Fall 2022 Course Descriptions

Table of Contents

100-Level English Courses

200-Level English Courses

300-Level English Courses

400-Level English Courses

Graduate English Courses

100-Level English Courses

ENG 100 Intro to College Writing 5cr

CRN: 40039 Day/Time: MTWRF 09:00-09:50 am Instructor: Bell, Michael

English 100 is an introduction to college-level written communication, which involves skills in reading, critical thinking, research, writing, and study itself. This course is an opportunity for you to further develop your ability to read for understanding, generate ideas in response to your reading, and communicate those ideas clearly, fairly, and accurately.

To be successful in any field of study, be it biology, business, or art, you will need to communicate your unique perspectives, so my goal is to help you become a more creative, curious, and engaged thinker and writer, with more confidence in your power to generate and fulfill ideas. You will be exploring a variety of texts, questioning these texts and our own responses to them through discussions and activities, and writing with fluency and control using the conventions of standard written English.

You will be writing in several contexts, but the emphasis will be on work that develops ideas through analysis of your reading. You will emerge from this course a stronger writer and reader with enhanced perspectives on a variety of issues both personal and public, and hopefully you’ll enjoy reading and writing more than ever, with a renewed curiosity about the world and how you can write about it.

ASSIGNMENTS: We will read intensively rather than extensively, with less than 50 pages total of reading for the course. Readings will be drawn from contemporary topics. You will write up to 7 short informal papers of about 3 pages, and one longer essay of about 7 pages.

CRN: 40291 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Lucchesi, Andrew

This course provides an intensive workshop in college-level writing skills. We will use writing as a tool for understanding complex ideas, for making new knowledge, and generally for getting stuff cone at college.

This class offers only a few seats each year, giving students a personal connection to both the instructor and to their classmates. We will focus on how to read and respond to complex texts and how to compose pieces of writing in multiple forms, including essays, reports, proposals, websites, and slide presentations. Students will leave this class with the flexibility and confidence to succeed in their future writing-intensive classes.

ENG 101 Writing Your Way Through WWU

Prerequisites Notes: May not be taken concurrently with ENG 100. GUR: ACOM.

A writing course designed to prepare students for college-level creative, critical, and reflective writing. Because writing looks and works differently in different contexts, this course teaches the rhetorical competencies that students need to write across multiple disciplines. The course introduces students both to the processes of building and analyzing ideas, and to ways of communicating those ideas in context-specific genres for targeted audiences. This course has the immediate goal of preparing students to succeed in their writing at Western, but it will also serve them personally and professionally. Students needing to satisfy Block A of the communications section of the General University Requirements, which ENG 101 does, are required to do so prior to completion of 45 credits. Students with a 4 or 5 AP score are encouraged to take this class so they can learn to adapt their test-taking skills to college coursework.

OVERRIDES / CAPACITY OVERRIDES ARE NEVER GRANTED FOR ENGLISH 101.

200-Level English Courses

ENG 201 WritinHumanit: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 or 4/5 AP English Language Exam.

CRN: 40751 Day/Time: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Staff

Advanced instruction and practice in writing using ideas, texts and questions from a specified topic in the humanities. Areas and focus vary with section.

ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101.

CRN: 40165 Day/Time: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Guess, Carol

What does it mean to look like who you are? What happens if you don't; that is, if you pass as someone else? In this course, we'll read and analyze contemporary poetry written by writers whose work focuses on the theme of passing. We'll narrow this vast topic by analyzing writings on race (Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem and Shane McCrae's Mule), sexuality (Richard Siken's Crush), and mental illness (Allison Benis White's Self-Portrait with Crayon). Students will draft, write, and revise two critical papers, analyzing literary texts to develop a thesis on our theme.

CRN: 40293 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Lee, Jean

In this course, we will learn the close reading of literary techniques, literary interpretation, and literary argumentation by engaging deeply with Caribbean literature foregrounding how race, gender, and sexuality constitute feminist subjectivities. We will read poems, short stories, essays, song lyrics, and novels that respond to postcolonial and diasporic contexts. Throughout the quarter, we will query how Caribbean women define “freedom” from a racialized, gendered, and sexualized perspective that destabilizes ethnopatriarchal and heteronormative conditions of visibility and citizenship in postcolonial nations and abroad. 

CRN: 40427 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Weed, Katie

Satire & Social Change: Satire can make us laugh, wince, and question what we accept. In this section of 202, we will examine satirical literature dealing in particular with themes of limits and boundaries. We’ll explore satire in multiple genres and forms--sampling works from a broad range of time periods and cultures--and probe ways satire can complicate our views, sometimes effecting change and others impeding it. 

Studying novels, short stories, poetry, and film, we will hone skills in close reading and critical analysis of literary texts via various theoretical lenses, paying special attention to how language, style, and form contribute to social and/or political claims. Coursework will include extensive informal writing, group work, some creative writing, and multi-draft critical essays with a focused, arguable thesis supported by thoughtful sequences of claims and carefully selected textual evidence.

CRN: 41514 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

This writing course will invite you to think about your identity(ies) as a writer and to become more aware of the social, political, and rhetorical contexts of “writing” about literature. In this specific section of English 202, we will focus on contemporary forms of critical expression through multi-modal blogs as well as study a contemporary graphic novel, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, by Emil Ferris. I’m excited to introduce you to the indie comix scene with this recent work by Emil Ferris! We will explore the intersectional young adult themes of identity, community, and agency. Through this graphic novel, we will try to articulate and understand the strange, the beautiful, the complex, and the interesting . . . . My Favorite Thing is Monsters features marginalized and under-represented characters and themes, including topics such as love and friendship (relationship building), depression, sexuality, resiliency, loneliness/isolation, and trauma. We will celebrate this comix as a queer space where openness, fluidity, and non-conformity represent textual strategies as well as characters’ identities. The themes in Ferris’ work intersect and overlap with history, politics and rebellion while issues of diversity and inclusion are brought to the fore in a contemporary context. We will also study comix form, technique, and theory. I also invite you to share your favorite comix or web comix throughout the quarter. 

*Please note: this class content contains adult language and themes, including depictions of racism and sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexual predation and sexual assault, abortion, and death.  

Assignments and Evaluation 

You will have the opportunity to create multi-modal blogs, learning how to write about literature analytically and through close readings of the text and the visual rhetoric. This will necessitate learning about medium-specific analysis and comics technique and theory. The skills you learn in this course will prepare you to take other courses in literature, media, and writing within the English department and at WWU. 

Required Texts 

  • Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud (PDF in Canvas or you can order a print book) 
  • My Favorite Thing is Monsters (vol. 1), Emil Ferris (print book or digital text) 

CRN: 41855 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

This course directs attention to where literature and madness overlap by examining texts that either include characters experiencing hallucinations or texts that claim to produce madness.   We will inquire into the differences between madness, weirdness and that which is yet to be articulated and made habitual.   

  • Chambers, Robert. The King in Yellow (online) 
  • Clark, P. Djeli. Ring Shout 
  • Rivers, Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, The Deep 
  • Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird  
  • A People’s Future of the United States 

CRN: 42214 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Yu, Ning

This course is designed to develop and enhance the students' ability to read, and write about, a variety of literary texts (fiction, poetry and drama) critically.  While the essential concern of this course is to help students analyze how various elements of literature work together to lend power to a literary text, due attention will also be paid to the study of the complex interrelationships among writer, reader, text, and literary, historical, and cultural contexts. 
 
Assignments: In this course you will write four 3-4 page essays including various drafts that lead to the finished products.  Some of the drafting will be done in class.  You must read the assigned texts as close and critical reading is the first step towards successful writing about literature.  In addition to the assigned readings from, you wll periodically read from A Handbook To Literature, in order to gain a working knowledge of literary terms and learn the structure, style and mechanics of an academic paper. You read MLA Handbook for the correct format of your own writing.
 
Class Attendance:  Your regular physical and mental presence in class is essential.  Much of our work will be dependent upon exercises and discussions during the class period.  Due to this structure, there is usually no way to make up a class you have missed.  If you miss more than four classes, I advise you to withdraw from the course.  I will check attendance regularly. 

Class Participation: Your success in this course will depend a great deal on how consistently and seriously you participate in class discussions and group work.  I expect you to complete all reading assignments and to be prepared to discuss the readings in class and in your essays. 
Class Behavior:  For a term we will be a classroom community working toward shared goals.  We need to respect each other in order to do our jobs well and so good listening (no talking while others are talking) and good classroom citizenship are required of you.   
 
Evaluation:  Your final grade will be based on your essay grades and class participation: four essays = 60% (15% each; I grade with detailed comments);  class  participation = 25%; each student will write a total of 3 questions with a one-page written response to each of their own questions = 15% (5% per question/response; I grade without comment). 

Texts:  

  • A Handbook to Literature. Holman/Harmon, Editors. Sixth or later editions.  
  • MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Sixth or later editions.

Please buy the two books asap.

