Spring 2025 Course Descriptions

Major Restrictions have Lifted!

Major restrictions have lifted for all* English courses! For more information on our major restriction schedule, visit the English Registration FAQ page.

*Major restrictions never lift from select teaching endorsement courses (ENG 441, 443, and ENG 444) and 500-level graduate courses.

Course Descriptions

100-Level English Courses

ENG 101 Writing Your Way Through WWU 5cr

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

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 Writ in Hum: Political Resistance 5cr

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

CRN: 21713 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Holland, Cindy

Political Resistance

The Gaza Protests, Black Lives Matter, and the Women’s March in 2017 are recent examples of political resistance in the United States, but the list is looooong; indeed, emerging as the nation did out of revolutionary fervor, political resistance seems woven into the country’s social fabric. At the same time, and perhaps for the first time in the nation’s history, we are facing an actual turn away from democratic governance toward fascism, where political protest can become actively quelled by those in power. Already, people are feeling disempowered and scared, unsure how to respond. But Americans have long celebrated our rebellious nature and fighting spirit. Does the nation’s long history of political resistance offer tools for meeting the present moment?

This Comm C GUR course offers you the opportunity to think through political resistance while practicing the kinds of inquiry and writing we do in the humanities. With American Resistance as our topic, we’ll be digging into a wide variety of “texts,” to include video, audio, and primary documents, many from actual protests. At the same time, we'll also engage with the critical thought that often underpins resistance movements. Such texts will include op-ed articles, guerilla publishing, music/lyrics, and other forms of public intellectual thought by authors such Ida B. Wells, Angela Davis, and James Baldwin. My hope is that you will leave this class not only more aware of the role of writing in the humanities, but also more knowledgeable about the role political resistance plays in shaping American culture.

ASSIGNMENTS: Students will write about 20 pages of analytic writing across three writing/presentation projects, one being a thorough response to the reading of a full-length book on political resistance. A regular journaling practice will also be required.

ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101.

CRN: 20109 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Redwoman, Zoe

Why do Indigenous Literatures matter? That is the question asked by Cherokee scholar and writer, Daniel Heath Justice in his book of the same name. In English 202, we will work to answer that question (and a few more) by carefully reading contemporary Indigenous Literature and responding, in writing and discussion, to all the work that Indigenous Literature is doing. We will learn to read and work closely with our course texts and produce writing that engages with the larger discourses of literature, storytelling, and representation.

CRN: 20203 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

This section of English 202 involves critical inquiry into the literary effect of “speculative fiction”: fantasy, science-fiction, horror, alternate history. Such fiction has become arguably the dominant mode of contemporary narrative, so there is rich opportunity to explore how these kinds of stories influence our experience, our history, and our culture. The specific forms we will study will of course include the written word, but because so much of our contemporary culture is expressed and reflected in the visual realm, we will be making constant connection to TV, film, comics, and game narratives as we develop our inquiries.

All of our study will assume that whatever form it takes, fictional narrative has the power to construct and inform our worldly experience. To sometimes great extent, we model our identities on literary stories, and build our perspectives from them. By making connection to our experiences and histories, stories illuminate the world, permitting us to see more texture and variety and possibility in our lives. Through intensive reading, discussion, activity, and writing we will further develop our ability to make meaning from the texts we study, focusing our analyses through formal critical practices as well as rigorous play and experimentation. You will emerge from the course a stronger analytic writer and reader with greater appreciation of the power of literature to bring you to deeper self-knowledge and increased awareness of a wider, richer, more complex world.

TEXTS: The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole; Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia; White as Snow, Tanith Lee; A Psalm for the Wild Built/A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers

ASSIGNMENTS: In addition to reading assignments and participation in class activities, requirements will comprise one formal analytical paper, several informal writing assignments, and a final project.

CRN: 20563 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

The main objective of this class is to improve your reading and critical thinking skills by focusing on how language, style, and form contribute to a text’s social or political claims. Throughout the class, you will develop multiple skills that are important for the study of both literature and other audiovisual forms of (mass) communication alike. These include:

Forming compelling arguments and using a variety of argumentative strategies
Gathering, citing, and properly documenting sources that support your claims
Writing a well-organized and persuasive research paper
Practicing important peer review skills and providing constructive feedback

In this section of ENG 202, we will focus on various cases of self-adaptation; authors adapting their own literary works into audiovisual media. We will read and analyze a diverse set of novels from the US, South Africa, and Japan. We will compare each novel with its film adaptation, unpacking medium-specific elements in each version and discussing the creative changes the authors make while transporting their own work to another art form. Identifying such “deviations” or “discrepancies” between the texts will be the first step towards making sense of the evolving social and political contexts that inform the adaptation process.

TEXTS

“The 25th Hour” by David Benioff, film adaptation directed by Spike Lee
“The Face of Another” by Kobo Abe, film adaptation directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
“Waiting for the Barbarians” by J. M. Coetzee, film adaptation directed by Ciro Guerra

Additional readings will be available online on Canvas.

CRN: 20569 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

In this course, we will analyze and interpret various literary genres, including poetry, plays, films, as well as literary fiction and nonfiction, with the goal of preparing students for advanced work in literary study, especially writing college-level essays in literary criticism. Student papers may sometimes be workshopped during class. Students will be required to regularly attend class, perform all reading and film assignments, turn in all formal and informal assignments, give oral reports, and work in small groups. Laptops or cellphones usage are not permit during class without a DAC accommodation. Attendance will be taken for all class sessions. Participation-attendance will comprise between 30% of your grade.

CRN: 20570 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Bell, Michael

TEXTS: The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole; Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia; White as Snow, Tanith Lee; A Psalm for the Wild Built/A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers

CRN: 20920 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am 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: 21497 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Redwoman, Zoe

ENG 216 American Lit: Haunted America 5cr

CRN: 22855 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Prichard, Tony

“America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil…The evil is there waiting.”—William S. Burroughs Using William S.

Burroughs’s quote as a point of departure we will examine the relationship between American Literature and the supernatural. We will look at how American Literature is haunted.

Required Texts

Joshi, S. T. ed. American Supernatural Tales
Lanagan, John. The Fisherman

ENG 227 Queer Literature 5cr

After emailing students registered for the course, this course was cancelled on March 3 due to unexpected schedule changes. The English Department plans to offer ENG 227 again in 2025-2026.

