Fall 2024 Course Descriptions

Table of Contents

100-Level English Courses

200-Level English Courses

300-Level English Courses

  • ENG 371 Rhetorical Practices
  • 400-Level English Courses

    Graduate English Courses

    Registration Questions?

    Learn more about major restrictions, prerequisites, and other frequently asked questions on the English Department Registration FAQ page.

    100-Level English Courses

    ENG 100 Intro to College Writing 5cr

    CRN: 40038 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.

    CRN: 40243 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.

    ENG 101 Writing Your Way Through WWU 5cr

    View CRNs and DAY/TIMEs on Browse Classes in Web4U. 

    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: Pop Music 5cr

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

    CRN: 40628 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

    Pop Music

    This Comm C GUR course offers you the opportunity to practice the kinds of inquiry and writing we do in the Humanities within a specific context. Our context for this class will be (for current lack of a better term) “pop music,” which for our purposes will mean any music that depends on mass production for its power: from Billie Holliday to Mudhoney, from The Carter Family to Melanie Martinez.

    Although we will be listening to lots of music together, our specific subject will be the analytic responses music has inspired, particularly with regard to contemporary pop (from the mid-20th century to the present). This will include such things as album reviews, lyrics, and liner notes of course, but also extend into music journalism, music documentaries, and weighty tomes of cultural criticism. My hope is that you will leave the class not only far more aware of the reach of writing in the humanities, but far more knowledgeable about the place of pop music in our culture and history (and perhaps having had your horizons extended a bit).

    ASSIGNMENTS: Students will write about 20 pages of analytic writing total across three writing/presentation projects in addition to an ongoing listening journal. This writing will include a thorough response to the reading of one full-length book of music criticism or history.

    ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. 

    CRN: 40124 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Trueblood, Kathryn

    Classics of the Sixties

    "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  

    Course Description: So many movements emerged from the crucible of the 1960s—the Anti-War Movement, The Free Speech Movement, New Journalism, Civil Rights, Feminism, Gay Rights, Environmentalism, and Postmodernism. Students will have the opportunity 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. We will certainly be evaluating the relevance of these works today. Students will learn how to find a genuine stake in the readings and undertake the many stages a critical essay goes through on its way to becoming a polished and persuasive interpretation.  

    TEXTS: 

    • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 
    • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 
    • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin 
    • They Say/I Say: by Graff & Birkenstein 

    CRN: 40245 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Celaya, Anthony

    A writing course designed to help students develop the skills of close reading and careful analysis of literary texts, with particular attention to how language, style, and form contribute to a text’s social or political claims. Introduces students to the challenge of situating themselves in relation to a literary text and the critical conversation about that text, and crafting multi-draft critical essays with a focused, arguable thesis supported by thoughtful sequence of claims and carefully selected textual evidence. 

    CRN: 40356 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Yeasting, Jeanne

    CONTENT: Gothic Contexts. This is an intensive writing, discussion, and reading course designed to help develop the skills of close reading and careful analysis of literary texts, with particular attention to how language, style and form contribute to a text’s social and/or political claims.  Coursework will include various approaches to writing about literature, including analytical essays, observational journals, and creative nonfiction reading narratives. We’ll explore some of the Gothic’s well-known tropes and uses of the uncanny, the fantastic, the monstrous, and sublime; as well as how this genre employs terror, suspense, and humor.  You’ll be required to do a great deal of reading, writing, and talking about texts, both in and out of class, with the aim of enhancing your skills at writing and responding to texts, while deepening your pleasure in reading.   

    EVALUATION: Based on active class participation and fulfillment of assignments, including weekly reading responses, group projects, and a Final Project.  

    REQUIRED TEXTS:   

    • Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto 
    • Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey  
    • E. Lockhart, We Were Liars 
    • Selected shortered texts on Canvas 

    CRN: 40627 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Roach-Orduña, Caitlin

    A writing course designed to help students develop the skills of close reading and careful analysis of literary texts, with particular attention to how language, style, and form contribute to a text’s social or political claims. Introduces students to the challenge of situating themselves in relation to a literary text and the critical conversation about that text, and crafting multi-draft critical essays with a focused, arguable thesis supported by thoughtful sequence of claims and carefully selected textual evidence.

    CRN: 41182 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

    A writing course designed to help students develop the skills of close reading and careful analysis of literary texts, with particular attention to how language, style, and form contribute to a text’s social or political claims. Introduces students to the challenge of situating themselves in relation to a literary text and the critical conversation about that text, and crafting multi-draft critical essays with a focused, arguable thesis supported by thoughtful sequence of claims and carefully selected textual evidence.

    CRN: 41431 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Yeasting, Jeanne

    Content: Gothic Contexts. This is an intensive writing, discussion, and reading course designed to help develop the skills of close reading and careful analyis of literary texts, with particular attention to how language, style and form contribute to a text’s social and/or political claims.  Coursework will include various approaches to writing about literature, including analytical essays, observational journals, and creative nonfiction reading narratives. We’ll explore some of the Gothic’s well-known tropes and uses of the uncanny, the fantastic, the monstrous, and sublime; as well as how this genre employs terror, suspense, and humor.  You’ll be required to do a great deal of reading, writing, and talking about texts, both in and out of class, with the aim of enhancing your skills at writing and responding to texts, while deepening your pleasure in reading.   

    EVALUATION: Based on active class participation and fulfillment of assignments, including weekly reading responses, group projects, and a Final Project.  

    REQUIRED TEXTS:   

    • Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto 
    • Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey  
    • E. Lockhart, We Were Liars 
    • Selected shorter texts on Canvas 

    CRN: 41690 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Staff

    A writing course designed to help students develop the skills of close reading and careful analysis of literary texts, with particular attention to how language, style, and form contribute to a text’s social or political claims. Introduces students to the challenge of situating themselves in relation to a literary text and the critical conversation about that text, and crafting multi-draft critical essays with a focused, arguable thesis supported by thoughtful sequence of claims and carefully selected textual evidence.

    ENG 203 Wrtg for Public&Prof Audiences 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101  

    CRN: 42274 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Bell, Michael

    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 creating texts that enable readers 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, accurately determining the specific requirements of a target audience, and 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 be excellent visual designers, with a solid grasp of the effects of graphics and layout on reader response. In the 21st century, the production of text for professional and public audiences lies within the realm of design: writers for these audiences are document designers.

    Assignments will comprise both solo and group projects, for a variety of audiences/contexts.

    ENG 215 British Literature 5cr

    CRN: 44002 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Anderson, Katherine

    Monster Fiction 

    Course Description:All cultures create monster stories. Monsters help humans articulate and then deal with major social changes and the accompanying anxieties. This course will investigate the rising cultural significance of monstrosity in some of the most important fiction and poetry published in Britain during the nineteenth century. We’ll also fast-forward a bit to consider later British iterations of monstrosity that build upon the literary innovations developed in nineteenth-century monster fictions. The nineteenth century was an age of change and challenges to established cultural norms in Britain and beyond: the Industrial and Darwinian Revolutions, the abolition of slavery, anticolonial rebellion, and the emergence of women’s rights, among others. Amidst these public changes, individuals struggled to maintain their sense of identity, dealing with the private and psychological changes chronicled in the literature of the period. How could the self – and how could the nation – maintain a coherent and stable sense of identity?  