ENG 203 Wrtg for Public&Prof Audiences 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. CCOM.

CRN: 43170 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Brown, Nicole

English 203 is designed to provide you with instruction and practice in the creation of highly effective documents custom-tailored to specific professional and public audiences and their functional contexts. Writing in this field is focused on the uses that readers put to texts, readers who are reading to make decisions, choose actions, or accomplish tasks.  Audience-centered writers are therefore experts in rendering complex information in clear terms that their readers can understand. A skilled professional writer is able to accurately determine the specific requirements of a target audience, making careful selection and presentation of information for specific effect. Such writers present complex information with impeccable organization and clarity across many different kinds of documents: letters, reviews, reports, proposals, and presentations among them. Successful audience-centered writers must be excellent researchers and fast-learners. Increasingly, such writers must also have a solid grasp of the effects of visual information, graphics, and layout on reader response. In the 21st century, much of the production of text for professional and public audiences lies within the realm of design: writers for these audiences are information designers. 

ENG 216 American Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. HUM.

CRN: 44083 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Hardman, Pam

In this course we will explore various works written by writers in the United States from the 1600s-present. We will look at each work in its cultural context, discussing how such issues as race, gender, class, colonialism, science, technology, music, consumerism, and popular culture influence the text. We'll question assumptions about the literature itself and the American cultures that produced it.  

ASSIGNMENTS: Mid-term and final exams; reading responses; final multi-modal project 

TEXTS: Concise Heath Anthology of American Literature 2nd Edition, vols. 1 and 2 

ENG 227 Queer Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. BCGM.

CRN: 41206 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Colen, Elizabeth Jane

In this course we will read, respond to, and analyze a wide range of texts. Students will explore the historical context of these works and exercise and refine literary analysis skills by examining how an author uses context, form, language, and elements of style to deal with the personal, social, and political. Our encounters with the work will maintain a critical eye towards intersections of race, class, economics, ethnicity, ability, and others. As such, we will examine the literature of liminal spaces and their bearing on the future of queer culture. Students will be responsible for and graded on written literary analyses, class presentations, and regular participation in class discussions.

ENG 235 Native/Indigenous Literatures 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. BCGM.

CRN: 41856 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Gulyas, Lee

We will focus on contemporary literature by Indigenous authors from the continent called North America, and read, discuss, and interpret these works through history, theory, and artistic contexts. Instead of a survey of an extremely diverse and wide-ranging set of literatures, we will practice the skills that readers need to engage with Native & Indigenous Literature on its own terms. 

Texts 

  • There There, Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho) 
  • Nature Poem, Tommy Pico (Kumeyaay) 
  • Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson (Haisla, Heiltsuk) 
  • Additional Analytical and Creative Readings, provided by Instructor.

ENG 238 Society through its Literature (FYE) 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. HUM. Limited to first-year students:

CRN: 41210 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

A thematic approach to literature, with different themes exploring the relationship between literary forms and society. Repeatable once as an elective with different topics. May be taken only once for GUR credit.

ENG 282 Global Literatures 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. HUM.

CRN: 42425 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Wise, Christopher

This introductory course will survey various writers from across the world, especially Africa and the Middle East. We will read memoirs, poems, short stories, and novels. In addition to group work, students will turn-in three formal writing assignments: a take-home midterm essay exam [25%], an in-class final exam [25%], and a formal research paper [25%].  Regular attendance is required. Attendance and participation, including group work and in-class writing, will count for 25% of course grade. Use of cellphones, laptops, and other electronic devices are not allowed in the classroom, except for students with formal accommodations. 

Texts

  • Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave
  • Norbert Zongo, The Parachute Drop
  • Hawad, In the Net
  • Mariama Ba, So Long A Letter
  • Mohamed Choukri, For Bread Alone
  • Mahmud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise
  • Alifa Rifaat, Distant View of a Minaret

300-Level English Courses

ENG 301 Wrtg Stds: 5cr

Notes and Prereqs: ENG 101; junior status; or instructor permission. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior status; or instructor permission. WP3.

CRN: 40101 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Qualley, Donna

Probing the Infosphere of Writing Activity Systems

We live in an age of complicated information streams and competing rhetorical ecologies. So how can we negotiate the creation, circulation, and uptake of the many information streams that impact us daily? 

In this section of Writing and the Public, we’ll look at the ways that writing is part of networked activity systems that have the capacity to call different publics into being. By engaging in what Jacob Richter calls “infosphere probes,” you’ll practice locating and mapping different conversations and streams of  information surrounding an issue of social, cultural, or political importance that is currently impacting your life. You’ll examine the extent to which particular sources may be entangled in larger associative webs comprised of other texts, people, things, places, moments, and activities. We will spend time exploring what Sarah Ann Singer calls “wildcard sources,” those non-vetted, but rhetorically compelling sources that attract and persuade broad public audiences.  Throughout the course, we’ll write (a lot!), share, and present our provisional discoveries using different genres, modes, and formats. 
 

ENG 302 Technical Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior standing. WP3. 

CRN: 40102 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Bell, Michael

In this section of English 302 you’ll develop your skill in generating reader-centered documents that work: documents that do things as well as say things, performing specific functions for specific kinds of readers. Given that so much of our culture now communicates and conducts its business in the visual realm, your work in the course will be focused as much on document design as written language. Through this work you will gain an understanding of how all the elements of a document work together to communicate within specific contexts, for specific audiences.

English 302 is not simply a skills-acquisition course however. We will use technical communication as a field in which to conduct analytic inquiry appropriate to study in the humanities. This quarter the analytic component of the course will take us into a study of games and the culture surrounding them: both table-top and video games. As a student of the course, you will be collaborating with other students on a series of documents, presentations, and prototypes leading to the development of an original tabletop game. The design of your game will be based in part on contemporary game studies and critiques. Every stage of this inquiry will generate documents in accord with the guidelines of effective technical and professional communication. (And yes, we will be playing games in class!)

You will emerge from the course with the ability to respond effectively to the requirements of technical communication. You will also have a complex understanding of what is becoming a vital aspect of our contemporary culture.

CRN: 40337 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Sarkar, Rachel

Students engage with the rhetorical and technical practices for creating artifacts that help people do things with technology, such as usability testing, screencasting, web authoring, document design, and information architecture. The course covers a variety of technical genres and focuses on the ethical and social implications of a technical writer's choices.

CRN: 40400 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

English 302 is the English department’s introductory 300-level workshop course in technical writing. It is for juniors and seniors. It is a 5-credit writing proficiency course. English 302 emphasizes the writer-reader relationship in a variety of nonacademic writing situations. Students learn to identify their audience, develop objectives, organize the content of their documents and revise documents for readability. Students write and design a resume, letters, memos, a proposal, a formal report, an infographic, and a visual presentation. Students also learn to work in small breakout groups, collaborate on writing, and give peer feedback. The final project in this course is a professional portfolio which provides examples of your strongest work. When you have completed this course, you should be ready to write in the professional world.

CRN: 40416 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

This writing intensive course invites you to explore what is technical about technical writing. Course projects ask you to analyze and create technical documents that relate to your academic, professional and social interests. Projects emphasize rhetorical analysis, document design, user testing, and the practical and cultural implications of your choices as a writer. Throughout the course, you’ll learn to re-imagine the page, to edit and revise documents for visual impact, and to view your readers as information users with specific needs. We will also examine and utilize fundamental concepts in technical writing such as readability/usability, page layout and visual rhetoric, and the importance of analyzing your audience before you write.

CRN: 40499 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

English 302 is the English department’s introductory 300-level workshop course in technical writing. It is for juniors and seniors. It is a 5-credit writing proficiency course. English 302 emphasizes the writer-reader relationship in a variety of nonacademic writing situations. Students learn to identify their audience, develop objectives, organize the content of their documents and revise documents for readability. Students write and design a resume, letters, memos, a proposal, a formal report, an infographic, and a visual presentation. Students also learn to work in small breakout groups, collaborate on writing, and give peer feedback. The final project in this course is a professional portfolio which provides examples of your strongest work. When you have completed this course, you should be ready to write in the professional world.

CRN: 40548 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

In this section of English 302 you’ll develop your skill in generating reader-centered documents that work: documents that do things as well as say things, performing specific functions for specific kinds of readers. Given that so much of our culture now communicates and conducts its business in the visual realm, your work in the course will be focused as much on document design as written language. Through this work you will gain an understanding of how all the elements of a document work together to communicate within specific contexts, for specific audiences.

English 302 is not simply a skills-acquisition course however. We will use technical communication as a field in which to conduct analytic inquiry appropriate to study in the humanities. This quarter the analytic component of the course will take us into a study of games and the culture surrounding them: both table-top and video games. As a student of the course, you will be collaborating with other students on a series of documents, presentations, and prototypes leading to the development of an original tabletop game. The design of your game will be based in part on contemporary game studies and critiques. Every stage of this inquiry will generate documents in accord with the guidelines of effective technical and professional communication. (And yes, we will be playing games in class!)