ENG 239 Latina/o Literatures 5cr

CRN: 22857 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Roach Orduña, Caitlin

Analysis, interpretation and discussion of a range of texts in English and in translation by Latina/o authors.

300-Level English Courses

ENG 301 Wrtg Stds:Comics&GraphicTexts 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior status; or instructor permission. Major restrictions will be lifted on February 27 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 20071 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Lucchesi, Andrew

Comics and Graphic Texts and Public Rhetoric

This course focuses on the rhetoric of comics for nonfiction, public engagement. We will begin by studying the comics medium, then go on to study comics as rhetorical texts, including the ways they circulate in fan cultures and communicate messages on public topics (such as comics used for public health campaigns). We will see how comics respond to community needs and engage with vital public debates.

We will read a range of comics journalism and life writing addressing issues of disability, colonialism, combat, and community identity. Class projects will include small drawing exercises, rhetorical analyses of comics from the Wanewood Collections at Library Archives and Special Collections, and creating a zine (handmade mini magazine) about an public issue of your choosing. You’ll experiment with both traditional (pen and paper) and digital tools (Comic Life 3) to explore the rhetorical power of visual storytelling—no artistic ability required.

Required texts
Grounding Theory and Criticism

Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” (new $24)
Lynda Barry’s “Making Comics” (new $20)
Graphic Medicine Manifesto by Czerwiec et al (free eBook)
Graphic Public Health: A Comics Anthology and Road Map (free eBook)

Primary Texts

Palestine by Joe Saco (new $25)
Sensory: Life on the Spectrum by Bex Ollerton ($17)
Bitch Planet, issue 4 ($2 for digital)
Detained by Eoryn Franklin (free)
Selections from the Wanewood Collections at Library Archives and Special Collections (free)

Additional Expenses

One pack of 4x6 inch index cards and several PaperMate brand black flare pens ($5-$10)
To engage with current comics, you will subscribe to three ongoing comics series of your choice throughout the length of the course which will equal about nine issues purchased total (around $45)

ENG 302 Technical Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior standing. Major restrictions will be lifted on February 27 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 20119 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Brown, Nicole

This interdisciplinary course puts knowledge into action by communicating technical and disciplinary knowledge in accessible ways to a range of different audiences. The course engages with an exciting rhetorical praxis that includes: care and ethics, research and invention, translation and writing, design and testing, and revising and publishing. In particular, this particular section of 302 looks closely at the influence of globalization and localization on information and information technologies. In addition to practicing the art of rhetorical analysis, we will shape professional writing strategies and values towards accessible design. We reflect upon how we view authorship and our disciplinary responsibility towards the social construction of knowledge.

A primary goal for the course is to construct a portfolio of rhetorically savvy and accessibly designed documents for use with public audiences [most likely] outside the class: resumes, cover letters, memos, interpretive materials, instructional documents, usability testing reports, proposals, and other verbo-visual representations of information. Similar to most professional and technical writing contexts, these projects require you to work individually (as well as collaboratively) to conduct out of class observations and research and to practice/learn new knowledge concepts and computer applications. Throughout the quarter, you will participate in the ongoing process of writing and accessible design that includes: planning, researching, drafting, collaborating, testing, revising, and publishing.

CRN: 20273 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

English 302, the English department’s introductory 300-level course in technical writing, is a 5-credit workshop that requires 15 hours of work per week. It strongly emphasizes the writer-reader relationship in various academic and non-academic writing scenarios. As a writing intensive course, it equips students with practical skills such as identifying an audience, developing objectives for their written documents, organizing the content of their documents, and revising documents for readability. Students will master the art of writing memos, resumes, letters, proposals, white papers, infographics, and visual presentations. They will also learn to work in small groups and collaborate on writing. The culmination of this course is a digital professional portfolio that showcases the writer’s technical writing skills, providing tangible evidence of their newly acquired abilities in technical writing, critical thinking, and collaboration.

CRN: 20324 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

CRN: 20373 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Guadrón, Melissa

Solving Problems with Technical and Professional Communication

In this section of English 302, we will gain an understanding of technical writing as written, visual, and aural communication designed to solve problems. Along the way, we will examine how technical writing has the power to shape community knowledge and action—for better or worse—through its design, style, and content. Additionally, we will take a hands-on approach to technical writing by immersing ourselves in the process of Human-Centered Design to identify and solve user experience issues with everyday tasks and technologies.

Because, for many, this is an introductory course to technical and professional communication, my goal is for students to understand how to read and translate technical writing for themselves and others; how to write and design clear, concise, and accessible user-centered content; how to engage with the rhetorical and ethical implications of the ways we use language to prompt specific actions and thoughts; and how to identify, diagnose, and propose creative solutions to technical problems.

CRN: 20441 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.

ENG 307 Seminar: Medieval 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Restricted to Literature Emphasis and Teaching Endorsement Majors. Opens to Film Emphasis and Creative Writing Emphasis Majors on Monday Mar 3 by 10:00am. All major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 21943 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 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.

It’s an exciting time for medieval studies! More and more, the focus is shifting beyond the borders of Europe and across the globe, presenting an expanding and dynamic view of the world. In this version of 307, we’ll explore the roots of samurai culture in Japan, bask in the delights of Islamic poets, consider the newly rediscovered works from West Africa, bash some monsters with Beowulf, and laugh at human foibles with Chaucer. Adventure awaits!

ENG 308 Seminar: Early Modern 5cr

CRN: 21715 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny

The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 308 or ENG 318, do not take ENG 308.

TRANSLATING AMERICAS / AMERICAS TRANSLATED

Although their work is often rendered invisible, translators and interpreters play a vital role in shaping the histories and literatures of the American hemisphere. This class considers translation and interpretation as written, spoken, and embodied practices that enable survival, unsettlement, diplomatic relationships, revolt, rebellion, textual transfer, narrative control, and collaborative meaning-making. We’ll read excerpts from the earliest sections of The Broadview Anthology of American Literature, and we’ll also heavily supplement these pages with additional resources from many fields (material and visual culture studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, anthropology, translation studies, and more).

This in-person class is designed as a Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE). For the first six weeks, we will closely read sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts that feature translators and interpreters, and we will build a working understanding of key concepts in translation studies and early American studies. During the second half of class, students will gain experience producing original research in the fields of translation studies and book history by working together to create a translation project. This class incorporates collaborative in-class activities and small group work, and attendance is required.

ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

CRN: 21089 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm 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.

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

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

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

CRN: 21090 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

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

(Post-)(Post-)Modernism

Have you noticed that the present is, well… weird? Why do we live in such weird times? That’s what we aim to discover in this class – examining the weird, uncanny age we live in, and how we got here.

We’ve got three terms here – modernism, postmodernism, and post-postmodernism – and, to grossly oversimplify, they correspond to eras of relatively contemporary history, art movements, and more. Between these three, we’ve got the three major paradigms of Western thought in the 20th and 21st centuries (that is, the dominant “systems of logic” that determine how, why and what we do as a society). But there’s more (there’s always more). It’s not just modernism we’re talking about, but modernity and modernization. Same with postmodernism, which also splits off into complementary terms; same with post-postmodernism. It all gets very complicated, and yet, we need to understand it all because these are the preeminent systems of logic, production, symbolic exchange and meaning-making dictating our recent past, our “eternal present” and any eventual future we may have. Thinking about the evolution, and overlap, of dominant ways of thinking (the “common sense” of an age), technological advancement, and ever-expanding capitalism in the context of three somewhat distinct phases (in which, to put it at simply as possible, things get increasingly weird) allows us to make sense of it all (and maybe even do something about it – such as dialing back the weirdness a little!). In the words of the renowned postmodern scholar, Fredric Jameson, “Always historicize!” That is to say, figure stuff out by placing it in its proper, and properly detailed, historical context. Only then can we proceed.

We need a lens through which to do that, and literature makes a fine one. Literature and art are always reflections of the time in which they’re made, so this class aims to use literature as a gateway to understanding our often-contentious three terms up there. What is modernism? Let’s figure it out through reading Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. What’s postmodernism? Let’s ask Philip K. Dick and Jorge Luis Borges (OK, we’re getting weird now). What is post-postmodernism? Let’s watch Barbie and A Minecraft Movie (yes, seriously – I did say this would get weird, didn’t I?). Along the way, we’ll have the usual essays, group projects and discussions, culminating in a final project wherein you choose a text from one of these eras and consider how it descends from, predicts, or serves as a transition between these three eras.

ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20072 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

Literary analysis as a field absolutely exploded in the 20th century, with dozens and dozens of critical frameworks (and their respective adherents) building on each other, talking back to each other, competing with each other, and even occasionally getting along with each other! If you’re an English major, you’re probably familiar with terms like formalism, feminist criticism, etc., and even if you’re not, you’ve probably come across these ideas simply because of how much they’ve come to pervade Western thought. In this class, we… won’t be looking at any of those, but rather at the roots of literary analysis itself – the critical foundations that allowed for this explosion to occur in the first place in which this widespread ‘analysis of thought and culture’ became part of our everyday life.

We’ll begin at the critical juncture of the mid-to-late 1800s when Karl Marx’s ideas of class, politics, economy – and yes, even culture and literature – cultivate a slow-moving paradigm shift in Western thought that continues to reverberate even through today. After this initial unit on Marxism, we will start traveling backwards, all the way to the ancient Greeks, making several pitstops along the way, as we trace how we got to such a point in culture and literature that an explosion of analysis became a necessity. What led to this explosion, and how was it influenced by what came before? What DID come before, anyway?

In order to facilitate this, we’ll be looking at a number of texts from different media – prose, comics, and more – as we trace these foundational analytical lenses and their ongoing influence. If you’re an English major, learning this stuff is absolutely crucial, and if you’re just interested in the history of Western thought, you’re going to find an awful lot to love about this class.

CRN: 22469 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Troy, Eddy

This course surveys foundational authors in critical theory from pre-Socratic writers to the 19th century. The course will encourage students to reflect on essential questions about the relation of art to language, aesthetics, politics, representation, hermeneutics, race, gender, and sexuality. In the course readings, which are drawn from a variety of disciplines and historical contexts, students will encounter critical assessments of the role of language, art, and cultural production more broadly. In what ways do cultural artifacts like films and novels mediate our realities? How does culture function to control, repress, or perhaps, liberate? Do art and language merely describe a pre-existing world, or do they, in a sense, create the world? Above all, we will put our texts to work to critically examine the everyday, common-sense assumptions that inevitably shape our cultural and political horizons. Approaching our difficult course readings with enthusiasm and determination will prepare students for advanced classes in literature, film, and cultural studies.

ENG 314 Critical Theories & Prac II 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 21946 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

Required Texts

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (3rd edition), Leitch, Cain, Finke, et al.
Excerpts from A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader (2nd edition), Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan (Canvas PDFs)

Want to think about how we construct identities? Why gender, sexuality, and race matter? Why texts are political? How capitalism, immigration, and climate change are related? How power is embedded within our institutions and practices? And how to create meaningful change within our communities and the broader world? This class will utilize critical and cultural theories to help us think about literary texts and methodologies--as well as engage the pressing issues of our day. We will do so through so a wide range of readings and examples from contemporary culture.

The course will begin by providing an overview of structuralist and post-structuralist literary and critical theories, from Ferdinand de Saussure’s insights about language as a sign system to N. Katherine Hayles’ analysis of cognitive assemblages and Bruno Latour’s work on politics and climate change. We will engage a full range of readings and media selections from post-Marxism; new materialism/object-oriented ontology; eco-criticism/Anthropocene; feminism, gender and sexuality studies; disability studies; critical race theory; post-colonialism; and Indigenous knowledge systems. Course questions and themes will investigate the embodied perspectives we assume in the material world and how these perspectives shape our reading and writing practices as well as our behavior, generally. The digital context in which we find ourselves necessitates our thinking about our relationship to “things” and “machines” as well as peoples and cultures. And the current climate crisis requires us to think about the relationship of all systems and networks, including those involving non-human animals, geological processes, and inanimate objects. By the time you’ve completed this course, you will be able to identify the ideological perspectives and inherent biases embedded within texts, whether written, spoken (aural), or visual; and you will understand how to use critical thinking to inform your agency and advocacy in the larger, civic world.

Assignments

Course work will include the assigned readings, class discussions and small group problem-solving, and critical/multimodal blog writing.

Evaluation

Course evaluation will be determined by writing 3 critical/multimodal blogs (5-7 pages), working with small group assignments, and engaging in workshops and peer response assignments.