    Throughout the quarter, we’ll consider how each of our texts use the figure of the monster to grapple with these cultural – and individual – changes and fears. Some of the questions we will consider include: In what ways do monsters teach us what it means to be “human,” or even more simply, how to behave? How does British literature use the monster to mark territory as either culturally acceptable or socially dangerous? What are the fears and desires embodied in monsters, and how does the monster transform in response to changing cultural demands? Ultimately, what can these British monsters teach us about ourselves?  

    Course Goals: The core of a liberal arts and sciences education, GURs provide students with foundational knowledge and opportunities to develop, integrate, and extend core capacities in a range of literacies. This course fulfills the HUM General University Requirement (GUR). Humanities GURs provide you with a chance to practice critical, historical, and aesthetic approaches as a means to explore how people experience and document their lives, examine and question the values of their societies, and creatively engage with their world.  

    In developing these intertwined literacies, we’ll use the figure of the monster to give you a broader knowledge of British literature over the course of the nineteenth century and beyond, and the ways in which people used that literature to experience and document their lives, examine and question their society’s values, fears, and norms, and creatively engage with their world. By the end of the quarter, you will have a better understanding of some of the significant literary movements and generic innovations that emerged in the period and how they overlap (Romanticism and aestheticism, for example), as well as a better understanding of the cultural issues, fears, and desires that emerged in said literature, in relation to things like gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, scientific innovations, violence, and the family.  

    Student Learning Objectives (what you’ll get out of this class): 

    1. Increased ability to identify basic generic and formal characteristics in British literature. 
    2. Increased ability to perform critical analysis of literary works across genres. 
    3. Increased ability to compare and contrast texts of different forms or genres productively. 
    4. Increased ability to effectively express interpretations through writing and art. 
    5. Increased ability to relate literature to its historical context as well as to the current contemporary moment. 

    Warning: This course incorporates mature themes. Some of the texts we’ll read may be emotionally troubling. Literature (in all its modalities) exists in part to help us process and cope with the troubling realities of human crises and trauma, and in asking us to confront these things, it also actively encourages our empathy with and for others. To be a student in this class, you will need to commit to reading, viewing, and discussing this material and doing so in a mature, respectful way. 

    ENG 227 Queer Literature 5cr

    CRN: 40971 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Roach-Orduña, Caitlin

    Analysis, interpretation and discussion of a range of texts by queer authors.

    CRN: 44117 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Roach-Orduña, Caitlin

    Queer 7 Trans Thriving FIG. First-year freshmen only. Must also register for CRNs 43029 and 41508.

    Analysis, interpretation and discussion of a range of texts by queer authors.

    ENG 235 Native/Indigenous Literatures 5cr

    CRN: 41432 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Warburton, Theresa +1 hr/wk arr

    CRN: 44125 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Warburton, Theresa The Salish Sea FIG. First-year freshmen only. Must also register for CRNs 42416 and 41914

    Introduction to Native and Indigenous Literatures of North America 

    Using a place-based method, this course will provide students with the historical, theoretical, and artistic contexts through which to engage with Native and Indigenous Literatures. Recognizing that Native land is the literal foundation of the United States and Canada, we will focus on literature (broadly defined) from around Turtle Island (North America) in order to ask how the study of American literature might look different if we take Native and Indigenous literatures as foundational rather than ancillary. Rather than providing a survey of an extremely diverse and wide-ranging set of literatures, this course will provide students with the skills they need to engage texts written by Native and Indigenous writers on the terms set by Native and Indigenous authors, scholars, and activists themselves.  

    At the end of this course, students can expect to: have familiarity with the history of Native and Indigenous literatures; have read texts from contemporary Native and Indigenous authors; be comfortable discussing the diverse approaches to the study of texts by Native and Indigenous authors that have developed through the field of Native literary studies; be able to analyze such texts on their own using theoretical approaches from the course; and communicate effectively in both written and verbal forms about Native and Indigenous literatures.  

    ENG 238: Society Through Its Literature (FYE) 5cr

    CRN: 40973 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

    FYE (First Year Experience) seminars are GUR courses offered in a smaller size with a focus on integrating community-building and general advising into a first-year class. Broad goals of these courses include:

    • Give first-year students an intimate, small-group experience that focuses on discussion, interaction, expression, and peer community as part of the transition into university life
    • Offer opportunities for interaction with faculty and university resources, fostering a sense of academic community
    • Convey high academic expectations to students, for adaptation to university-level work and success.

    English 238 is a literature course designed to help students develop the skills of close reading and careful analysis of literary texts, with particular attention to how language, style, and form contribute to a text’s meanings. The course introduces students to the challenge of situating themselves in relation to a literary text and to critical conversation about that text. We do this by:

    • Reading accurately and critically in a variety of genres and media
    • Analyzing and communicating ideas effectively in oral, written, and visual forms
    • Writing effectively in a variety of genres using appropriate conventions.

    Through these strategies, students learn to "see" a work of literature from multiple perspectives and to explore what it may "say" or "show" us about a particular topic. Our topic for this section is “Writing the Wild Life”—we will explore intersections of wilderness, literature, cinema, and society. Tell me, writes Mary Oliver in her poem “The Summer Day,” ―Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Humans have long felt compelled to test ourselves in the wild, to relinquish convention and restriction in order to explore that which is “wild and precious” in our own nature. Is this urge beautiful? Necessary? Indulgent? Crazy? Is wilderness accessible to all identities? Because our relation to the wild and to the natural world takes place in a place, much of our work together will focus on paying attention to, writing about, and analyzing writing about our own bioregion of the Salish Sea.

    ENG 282 GlobalLits: Africa&Middle East 5cr

    CRN: 41853 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

    ENG 282 is an introductory course to Global Literatures focusing on poetry, short stories, novels, and other genres in translation. Regular attendance is required. Students will also regularly perform in-class writing assignments, including in-class midterms and finals. Cellphone and laptop usages is not permitted in the classroom. There will also be group work and formal writing assignments on the assigned material. 

    300-Level English Courses

    ENG 301 Writing and the Public: Public Rhetorics on College Students 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior status; or instructor permission. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday May 16 by 4:30pm. 

    CRN: 40081 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50am Instructor: Cindy Lou Holland

    In this course we will investigate the public rhetorical portrayal of college students in the United States and explore what effects those portrayals have had on both higher education and on students themselves. Together we will examine a variety of sources—-scholarly, public, historical, and personal--to map and analyze the kinds of student representations present in the US media landscape. Our study will help us identify rhetorical patterns, trace their historical roots, and follow their effects on both students and higher education.  The goal of this course is for students to learn collaborative knowledge-making skills while developing original rhetorical knowledge concerning the very real impacts of public rhetorics."

    You can think of this class as a way to reflect on what it means to be a 'college student' in the 21st century, and how to produce public-facing documents that make a difference for how the idea of "college student" gets framed in lager public discourses. There is so much change happening within colleges, and this class is going to dive into what that is and why it matters, even why it matters outside the college classroom. 