You will emerge from the course with the ability to respond effectively to the requirements of technical communication.  You will also have a complex understanding of what is becoming a vital aspect of our contemporary culture.

CRN: 41975 Day/Time: TBD TBD Lewis, Justin

In ENG 302, we will be learning about and practicing technical communication through the study of rhetorical principles, audience analysis and user experience design (UXD). We will be learning about rhetorical problem-solving principles and applying them to diverse professional writing tasks and situations. In other words, in this class, you will be learning about the conventions for writing, speaking and designing appropriate workplace documents and communications. We will be studying and writing a variety of different genres that are common in professional settings and you will be learning about and testing out new digital platforms and programs for technical & professional communication.

Assignments/Evaluation:

  • Rhetorical Analysis
  • Professionalization Documents
  • Website Design

Registration information call 360-650-4390.

ENG 307 Seminar: Medieval 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 307 if you have taken ENG 307 or ENG 317. Opens to creative writers (without the endorsement) on Monday, May 16th, at 10am. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 41461 Day/Time: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy Michelle

Knights! Dragons! Churches! Really good gravy! The literature of the Middle Ages is diverse and fascinating, ranging from the silly to the sublime, the enlightening to the enigmatic, the humorous to the holy. Far from being stiff and boring, medieval literature is filled with adventure, excitement, and the ongoing quest to understand the human condition. The songs, stories, and tales of this period of history continue to exert their influence today, in works like The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and even Game of Thrones - and it all begins with English 307.

Text: The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Literature.

ENG 309 Seminar: The Long 18th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 309 if you have already taken ENG 319 or 309. Opens to creative writers (without the endorsement) on Monday, May 16th, at 10am. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 41463 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Loar, Christopher F.

The long eighteenth century in Great Britain used to be thought of as a time of religious reconciliation. After the bloody religious conflicts of the 1640s and 1650s—which claimed tens of thousands of lives--the decades that followed have often been seen as a time of reconciliation. In this course we’ll challenge that assumption: this period’s writing and thought are still characterized by a conflicts between competing versions of Christianity, as well as by emerging forms of religious skepticism (including both deism and outright atheism), as well as an ongoing interest in supposedly “exotic” religious practices and beliefs found in Asia and among indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Pacific. 

These topics were of course addressed in somewhat dry theological works and sermons. We’ll look at a few of those, but most of our attention will go to the vibrant works of poetry, fiction, and autobiography that characterize this period. While the reading list is still taking shape, we will certainly engage with writings by Aphra Behn, this period’s most prominent female playwright and poet; John Milton, John Dryden, Anne Finch, and Alexander Pope, brilliant and controversial poets whose writing struggled over the relationship between religious belief and political life; Olaudah Equiano, a formerly enslaved writer and political activist; and Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved poet whose writing challenged readers on both sides of the Atlantic.  

No special knowledge of Christianity or other religious traditions is needed for this course—lectures and readings will give you all the information you need. It should also be clear that no religious belief (or nonbelief) is expected, though respect for the beliefs of others in the classroom is of course a basic requirement of this course (as for any course at WWU). 

Course requirements will likely include regular engagement in class meetings; several informal response papers (2-3 paragraphs); and a longer culminating writing project. 

ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 310 if you have already taken ENG 320 or 310. Opens to creative writers (without the endorsement) on Monday, May 16th, at 10am. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 44402 Day/Time: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Giffen, Allison A.

U.S. Gothic Literature: Antiquated spaces, castles, patriarchal estates, ghost ships and garrets, these are some of the settings of the American gothic literature, a literature which harbors America’s hidden secrets, its repressed emotions, desires, and anxieties. In this course we will examine the ways in which gothic literature represents the cultural contradictions between American optimism, with its investment in a coherent national identity, and some of America’s darker realities. Race and slavery are specters that insistently haunt U.S. gothic literature, and we will pay close attention to the relationship between fictive gothic effects and the very real horrors of New World slavery. We will also attend to the development of a female gothic in American literature, exploring the interesting tensions between the perpetuation and consolidation of oppressive social structures and the text’s drive toward subversion. My goal is to offer you a introduction to U.S. nineteenth-century literature, focused through the lens of the gothic. Writers under consideration will include Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, and Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Requirements will include lively and engaged participation in classroom discussion, a variety of formal and informal short writing assignments, and final essay that we will include several drafts.  

CRN: 41464 Day/Time: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Yu, Ning

This course surveys works by writers of Chinese descent in North America from the 1890s to the present millennium . We will read, analyze and discuss texts by Sui Sin Far, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Gish Jen, Shawn Wong, David Wong Louie  and Jamie Ford in the context of both American and Chinese cultures, especially the history of Chinese immigration.  Our objective is to achieve a better understanding of the rich diversity within Chinese American communities. One oral presentation, one final paper of 12-15 pages, five written questions and responses.   

Requirements: 1. Heavy (but fun) reading. Students must read all the assigned texts carefully and be well prepared to discuss them in depth. Active participation in class discussion is a must for a successful student in this class.  2. An oral presentation on a topic chosen by the student from a list provided by the instructor  3. Each student is responsible for five thought-provoking written questions and responses about the assigned texts.  Each question should have a page long response and the questions are due the night (by 7 pm) before discussion, so that the instructor will organize his lecture and discussion in response to them. Written responses are not to be posted on Canvas but submitted to the instructor after the discussion during which it was used.  4. A final paper about 15 pages (double space) in length. Students are encouraged, though not required, to incorporate their presentation research into their final paper.  5. Last but not least, regular attendance is required. The student will lose 3% of their total grade for each unexcused absence.  No student with more than three unexcused absences will get a grade higher than C+ no matter how well s/he does in the class otherwise. 

Evaluation: Class participation = 25% of total grade; written questions = 25% (5% per question and response); oral presentation = 20%;  final paper = 30%. 

Texts:

  • Frank Chin, The Chickencoop Chinaman, The Year of the Dragon: Two Plays by Frank Chin;
  • Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men;
  • Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Thousand Pieces of Gold;
  • Gish Jen, Typical American,
  • David Wong Louie, The Barbarians Are Coming,
  • Shawn Wong,  American Knees: A Novel,
  • Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

ENG 311 Seminar: The 20-21st Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 311 if you have already taken ENG 321 or 311. Opens to creative writers (without the endorsement) on Monday, May 16th, at 10am. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 41465 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Heim, Stefania F.

Modern Elegy

“We need elegies,” concludes poet Countee Cullen at the end of his 1925 poem “Threnody for a Brown Girl.” In this course, we will ask: what can literature possibly offer us in the experience of grieving our beloved dead? How might stanzas or musical language negotiate the intersection of private and public trauma, relating individuals to the world in moments of the most intense feeling? What kind of poetry can speak to structural violence and mass killings in racist, sexist, and xenophobic states? What relationships can we imagine between mourning, literature, and politics? Derived from the Greek for “mournful song,” the traditional “European elegy” is understood to move through three stages of loss: from lament, to praise, to consolation. Together, we will consider the legacies of this form, its developments across the 20th century, and any potential it might have for our present. We will study elegies that confront intimate loss as well the most devastating aspects of the past century: lynchings, the Holocaust, perpetual war and industrialized armed conflict, the police murders of Black people, the AIDS epidemic, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We will root our investigations in various theoretical approaches, close reading poems that, in Jahan Ramazani’s words, “erupt with all the violence and irresolution, all the guilt and ambivalence of modern mourning.” In this student-centered, writing-intensive seminar, interactive discussions and various creative and scaffolded writing assignments will provide multiple ways in to this challenging and moving material.

ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40103 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy Michelle

Why do we read books? What separates a good book from a bad one? Why are the works of one author remembered while the works of another end up discarded?  Anybody who’s cared about reading has probably had this conversation at sometime or other, with a roommate, a family member, or the person sitting next to them on the bus. People have been asking these very same questions almost as long as we’ve been recording words. The great  conversation about what we read and why we read it has shaped histories, religions, countries, and even your classroom curricula. In short, it matters.  

English 313 is your chance to plunge into the great conversation and get in your two cents. We’ll spend time with some of the earliest known writers and explore how they’ve shaped the way we think about literature today, but also venture into other realms and other cultures to see how great thinkers from other traditions have also had their impact. The world is one big place, after all, and every voice has its place. Where do your values and ideas fit in? There’s only one way to find out.

ENG 314 Critical Theories & Prac II 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 42749 Day/Time: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Lester, Mark M.

This course will introduce important concepts informing both modern and contemporary literary criticism. Foundational works in Marxist, psychoanalytic, semiotic, and poststructuralist theory will be explored with an eye to developing a broad appreciation of the nature and use of literature. Intersections of literature, art, politics, science, and philosophy will be highlighted.

Texts: Vincent Leitch, et al., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Additional materials will be posted on Canvas.