ENG 317 Survey: Medieval 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 22013 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am 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 318 Survey: Early Modern 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 21948 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny

The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 318 if you have taken ENG 308 or ENG 318.

EARLY MODERN MASKING

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a disciplinary discourse on dissimulation emerged to teach princes, courtiers, and eventually society at large how to disguise their most intimate thoughts and emotions in the interest of political gain. Under absolutist regimes, both texts and bodies were subject to evaluation against a double register that distinguished appearance from inner reality. But dissimulation was just as much about using one’s own body to disguise the truth as it was about claiming the ability to exercise judgment and power over the bodies of stigmatized others. Thus texts that purport to teach and depict dissimulation also construct systems of social differentiation based on class, race, gender, and ability.

In this survey class, we will read texts about dissimulation with the goal of uncovering the social operations the texts themselves often work to disguise. Our reading list includes some well-known authors from the time period (Baldassare Castiglione, Niccolo Machiavelli, William Shakespeare) and many more that may be less familiar (Tullia d’Aragona, al-Hasan Muhammad al-Wazzan, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Bernardino de Sahagún, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz). You’ll write two reader reports, learning and participation commentaries, and collaborative midterm and final exams. This class incorporates collaborative in-class activities and small group work, and attendance is required.

ENG 319 Survey: The Long 18th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 21091 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Loar, Christopher

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

Style:

An instrument made of metal, bone, etc., having one end sharp-pointed for incising letters on a wax tablet.
The manner of expression characteristic of a particular writer (hence of an orator), or of a literary group or period.
features of literary composition which belong to form and expression rather than to the substance of the thought or matter expressed.
A mode of deportment or behavior.
A stylus, used as a weapon of offense, for stabbing.

(Adapted from the Oxford English Dictionary)

"Style" is a highly unstable term: originally a simple name for a writing instrument, the term now refers to a variety of loosely connected and rather abstract concepts. Style is, most often, a manner of presentation: an empty category that can describe the way a sentence is written—the way a ballet is danced——the way a wardrobe is selected. It can also, in the right hands, be a weapon in high-stakes rhetorical battles.

These battles were everywhere in the eighteenth century. Literary style played a key role in Britain's construction of a canon of English literature as well as in its production of new genres and forms. Interpersonal styles, too, played a key role in establishing and contesting the role to be played by women and the middle classes in an increasingly complex society. In this class we will consider some of the ways that style (in literature, clothing, and cultural taste) in the eighteenth century helped to define new kinds of personalities, identities, and experiences through the public presentation of selves in language, body, and art. We will examine popular fashions and the arts, but we will focus particularly on the style of the written word and the importance that choosing a writing style had for the literate in this period.

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

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 20332 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Yeasting, Jeanne

This English literature course will focus on a selection of coming-of-age texts by 19th-21st century women authors. We’ll investigate some of the complex issues underlying their writing, such as growing up under colonialism, romantic idealization, gender ideals, and class inequality. We’ll consider some of the ways their texts challenge, resist, talk back to and/or support cultures. And we’ll examine some of the ways women writers are inspired by, revise, and respond to other writers. This is not a lecture-based course: class will be a mixture of discussion of assigned readings and short presentations.

ASSIGNMENTS: Heavy reading! Other requirements include quizzes, collaborative group presentation projects, close reading/literary analysis, literary research, and weekly reading engagement responses.

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

TEXTS: Students are expected to buy the paperback editions listed below. Assignments will be based on page numbers in these editions.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey. Norton Critical edition, edited by Susan Fraiman. W.W. Norton & Company. 2004 edition, ISBN: ‎ 978-0393978506
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt, or Carol. Authorized W. W. Norton (reprint edition 2004), paperback: ISBN 978-0393325997
Warsan Shire, Our Men Do Not Belong to Us. Slapering Hol Press. Abridged e-version 2014 (on Canvas)
Tanya Taraq, Split Tooth. 2019. Penguin Canada. 2019. Paperback ISBN 978-0143198055
Selected texts on Canvas; must be brought to class for discussion

CONTENT: This English literature course will focus on a selection of coming-of-age texts by 19th-21st century women authors. We’ll investigate some of the complex issues underlying their writing. And we’ll examine some of the ways women writers are inspired by, revise, and respond to other writers. This is not a lecture-based course: class will be a mixture of discussion of assigned readings and short presentations.

ENG 342 Studies in Literary Genres: Graphic Novels by Asian American Authors 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 21716 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

Together we will examine and discuss graphic novels by Asian American authors and artists, including works by Jen Wang, Trung Le Nguyen, Jillian Tamaki, April Malig, John Pham and others.

As a mode of better understanding comics form, technique and theory, you will develop your own comics. Your comics will also be an environment for processing the themes, questions, concerns that arise in our discussions, as well as a mode of cultural critique. Any comics creation will be open to beginners (includes your teacher), and will celebrate experimentation and playfulness.

While course costs will be as low as possible, this course will require you to purchase 3-4 books, and you will need access to an electronic device (e.g. laptop or smart phone) for shared materials on CANVAS. A full reading list will be shared prior to the start of classes.

ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or instructor permission. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20313 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Golden, Sean

Studies in Young Adult Literature will be about journeys. The lives of young adults are often framed as journeys. They go through incredible pivotal moments at such young ages because childhood is a fleeting temporality that happens so quickly! Each week (or two) we will spend time examining how specific moments of a young person’s life are constructed through literature and media. We will look at each work in its cultural context, discussing how such issues as race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, science, technology, and popular culture influence the production of the text. These texts frequently address issues that are controversial. In taking this course, you do not have to adopt any particular way of thinking. However, you do need to listen and respond to others’ ideas with sensitivity and respect.

ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20120 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am 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.

CRN: 20378 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

As a community of writers, we will strengthen our competencies through reading, writing, discussing and reflecting. We will have conversations about the fundamental elements of fiction (pov, characterization, worldbuilding, predicament, dialogue) and poetry (dramatic situation, speaker, metaphor, imagery, forms) as we examine a diverse body of published works and the early drafts (stories and poems) 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.