    ENG 302 Technical Writing 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior standing. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday May 16 by 4:30pm. 

    CRN: 40280 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Staff

    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: 40335 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: 40346 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: 40420 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Sarkar, Rachel

    English 302 addresses the essential elements of technical writing—or writing in action. My underlying objective for English 302 is to explore the power of language to change people, events, and self. We’ll explore ways to use writing skills to accomplish personal, professional, and ideological goals. In the process, we’ll also consider the use of humor, empathy, ethics, and storytelling in technical writing.  

    CRN: 40458 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Brown, Nicole

    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: 43099 DAY/TIME: TR 01:00-03:20 pm Instructor: Lewis, Justin Poulsbo - State Supported This course is offered to Poulsbo campus students. For more information, visit wwu.edu/poulsbo

    CRN: 43168 DAY/TIME: M 06:00-08:50 pm Instructor: Staff Kirkland-State Supported W 06:00-07:50 pm Instructor: Staff Kirkland-State Supported

    ENG 307 Seminar: Medieval 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Opens to creative writing majors on May 20 by 10:00am. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 41148 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy

    The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 307 if you have taken ENG 307 or ENG 317.

    A research and writing intensive course in the context of the literary history of the medieval period. Students will develop the skills to research and write about literary texts and participate in the critical conversations about them

    ENG 309 Seminar: The Long 18th Century 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Opens to creative writing majors on May 20 by 10:00am. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 41150 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Laffrado, Laura

    The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 309 if you have already taken ENG 319 or 309.

    CONTENT: This courses focuses on the time period that scholars have recently named the long eighteenth century—that is, the era that extends from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. These are such dynamic years in the literature of what becomes the United States. We will read literary works by people of various races, ethnicities, religions, and economic positions that explore vital issues of the day such as liberty, literacy, revolution, and science. We will examine the various ways in which a dominant rich male Whiteness is challenged as America and American identities are formed and defined.  

    ASSIGNMENTS: In this course you will write both extensively and intensively, producing multiple drafts of papers, revisions, and finished essays. We will devote class time for instruction and practice in disciplinary research methods and writing strategies. Students will write short responses to the reading, shorter essays, and one twelve-page critical research paper that engages with current scholarship on an eighteenth-century text or texts assigned for class. Much reading, writing, and thinking will be asked of you, along with steady attendance, a participation grade, group work, and various out-of-class assignments. 

    TEXT: Broadview Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A, Beginnings to 1820 

    ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Opens to creative writing majors on May 20 by 10:00am. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 41151 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Hardman, Pam

    The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 310 if you have already taken ENG 320 or 310.

    Resisting Narratives

    CONTENT: In this course we’ll explore a variety of texts created by women in North America during the long 19th century. Each of the texts challenges traditional narratives, resisting not only genre expectations but also broader cultural assumptions and structures. Many of the texts give agency and voice to marginalized women, providing – to borrow bell hooks’ words – ways to subversively claim space that normally excludes them. We’ll consider different types of media in addition to writing, such as scrapbooks, embroidery, samplers, recipes, and quilts.  

    TEXTS: may include the writers Sui Sin Far, Zitkala-Ša, Harriet Jacobs, Louisa May Alcott, Rose Terry Cooke, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Fanny Fern, and Emily Dickinson, as well as examples of scrapbooks, samplers, embroidery, recipes, and quilting. 

    ASSIGNMENTS: Assigned reading; discussion presentation; reading responses; final multi-media project.  

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

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Opens to creative writing majors on May 20 by 10:00am. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 41152 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Youmans, Greg

    The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 311 if you have already taken ENG 321 or 311.

    Literary Labyrinths 

    The Argentinian master Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Indeed, David Foster Wallace argued that he was “the great bridge between modernism and postmodernism in world literature.” Borges’s elegant and succinct short stories often take the form of a Möbius Strip, unfolding in a manner that seems entirely rational yet somehow ending in paradox. He was the eminent writer-as-reader—he served as the director of Argentina’s National Library for nearly twenty years—and whatever other labyrinths he created and traced in his stories, it is ultimately the maze of reading that lies at the heart of his work, the unique path that each of us follows through the universe of books. In this seminar, we will explore Borges’s influence on world literature of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first. Since all of postmodern literature arguably owes something to him, there are many paths we could follow, but ours will center the Americas and issues of language: reading and writing, allusion and plagiarism, translation and multilingualism. We will begin with a close study of Borges’s groundbreaking collection Ficciones (1941–56), and then turn to the work of subsequent writers, looking at both texts that were originally written in English and others translated from Spanish. Among those whose work we may explore are Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortázar, Roberto Bolaño, Samuel Delany, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Ted Chiang.  

    ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 40083 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

    ENG 313 is an introduction to critical theory and practices from Antiquity to the Modern Era. Regular attendance is required. Students will also regularly perform in-class writing assignments, including in-class midterms and finals. Cellphone and laptop usages is not permitted in the classroom. There will also be group work and formal writing assignments on the assigned material. 

    ENG 314 Critical Theories & Prac II 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 42054 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Staff

    Introduction to a range of critical and cultural theories in an historical context from the nineteenth century to the present. Emphasis on critical reading and writing in preparation for courses in film, literary, and cultural studies.

    ENG 317 Survey: Medieval 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 42055 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Vulic, Kathryn

    The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 317 if you have taken ENG 307 or ENG 317.

    Course Description and Objectives: This course covers the first era in our Literature and Culture sequence, starting with the origins of English literature from its earliest surviving writings to the advent of the printing press in England. This is an exciting time in English literature and history when enduring literary conventions were being established, and iconic literary subjects such as King Arthur and courtly love were first being written down. This course celebrates the fascinating and sometimes bizarre (to 21st century readers) literature of the past and offers models for how any modern reader can develop expertise with a body of literature with which they may have little in common. To explore these subjects, this class will sample a broad array of genres, techniques, forms, and themes of the literature of medieval England. 

    By the end of the quarter you will understand the ways in which English language and literature waned and waxed over the course of the Old English and Middle English periods, and how English vied with French and Latin as a medium of communication. You will learn to recognize the characteristics of many of the common medieval literary forms, as well as the reasons for their use (e.g., polemical, pedagogical, recreational). You will learn about medieval culture and literary tastes, as they are reflected in the course readings.       

    This class aims at breadth of coverage (with course readings consisting of excerpts as well as whole texts), rather than depth, though this course could be designed productively either way. This class focuses on what it meant to read and write in Middle English, and therefore strives not only for a general understanding of the politics and other social factors that influence writing in English, but also examines the range of writing interests expressed by those who chose to compose in English. 

    Textbook: Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 1: The Medieval Period (3rd ed. 2014,  or Revised 3rd ed. 2023 – either one is fine) and supplements posted to Canvas. 

    Assignments and evaluation: This class uses contract grading to help you work toward a grade of your choosing. The assignments are a mix of daily reading and discussion preparation, small research or creative projects meant to help you explore connections between our class material and our contemporary lives, and a series of check-ins that let me see what you are learning and how. Your course grade will be determined by the grading contract as well. 