ENG 317 Survey: Medieval 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 317 if you have taken ENG 307 or ENG 317. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 42750 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy Michelle

One of the most dynamic fields in literature today is the exploration of global medieval literature.  From the rolling hills of England to the roots of medieval Japan, this course takes us through the widespread and emerging understanding of how these stories speak to each other across time and space.  Beginning in our own back yard with the tales and legends of the Lummi and the Nooksack, we’ll wrestle a dragon with Beowulf, roam the deserts of the Middle East with Ibn Fadlan, witness the rise of the samurai in feudal Japan, and marvel at the wonders of the world’s great library at Timbuktu.  The tales told by these remarkable people continue to delight, and underline the common humanity that unites us all. 

ENG 319 Survey: The Long 18th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 319 if you have already taken ENG 309 or 319. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 41858 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Loar, Christopher F.

The “long eighteenth century” (for our purposes, roughly 1660-1789) was a time of enormous transformations in Great Britain and the Americas. This course considers some of these social, ideological, economic, and political changes as they appear in literary texts (fiction, nonfiction, drama, and verse) in this period. Though the course will introduce a broad range of works, it will look most closely at texts that engage with questions about gender and sexuality, the relationship between nature and culture, slavery and abolition, and the rapid growth of the British Empire. 

ENG 320 (TYE) Survey: The 19th Century: American Literatures 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 320 if you have already taken ENG 310 or 320. This is a Transfer Year Experience (TYE) course for incoming Fall transfer students. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 42443 Day/Time: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Hardman, Pam

In this course we'll explore a wide array of works published in North America from 1800 to 1865. You’ll learn to analyze texts from different critical viewpoints and write in a variety of formats. We'll look at each work in its cultural context, discussing how such issues as race, gender, class, colonialism, science, technology, music, consumerism, and popular culture influence the text. We'll question assumptions about the literature itself and the American cultures that produced it. Expect much interesting reading and engaging discussions.

Assignments: Regular response papers; group presentation; multi-modal project; final exam 

Texts: Heath Anthology of American Literature, 7th ed., vol. B.    

ENG 321 (TYE) Survey: The 20-21st Century: Writing (and) War 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Donot take ENG 321 if you have already taken ENG 311 or 321. This is a Transfer Year Experience (TYE) course for incoming Fall transfer students. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 41485 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Heim, Stefania F.

“I lived in the first century of world wars” wrote American poet Muriel Rukeyser in 1968, highlighting how war seeped into both the 20th century’s poems and daily life. The genre of war writing was once imagined to take its value from proximity to the gory truths of men’s combat experience. Over the course of the 20th century, though, as legal scholar Mary Dudziak argues, wartime stopped being “an exception to normal peacetime” and became “the only kind of time we have.”

This course surveys 20th and early 21st century literature as it intersects, protests, grapples with, and is shaped by ongoing war. First, we will interrogate various visions of what war literature is, and then we will ask what it becomes when war is everywhere and always. We will consider: What forms have been created to access and express experiences that defy common meaning-making strategies? To what extent can some of the most radical writing experiments of these times be understood in relationship to conflict? We will ask difficult questions about aesthetics and violence, witness and authority. And we will interrogate constructions of combatant, civilian, enemy, self, and other, as well as intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender. Because this is a Transfer Year Experience course we will focus overtly on how we can use writing as thinking; on self-consciously developing formal assignments through drafts, peer review, and revisions; and on being attentive to the assumptions and habits behind our reading and writing practices.  

ENG 331 Studies in Gender Theory 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or WGSS 211.

CRN: 43176 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Lee, Jean

Racialized gender and sexual categories have been central to the production of social, scientific, cultural, economic, and political practices. This class focuses on Black feminist scholarship on reproductive justice and sexual agency to grapple with these categories and the history of reproductive and sexual labor, science, healthcare, and activism in the United States and the Black diaspora. The reproductive justice framework exceeds the single-issue framework that is dominant in debates about reproductive justice (as only the access to abortion or right to privacy) to analyze structural inequalities and intersecting social justice concerns which aim to produce a more democratic distribution of life chances and flourishing. Sexual agency, which is intimately tied with reproductive justice, speaks to politics ensuring Black female bodily integrity in sexual pleasure, sexual citizenship, and sexual labor. We will read essays, memoirs, and poems which elaborate on these concepts and their relationships. 

ENG 334 TextsAcrossNAm&Eur: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 or equivalent. BCGM.

CRN: 41859 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Trueblood, Kate

This course serves as an introduction to the literature associated with the countercultures of the 1960s, beginning with the Beat writers of the 1950s and ending with the feminist work of the early 1970s. The 1960s saw the first televised war coverage and civic protests; international unrest hit Prague, Paris, Rome, and London. Just as the civil rights movement in America sought to create a just society after the legacy of slavery, Western European countries moved into a post-colonial new world order when former colonies liberated themselves. The Cold War dominated both Eastern and Western Bloc countries and the build-up of nuclear arsenals on both sides seemed to guarantee mutually assured destruction. The world seemed poised on the brink of destruction, much as it does today.

"Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song 
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along 
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn 
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born."
        —Song to Woody by Bob Dylan 

So many movements emerged from the crucible of this time—the Anti-War Movement, The Free Speech Movement, New Journalism, Civil Rights, Feminism, Gay Rights, Environmentalism, and Postmodernism—students will be invited to consider how this literature has shaped our national discourse as well as our individual lives. The theoretical approach to the class will provide historical context and apply race-class-and-gender analysis to the literary texts to enable students to understand the readings as the products of particular moments and the role of art in revolutionary social movements.

Overall Expectations:
Total engagement. In keeping with the spirit of the Sixties, students will be involved in shaping the material we cover.

Texts (subject to change)

  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl  
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
  • The Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

ENG 339 Mythology and Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. HUM.

CRN: 43177 Day/Time: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Weed, Katie

Comparative study of the patterns, motifs and techniques in world mythologies as they recur and evolve in poetry, drama, fiction, creative nonfiction, film and electronic media in English and translation.  

ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or instructor permission. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40559 Day/Time: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Qualley, Donna

Our course will focus on contemporary literature written and published for young adults between the ages of 12-20+. In these books, you’ll meet a diverse group of young people who are wrestling with the seminal questions of identity, agency, and community: Who am I? Who are my people? Why does the world sometimes suck? What can I do about it? Because young adults themselves question, experiment, and push boundaries, it should come as no surprise that the literature written for and about young adults also pushes conventional boundaries in terms of language, subject matter, and craft.

This course will also help you develop your own answers to questions like these:

  • How might young adult literature serve as a vehicle for critical and self-reflexive examination of the social, cultural, and political landscapes in which we are and have been emmeshed? How might these books offer their readers new ways to imagine and create a more just, equitable, and hopeful futures for themselves and others?
  • What are some of the critical conversations that continue to galvanize the field of young adult literature?
  • How might YA literature re-ignite an interest in reading? How might YA literature stimulate young people’s (and your) own expressive and creative work?
  • What qualities make YA literature engaging and deserving of respect by adults (and schools) as well as young people? What kinds of discussions, assignments, and projects can open up and extend students’ understanding and enjoyment of this literature?

Since a primary goal of this course is to expose you to a range of contemporary young adult literature, the course is reading-intensive, but I hope you will agree—also intensely interesting! In our time together, we’ll read 6 books plus some supplementary material that I will make available on Canvas. We’ll also start each class by listening to the audio version of a 7th book throughout the quarter.. You’ll engage in short response projects (analytical and creative, individual, and collaborative) that include writing, speaking, and responding using visual and other non-print media.

Important Information About Books

  1. Having a physical copy of each book is preferable (especially if you plan on teaching in the future). Page layout and design is an important element in many of our course texts. However, you may read digital versions for some of these books if you have one of the larger e-reader devices (not your phone).
  2. We’ll likely read the books in the order listed. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you have copies of these books well in advance of our reading them. Please do not tell me at the last minute that your copy of the book has not arrived.
  • Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down (print version required)
  • Mariko Tamaki & Rosemary Valerie O’Connell, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me (print version required)
  • Karen Blumenthal, Jane Against the World: Roe V Wade & the Fight for Reproductive Rights
  • Renee Watson, Piecing Me Together (The author will be presenting at the WWU Children’s &Young Adult Conference in February 2023!)
  • Jeff Zentner, In the Wild Light
  • M.T. Anderson, Feed (print version required)

ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40167 Day/Time: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Staff

Examines the fundamentals of at least two genres, such as fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, or poetry. The course will include both lectures, focused on model texts, and workshop-style discussions, focused on student work.

CRN: 40815 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: McGuire, Simon

[In this course we will explore, discuss, practice and revise forms of poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction. I'll introduce you to exercises in ekphrasis (writing about art), traditional forms, poetry machines and current trends in contemporary poetics (visual poetry, collaborative writing methods, conceptual writing, multilingual pieces.). While we all will work remotely, everyone will be required to participate each week in small group discussion forums to read and responds to assignments and complete attentive peer reviews. This course uses Imaginative Writing (4th ed.) as a main text, and I will offer other documents and sources on Canvas.