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 or computer) that will allow you to access podcasts

CRN: 21202 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

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

CRN: 21949 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Roach Orduña, Caitlin

CRN: 21950 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Winrock, Cori

‘The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope.’
—Leonora Carrington

This Introduction to Creative Writing course will be an observatory in which we attempt to understand what it means to be readers and writers in this strange moment in time. You will learn to peer through the microscope to look at the nitty gritty of how pieces in different genres are crafted. And peer through the telescope to look out at the wider skies of yourselves and the world around you in relation to writing. Have we changed as readers and writers during the last four plus pandemic years? Can we imagine a different way of reading and writing the current world? Across the span of the quarter, you will study specimens of craft while witnessing and conversing with your classmates about your findings. You will consider what it means to read actively as writers, with intention toward discovery and curiosity and bewilderment—to admire the paintbrush hairs left in the painting, the traces of process. You will learn to read as thieves—to borrow and try out and try on different styles and elements. And lastly, to read with an eye toward the playful and what might be enjoyable precisely because it doesn’t make “sense.” You will, of course, also write and write and write—cataloging all this beauty and difficulty and constraint through notebooks, poems, essays, stories, and hybrid forms.

CRN: 23512 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Roach Orduña, José

We’ve All Got Stories to Tell

In this course we will explore what it means to make art with language. To do this, we will read and discuss a wide range of poetry and prose. We will discuss the impetus behind writing creatively, look at its mechanics, and move through a sequence of creative writing exercises that will culminate in the creation of a portfolio of work. Evaluation in this course will be based on participation in discussion, a presentation of a published creative work, and the completion of our creative writing exercises.

Required Text: The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing 2nd Edition

ENG 351 Intro to Fiction Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20254 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

This course is designed to introduce you to the craft and culture of writing fiction as well as the complex world of critique and workshop. We will read the work of established authors, studying the ways they make their writing successful through unique use of voice, description, language, dialogue, setting, 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: 20379 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Magee, Kelly

English 351 is a ten-week immersive experience in writing fiction. It’s a course in the art of storytelling with a focus on short stories and novel excerpts. As an introductory course, we’ll cover things like creating memorable characters, crafting vivid scenes, maximizing tension, channeling authentic voices, working with form, and searching for insight. More importantly, we’ll investigate how to tell the kind of story a total stranger would want to spend an hour or so of their life reading—the kind of story people will believe, no matter how far-fetched the premise.

From you, the course requires intensive reading and writing. You’ll compose writing exercises designed to practice particular narrative skills, revise these into full-length pieces, and practice the art of peer revision by reading each other’s work. You’ll also consider what audience(s) you’re hoping to reach through your words and worlds, and how to reach them. You’ll finish the quarter with lots of beginnings, middles, and endings, though not necessarily in that order.

The bulk of each class—and your grade—will be driven by:

large- and small-group discussions of reading
short craft lectures and discussion
in-class prompted writing and creative exercises
group workshops of student writing

CRN: 22859 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Trueblood, Kathryn

Texts:

The Seagull Reader: Stories, edited by Joseph Kelly
Bird by Bird by Annie LaMott

Description:
This class will be about creation and craft, about opening the floodgates of the subconscious as well as learning the tough task of self-editing. We will pay close attention to the toolbox at the writer's disposal, identifying narrative strategies, levels of diction, conventional and unconventional short story form. The course will include many exercises in automatic writing in order to illustrate cliché-breaking and block-dissolving methods. These in-class exercises will also serve as a reminder that a workshop at its best provides a safe forum in which all are entitled to experiment and receive thoughtful responses to their work. This course will introduce students to the terms and protocol of good workshop critique.

ENG 353 Introduction to Poetry Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20073 DAY/TIME: MWF 2:30-3:50 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

Introduction to the techniques of poetry writing, including craft, practice and modeling.

CRN: 21498 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought,” Audre Lorde teaches us; “it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change.”

In this class we immerse ourselves in reading and writing poems and in the practice of keeping an observational journal. Exploring different measures of that “skeleton architecture,” we focus on honing our ability to notice, and we study and listen to poems from a diverse range of writers—including our peers—paying attention to how words and the poem-shapes they inhabit can matter and compel change. We explore contexts for writing (how to practice, how to revise, how to understand craft, how to participate in or push against tradition and form, how to find community) as we generate material and shape it into poems.

This section of 353 primarily makes use of The Poetry Foundation and other sites for assigned reading materials.

ENG 354 Intro to Creative Nonfict Writ 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20271 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Roach Orduña, José

“True Stories, Well Told”

True stories, well told. That’s how Lee Gutkind, essayist and “the Godfather” (as Vanity Fair put it in 1997) of the creative nonfiction movement, characterizes the genre. Aldous Huxley, perhaps our most famous literary ‘psychonaut’ thought about it as the movement between a three-poled frame of reference: the personal/autobiographical, the concrete/particular, and the abstract/universal. And as Brooklyn bard Jay-Z puts it, we’ve all got stories to tell. In this course we’ll be learning about creative nonfiction by reading and writing it. We’ll read about first loves, hippies in San Francisco, father’s funerals, a mass shooting, the humble pecan, a man who lives on an abandoned film set, and the mathematics of subjugation. We’ll read personal essay, immersion journalism, polemic, contemplative essay, and lyric essay. We’ll also learn through short lectures, a number of short writing assignments, and one major writing assignment that will be read by everyone in class and “workshopped.”

CRN: 20438 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

Students in this section of English 354 will explore a range of forms and themes in the literary genre of creative nonfiction. Through theorizing the ethics of "truth" telling, close reading and analysis of example texts, and immersion in the process of exploratory writing, drafting, revising, and polishing personal essays, participants will come to better understand and express their language, themselves, and their world.
Our required textbooks are the paperback editions of:

· Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola, Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, 3rd edition.

· The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction.

ENG 364 Introduction to Film Studies 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101.

CRN: 20380 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Rogers, Jamie Ann Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm

This course is an introduction to the rich world of the cinematic arts. We will begin with the presumption that film is both an art form and a commodity industry, and that in both cases, it functions to shape cultural and political worlds (whether deliberately or not). We will practice techniques of film analysis through the study of filmmaking strategies, including editing, sound, mise-en-scène, cinematography, color and lighting, etc. We will also consider the role of distribution, industry norms, and reception. We will place particular emphasis on considerations of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, ability, and national identity within film analysis and the film industry.

Course work will include a variety of formal and informal writing assignments, exams, and the option of a creative project.