    ENG 320 TYE Survey: The Long 19th Century 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: 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 that is equivalent to ENG 202.

    CRN: 41865 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Giffen, Allison

    The Long Nineteenth Century: 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 survey of 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 an essay-style midterm and final exam.  

    ENG 321 TYE Survey: The 20-21st Century 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not 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 that is equivalent to ENG 202.

    CONTENT: This TYE section has several aims: to teach you about texts and cultures of  20th and 21st century North America; to give you critical and theoretical “tools” you can use in analyzing texts and cultures; to provide you with a supportive community of other transfer students as you navigate your first quarter at WWU. We’ll pay particular attention to the cultural and historical mythologies that have influenced the texts, discussing such issues as race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, technology, music, and popular culture.

    TEXTS: Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad; Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing is Monsters; Eric Gansworth, Apple: Skin to the Core;  Ntozake Shange, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo; Octavio Solis, Retablos; reading packets

    ASSIGNMENTS:Reading Responses; in-class mixed-media workshops; final mixed-media project; final exam 

    ENG 331 Studies in Gender Theory 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or WGSS 211. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 42275 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Lee, Jean

    Black Queer Feminist Cosmologies 

    Description: While many of us can critique the limitations of liberalism, Enlightenment philosophies, and Euro-Western ideologies, it’s hard to imagine beyond them. This course explores Black queer feminist cosmologies (ways of understanding the self in relation to the spiritual and ancestral) and ontologies (ways of understanding “being” and embodiment) which deeply inform activist imaginaries in Black feminist scholarship and literature. As Toni Cade Bambara said, this knowledge is what makes liberation irresistible. We will learn about queer roots in Afro-diasporic spiritual practices (Vodou, Santería, etc.) and time travelling by connecting to ancestors and speculating queer futurities. We affirm and explore the following sentiment from Alexis Pauline Gumbs as she speaks from women of color feminism and reproductive justice theory: “all day long and everywhere…we acknowledge the creative power to transforming ourselves, and the ways we relate to each other [b]ecause we were never meant to survive and here we are creating a world full of love.”

    ENG 334 Texts/N.Am&Eur: "Returning" to Africa 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 or equivalent  

    CRN: 41435 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Lee, Jean

    “Returning” to Africa 

    Description: What does it mean to “return” home to a place you’ve never been? This course focuses on Black writers from the United States and Caribbean who travelled to Africa to further their Pan-Africanist and decolonial consciousness and solidarities. We will explore the contradictions that many Afro-Caribbean and African American writers felt as they confronted romanticized idea of Africa as one’s ancestral and cultural home with their internalized Western assumptions about Africa’s (under)development and premodernity. In addition, this course foregrounds how the civil rights movement was informed by anticolonial movements across the Caribbean and Africa. We will read essays, memoirs, biographies by writer/activist/scholars such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, MLK Jr., Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Saidiya Hartman to meditate on what it means to be alienated from and claim Africa as members of the Black diaspora.  

    ENG 335 Global Texts Outside N.Am&Eur 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 or equivalent  

    CRN: 42984 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Prichard, Tony

    Global Horror

    We will examine the literature of horror and the weird throughout the world.

    Required Texts
    • Jenkins and Cagle eds, The Valancourt book of World Horror Stories Vols 1 and 2.
    • Vandermeer, Ann and Jeff ed. The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

    ENG 338 Women's Lit N Am and Europe 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101  

    CRN: 40336 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

    This class will focus on innovations and interventions of women writers in Modernism. Covering philosophic writing by Simon de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch & Susanne Langer, the fiction and essays of  Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf & Mina Loy and the poetic contributions of Gwendolyn Brooks, Gertrude Stein & H.D. We’ll consider the relationships between these writers and the notable disruptions of art and literature during the modernist period (first wave feminism/Futurism/Dada/Surrealism/etc.) We will also consider how these writers influenced late modernism by reading work by Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, bell hooks and Adrienne Rich. Assignments will include weekly reading responses, brief analytical essays, and a small-group-multimedia project.  

    ENG 344 Film&Media Ac. NorthAmEurope 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101  

    CRN: 44170 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Youmans, Greg

    Film Viewing: M 04:00-06:50 pm

    Surrealisms 

    The course explores the origins, legacies, and ongoing significance of what was probably the most influential avant-garde movement of the twentieth century: surrealism. We’ll begin by looking at some of the defining texts of the movement, including Sigmund Freud’s writing on drives, dreams, and the unconscious, as well as Andre Breton’s 1924 surrealist manifesto. After that we’ll engage with a range of artists who have created work in a variety of media, including literature and the visual arts but with an emphasis on film. Some of the artists whose work we’ll explore are Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Aimé Césaire, Věra Chytilová, Leonora Carrington, Jan Švankmajer, Satoshi Kon, and César Aira. 

    ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or instructor permission. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 40464 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Hardman, Pam

    CONTENT: In this course we’ll read a diverse array of texts written for young adults. These books all address complex notions about identity, power, race, sexuality, gender, class, love, and voice. We’ll explore the texts from a variety of angles, asking questions of the texts themselves and readers’ responses to the texts. In addition to exploring the books, we’ll think about the histories of childhood and adolescence, and how youth culture is represented.  We’ll address issues of consumerism, popular culture, and technology, looking at their effects on this genre of literature and its target audience.  

    TEXTS: Trung Le Nguyen, The Magic Fish; Isabel Quintero, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces; Andrea L. Rogers, Man Made Monsters;  Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep; Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, Punching the Air 

    ASSIGNMENTS: Reading responses; mixed-media class workshops; mixed-media final project; final exam

    ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 40125 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Magee, Kelly

    Welcome to English 350: Introduction to Creative Writing! This course is an introduction to three genres of creative writing: fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. You’ll learn about the forms and conventions of each genre, as well as ways to combine genres and utilize crossover techniques, such as with narrative poetry, autofiction, or lyric essays. We will discuss both published texts and your own writing, as the class learns how to read closely as writers and put that learning into practice. You’ll move between writing exercises and complete creative works—stories, poems, essays, and hybrid work—producing a portfolio of creative work that you’ll submit as a final exam. Grades will be determined by completion of exercises to develop particular skills in writing, responses to published work, peer response and workshop, and of course, creative submissions.  

    CRN: 40687 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Guess, Carol

    What does it mean to use language creatively, rather than for straightforward communication? This class will be a fun, playful exploration of language and creativity. We will write and read and make things with an open mind.  

    CRN: 42056 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

    In this section of Introduction to Creative Writing we will examine and practice the fundamentals of craft:  imagery and figurative language; sound; character and setting; voice and perspective; form and structure.  We will focus on “close reading” of model poetry and prose; brainstorm creative expression and response; draft poems, stories, and creative nonfiction personal essays; share some of these projects with peers; and revise selected works--learning how to communicate about and make practical use of feedback on drafts.  Evaluation will be based on completion of a sequence of activities and full participation in the class.  5 credits 

    Required Textbook: Write Moves: A Creative Writing Guide & Anthology (print edition) 

    CRN: 42057 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Gulyas, Lee

    This course will introduce you to the process of writing—the reading, drafting, craft elements, analysis, extensive revision, focus, and discipline that are essential. You will explore, develop, rethink, and revise with the final goal of a portfolio of creative work. This is a skills class, one that will require practice and participation. We will work in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. 