CRN: 42752 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

In this course we will explore, discuss, practice and revise forms of poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction. I'll introduce you to exercises in ekphrasis (writing about art), traditional forms, poetry machines and current trends in contemporary poetics (visual poetry, collaborative writing methods, conceptual writing, multilingual pieces.). While we all will work remotely, everyone will be required to participate each week in small group discussion forums to read and responds to assignments and complete attentive peer reviews. This course uses Imaginative Writing (4th ed.) as a main text, and I will offer other documents and sources on Canvas.

CRN: 42753 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

This course is designed to introduce you to the elements of writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. We will read established authors from various backgrounds and cultures and study the ways in which they make their writing work through unique use of elements including setting, description, figurative language, character development, and experimentation. While reading and studying these authors, you will begin your own journey into exploring these genres with the help of various writing exercises and assignments, peer workshop, and revision.

CRN: 42910 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Weed, Katie

“When I'm writing, I'm thinking about time, pace, rhythm, cadence. Sometimes the language is upright, more formal in sound--my getting out of the story's way. Other times, the words lay down, lean, fall on each other, play differently, which makes a different sound and music. That's the part of craft that I love most. Thinking about how to stack the language.” -- Sarah M. Broom 

“Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.” -- Patti Smith 

“My mantra was: follow the fun. If I’m not having fun, I’m doing it wrong.” -- Jordan Peele 

In this introduction to the practices and possibilities of creative writing, we’ll explore multiple genres: creative nonfiction, poetry, and screenwriting. Together, we will immerse ourselves in a variety of works across these genres, considering writing from authors and artists spanning continents and centuries. We’ll pay careful attention to various perspectives on theory and approaches to craft, reflecting on both tradition and innovation. 

We’ll stack language. We’ll follow fun. We’ll think about power. As Matthew Salesses--whose book Craft in the Real World we will work with, writes: “Make no mistake--writing is power. What this fact should prompt us to ask is: What kind of power is it, where does it come from, and what does it mean?” Salesses again: “Craft is support for a certain worldview…To be a writer is to wield and be wielded by culture.” We will reckon with these ideas, with genre, with voice, with audience. We will wield, and be wielded by, cultures around us and the culture we create together in our classroom. 

We’ll draft extensively both in and out of class, creating a range of work to share, and offering and receiving substantial peer feedback. We’ll compose pieces inspired by and in response to those we read, and as well generate original work of your own design, culminating in a polished portfolio and live reading. 
 

ENG 351 Intro to Fiction Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40520 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

This course is designed to introduce you to the craft and culture of writing fiction as well as the complex world of critique and workshop. We will read established authors from various backgrounds and cultures and study the ways in which they make their writing work through unique use of voice, description, language, dialogue, character development, and experimentation. While reading and studying these authors, you will begin your own journey into fiction writing with the help of various writing exercises and assignments, revision, and most importantly, your imagination and individuality.

CRN: 40598 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Colen, Elizabeth

In this introductory fiction course, students will analyze all aspects of the short story form, including plot, point of view, characterization, setting, and conflict, as well as the sonic qualities of language; learn how these tools are combined to best effect in the service of storytelling; develop a language for discussing the interplay of a writer’s craft and content; and engage with weekly writing exercises. The final project will be a portfolio that includes 10-15 pages (2500-4000 words) of one fully revised, well-crafted story.

CRN: 42235 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

As a participant in this course, you will learn through reading, writing, discussing and reflecting. You will be tasked with developing fictional worlds, characters and predicaments. We will have conversations about the fundamental elements of fiction (e.g. tense, pov, dialog, voice, conflict), as we examine both a diverse body of published work and the early drafts (stories) written by your peers.  

Expect this to be an exciting and challenging course. We hope you will develop new ways of thinking, working, writing and communicating. We hope you will take risks. You do not have to write “magnificent” fiction to do well in this course. But you will have to be brave, respectful and a hard worker.  

Participation in a 5-credit course is equivalent to 150 hours of work over the quarter. This will include 4 hours of classroom time weekly (lecture, discussions, workshop) and approximately 10 hours of outside preparation (reading, writing, investigating, reflecting, projects). You are also encouraged to visit me in office hours, attend literary events, and  (safely) connect with your peers.  

Required reading includes Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer and Bronze Drum by Phong Nguyen. I am also asking that you find access to a portable electronic device that will allow you to listen to a podcast and move simultaneously (e.g. walk or dance).

ENG 353 Introduction to Poetry Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40104 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Wong, Jane

Language is curious. Language is an archeological dig, a translucent fish. In this class, we will turn over the rock and see what’s underneath. We’ll discover that language is malleable, evocative, elusive, and ferocious. In addition to language, we will test our curiosity with genre, form, and content. We will read and write poetry. And then we will question these genres. Be prepared to challenge yourself aesthetically, thematically, and formally. Throughout the quarter, we will return to certain questions: How can we use language to convey the unconveyable? How can words on a page move us? How can we play with language and form in an innovative, challenging, and productive way? English 353 is a foundational-level course that introduces writers to the history, craft, and practice of poetry writing. To help us explore the above questions, we will read the work of diverse writers, including the work of your peers. By interrogating and exploring these texts as readers, we will get a better sense of how language and structure work (or don’t work) and how we can begin to cultivate our own styles and literary voices. You will be expected to generate creative pieces for workshop, feedback letters, and a final portfolio of revised work. Additionally, we will invite award-winning visiting guest poets to our class this quarter, moving writing from the page and into the real world.

ENG 354 Intro to Creative Nonfict Writ 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40105 Day/Time: MWF 04:00-05:20 pm Instructor: Yeasting, Jeanne Ellen

This course will focus on creating and revising original creative nonfiction.  Students will be introduced to a variety of forms of nonfiction, including memoir and lyric essays.  Students will read and study the craft of range of nonfiction writers, and use their texts as catalysts for generating and revising their own work.  We’ll study the work of some earlier practitioners, as well as contemporary authors.  

ASSIGNMENTS: Assignments include considerable reading of writing model creative nonfiction and craft essays; weekly writing and revising of creative nonfiction; completing detailed peer feedback using guidelines; posting to a weekly reading response forum; and completing a Final project.  Students may be required to work on a collaborative project and/or conduct research. 

EVALUATION:  Based primarily on active, attentive class participation and fulfillment of assignments, including a Final Project. 

REQUIRED TEXTS:   

  • Lex Williford and Michael Martone, editors. Touchstone Anthology of Creative Nonfiction. Touchstone (2007). 
    paperback: ISBN 978-1416531746  
  • digital edition available:  Kindle, Apple Books 
  • Judith Kitchen and Dinah Lenny, editors. Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction. W.W. Norton (2016). 
    paperback:  ISBN: 978-0393350999 
    digital edition available:  Kindle, Apple Books 
  • Zadie Smith. Intimations: Six Essays. Penguin Random House (2020). 
    paperback: ISBN 978-0593297612 
  • digital edition available: Penguin: ISBN 978-0593297629 
  • Selected readings on Canvas 
  • Optional: Brenda Miller and Suzanna Paola, Tell It Slant. 3rd edition.  McGraw-Hill         (2019). 
    paperback: ISBN: 978-1260454598 

ENG 364 Introduction to Film Studies 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 40330 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Film Viewing:W 05:00-07:50 pm Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

This course is designed to provide an introduction to the key components of film expression such as cinematography, sound, editing, and production design. We will closely analyze several canonical films from around the world, utilizing the fundamental concepts and definitions covered in the course units. Furthermore, we will explore cinema’s relationship to other arts and various media forms.  
 
More specific course objectives: 

  1. Enrich your ability to look and listen closely to motion pictures 
  2. Understand and apply a range of critical and cultural theories to the study of cinema 
  3. Explore a range of film genres, national cinemas, historical periods, and auteurs, with an emphasis on expanding the frame from Hollywood to a more diverse world cinema 
  4. Engage with local film cultures and other communities rooted in cinephilia 

Textbook: 

  • David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Jeff Smith. Film Art: An Introduction, 12th edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2019. 

You are welcome to use an older edition, a used copy, or the e-book version.   

CRN: 42431 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Film Viewing: W 05:00-07:50 pm Instructor: Youmans, Greg

The course introduces the foundations of film studies. We will explore core vocabulary, concepts, and skills that help us look and listen more closely to motion pictures. We will also develop practices of critical thinking, argumentation, and analysis through various writing exercises. Our course screenings will present films from around the world and from the historical beginnings of cinema to the present day.

ENG 365 Film Hist: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or ENG 202

CRN: 41491 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Film Viewing: T 04:00-06:50 pm Instructor: Youmans, Greg

The course surveys the history of experimental film, video, and digital media. Together we will explore various artistic movements (e.g., surrealism, structural film), medium-specific practices (Super 8, analog video), formal techniques (scratching on celluloid, found footage), and genres (the trance film, machinima). We will move more or less chronologically, but as we go along we will connect our historical investigations forward to contemporary practices, particularly as they relate to digital technologies. In the class, you will be asked to write critically about experimental media and to create an experimental media work of your own.