The required textbook is The Film Experience: An Introduction by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2021.

CRN: 22860 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Youmans, Greg Film Viewing DAY/TIME: M 04:00-06:50 pm

The course introduces the foundations of film studies. We will explore core vocabulary, concepts, and skills that help us look and listen more closely to motion pictures. We will also develop practices of critical thinking, argumentation, and analysis through various writing exercises. Our course screenings will present films from around the world and from the historical beginnings of cinema to the present day. In the second half of the term, we will shift focus to a video-production project that will further enrich everyone’s understanding of how movies are made.

Textbook: David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Jeff Smith. Film Art: An Introduction, 13th edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2023. (You are welcome to use the 10th, 11th, or 12th edition instead to save money.)  

ENG 367 Equity Representation Film/Med 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission.

CRN: 23513 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Cosey, Felicia Film Viewing DAY/TIME: M 05:00-07:50 pm

Contemporary Representations of Black America

In this course, we will look at the ways Black Americans are depicted in film, television, music, and social media in the 21st century. Through works like A Thousand and One, Lovecraft Country, and Beyoncé’s Lemonade, we will study the ways Black creators tell their stories and challenge traditional narratives about Black identity.

We will tackle such questions as: How are Black artists using different media platforms to express the complexities of Black life? What happens when Black creators reclaim control of their narratives? How do factors like gender, sexuality, and class intersect with racial identity in contemporary Black storytelling? We will also examine how Black Americans use these various media forms to encourage social change and challenge systemic injustice.

Expect engaging discussions about everything from groundbreaking films to viral Black Twitter movements, along with readings that will deepen our understanding of representation in modern media.

Assignments: Course work will consist of Annotation Assignments, Quizzes, and Media Analysis

Readings will be available on Canvas

Content Warning: Please be aware that some media in this course may contain potentially disturbing content.

ENG 371 Rhetorical Practices 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 and junior status. Major restrictions will be lifted on February 27 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 23514 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Holland, Cindy

As much as we like to think we are "in control” of our thoughts, decisions, and actions, we are, in fact, constantly being persuaded by the world around us, by beings and places, and even by our own bodies. The dirt path offering a shortcut persuades us to alter course; institutions like WWU persuade us to identify as sophomores or seniors; our feelings persuade us that we’re in love or enraged. We veer onto the dirt path, accept new identities, and believe our feelings, largely without conscious thought. We are always engaged in some act of persuasion, big or small, because persuasion is baked into living in a world with others. Said differently, rhetorical practices underlie the myriad ways we move in the world; rhetoric informs the way we understand ourselves, our communities, and our shared values, shaping how and what we think, believe, and do. So, in this class, we’ll explore the complicated nature of persuasion and rhetorical practices from several different perspectives.

More specifically, we’ll spend our time together:

asking questions about ancient understandings of rhetoric (some of which may surprise you!)
using contemporary rhetorical practices connected to a) what often gets called Indigenous Wisdom or Methodology and b) to the Sociology of Science (which often seems to ignore Indigenous ways of knowing altogether)
wondering about the ways rhetoric became a bad word
and focusing on rhetoric’s role in imagination and advocacy.

Together we’ll explore the ‘weirdness’ and productive potential of rhetoric, and maybe even invent some powerful responses to that rather tired question about what a degree, or even a single class, in the Humanities is good for.

ENG 385 Systems Thinking 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: One course from: UEPP 116, SUST 116, ENG 203, ENG 302, or SALI 201; or instruction permission.

CRN: 21227 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Brown, Nicole

Seeing things from a systems thinking perspective not only helps us to better understand the complexities of our lives and, in particular, these times, as but it also provides an approach for interacting with systems in persuasive and responsive ways. A systems thinking approach shapes frameworks for approaching rapidly changing worlds as interconnected challenges and opportunities. Included in this understanding, is a focus on leverage points for systems change — the opportunities that exist where small targeted actions in the system can have profound effects (change) on the system's behavior or outcomes. Rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, is important to such systems change because it is through rhetorical praxis that the public’s perceptions and behaviors can be persuaded to adopt new ways of thinking, seeing, and acting.

This systems thinking course takes a human-centered approach towards understanding complex systems through research, story, and information sharing. By shifting the focus from the parts to the interconnected whole of our complex world, this course offers an introduction to the specialized language, habits-of mind, and methodology of systems thinking. In addition, we will do close reading and analysis of the language we receive and that we create to shape an understanding of the ways in which human and beyond-human materialities intra act and co create to form complex and unified wholes.

Systems thinking can be applied to every discipline and context. It engages with different cultural, ecological, technological, and disciplinary perspectives to find problems, reframe language and stories, and to discover leverage points for enacting systems change.

Course projects include weekly writing assignments that incorporate visual and verbal elements, including experimenting with new media and/or multi modal compositions. For the major project you will be a part of a team that applies a systems thinking approach to develop systems maps, stories, and critical analysis of an issue that you care about. We will use these models to articulate solutions through written and oral proposals. You should leave the course with excellent writing samples: mappings, systems and rhetorical analyses, research displays, and proposals, as well as a new vocabulary and methodology to facilitate systems-based analysis, communication, and change.

The course also invites guest visits from social change leaders in our community. This broad spectrum of disciplinary viewpoints will offer unique perspectives on systems thinking as a practice and field of study and work. Together we will identify the properties and engage in the process of writing/building a viable, desirable, resilient, and sustainable future.

400-Level English Courses

ENG 401 Wrtng/Rhet&AncientChristianity 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 301, ENG 302, ENG 313, ENG 314 or ENG 371, or instructor permission. Major restrictions will be lifted on February 27 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 22470 DAY/TIME: TR 8:00-9:50 am Instructor: Cushman, Jeremy

Writing, Rhetoric, & Ancient Christianity
This course might feel a little risky in that, together, we'll explore the practical and theoretical implications of writing and rhetoric entirely in terms of ancient Christianity. So it might feel risky because we'll work together to understand and approach writing and rhetoric as not only necessary for the development of what eventually becomes Christianity, but also the ways religious practices cannot be separated out from writing and rhetoric. To put it a bit bluntly, writing, rhetoric, and religious practices like Christianity are not the same thing, except for when they are. : )

In a tiny (tiny!) nutshell, here's how we'll approach each of the terms in the course title. We'll approach:

writing as the technology that makes it possible to separate out the presence of the speaker from their (intentional) message, allowing information, stories, and ideas to move and morph as they circulate;
rhetoric as the study and practice of the ways persuasion happens, which includes the actions of those who intend to persuade others, and also includes the ways persuasion happens without any human intention or purpose;
ancient Christianity as a loose set of ideas, stories, and arguments, along with the creation of active communities that all got started in the 50s and 60s (the first 50s and 60s!). We'll spend most our time with the letters and fragments written around this time, 50-60 CE, long before the movement was called Christianity. But we'll also look at documents from the 200s and 300s CE that often shaped (persuaded?) more contemporary interpretations of those original letters and fragments.