    Assignments include: exercises, readings, analysis, discussions on a variety of topics, and extensive revision of your own drafts into your final portfolio, held together by an analytical discussion. 

    COURSE GOALS 

    • You will practice reading published work as a writer. 
    • You will work with craft elements and literary techniques in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and read examples from a variety of authors, perspectives, genres, and forms. 
    • You will experiment and take risks to create drafts, then cut, hone, and explore possibilities through revision. 
    • You will actively work to increase your knowledge and skills, aim for professional standards, participate effectively in our writing community through discussion, develop useful feedback, work with revision and deadlines, and locate resources and opportunities both in and out of our classroom. 

    ENG 351 Intro to Fiction Writing 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 40438 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am 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 of various identities and study the ways they make their writing shine 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 short story fiction writing with the help of various writing exercises and assignments, revision, and most importantly, your imagination and individuality.

    CRN: 40497 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

    As a community of writers, we will strengthen our competencies 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 a diverse body of published works and the early drafts (stories) written by you and 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. Count on being 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.  

    We will examine a diverse body of published work across genre boundaries. I attempt to keep course costs as low as possible, but I require access to a few critical materials:  

    • Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer 
    • An electronic device (e.g. smartphone) that will allow you to access podcasts 

    ENG 353 Introduction to Poetry Writing 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 40084 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Wong, Jane

    Course Description: 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 exploring these texts as readers, we will get a better sense of how language and structure can move us and how we can begin to cultivate our own styles and literary voices. You will be expected to generate creative pieces for workshop, feedback responses, and a final portfolio of revised work. Additionally, we will invite visiting guest poets to our class this quarter, moving writing from the page and into the real world! It is such an exciting time in the world of poetry!  

    ENG 354 Intro to Creative Nonfict Writ 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 40085 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Dorr, Noam

    An introductory course in writing nonfiction prose, such as personal essay, memoir, autobiography, travel writing, and other forms.

    ENG 364 Introduction to Film Studies 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101  

    CRN: 40276 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

    Film Viewing: M 04:00-06:50 pm 

    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. There will also be a video production project that will further enrich our understanding of how films are put together.  
     
    More specific course objectives: 

    • Enrich your ability to look and listen closely to motion pictures 
    • Understand and apply a range of critical and cultural theories to the study of cinema 
    • 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 
    • Engage with local film cultures and other communities rooted in cinephilia 

    Textbook: 

    David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Jeff Smith. Film Art: An Introduction, 13th edition. New 

    York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2024. 

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

    CRN: 41856 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Cosey, Felicia

    Film Viewing: T 04:00-06:50 pm

    Overview of the conventions and techniques of narrative cinema with some readings in film theory.

    ENG 365 Film Hist: "Film Blackness" 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or ENG 202  

    CRN: 41175 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Rogers, Jamie

    Film Viewing: T 04:00-06:50 pm

    This course will examine the development of and trends in Black experimental documentary film in the United States from the 1960s onward. We will examine the influence of various cinematic movements (surrealism, poetic realism, Third Cinema, etc.) in relation to the development of documentary styles employed by and about Black communities and filmmakers. To follow this historical inquiry, the course will address three theoretical questions. One, how do we define the category “Black film?” Two, how do we define the category “experimental?” And last, how do we define the category “documentary?”  

    In grappling with these questions, we will draw largely from Michael Boyce Gillespie’s term “film Blackness,” which he employs to complicate the presumption that the primary responsibility of cinema by and/or about Black people is to provide some sort of “authentic” insight into Black “lifeworlds.” Rather, he says, “film Blackness” implies a type of inquiry into Black film “as an art practice, with its attendant questions of form and politics.” In our course, we will ask how we understand the history of Black documentary films, with all that “documentary” implies (i.e. a fidelity to “truth” and representation), when they are experimental in form; that is, when they are unabashedly “art.”  

    While the course does not aim to be comprehensive, it will explore a broad history of documentary and experimental forms in order to situate our specific focus on Black experimental documentary film. Coursework will include quizzes, short writing assignments, and essays with the option to substitute one creative project or video essay. 

    ENG 371 Rhetorical Practices 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 and junior status. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday May 16 by 4:30pm. 

    CRN: 42997 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Staff

    Opens up the field of rhetoric through a sustained engagement with its contemporary practices and theories. Work in the course examines various relationships among language, culture, and communication, often helping students articulate their work in the humanities to outside audiences.

    400-Level English Courses

    ENG 410 Lit Hist: Gothic Sensations 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202; plus three from: ENG 307, ENG 308, ENG 309, ENG 310, ENG 311, ENG 313, ENG 314, ENG 317, ENG 318, ENG 319, ENG 320, ENG 321, ENG 331, ENG 333, ENG 334, ENG 335, ENG 336, ENG 338, ENG 339, ENG 341, ENG 342, ENG 343, ENG 347, ENG 364, ENG 371. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.    

    CRN: 42597 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Anderson, Katherine

    Course Description: When Matthew Lewis published The Monk in 1796, his Gothic masterpiece provoked a social uproar, rage, and disgust. For many readers it was just too visceral: in forcing the reader to confront gory and tangible violence and sexual assault, the novel evoked body horror instead of the more sublime terror associated with imagination and the supernatural.  

    This class surveys the literary history of the Gothic as it evolved over the nineteenth century with a particular focus on how it represented and commented upon various social anxieties and cultural critiques via its insistent attention to the body: both bodily sensation as an experience, and constructions of embodied selfhood and identity. Moving from Lewis’s The Monk to a variety of Gothic subgenres including sensation fiction, we’ll interrogate the way these texts represent gender and sexualities, race and imperialism, class, science, religion and the supernatural, and more, in relation to the ethics of body horror creation and consumption. Along the way, we’ll also read scholarly work to deepen our conversations and inform our analyses. Some of the questions we’ll consider include: Which cultural fears and anxieties does the nineteenth-century Gothic engage and why? When, how, and why does the nineteenth-century Gothic transgress or uphold cultural norms? How, if at all, does the Gothic change its formal elements and/or its cultural fears or preoccupations across the nineteenth century, and conversely, how has it stayed the same throughout its many forms and cultural histories? What does Gothic horror have to do with the body? Why does Gothic horror both frighten and fascinate us? Ultimately, what can the nineteenth-century Gothic teach us about ourselves?   

    Content Warning: As its title and subject matter indicate, this course incorporates mature themes. Some of the texts we’ll engage include representations of graphic violence, gore, suicide, and/or violent sex (including sexual assault). I did not assign these texts lightly. Rather, it is my goal for us to confront those elements sensitively, thoughtfully, and deeply, as I hope we do when we encounter them in the real world. Literature (in all its modalities) exists in part to help us process and cope with the realities of human crises and trauma, and in asking us to confront these things, it also actively encourages our empathy with and for others. To enroll as a student in this class, you need to commit to reading, viewing, and discussing this material and doing so in a mature, respectful way. 

