconventional Sula and beyond, together we’ll consider what it means to be a “difficult women,” and we’ll examine novelistic representations of “difficult women,” the historical and cultural patterns that helped to shape those representations, and we’ll consider how those representations evolved – and didn’t – over the course of the century. We’ll supplement our reading of these novels with several shorter prose and poetry readings, including excerpts from Gay’s short story collection, as well as with readings about the impact of Jim Crow laws, the eugenics movement, the removal of Native American children to federal institutions, and other structures and systems that marginalized people of color in America in the twentieth century and women of color in particular.

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath

Instructor: Michael Carter

002: TR 9:30-10:45am

John Steinbeck combines much of the confusion of 20th century American culture in his many works from non-fiction reporting to novels of the American West and the misfits he found there. His merging of realism and modernism exhibits his despair with the disappearing American Dream that shows in his writing in which he depicts the social outcasts, immigrants, common laborers, and traditional rural values. Is he a radical socialist? Is he a misogynist? Is he something else? We will read a variety of his works from the 1930s (focusing on The Grapes of Wrath) and try to discover the Nobel Prize writer and ourselves among his characters and their words and actions. We will write two shorter essays, have a midterm examination, and develop a collaborative final project or another individual final project. Grades will be determined by these tasks, attendance, participation, and by your preparation for each class meeting.

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition

Instructor: Rynetta Davis

003: TR 11-12:15pm

This course will examine one of the most important texts in African American literary history, Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901). We will consider why Chesnutt chose to write a fictional account of the 1898 Wilmington Race Massacre. As well, we will study the historical, cultural, political, and literary contexts in which this novel appeared. How did Chesnutt’s literary peers, specifically William Dean Howells, receive the novel? How many copies of the novel were sold in 1901? Who was Chesnutt’s “target” audience? Chesnutt’s fictions address a variety of themes including racial passing, “illicit” interracial sex and marriage, and interracial violence; his literary texts interrogate what W.E.B. Du Bois dubbed the “problem” of the twentieth-century (and beyond): the color line. We will pursue a similar line of inquiry in our assessment of Chesnutt’s literary oeuvre by analyzing how his fictions dramatized social crises such as segregation and racial discrimination. Moreover, we will examine how Chesnutt’s contemporaries, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Hopkins, among others, responded to his representation of race relations in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries.

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Hamlet

Instructor: Emily Shortslef

004: TR 12:30-1:45pm

Few plays have had afterlives as long and rich as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this course we’ll explore some of Hamlet’s many reappearances in literary criticism, philosophy, theater, and film. We’ll also look at some of the primary sources that Shakespeare drew on to create the play, and discuss its relationship to various late sixteenth-century religious, economic, and political contexts. We’ll also read a few other plays from the same period that take up similar issues (e.g. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, Middleton’s Revenger’s Tragedy). Likely topics of discussion and research include memory, mourning, revenge, and ghosts. Expect a lot of reading and a sizable amount of analytical writing (short papers building to a longer research essay), as well as an oral presentation.

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Melville

Instructor: Armando J Prats

005: TR 2-3:15pm

ENG 337: LITERATURE AND GENRE: Revenge

Instructor: Frederick Bengtsson

001: TR 9:30-10:45am

Revenge: A kind of wild justice, a way of getting retribution when society has failed you, or part of an unending cycle of bloody violence that threatens to destroy society itself? Writers and artists have asked this question for thousands of years, making revenge one of the most enduring literary and artistic themes. From the familial, mythical dramas of the ancient Greeks where wives kills husbands and children kill their parents, to the spectacular violence of Renaissance revenge tragedies where blood flows freely and body parts litter the stage, to the frontier justice of the American Western where the good guys go after the bad guys, this class will consider revenge stories in all their variety.

ENG 338: TOPICS IN LITERATURE: Love and Gender in Modern and Contemporary Literature

Instructor: Janet Eldred

001: MW 10-10:50am; Discussion TBD

"And love is love, is love is love. . . .Love makes the world go round." Jennifer Lopez and Lin-Manuel Miranda sang it out in their tribute to the 2016 Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, Florida. And yet, as the context of the tribute reminds us, people commit violent acts in the face of love. And yes, governments around the world regulate it. This course looks at love in late 20th- and early 21st-century literature, refracting the abstraction through topics such as law, violence, sexuality, and individual and cultural identities. I haven't quite firmed up the book list yet (so much to choose from!), but texts might include, Yoko Ogawa, The Diving Pool (1990, 2008), Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (1996), David Ebershoff, The Danish Girl (2000), Bharati Mukherjee, Desirable Daughters (2003), and Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love (2011). Online discussions, midterm, final exam.

