ENGL

This category designates courses that organize the study of literature into discrete historical eras and their significant cultural, aesthetic, or political concerns. "Eras" courses differ from historical surveys in that they focus on a single historical period, rather than bridge multiple historical periods, thus emphasizing depth within the period over breadth encompassing multiple periods. The emphasis on literary texts is balanced with attention to secondary sources and literary scholarship.

Courses under this category organize texts into the study of particular and discrete movements. These movements may be defined literarily, historically, politically, or culturally, among other possible groupings. The course may focus on self-defined literary movements or movements that have been defined retrospectively. The course topic is determined by the instructor. Recent topics include "Irish Literary Revival" and "Rhetorics of Resistance: Contemporary Activist Movements." Please consult the department website for information on current and upcoming offerings.

The selected author of study for any given term varies according to the instructor's specialization.

Courses under this number may explore either a single theory or small group of literary theories, as well as their application. As opposed to a broad survey of theory, this course aims to give students a deep knowledge of particular theoretical fields, resulting in conceptual and lexical fluency that will contribute to literary analysis across the curriculum. The course topic is determined by the instructor.

This course investigates how texts might generate and require a literacy that is visual before it is lexical. By tracing the relationship between words and images in a variety of genres including illustrated novels, photographic essays, comic books, film, and zines, students explore how images convey, argue, and narrate cultural, political, and personal stories.

This course investigates the external forces that shape what authors write and how readers read. Rather than study the stories contained within the pages of a book, students concentrate their analyses on the economic and cultural influences that affect the production and reception of books, whether the stories they tell are old or new, fiction or nonfiction, bestsellers or cult hits.

This course explores the nature, form, and function of a selection of narratives, reflecting on how a story unfolds depending upon the medium through which it is told. Drawing on theories of narratology, students consider the techniques that writers employ to convey their stories and, in turn, how filmmakers translate these techniques for cinema audiences. To facilitate this exploration, concentration is placed on the narrative mechanics that are unique to specific genres, auteurs, or movements. Themes, texts, and films vary by instructor.

Special Topics in Rhetoric, Literacy, and Composition will familiarize students with theories in the field of rhetoric, literacy, and composition studies (RLC). Courses under this number will provide an in-depth examination of key intellectual movements and figures that inform the development of rhetoric, literacy, and composition studies. Through these courses students will gain a critical appreciation for the conceptual frameworks that shape understandings of the relationships between language, literacy, and culture. The course topic is determined by the instructor.

This course investigates the enigmatic and shifting term "culture" by examining how writers, theorists, and artists express themselves when responding to a variety of circumstances, events, or existing forms of expression. Texts under study include literature, journalism, critical theory, photography, and film, as well as the places that mediate these texts (bookstores, museums, cinema houses, the classroom, the Internet). In approaching culture through these different mediators and media, students also investigate strategies to express such encounters in their own writing.

This course examines major concepts and theorists within the rhetorical tradition from antiquity to the present. Issues central to the course include whether the goal of rhetoric is necessarily persuasion, and whether the mode of presentation in speech or writing alters the meaning of rhetoric. Students explore the implications of rhetorical theory for daily life, particularly through the intersections of rhetorical theory and writing instruction, political and social activism, and visual media.