    This course is under construction, but course texts will likely be chosen from the following:  

    • Matthew Lewis, The Monk 
    • Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya 
    • Samuel Coleridge, Christabel  
    • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 
    • John Polidori, The Vampyre 
    • Uriah Derick D’Arcy, The Black Vampyre: A Story of Saint-Domingo” 
    • Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” 
    • Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire 
    • Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla and “Green Tea” 
    • Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White 
    • Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret 
    • Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Rajmohan’s Wife 
    • H. Rider Haggard, She 
    • Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood 
    • Dusé Mohamed Ali, “Katebet the Priestess” 
    • Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness 
    • Richard Marsh, The Beetle 
    • Bram Stoker, Dracula 
    • Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
    • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray 

    ENG 418 Senior Seminar 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. Opens to Literature juniors on Monday May 20 by 10:00am. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am. 

    CRN: 40380 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy

    Important note: ENG 418 is not repeatable & cannot be used as an elective for the literature major.

    Haunting the Dead

    Ghosts have always walked among us. Or perhaps more accurately, stories of ghosts have always walked among us: as far as we can tell, ghost stories are the oldest recorded stories in the world. What can we learn, by listening to these tales of the dead? What secrets lie hidden about our deepest, most secret fear and beliefs? What traits are unique to a specific culture, and which are universal? We begin by exploring ghost stories and traditions around the world, and then move on into the stories that haunt our own times. Ghost stories written by living authors and current folklore reveal that far from outgrowing our ancient beliefs, we humans continue haunting the dead. 

    CRN: 40381 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Laffrado, Laura

    Important note: ENG 418 is not repeatable & cannot be used as an elective for the literature major. 

    CONTENT: This course looks at the writings of once celebrated but then long forgotten author Ella Rhoads Higginson, the first prominent literary writer from the Pacific Northwest and the first Poet Laureate of Washington State. Higginson was celebrated for her award-winning fiction, her lyric poetry which was set to music and performed internationally, and her prolific nonfiction. During the turn from the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, readers around the world were introduced to the then-remote Pacific Northwest region by Higginson’s descriptions of majestic mountains, vast forests, and scenic waters, as well as the often difficult economic circumstances of those dwelling near Puget Sound.  

    We will read her major works in the order she wrote them, pay attention to their interactions with the larger culture, watch her create characters who help define the Pacific Northwest, and ask why Higginson became so famous. We will consider issues of gender, race, region, and identity, among others. We will also periodically meet in the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies and do some hands on archival work with the Ella Higginson Papers. 

    ENG 423 Major Authors 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202; plus three from: ENG 307, ENG 308, ENG 309, ENG 310, ENG 311, ENG 313, ENG 314, ENG 317, ENG 318, ENG 319, ENG 320, ENG 321, ENG 331, ENG 333, ENG 334, ENG 335, ENG 336, ENG 338, ENG 339, ENG 341, ENG 342, ENG 343, ENG 347, ENG 364, ENG 371. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.  

    CRN: 40382 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

    Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

    This course will introduce you to the radical creativity of the indie comix scene with the work of Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki. Focusing on the graphic narratives of these queer writers/artists, we will explore the intersectional young and new adult themes of identity, community, and agency. Through our four texts, we will attempt to articulate and understand the strange, the beautiful, the complex, and the interesting . . . in these graphic novels. The selected texts feature marginalized and under-represented characters and themes, including topics such as love and friendship (relationship building), gender identity, resiliency, depression, and loneliness/isolation. We will celebrate comix as a potentially queer space where openness, fluidity, and non-conformity represent textual strategies as well as characters’ identities. We will also study comix form, technique, and theory; and you will have the opportunity to write about comix as well as create your own comic panels. 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. 

    Assignments and Evaluation 

    You will have the opportunity to write three multimodal blogs about the Tamakis’ work. You will also have the chance to engage in comix workshops, where you will create your own panel experiments through drawing or using a comix generator. Students will receive full credit for doing the exercises, which are totally fun! No artistic experience or illustrating talent is required.  

    Required Texts 

    • Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud (PDF) 
    • Skim, Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki 
    • Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Mariko Tamaki & Rosemary Valero-O’Connell 
    • Roaming, Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki 
    • This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki 
    • Making Comics, Lynda Barry (PDF) 
    • Selected comix criticism (PDFs) 

    CRN: 41857 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Heim, Stefania

    Langston Hughes

    Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was a poet of the people. The first Black American writer to earn a living solely through his literary output, Hughes has a huge reputation—“Let us in / on how / you ’came a saint // LANGSTON,” writes Kevin Young in a tribute poem. At the same time Hughes was, as a former assistant quipped, “critically, the most abused poet in America,” ignored for many years by white critics and criticized by some black readers for what they saw as simplistic depictions of black life. Other than acknowledging him as a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance and recognizing some of his most resounding lines (“What happens to a dream deferred?” or “America never was America to me”) most contemporary readers don’t know much about Hughes’s incredibly various, prolific, and international life in literature. In this course we’ll read across his work in all genres—jazz poems and modernist montages; political reportage from Harlem and the bombed streets of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War; short stories, memoirs, and books for children; his translations of Afro-Cuban protest poet, Nicolás Guillén and Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca; and his introductions to the work of some great 20th century poets he nurtured and supported including Gwendolyn Brooks and Lucille Clifton. Throughout, we’ll ask urgent questions about what it means to be a “Social Poet.”  

    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 do not lift.

    CRN: 42061 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Celaya, Anthony

    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.  

    In this course, we will examine language in context. Therefore, students will be asked to write regularly practicing and applying what we learn in class within the context of writing. Additionally, students will be asked to critically engage with the language practices they experience and witness outside of class over the course of the quarter.  

    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 do not lift.

    CRN: 40587 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: 40277 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00pm-01:50 pm Instructor: VanderStaay, Steven

    ENG 451 Creative Wrtng Seminar: Fiction 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am. 

    CRN: 40339 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Colen, Elizabeth

    In this advanced workshop in fiction writing, students will closely read and analyze books of short stories written in the last year, engage in weekly writing exercises and imitations, and hone their storytelling skills through the production of at least one fully revised story. The final project will be a portfolio that includes a story of 10-15 pages of fully revised, well-crafted work. 

    CRN: 40500 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Trueblood, Kathryn

    How do writers use research—conventional and unconventional—without sounding like PBS narrators? How does a writer employ research while also sustaining a deep connection to his, her, or zir story? This is the central question of our workshop. We will be experimenting with writing based on newspaper articles or other clippings and considering the many ways that writers incorporate research into their fiction without losing tension on the narrative-line. Our inquiry into methods will include interviews, cultural artifacts, and found objects. In this class, we will have the chance to read some terrific short stories and discuss them in the spirit of shared inquiry. For every story, you will be asked to consider how it offered you inspiration or modeled a technical skill. This course emphasizes three tools every writer needs: journaling, sentence collecting, and research. 

    As 400-level workshop students you are expected to be conversant with the principles and techniques of fine writing, but please remember that workshops share much in common with studio art classes. The study or sketch for a work may bear little resemblance to the final piece. Be open-minded. Bring goodwill to the workshop. 