ENG 339: AUTHOR STUDIES: Jane Austen

Instructor: Michael Trask

002: TR 11-12:15pm

A study of the greatest English novelist. We’ll read all her novels (NORTHANGER ABBEY, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, MANSFIELD PARK, EMMA, PERSUASION). We’ll pay special attention to the development of Austen’s style, which became the dominant narrative mode of fiction after her (free indirect discourse); to her preferred theme (the marriage plot); to her context (the transition from the revolutionary 18th century to the industrialized 19th); and to the role that literary texts play within that context. There will be a focus on gender issues and issues of class to the extent that these categories illuminate (but do not dictate) our study of Austen. We’ll be guided by the strange fact that although Austen everywhere in her novels champions the wedding of shabby-genteel women of exquisite parts to their social superiors, she herself was an unmarried woman who practiced a professional trade. This mismatch between biography and art opens the door to a number of speculations about the tension between old and new classes, old and new gender arrangements, and old and new forms of representation. We shall also watch a select handful of the by now prolific number of screen adaptations of Austen’s novels.

ENG 342: HONORS SHAKESPEARE

Instructor: Emily Shortslef

001: TR 2-3:15pm

An introductory survey of Shakespeare’s plays with a thematic focus on complicated relationships (between friends, family, lovers, enemies, and strangers). We’ll explore acts of trust, betrayal, and forgiveness, kindness and cruelty, in plays that span Shakespeare’s career and cover the range of dramatic genres in which he wrote. At the same time, we’ll examine how Shakespeare’s use of language (especially figurative language) creates meaning; discuss the theatrical cultures and social worlds in which these plays were written and have been performed; and think about the exciting interpretive possibilities of performance all questions having to do with the relationship these plays have with their audiences, in Shakespeare’s time and now. This course will introduce students to Shakespeare’s work in its historical and dramatic contexts; foster the development of a critical vocabulary and set of strategies for analyzing complex texts; and help students to develop close reading and critical writing skills. Texts likely to be studied include Hamlet, Othello, and Twelfth Night.

ENG 345: BRITISH POETRY

Instructor: Michael Genovese

001: MWF 1-1:50pm

At the end of the 1600s and beginning of the 1700s, British poets delved into the darkness. Excelling at tawdry sexual lyrics and rhymes that mocked the elite and common alike, these poets wrote little that resembles the introspective, emotional poetry that developed a hundred years later and still dominates stereotypes about poetic expression. So what exactly happened, and is there even a way to answer that question? To approach this issue, we will begin with the satires and bawdy couplets of the 1680s-1720s and continue on to the Romantic poetry of the 1790s-1820s, pausing along the way to examine how attitudes towards poetry and consideration of the well-examined life shifted in the intervening decades. Out of a genre of writing that excelled in snipe eventually arose the pre-eminent genre for examining one’s soul, and in this class we will test whether there is any family resemblance between poetic traditions that look so different. Authors will include Rochester, Behn, Pope, Swift, Duck, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Barbauld, Robinson, Johnson, and numerous others. Students should be prepared to read anywhere from 1 to 4 poems per day, depending on their lengths, and there will be 2-3 page analytical papers throughout the semester as well as a longer, final paper

ENG 347: THE RISE OF THE BRITISH NOVEL

Instructor: Lisa Zunshine

001: TR 2-3:15pm

This course will focus on the eighteenth-century British novel: its rise and historical origins, as well as its recent cinematic adaptations. We’ll read novels by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Horace Walpole, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen. Requirements include quizzes, short papers, and two long papers.

ENG 380: FILM AND GENRE: Going West

Instructor: WC Foreman

001: TR 3:30-4:45pm

"Go West, young man," famous as the mid-19th century words of journalist and politician Horace Greeley (whether he originated them or not), will set in motion an eclectic mix of films in a variety of genres (especially westerns, noir/detective films, and comedies) in which the move west moves through the deserts of the arid Southwest toward the City of Angels, Hollywood, and the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Starting with Buster Keaton's GO WEST (1925) and ending up somewhere near Ana Lily Amirpour's A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (2014) (billed as "the first Iranian vampire Western," but shot in south central California), with a short detour southward into Mexico via Ida Lupino's THE HITCH-HIKER (1953) and Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL (1958), we'll encounter, among other movies, John Ford's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE (1962), Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), Howard Hawks' THE BIG SLEEP (1946), Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN (1974), Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), and Curtis Hanson's L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997).