400-Level English Courses

ENG 410 Lit Hist: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202; plus three from: ENG 307-311, ENG 313, ENG 314, ENG 317-ENG 321, ENG 331, ENG 332, ENG 333, ENG 334, ENG 335, ENG 336, ENG 338, ENG 339, ENG 341, ENG 342, ENG 343, ENG 347, ENG 364, ENG 371. WP3. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 44091 Day/Time: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny Marie

History of the Book from Pulp to Present 

For book historian Roger Chartier, “forms create meaning,” and the relatively stable words that make up texts become invested with new meanings over and over again depending on the material forms they take. In this class, we examine histories of books as material form and the materials that make up books. By discussing scholarship from book historians and examining representative case studies, students will gain a working understanding of key moments in histories of books, their creators, and their materials from 1400 to the present.  
 
Students will be responsible for producing discussion posts and presentations throughout the quarter. They will spend time in and out of class working to create an “unedited” digital literary anthology. 

ENG 418 Sr Sem: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites:Senior status; ENG 313 or ENG 314; and one course from: ENG 307, ENG 308, ENG 309, ENG 310 or ENG 311. Important note: ENG 418 is not repeatable & cannot be used as an elective for the literature major. WP3. Juniors will be able to register on Monday, May 16th, at 10am. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40456 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Lester, Mark

This seminar will concentrate on twentieth century literary works in which the modern city is presented in such a manner as to subvert bourgeois thinking and the promotion of idealistic or utopian futures. In addition to works of fiction and poetry, we will read and discuss a variety of pertinent philosophical, historical, and political texts. Topics include: Baudelaire’s flâneur and the situationist dérive; the city and cinema; criminality and revolution; biopolitics and noopolitics (the intersection of architecture, design, technology, and cognitive science).

Texts will include: Philippe Soupault, Last Nights of Paris; Bruno Jasieński, I Burn Paris; Julio Cortézar, 62: A Model Kit; Georges Perec, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris; Teju Cole, Open City. Additional material will be made available on Canvas.

CRN: 40457 Day/Time: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Prichard, Tony Alan

“Just because people throw it out and don’t have a use for it doesn’t mean it’s garbage”--Andy Warhol 

“They go the their homes and I go to mine...which happens to be a dump.  And when I say a dump I don’t mean like a shabby place, I mean an actual dump where the garbage goes and a bunch a bricks and smashed building parts. That’s what I call home..”--Wreck-It Ralph 

“GEOLOGY" (Links to an external site.), n. The science of the earth's crust — to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.”  --Ambrose Bierce 

“But it’s garbage!” --Rey 

“I love trash” --Oscar the Grouch 

This senior seminar looks at the discourses around disposal and waste.  Instead of simply adopting the dominant and well-worn tropes placed in endless circulation (recycled) by neo-liberal ideological systems such as capitalism and environmentalism, we will practice reading against these systems to consider waste and its consequences, toxic and otherwise.  We will look at how discourses frame what is disposed and inquire into how the consequences of waste remain a fertile area of human activity that resists being easily explained away. 

Required Texts 

  • Guattari, Felix. The Three Ecologies 
  • Laporte, Dominique. History of Shit 
  • Morton, Timothy. Spacecraft 
  • Quifan, Chen. Waste Tide 
  • Serres, Michel. Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? 
  • VanderMeer, Jeff. Hummingbird Salamander 
  • Wilk, Eliva. Oval 

ENG 423 Maj Auth: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202; plus three from: ENG 307-311, ENG 313, ENG 314, ENG 317-ENG 321, ENG 331-ENG 347, ENG 364, ENG 371. WP3. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40458 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Anderson, Katherine J.

George Eliot’s Bodies:

Although many modern readers don’t even know her name, George Eliot (Marian Evans) is considered by many critics to be one of the best writers not only in nineteenth-century Britain or the Western literary canon, but in all of literary history. Eliot was the godmother of literary realism, honing its preeminent technique of free indirect discourse and subsequent psychological depictions of selfhood with a masterly touch that far surpassed that of her contemporaries. She was also an editor, a translator, a theorist, and a literary critic.  


For Eliot, the body – marked by experiences of gender, race, class, violence, sexuality, and so much more – was essential not only to formulating consciousness, but also to understanding “real” life and social (in)justice. In this class, we’ll consider Eliot’s depictions of human consciousness and interiority alongside her depictions of the human body, attending to the importance of embodiment and physical sensation as it manifests across her work and within her own life. Along the way, we’ll tangle with the political, theological, moral, epistemological, and phenomenological philosophies that fascinated her, meditating with Eliot on what we do to bodies (both our own and other people’s); what bodies do to us; and how bodies factor into selfhood and into the ethical and practical ways we live our lives. 

Course Objectives:  

This course provides deep analysis of the writing and life of major Victorian author George Eliot, accompanied by analysis of relevant cultural issues and developments in nineteenth-century Britain. You will exit the class with a more sophisticated understanding of Eliot’s contributions to literature, including her versions of psychological realism and the Gothic, as well as a firmer grasp of nineteenth-century cultural and literary history. Assignments emphasize critical analysis and research skills. 

Student Learning Outcomes (what you’ll get from your work in this class):  

  • Advanced ability to analyze nineteenth-century literature and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context as well as the current contemporary moment.  
  • Advanced capacity to compare and contrast texts of different forms or genres, making connections while noting evolutions in form, style, and content over an author’s oeuvre. 
  • Advanced ability to perform and then apply proactive research in relation to both nineteenth-century periodicals and literary scholarship.  
  • Advanced ability to write cogent literary criticism.  
  • Increased autonomy in assessing literary texts and critical arguments. 
  • Increased ability to participate in an ongoing academic conversation. 
  • Increased self-awareness of personal reading, writing, and methodological practices.  

Required Texts 

I order our novels at Western’s bookstore in the editions below, but you may use any hardcopy edition you like. In whatever edition you use, you must be able to read closely, highlight/annotate the text, and bring the novel with you to class when we’re discussing it. The bookstore typically has supply chain problems and delays, so please be proactive about purchasing your books sooner rather than later. If the bookstore doesn't have them, use an alternative bookstore or website.  

  • Daniel Deronda (Oxford, ISBN: 9780199682867) 
  • Middlemarch (Broadview, ISBN: 9781551112336, this edition contains useful appendices, some of which we’ll read from. Middlemarch reading begins in week 2)  
  • Additional required short texts and secondary readings made available on Canvas. 

CRN: 42434 Day/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Lester, Mark M.

Anna Noon, the narrator of Stewart Home’s 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (2002), remarks at the beginning of the novel that “our attention could be more usefully directed towards Ann Quin” than toward canonical modern writers such as Hemingway, Stein, or Beckett (with whom she has been compared). First published in the 1960s by John Calder and Marion Boyers — noteworthy for their promotion of avant-garde postwar literature — Quin (who died in 1973) had been and continues to be recognized as a stylistically innovative, ‘experimental’ writer. Anna Noon’s comment (Home’s book can be read in part as a tribute to Quin) also indicates, however, that there is something untimely and urgent about her work. Frequently bewildering, at times profoundly unsettling, the subtlety, complexity, and political sensitivity of Quin’s exploration of the poles of delirium and the potential of life is both engaging and transformative.

In this course, we will read Quin’s four novels — Berg, Three, Passages, and Tripticks — as well as a number of shorter pieces and critical essays.

ENG 427 Queer Studies 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: One course from: ENG 227, ENG 313, ENG 314, ENG 351, ENG 353, ENG 354 or equivalent prerequisite coursework and instructor approval; and junior status. WP3. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 44093 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Shipley, Ely

This course explores the wave of poetry by trans and gender nonconforming poets published primarily within the past decade. We will read trans poets whose work spans diverse embodiments of sexual, racial, national, class-based, and familial experience. Some questions we’ll consider include: What is trans and/or gender nonconforming about these poems? What is the trans poet’s relationship to content and to form, whether “traditional” or “innovative”? How and what poetic techniques do trans poets use and to what end? Ultimately, what is form’s relationship to the body?

ENG 441 Language and the Sec Classroom 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 301, ENG 302 or ENG 371; ENG 347; ENG 350, ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354; two from: ENG 307, ENG 308, ENG 309, ENG 310, ENG 311, ENG 317, ENG 318, ENG 319, ENG 320 and ENG 321. Major restrictions never lift.

CRN: 42758 Day/Time: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: VanderStaay, Steven L.

This course will explore language structure and use in the Secondary Language Arts classroom, including cultural and equity issues, dialect and discourse style bias, ESL learners, and the challenges of standard grammar and conventions.  We’ll spend some time addressing linguistic fundamentals as a means of understanding language diversity. This methods course requires the same kind of individual initiative, dedication, and professionalism that you will apply to your future work as a teacher.