    TEXTS:  

    • The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction  
    • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers 

    ENG 453 Creative Wrtng Seminar: Poetry 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 353. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am. 

    CRN: 40304 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Winrock, Cori

    The Object

    "Making a poem is making an object. I always thought of them more as drawings than as texts, but drawings that are also physically enterable through the fact of language. It was another way to think of a book, an object that is as visually real as it is textually real."

    —Anne Carson

    What does it mean to consider the poem as an object—something that is as visually real as it is textually real? As something you can hold or enter or encounter through language? How might we make a poem with the idea of its object-ness in mind? What happens when the material concerns of a poem create part of its process? For Emily Dickinson, the shape of an envelope shifted the poems she composed. For Nicole Sealey, the language of the Ferguson Report dictated possible word choice. Across the course of the quarter, we will explore the possibilities of the poem-as-object—considering material, form, and page-based constraints through writers such as Emily Dickinson, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Jenny Xie, Nicole Sealey, Layli Long Soldier, Erin Marie Lynch, Alison Titus, and Keith Wilson. We will frame this work through craft essays and the construction of your own poems.

    ENG 454 Creative Wrtg Sem: Nonfiction 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am. 

    CRN: 40340 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Roach-Orduña, José

    Criticism in Crisis: Social Criticism in Times of Social Change 

    In a 1987 interview, Margaret Thatcher famously (or infamously) declared that “there is no such thing as society,” only “individual men and women and … families.” Her declaration, and her rule, along with the rule of her US counterpart Ronald Reagan, served to consolidate the neoliberal political project, one that sought to hollow out the social safety net and which used the rhetoric of personal responsibility and choice to blame individuals for their immiseration under capitalism.   

    In this class, we will read as writers. That is, we’ll read with a special attunement for “how” questions, such as “how did X author accomplish Y?”  The literature we’ll read will engage in social criticism. That is, criticism that presupposes the existence of something called society—an organizing idea that might mean something like the mutual influence and indebtedness we bring into being through our interactions—and situates its interrogations in the interconnected web of political, economic, and cultural relations. Writers we’ll read in this class grapple with a plethora of social problematics, and students in this class will be asked to write two short pieces of social criticism that engage in different literary modes. 

    Our class will primarily be workshop based. Students will also watch films, lead reading discussions, engage in short in-class writing exercises, and write one piece of literary social criticism based on our study of the genre.  

    ENG 456 Fiction Wrtg: Collaborative Writing 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am.   

    CRN: 42599 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Magee, Kelly

    This is a class in the wonderful world of collaborative writing! While it can be argued that all writing is collaborative at heart, this class will focus on collaboration as a generative practice, one that can help you write more fiction than you thought possible in one quarter. Through assignments such as story halves, call and response, creative editing, updating, idea speed dating, workshop generation, and more, students will experiment with the many ways to work with other writers in the production of creative work. This course requires flexibility and adaptability, a willingness to share authorship, good humor, and a sense of playfulness about the subject. You might see your writing become something entirely new…maybe several times over! We’ll discuss both the practical and ethical questions this kind of writing process raises, and together, we’ll work through difficulties to maximize the many fulfilling aspects of collaboration. As the quarter continues, the class itself will become a collaborative effort, with students directing their own projects and bringing new texts in for discussion. 

    ENG 458 NonfictionWrtg: 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am. 

    CRN: 40352 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Dorr, Noam

    Intensive reading, writing and workshop in one or more specific modes of nonfiction, such as memoir, travel writing, autobiography and the personal essay. Repeatable with different instructors to a maximum of 10 credits, including original course.

    ENG 459 Editing and Publishing 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am. 

    CRN: 40498 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 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. 

    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. 

    ENG 460 MultiGenreWrit: 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday May 21 by 10:00am. 

    CRN: 40426 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

    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, surrealism, horror, science fiction, and romantic literature. 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. I attempt to keep course costs as low as possible, but I require access to a few critical materials:  

    • The Weird (anthology) edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer 

    • An electronic device (e.g. smart phone) that will allow you to access podcasts 

    CRN: 41701 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Guess, Carol

    Prose Poetry

    Prose poetry combines the musicality of poetry with the structure of prose. It emphasizes compression and nuance rather than plot and factual detail. In this 460, we will read and write prose poetry, making language dioramas filled with imaginative worlds. Our emphasis will be on the pleasure of making sounds and telling stories in miniature. 

    ENG 462 Prof Wrtg: 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: One course from ENG 301, ENG 302, ENG 371; or equivalent experience and instructor approval. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday May 16 by 4:30pm. 

    CRN: 44048 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Brown, Nicole

    Note on Prerequisites: This course is open to students from diverse academic backgrounds with an interest in grant writing and AI technologies. Please contact the instructor at brownn6@wwu.edu. 

    At its essence, grant writing is the applied rhetoric of matching an individual’s or organization’s visions, missions, objectives, and goals so that an idea—and the change necessary to achieve it—receives support. Over the course of the quarter, you will be introduced to the rhetorical situation and principles of grant writing in theory and practice—as a profession and a habit-of-mind. 

    With AI rapidly evolving our writing processes, this course is also designed for grant writers to experiment with augmenting their work with artificial intelligence.  We will practice and evaluate what possibilities exist for elevating our distinctive voices, narratives, values, and persuasive storytelling capabilities with AI tools. We will explore claims made regarding the capability for AI tools to streamline the grant writing process and assist writers with strategic thinking. Through our critical use and reflection of AI technologies, we will articulate our individual perspectives on ethical and responsible AI use and the implications for professional writers of all types and specific to the grant writing process, including issues related to privacy, intellectual property, algorithmic bias, and fairness

    Drawing on the broad usefulness of understanding the proposal writing process, this project-based, service learning course will have you practicing your proposal writing skills on real proposals.  You will gain a comprehensive understanding of the the rhetorical writing process of proposal development and how AI can be leveraged to assist with proposal creation. By December, you will have completed a project proposal requesting funding for a cause and/or organization that you care about.

    ENG 464 TopicsinFilmStds: 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission  

    CRN: 40427 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

    Film Viewing: W 05:00-07:50 pm

    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 genres we will study in this course are martial arts films (from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), musicals (from India), and horror (from Japan). Course requirements include two short essays, a curatorial group project, and a substantial research paper (10-12 pages). 

    All readings will be made available on Canvas. 

    Films: 

    • Dragon Inn (dir. King Hu, 1967) 
    • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (dir. Ang Lee, 2000) 
    • House of Flying Daggers (dir. Zhang Yimou, 2004) 
    • Sholay (dir. Ramesh Sippy, 1975) 
    • Main Hoon Na (dir. Farah Khan, 2004) 
    • Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (dir. Zoya Akhtar, 2011) 
    • Ugetsu (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953) 
    • Ringu (dir. Hideo Nakata, 1998) 
    • Pulse (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001) 

    ENG 466 Screenwriting 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or one from: ENG 350, ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354  

    CRN: 43021 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Cosey, Felicia

    Film Viewing: M 04:00-06:50 pm

    This course in film studies and creative writing provides students an introduction to screenwriting. The course focuses on the writing of narrative screenplays, both short and feature length, while also introducing skills applicable to other genres, including the video essay, episodic narrative for the web, and experimental forms.