ENG 384: LITERATURE AND FILM: The Vietnam War

Instructor: Armando Prats

001: TR 11-12:15pm

This course will study the distinctive literature of America’s Vietnam War as well as the more significant Hollywood films of that War. We will read Michael Herr’s Dispatches, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, and Tobias Wolff’s In Pharaoh’s Army. We will compare and contrast the literature with the Hollywood movies produced and released only after the end of the war (all but John Wayne’s The Green Berets): The Boys in Company C; The Deer Hunter; Coming Home; Go Tell the Spartans; Apocalypse Now; First Blood (a. k. a.) Rambo; Rambo First Blood Part II; Red Dawn (1984); Platoon; Hamburger Hill; Full Metal Jacket; and We Were Soldiers. In addition to these Hollywood movies we will screen all the episodes of the recent documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, The Vietnam War. You will also be responsible for studying material placed on Canvas’ “File” section. Please note that all films will be viewed outside of class, and that you are responsible for screening all the movies. Many of these films, both fiction and documentary, show graphic images of violence. Some also show brief scenes of nudity. If you cannot morally abide R-rated movies you will have to withdraw from the course. There are no substitute movies. NO CELLPHONES, NO LAPTOPS, NO EXCEPTIONS.

ENG 391: LITERARY THEORY

Instructor: Matthew Giancarlo

001: TR 12:30pm-1:45pm

Since the 1940's "literary theory" has emerged as a vibrant and vital aspect of literary studies. The term covers a wide range of formal, historical, and critical approaches to literature and culture that have changed the ways we read. This course investigates selected trends and schools of modern literary theory in diverse texts and contexts. These can include formalism, Practical Criticism, and the New Criticism; French Structuralism and the various modes of post-structuralism (Semiotics, Deconstruction, Reader-response, Speech-act theory); historicism and the New Historicism; as well as broader modes of cultural critique such as Feminism, Marxism, Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School, Post-colonialism, Critical Race Theory, and more.

ENG 399: INTERNSHIPS

Department of English Internship

Instructor: Pearl James

The Department of English internship is available for qualified students to receive academic credit through applied and practical experience with a variety of private and public entities, including but not limited to the University Press of Kentucky, law firms, media outlets, the Lexington Public Library, the Carnegie Center, and others. The internship will be supervised by both a responsible person on site and by an English Dept. faculty member. Credits: 1-3 credit hours, depending on the time required and nature of the internship. Approximately 10 hours a week of internship work equals three credit hours. English 399 will be graded only on a pass-fail basis. Repeatable for a total of up to 6 credit hours. Prereq: To be eligible for the internship, students must (1) be sophomores, juniors or seniors, and (2) have completed both parts of the CCR/composition and communication requirement. Contact pearl.james@uky.edu for more information.

ENG 407: INTERM WKSHP IMAG WRTNG: Poetry

Instructor: Julia M Johnson

005: TR 12:30pm - 1:45pm

Do you enjoy getting off campus to explore Lexington when possible? Have you ever been able to do so as part of a class? Did you know that Lexington has a thriving art scene with numerous art galleries and public art situated throughout the city? You might know that we have a first-rate Art Museum on our campus but have you ever spent much time there? Signing up for this course is your chance not only to further your work as a poet but also to write ekphrastic poems inspired by visual art. We will visit the UK Art Museum’s current shows as well as its permanent collection and will also go on field trips and independent excursions to the galleries and shows in nearby downtown. We will collaborate and think about how we, along with our fellow peers in the workshop, enter, explore, and take inspiration from visual art in unexpected and fruitful ways. We will read, as examples, a selection of poems from various early and contemporary poets (including international poets) who have used art as subject and together we will consider the endless possibilities.