Importantly, please know this is not a history class. That means we won’t be foregrounding the complicated ways these ancient traditions of rhetoric and Christianity emerged (and continue to emerge). Still, we will sometimes and rather obviously have to work through the historical meaning-making capacity that grows out of what we in the West call "organized religion." In fact, this notion of organized religion is relatively new, and we’ll approach it as a kind of rhetorical methodology or meaning-making apparatus that does, indeed, have differing histories. But when we do approach organized religion, we'll try to treat it as already rhetorical.

But much more so, we’ll spend a lot of time together thinking through the ways writing, rhetoric and ancient Christianity overlap and structure our current relationships to all kinds of others, human and otherwise. What’s at stake here is the argument that writing/rhetoric and religion are overlapping modes of being in the world, especially when it comes to what we value as ethical, as ‘transcendent,’ as ritualistic, as relational, and (and!) as magical or enchanted.

The world, for so many ancient writers and rhetoricians, is rather obviously enchanted, rather obviously religious simply because, well, because change happens. All the time. And while we’ll spend plenty of time in the ancient past with these creative and insightful writers and thinkers, during our ten weeks together, I’ll also introduce you to contemporary rhetorical scholars, religious scholars, sound artists, poets, and visual artists who wonder about the implications of working so hard to separate writing and rhetoric from religious practices like Christianity.

My hope is that even though we only have ten weeks, such an undertaking helps us all build incredibly concrete questions for how and why approaching rhetoric as religious and religion as rhetorical can matter, quite literally, for the various worlds in which we all want to act.

ENG 406 Crit/Cult thry: Black Thought 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 313 or ENG 314; two courses from: ENG 307-347, ENG 364 or ENG 371. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 22471 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Cosey, Felicia

Black Thought and Contemporary Critical Theory

In this course we will investigate the works of contemporary Black intellectuals such as Isabel Wilkerson, Ibram X. Kendi, and Peniel E. Joseph. Students will examine how these writers challenge master narratives and offer new frameworks for understanding racial inequality, reparative justice, and Black life in America.

We will pay special attention to how these authors center Black perspectives and experiences in their analysis, from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ case for reparations to Joshua Bennett’s exploration of Black masculinity and survival. Through critical readings and discussions, students will learn how these authors combined historical analysis, personal narrative, and cultural criticism to create new ways of seeing and understanding America’s past and present.

We will address such questions as: How do contemporary Black intellectuals rewrite American history to reveal hidden patterns of systemic inequality? How do they present paths toward justice and liberation? How do their theories help us understand the current movement for racial justice in America?

Assignments: Course work will consist of Annotation Assignments, a mid-term exam, and final paper.

Readings will be available on Canvas

ENG 410 LitHist: Perspectives on Cinema 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 Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20666 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Troy, Eddy

Reel Words: Literary Perspectives on Cinema, 1895-1945

This course will examine the complex interactions between literature and cinema from the first public film screening in 1895 to the Second World War. How did cinema change the way writers imagined their work? In what senses, if any, did literature become cinematic? How do modernist experiments with temporality relate to classical film theory?

We will explore theoretical approaches to media convergences in this period (1895-1945), which is replete with rich examples: Virginia Woolf reflects on the emergence of “the youngest art” in her essay, “The Cinema” (1926); in 1909, James Joyce establishes the Cinematograph Volta at 45 Mary Street in Dublin—Ireland’s first cinema; William Faulkner writes screenplays for Hollywood, including the 1944 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not; in 1930, the muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair collaborates with Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein to create ¡Que viva México!, a film that was to remain unfinished; novelist and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux responds to the white supremacy of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) with his Within Our Gates (1920), etc.

In addition, we will test the perspectives offered by secondary literature on these and other cases, with special attention to texts such as the “Time Passes” chapter in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, excerpts from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and the “Proteus” episode from Joyce’s Ulysses, among others. We will occasionally analyze clips or shorts from relevant directors, but our focus throughout will remain on literary texts and related scholarly interpretations.

ENG 415 Special Topics in National Lit 5cr

CRN: 23515 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Warburton, Theresa

Indigenous Lits of the PNW

Focused exclusively on Indigenous authors and artists from the Pacific Northwest, this course encourages students to become more familiar with the region through the work of those who have been in relation to this place since time immemorial. We will read a variety of texts by authors from diverse tribal nations in territories claimed by both the US and Canada. In doing so, we will seek to come to a better understanding of the literary production of the region while connecting those texts to conversations around the historical, political, social, and cultural issues that are and have been central to the area.

At the end of this course, students can expect to: have familiarity with Indigenous literatures of the region both historically and contemporarily; have read texts by Indigenous authors from a range of tribal nations in the area; be comfortable discussing a variety of approaches to the study of literary texts derived from the field of Native and Indigenous Studies; be able to analyze such literary texts; be able to speak to the historical, political, social, and cultural dimensions of the assigned core texts. Students will be evaluated on both their written work and active participation in class.

ENG 418 Sr Sem: Disposal Discourse 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. Restricted to literature seniors until Monday Mar 3 by 10:00am, then opens to literature juniors. Opens to all English majors and non-majors on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20334 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

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

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

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

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

“But it’s garbage!” --Rey

“I love trash” --Oscar the Grouch

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

Required Texts

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

ENG 418 Sr Sem: Indie Comix & Theory 5cr

CRN: 20333 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

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

This senior seminar will introduce you to the radical creativity of the Indie comix scene that largely originated in Seattle. Focusing on handmade comics and contemporary Indie presses, we will explore the intersectional themes of identity, community, and agency. Through our diverse range of texts, we will try to articulate and understand the strange, the beautiful, the complex, and the interesting . . . in these graphic narratives. The selected texts feature marginalized and under-represented characters and themes, including topics such as love and friendship (relationship building), depression, sexuality, resiliency, 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. The themes in these writers’ 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 also study comix form and technique as well as intermedial theory. You will have the opportunity to produce critical/multimodal blogs, create your own small comix, and engage in research and scholarship through designing a larger project. No artistic experience or illustrating talent is required for the Studio Comix assignments. Students receive full credit for completing the workshops. I also invite you to share your favorite comix or web comix on the Canvas Graffiti Board throughout the quarter.