    Graduate-Level English Courses

    ENG 500 Directed Independent Study 1 TO 5cr

    CRN: 40132

    ENG 501 Literary Theories & Practices 5cr

    CRN: 40002 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Vulic, Kathryn

    Course Description: This course is designed to introduce you, a new Master’s-level student, to your new role and program while also preparing you for further graduate-level study. Graduate school, among its many qualities, helps students deepen their knowledge and skills in their chosen field(s), and gives them the tools they need to function as professionals in their discipline. This class will therefore focus on both of these two areas in order to launch you successfully into your graduate program.  

    First, we will study a selection of influential critical theories and work with them in projects that give you advanced experience using theory to craft and support arguments. One 10-week course can’t hope to cover all of literary and cultural theory, but you will gain experience with significant representative samples that will help you determine which approaches are most in line with your own scholarly identity. 

    Second (and completely related), the course will equip you with the professional skills you will need through and after your graduate program. We will cover how to write for different specific publication or presentation opportunities, but also the less concrete aspects of academic culture that are extremely difficult to learn without the guidance of someone who has prior experience. We will be treating the classroom as a professional workplace so that you can start inhabiting the role of professional scholar from day one. I take my role as professional mentor very seriously, and I expect that class will be a supportive and collaborative space within which we will do our work.  

    ENG 505 Seminar in Writing Nonfiction 5cr

    CRN: 44049 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Roach-Orduña, José

    In this class we will concentrate on the literary profile. We’ll read them, we’ll talk about them, we’ll pitch one, and the class will culminate with the writing/workshopping of one! A literary profile is not a chronological list of the “great” events of a life. They’re not always about well-known people. It doesn’t need to be comprehensive, in fact, they usually aren’t, and its most urgent imperative is not to inform. Well maybe it is to inform, but it’s twin equally urgent imperative might also be to titillate, transfix, disquiet, rupture, complicate, move, evoke, scramble, pluralize, deepen. In other words, a literary profile is a piece of art—art that centers on a person and what makes them tick their peculiar tick. 

    Some of what we read might include: the ins and outs of a garbage collector’s morning; the night shift with a worker at a Dunkin Donuts; the life of a 14-year-old girl that was photographed (in a now iconic photo) next to a protestor that had just been shot by the National Guard at Kent State; Dylann Roof; and the life and times of America’s comic prophet of race, Richard Pryor; among others. 

    Students will prepare and present a pitch, and do several guided writing exercises that will feed into our major writing assignment for the quarter – a literary profile!  

    ENG 509 Intrnship in Writ, Edit & Prod 1 TO 5cr

    CRN: 40088, Wong, Jane

    ENG 513 Seminar in Tchg College Comp 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: appointment as a teaching assistant or instructor permission  

    CRN: 44171 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Cushman, Jeremy W.

    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 will be doing in your own composition classrooms. What that means is that, together, we’ll try on all of the theory and the assignments that your own students take up in ENG 101; we’ll ask questions and write responses concerning how and why we might produce more useful theory and create better assignments; we’ll reflect on the place of our college composition course within the larger 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 520 Studies in Poetry 5cr

    CRN: 44051 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Winrock, Cori Anne

    The Lyric

    The concept of the lyric is attached as an adjective to all sorts of things—from poetry, to essays, to fragmented fiction, to songs, to fashion, to advertisements for cars and hearing aids. But what is it? A genre? A mode? A means for conveying emotion? Is it small? Overheard? Is it really the style that Sappho was writing in? Does it have to involve a lyre to be lyric? Can you karaoke it? In this Studies in Poetry class, we will explore the concept of ‘the lyric’—backtracking through history to consider where/when/how the term was introduced and what it means to attach this one term to such a diverse set of poems/texts. Across the course of the quarter, we will chart the strange and sneaky form of the lyric and its attendant ‘I’, attempting to disentangle it from other possible forms while simultaneously creating our own working definition of the lyric in this contemporary moment. Through reading and writing craft essays, experimental criticism, and lyric sequences, each of you will consider as well as create the lyric.

    ENG 525 Studies in Fiction 5cr

    CRN: 42284 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn Y.

    Course Description 

    This course will introduce you to the radical creativity of the U.S. 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 a queer-positive lens. Through our eight 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 multiracial, queer, trans, and non-binary characters with themes that center around love and friendship (relationship building), depression, desire, resiliency, creative expression, body image, autonomy, and loneliness/isolation. The themes in these writers’ and artists’ works intersect and overlap with politics and rebellion while highlighting the complex ways in which individuals are situated in larger generational, regional, and national contexts. We will celebrate comix as a potentially queer space where openness, fluidity, and non-conformity represent textual strategies as well as characters’ identities. We will also study comix form and technique as well as learn to perform media-specific analysis through an introduction to intermedial theory. You will have the opportunity to write academic blogs and a longer critical work as well as create your own 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 adult language and themes. Topics discussed will include racism, homophobia, abortion, depression/mental health, bullying, sexual assault, and suicide. There are also many light, funny, and tender themes, but I don’t want anyone to be caught off guard with some of the more sobering topics. 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 multimodal academic blogs and a longer, research paper as well as engaging 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 multimodal 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 (vols. 1/2), 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, Sheena 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 570 Topics in Lit & Cultural Crit 5cr

    CRN: 44053 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm (NEW TIME) Instructor: Warburton, Theresa

    Indigenous Retellings  

    In this course, we will explore some of the ways that contemporary Native authors are reimagining canonical texts from the field of English literature in order to both illuminate their dependence on problematic tropes about Indigenous peoples, sovereignty, and land while also reorienting these narratives in ways that center Indigenous cosmology, epistemology, and storytelling practices. In doing so, we’ll focus especially on form and craft, looking to the methods that contemporary Native authors are using to shift conversations around the uses, power, and importance of literature for addressing how the structures of colonialism persist in a wide swath of the written word including legal documents, political treaties, poetry, novels, memoirs, and public history projects. Our course texts will include work by authors like: Rena Preist (Lummi), Heid E. Eridrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), Jordan Abel (Nisga’a), Debra Magpie Earling (Bitteroot Salish), Cherie Dimaline (Métis), Layli Long Solider (Oglala Lakota), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg), and Deborah Miranda (Ohlone / Costanoan-Esslen).  

    At the end of this course, students can expect to have a strong writing practice focused on clear and concise literary analysis; a working knowledge of the contemporary state of the field of Native and Indigenous Literatures; a familiarity with some of the core critical approaches of Native literary studies; the ability to analyze critical and creative texts in the field; and to communicate effectively in both written and verbal forms about this body of work. 

    This is a seminar course, so our work together will be largely focused on in-class discussion coupled with a rigorous reading practice outside of the classroom. Students can expect to read one book a week and to write short responses every week as well.  

    ENG 594 Practicum in Teaching 2 TO 5cr

    Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 501  

    CRN: 40090

    ENG 690 Thesis Writing 2 TO 10cr

    CRN: 40129