ENG 443 Tch Eng Lang Arts in Sec Sch I 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 301, ENG 302 or ENG 371; ENG 347; ENG 350; ENG 441 or concurrent or MLE 444 or concurrent; and two courses from: ENG 307, ENG 308, ENG 309, ENG 310, ENG 311, ENG 317, ENG 318, ENG 319, ENG 320 and ENG 321. Major restrictions never lift.

CRN: 40703 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Staff

Survey of theory, practice, resources and methods of assessment for the teaching of English language arts.

ENG 444 Tch Eng Lang Art in Sec Sch II 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 443

CRN: 40331 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: VanderStaay, Steven

This course is the second of a two-quarter sequence designed to help you become a thoughtful, knowledgeable, and effective teacher of English language arts at the secondary level. In 444 we emphasize the teaching of reading and literature with whole-class, small group, and individualized methods. This methods course requires the same kind of individual initiative, dedication, and professionalism that you will apply to your future work as a teacher.

ENG 451 Creative Wrtng Seminar:Fiction 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40405 Day/Time: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Staff

An advanced course in the writing of fiction. Repeatable with different instructors to a maximum of 10 credits, including original course.

CRN: 40603 Day/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Trueblood, Kate

“First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. The first draft is the most uncertain—where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.”
                                                                                    —Bernard Malamud

Welcome. This workshop will be devoted to writing scenes, those units of dramatic action in which characters speak and act, as opposed to summaries or exposition about what the characters are doing. Scenes are the lifeblood of fiction. They make it an experience for the reader. They are the building blocks of the short story and the novel. We shall undertake subjects specific to your generation because writers need to be strongly grounded in the questions of their own era. We also have the chance to read a range of published short stories and discuss them in the spirit of shared inquiry. Close observation of published work is how writers learn to write. Later we will devote ourselves to each other’s written work in small focus groups and as one large workshop.

  • The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction, ed., Williford & Martone
  • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Dave King & Renni Brown

ENG 453 Creative Wrtng Seminar: Poetry 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 353. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40365 Day/Time: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Shipley, Ely

This seminar focuses on the practice of reading and writing poetry. We will spend the quarter reading, writing, and discussing poems and poetics essays through focusing on elements such as metaphor, image, rhythm, sound, line, and dramatic tension. You will share original work and offer thoughtful observations to each work discussed. The texts for this course explore poetic traditions and contemporary developments. Likewise, they span diverse embodiments of sexual, racial, national, class-based, and familial experiences. Examining the artistic attributes of these texts, we will seek to understand form’s relationship to content and how poems work to generate experience. Through deep analysis of varied and excellent models, we will amass resources and practice techniques to make our own poems and poetics statements. We become better writers through reading, thinking and feeling intensely, learning from our own work, the work of others, and above all, by practicing.

ENG 454 Creative Wrtg Sem: Nonfiction 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 354. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40406 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

Students in this advanced creative writing seminar and workshop explore the expressive power of memoir.  We begin the quarter by reviewing and sharing the expertise we bring—from the foundational 354 “introduction to creative nonfiction” course and from our own experiences as readers and writers of memoir—into the space of this workshop.  We move then toward discovering and writing four forms of personal essay: the epistolary essay, ekphrastic essay, object essay, and community memoir.   

Required Texts: 

  • Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn (978-0399563300) 
  • Mary-Louise Parker, Dear Mr. You (978-1501107832) 
  • Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (978-1555976903) 
  • Lawrence Sutin, A Postcard Memoir (978-1555973049) 
  • Recommended:  Miller & Paola, Tell It Slant (3rd edition) 

The course syllabus, including modality information, will be available on Canvas before classes begin. 

ENG 456 Special Topics Fiction Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 44096 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

The Flash Novella

This workshop-based course will explore highly regarded flash novellas including Justin Torres’ We the Animals and Maria Romasco Moore’s Ghostographs to examine how they utilize various techniques to create compelling fiction. Students will begin their own journey toward creating a flash novella through extensive small and large group discussion, generative writing, drafting, workshopping, and revision.

ENG 458 Nonfiction Wrtg: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 354. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40422 Day/Time: TR 10:00-10:50 am Instructor: Teer, Kaitlyn

The Lyric Essay 

In the introduction to A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays, Randon Billings Noble writes:  

“I came to define a lyric essay as 
a piece of writing with a visible / stand-out / unusual structure 
that explores / forecasts / gestures to an idea in an unexpected way” 
(Noble  

In this course, we will read and write lyric essays and, in the process, seek to arrive at our own definitions of the form. We will ask ourselves the question that John D’Agata, one of the first editors to attempt such a definition, asks of the form: what happens when the essay comes to resemble poetry?  

Throughout our exploration of the form, we will focus especially on the shape, structure, and spatial form of the lyric essays we read and write, as well as their use of design and pattern. Some guiding questions for our work together may include: How do lyric essays move? What are the visual aspects of the lyric essay? What might mapping lyric essays reveal about the flow of ideas and narrative? 

The emphasis in this course will be on generating creative work. Students will write their own lyric essays by participating in both in-class and self-directed writing exercises, prompts, and experiments.  

Designed to be generative and collaborative, this course will ask students to analyze and imitate exemplary lyric essays, read and discuss craft essays about the form, theorize about the impulses for and implications of writing lyric essays, and polish a revised portfolio of their own creative work—all these endeavors will be supported by the writing community we form together. Our work together will be paradoxical, at once playful and rigorous, generative and critical, imaginative and scholarly. 

ENG 459 Editing and Publishing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40599 Day/Time: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Gulyas, Lee

This is a capstone course that offers an overview of publishing in the United States. Our explorations include the history of publishing; the wide variety of publishing houses and presses; literary careers and the business of publishing; and the literary Northwest.

COURSE GOALS

As upper-level writing students, you will:

  • explore the world of publishing and its place in our culture.
  • be introduced to skills including research, sources, copyediting, and proofreading, and be aware of the current literary conversation, discourses, and cultures of editing and publishing.
  • consider writing from the perspective of writer, editor, and publisher within the context of the industry, and be familiar with the roles of each.
  • understand how a book is made—from inception, to production, distribution, and promotion.
  • be familiar with some of the ethical issues and current trends in publishing, the politics of book buying, and how to engage and flourish as a member of a larger literary community.
  • actively work to increase your knowledge and skills and aim for professional standards.

Texts:

  • Eckstut, Arielle, and David Sterry.The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It—Successfully! New York: Workman Publishing, 2015.
  • Saller, Carol Fisher. The Subversive Copy Editor. Second Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.

ENG 460 MultiGenreWrit: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions lift on Tuesday, Aug 30th at 8:30am.

CRN: 40505 Day/Time: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Steele, Hayey

What does it mean for a place to be haunted? How do visions of the future shape the present? What does it mean when some groups are denied access to futurity and future-making narratives? In this course, we will be writing across genres and media, including prose, poetry, games, e-lit, and/or spoken word, while drawing upon “critical making” and adapting strategies from the maker movement. Our work will include individual and collaborative projects that explore themes of place, consent, and futurity. Beyond reading, viewing, and playing relevant works, we will also connect with community members in and beyond WWU who are doing different forms of future-oriented work, and explore ways we might weave their visions into our creative work. Ultimately, all writing and art that reaches the public is the result of a collaborative process, and as part of this course, we will gain practice in democratic decision-making styles used in real-world creative collaborations. We will likewise engage with relevant creative and theoretical texts, including works on emergent strategy, colonial unknowing, consent, the commons, critical Indigenous theory, and critical theories of race.   

EVALUATION: Based on active class participation and fulfillment of assignments, including a Final Project. 

CRN: 42232 Day/Time: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

This multi-genre workshop combines the study and practice of both poetry and memoir.  It’s an advanced course for growing writers—background in both poetry and creative nonfiction is helpful, but not prerequisite. As a student in 460, you will expand your understanding of genre and craft; hone your capabilities as a thoughtful and analytical reader; extend your experience with inventing, revising, and polishing literary forms of self-expression; and continue to grow as a collaborator—facilitating the engagement of classmates by selecting writing to share and designing discussion and creative writing prompts. 

Together we’ll focus on analyzing and emulating some of the moves made by memoirists who first established themselves as poets.  Through virtual discussion and creative expression, we’ll explore questions such as: What conventions have distinguished poetry from memoir?  What formal and ethical expectations do we bring to poetry and to memoir, as readers and as writers?  Why do poets choose to attempt memoir?  Do poet memoirists use language differently than other memoirists?  Can poetry and memoir combine?  What happens to the representation of self, when articulated through poetry and through memoir? 

Required textbooks include Lorna Crozier’s Small Beneath the Sky, Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, and a pair of books (a memoir and a volume of poems) by one of the following authors: Yrsa Daley-Ward, Toi Derricote, Camille Dungy, Ross Gay, bell hooks, Saeed Jones, and Natasha Tretheway.  