ENG 407: INTERM WKSHP IMAG WRTNG: Autobiography

Instructor: Gurney M Norman

002: M 5:00pm – 7:30pm

The premise of this course in autobiographical writing is that every person has stories to tell about her or his experiences of life. It is assumed that each member of the class is self-motivated to write his or her individual life-stories. Many will want to write their stories from personal need as part of their journey of self-discovery. Others will be more interested in making a record of their lives and thoughts for future use in a book-length autobiography, and for use by family members as part of the family's collective memory. Perhaps the writer will simply want to record long-held feelings, emotions, facts, secrets and other forms of self-expression. Regardless of motive, the basic task for each student writer is to produce 5-7 standard manuscript pages per week for a total of at least sixty pages. Students should feel free to write more than these minimum pages during the semester. Beyond the required sixty pages there are no restrictions on length or subject matter. The instructor will respond to the work of each individual through written comments, individual conferences and spoken comments during the class meetings. Fellow students are invited to offer suggestions and themselves take turns reading aloud passages of their writing to the assembled class members. Students are encouraged to maintain a journal or notebook to record thoughts, ideas, memories for later use. The instructor will offer prompts for short in-class and out of class writing exercises. As the final project of the semester, students will assemble the written pages in manuscript form according to professional standards.

ENG 407: INTERM WKSP IMAG WRIT: Fiction

Instructor: William Ewell

004: TR 3:30pm – 4:45pm

This is a course for writers with some prior workshop experience and a degree of understanding about the mechanics and terminology associated with the craft of fiction. In brief: you’ve done a bit of this before. Now, here’s your chance to sharpen your skills through close reading, attention to technique, and focused critique. You’ll write at least two complete short stories (maybe more), at least one thorough revision, and perhaps a few additional exercises and shorter pieces.

ENG 425: ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING

Instructor: Randall Roorda

001: TR 3:30pm – 4:45pm

Environmental writing is not a genre as such but a cluster or assortment of text-types orbiting about concern for the natural world and expression of our relations thereto. This realm of discourse has a history and comprises a lineage; one purpose of this course is to trace and sample this living past. Another purpose is to survey modes or sites of writing that congregate about this heading. These mostly fall under the imprimatur of nonfiction (“creative” or “literary” or otherwise) but vary from personal to public, factual to impressionistic, head-space to travel-based, city to sticks and so forth, as we’ll see. A further, major purpose is to go and do likewise, make the turn from consumer to producer, convert experience to expression: compose environmental writing of our own. So through the first part of the course we’ll venture brief, tentative efforts in the veins of writing we sample (what I call Trial Runs), while in the second part the class will shift shapes and become mainly a writing workshop (though we’ll also keep reading till the end). Finally, since this writing presumes environments, we’ll seek out field experience, both together and individually: a last, best purpose.

ENG 450G: STUDIES IN AMERICAN LIT: Native American Literature

Instructor: Andrew V Doolen

001: TR 12:30pm – 1:45pm

This course surveys various contemporary works of Native American literature, with an emphasis on the cultural and historical contexts of each work. We will explore a range of novelists and poets, including Leslie Silko, Sherman Alexie, Louis Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, Joy Harjo, and James Welch. Native American photography and film will also be central to our course.

ENG 495: HONORS SEMINAR: Poetry of Seamus Heaney

Instructor: Jonathan M Allison

001: MWF 12:00pm – 12:50pm

A course on the great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Born and educated in Northern Ireland, but later a teacher and academic in England and America, Heaney is regarded as one of the major poets of our time, who published over 20 books of poetry and criticism, including his widely-praised translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. The critic Blake Morrison stated that Heaney is "that rare thing, a poet rated highly by critics and academics yet popular with 'the common reader.'" The Nobel Prize committee praised his “works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” He taught literature and creative writing at Harvard for many years where he held the Boylston Chair of Rhetoric and Oratory, and he was also appointed the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994.) He has links to the state of Kentucky, and was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of Kentucky in 2006, on which occasion he gave the Commencement Address at Rupp Arena. His early works are known for their magical evocations of a rural childhood and youth, but his later poems respond to the political and military conflict in Northern Ireland during the period 1966-1999, popularly known as “The Troubles.” He is also a love poet, a naturalist and archaeologist, a master elegist, and a commentator on “the music of what happens.” We will read widely in his poetry, drama, and criticism, and also explore some work by his contemporaries. Class participation and attendance; three papers; final examination.

ENG 507: ADV WKSHP IMAG WRTNG: Poetry

Instructor: Julia M Johnson

001: TR 12:30pm – 1:45pm

ENG 507: ADV WKSHP IMAG WRTNG: Autobiography

Instructor: Gurney Norman

002: M 5:00pm – 7:30pm

ENG 507: ADV WKSHP IMAG WRTNG: Fiction

Instructor: Andrew Milward

004: T 5:00pm – 7:30pm

For the student who has shown marked talent and commitment, this course provides a rigorous workshop among peers and includes additional attention to outside reading. Each student will produce a their own stories.