The course syllabus will be available on Canvas before the quarter begins.  Please check it for information regarding course modality, to sign up for your chosen author to facilitate, etc. 

ENG 462 Prof Wrtg: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: One course from ENG 301, ENG 302, ENG 371; or equivalent experience and instructor approval. WP3.

CRN: 41499 Day/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Brown, Nicole

Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

— Harry remembers this advice as he handles the Marauder's Map

Information Architecture (IA) is about helping people understand their surroundings and find what they’re looking for in built or imagined worlds and other shared information environments. There are examples of IA everywhere—from websites and apps, to games and films, bookstores and museums, and even supermarkets and hiking trails. For information architects, the meta verse may be seen as a territory full of possibilities and (hopefully) responsibilities.

By exploring information architecture as applied in these diverse environment, the course prepares you with the knowledge, skills, and practices of IA needed to create user-centered and content-rich experiences in contexts most interesting to you. The course is organized around first exploring information architecture in a range of these offline, online, and hybrid environments, both fiction and non. We will then choose topics and audiences that provide contexts for us to participate in a design cycle for building a series of user centered knowledge systems.

The course also centers on accessible design including architecture and architecture in web based environments. IA involves making and imposing value choices, which positions the work and study of IA in the realm of writing and ethics.

Oh, and, yes, we will be spending time with the architecture of Hogwarts Castle and the spell books and library too at The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. JK Rowling created an architectural wonder, even though it was never built, except in scaled down models and theme parks. 

ENG 464 FilmStds: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission. WP3.

CRN: 40506 Day/Time: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Film Viewing: M 04:00-06:50 pm Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

While most film genres have universal codes and conventions that transcend national and cultural borders, some filmmaking traditions around the world have established distinctive genres that are exclusively associated with them. This course identifies several film genres that have emerged from a particular national cinema and explores the specific historical, social, political, or cultural contexts that have played a pivotal role in the development of these genres.  

What does the term “genre” mean? Are genres simple marketing and categorization tools, or do they have a significant impact on how we watch and analyze films? How do film genres evolve across cultures and over time? Through a series of case studies, we will address these fundamental questions and discover notable examples of commercial filmmaking from prolific media industries outside North America and Western Europe. 

The requirements for this course include two short essays (reading responses), a curatorial group project, and a research paper (8-10 pages). 

Textbook: 

  • World Cinema Through Global Genres, William V. Costanzo, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014 

E-book version is available through Western Libraries. 

Films: 

  • A Touch of Zen (dir. King Hu, 1971) 
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (dir. Ang Lee, 2000) 
  • Hero (dir. Zhang Yimou, 2002) 
  • Bobby (dir. Raj Kapoor, 1973) 
  • Main Hoon Na (dir. Farah Khan, 2004) 
  • Gully Boy (dir. Zoya Akhtar, 2019) 
  • Kwaidan (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) 
  • Cure (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997) 
  • Ringu (dir. Hideo Nakata, 1998)  

Graduate Courses: 500-Level English Courses

ENG 501 Literary Theories & Practices 5cr

CRN: 40002 Days/Time: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Rivera, Lysa

ENG 506 Multigenre: 5cr

CRN: 42441 Days/Time: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

Note: This will be restricted to MFAs for Phases 1 and 2 of registration. 

Together we will explore the ways in which genre offers a shape and an organization for the concerns and interests we want to write about. We will primarily be focused on short “weird” fiction, a multi-genre mode of writing that mixes elements of fantasy, science-fiction, supernatural fiction, horror and surrealism. As the VanderMeers say of weird fiction, “With unease and the temporary abolition of the rational, it can also come the strangely beautiful, intertwined with terror.”  

As we experiment with our work and process, we hope to observe how our adherence or resistance to genre conventions offers new ways to explore complex themes and ideas. Based on our materials and discussions, you will be asked to compose creative work in a multiplicity of shapes. We will do an intensive examination of the work produced in our workshop. We will also have conversations about the ecosystem of fiction writing (e.g. conventions, predicaments, plot, world, character). Above all other academic concerns, we will privilege the lifelong concerns of the writer: development, process and community.  

Expect this to be an exciting and challenging course. We hope you will develop new ways of thinking, working, writing and communicating. We hope you will take risks. You do not have to write a magnificent polished piece to do well in this course. You will have to be brave, respectful and a hard worker.  

We will examine a diverse body of published work across genre boundaries. Required course materials include Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, The Golden Key by Marian Womack, and The Weird edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. I am also asking that you find access to a portable electronic device that will allow you to listen to a podcast and move simultaneously (e.g. walk or dance). 

ENG 513 Seminar in Tchg College Comp 5cr

Notes: appointment as a teaching assistant or instructor permission

CRN: 40122 Days/Time: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Cushman, Jeremy

ENG 513 is what some folks in my field have called the impossible: a practicum for grad students in the teaching of college composition. Why does is it get dubbed impossible? For lots of reasons, I suppose. I can’t list them all here, but a good way to start thinking about this impossibility is simply to try and define “composition” for yourself. What does in mean in a 21st century classroom? What’s the process underlying composing? What does a composition look like? In other words, how does one learn to teach relatively new college students a diverse activity that is also a kind of nebulous noun. It’s hard to say exactly how one does such a thing. Still, much of this class is to recognize that impossibility and proclaim “challenge accepted!”

So we’ll look to historical definitions of composition, and we’ll put those up against more contemporary questions and concerns as we work to better understand what you are doing in your own composition classrooms. What that means is that, together, we’ll try on some of the assignments that our students do, we’ll ask questions and write responses concerning how and why we might create better assignments, and we’ll reflect on the place of our college composition course in the university.

What’s more, we’ll spend a good deal of time together working through the relationship between rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy. The goal here is to ground both your thinking about composition and your developing pedagogical style in the imaginative and productive questions that, I think, grow out of an authentic engagement with rhetoric and composition (both ancient and contemporary approaches).

Clearly, it’s a busy class. And while teaching composition may very well be impossible, we’ll still build a few practical paths through the strange project of teaching as a graduate student.

ENG 525 Fiction: 5cr

CRN: 43196 Days/Time: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

Contemporary Indie Comix

This course will introduce you to the radical creativity of the indie comix scene that largely originated in Seattle. Focusing on handmade comics and contemporary indie presses, we will explore the intersectional themes of identity, community, and agency. Through our diverse range of texts, we will try to articulate and understand the strange, the beautiful, the complex, and the interesting . . . in these graphic narratives. The selected texts feature marginalized and under-represented characters and themes, including topics such as love and friendship (relationship building), depression, sexuality, resiliency, loneliness/isolation, and mental and physical abuse. We will celebrate comix as a potentially queer space where openness, fluidity, and non-conformity represent textual strategies as well as characters’ identities. The themes in these writers’ work intersect and overlap with politics and rebellion while issues of diversity and inclusion are brought to the fore in a contemporary context. We will also study comix form, technique, theory, and criticism; and you will have the opportunity to write analytically about comix as well as create your own short comix in the course. No artistic experience or illustrating talent is required for this assignment or this class. I also invite you to share your favorite comix or web comix throughout the quarter! 

*Please note: this class content contains some heavy material as well as adult language and themes. You should be prepared for material that includes depictions of nudity and sexuality, drug use, violence, sexual assault, homophobia, racism, suicide, and themes around depression and mental health. Of course, the readings are not just about these heavy topics but so much more. However, I think it’s important for students to know that the course content will be challenging and difficult at times. I will provide content notes for the reading in each module, and you are always welcome to give me feedback on these notes. 

Assignments and Evaluation 

You will have the opportunity to write multi-modal academic blogs and to engage in comix production. You will receive full credit for doing Lynda Barry’s art experiments from Making Comics, and no artistic experience or illustrating talent is required. Additionally, you will be digging into comics scholarship and criticism and learning about this lively field of multi-modal textual production. Final projects may include an academic blog or essay or producing your own short comic. This seminar is geared for both literature and creative writing students. 

Required Texts 

  • Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud (print or PDF available) 
  • Comix Samples, Eroyn Franklin (print and online) 
  • Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki 
  • Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell 
  • Making Comics, Lynda Barry 
  • Hot Comb, Ebony Flowers 
  • My Favorite Thing is Monsters (vol. 1), Emil Ferris 
  • Megahex, Simon Hanselmann 
  • The Pervert, Michelle Perez & Remy Boydell 
  • Sabrina, Nick Drnaso 
  • Free Comic Book Day’s (FCBD) Our Favorite Thing is My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Emil Ferris (PDF available) 

Critical Texts on Reserve 

  • The System of Comics, Thierry Groensteen (print or PDF available) 
  • Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation, Sheen C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II 
  • The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America, David Hajdu 
  • Selected criticism (Canvas)

ENG 535 Studies in Nonfiction 5cr

CRN: 44098 Days/Time: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Staff