*Please note: this class content contains adult language and themes.

Assignments and Evaluation

You will have the opportunity to read fabulous graphic novels and learn about intermedial theory in this course. Reading comics also requires a knowledge of the artform and an introduction to technical aspects of graphic art, which is super fun and interesting. In terms of assignments, you will have the opportunity to write two critical/multimodal blogs (4-6 pages) as well as a longer research project (10-12 pages). We will also engage in comic-making with Studio Comix workshops that come with full credit for completing the assignment. No artistic experience or illustrating talent is required for this class!

Required Texts

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud (PDF available)
Comix Theory and Criticism (Selected PDFs available)
Comix Samples, Eroyn Franklin
Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Hot Comb, Ebony Flowers
Megahex, Simon Hanselmann
My Favorite Thing is Monsters (vol. 1), Emil Ferris
Sabrina, Nick Drnaso
The Pervert, Michelle Perez & Remy Boydell

ENG 423 Maj Auth: James Joyce 5cr

CRN: 20206 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

James Joyce

In this course, we will read James Joyce’s Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and excerpts from Finnegan’s Wake. Our primary focus will be Joyce’s literary texts, but we will read Homer’s Odyssey and Shakespeare’s Hamlet as secondary texts. On occasion, you will work in small groups and give both individual and group oral reports. There will be significant in-class handwriting, a formal paper you will write in consultation with the professor, and a final, in-class essay exam that will also be handwritten. Regular attendance is required. Laptop, cell phones, or other electronic devices are not permitted in the classroom without a DAC accommodation.

Texts

Patrick Hastings, The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses (ISBN 10: 1-4214-43490X; ISBN 13: 978010421404349-2)
Robert Fagels (translator), Homer, The Odyssey (0-14-026886-3)
James Joyce, Dubliners (0-14-024774-2)
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (0-14-015503-1)
James Joyce, Ulysses: The Corrected Text (ISBN 0-394-74312-1)

ENG 423 Maj Auth: Jeff VanderMeer 5cr

CRN: 20397 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

We will look at Jeff VanderMeer’s work as an author, editor, and instructor and how he has contributed to not only movements of speculative fiction but to conversations around ecological thought. VanderMeer not only challenges concepts of nature writing as well as the anthropocentric grounding of the novel as a form. In his Area X trilogy he works with a local place, the St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge in Florida, and makes it weird. His connection to St. Mark’s and the area around it continues in his donating of a portion of all of his book sales to support the Refuge as well as his continued efforts to “re-wild” his home, which he documents on social media as well as in articles if various publications.

Required Texts:

Ambergris Trilogy (Cites of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch)
Area X Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance)
Borne
Strange Bird
Dead Astronauts

ENG 424 Major Film/Genres: Jia Zhang-K 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission.

Since his breakthrough in 1997 with his debut feature film Pickpocket, Jia Zhang-Ke has established himself as the leading cinematic chronicler of social and political transformations in contemporary China. His work has been widely celebrated on the international film festival circuit, with 2006’s Still Life winning the prestigious Golden Lion award in the Venice Film Festival and 2013’s A Touch of Sin earning him the prize for best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. His films have been favorably compared to famous classics of neorealism, studied within the context of the “Sixth Generation” in Chinese cinema, and praised for their skillful combination of genre elements (crime, romance), social critique, and documentary aesthetics.

In this course, we will study Jia’s complete body of work through the lens of auteur theory. We will identify the central themes in all Jia films (rapid urbanization, capitalism and/or globalization in modern China etc.), analyze his work in a variety of formats (documentaries, narrative features, short films), and explore the cinematic techniques that he frequently uses as a part of his signature style (episodic narratives, hybrid structures combining documentary and fiction). We will watch and discuss all the feature films directed by Jia, survey many scholarly accounts written about his cinema, and read Jia’s own comments about his films.

Throughout the course units, we will investigate the artistic traditions that inform Jia’s films (from neorealism to wuxia), identify the notable artists with whom he has collaborated repeatedly (such as actress Zhao Tao and cinematographer Yu Lik-Wai), and discuss his influence on contemporary Chinese cinema as a prolific producer and actor. The requirements for this course include two short film analysis papers and a substantial final essay that comparatively examines two or more works by Jia Zhang-Ke.

TEXTS

Most of the required texts are available as free e-books through WWU Libraries. The only book that students need to acquire is the one written by Cecilia Mello.

“Jia Zhangke on Jia Zhangke (Interviews)” edited by Michael Berry, Duke University Press, 2022.
“Moving Figures: Class and Feeling in the Films of Jia Zhangke” by Corey Schultz, Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
“Jia Zhangke’s Homewotn Trilogy” by Michael Berry, British Film Institute, 2009.
“The Cinema of Jia Zhangke: Realism and Memory in Chinese Film” by Cecilia Mello, Bloomsbury, 2022

Additional readings will be available online on Canvas.

FILMS

Features:

Pickpocket, 1997
Platform, 2000
Unknown Pleasures, 2002
The World, 2004
Still Life, 2006
24 City, 2008
A Touch of Sin, 2013
Mountains May Depart, 2015
Ash is Purest White, 2018
Caught by the Tides, 2024*

* Depending on the US release date and availability.

Documentaries:

Dong, 2006
Useless, 2007
I Wish I Knew, 2010
Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, 2020

We will also see several short films directed by Jia.

CRN: 22861 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Odabasi, Eren Film Viewing DAY/TIME: W 04:00-06:50 pm

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. Restricted to English majors with teaching endorsement.

CRN: 21952 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 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. Restricted to English majors with teaching endorsement.

CRN: 20571 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Golden, Sean

In this course, we will engage with a variety of theory, research, methods, and resources for the teaching of writing within a secondary English language arts context. Together we will write in a variety of genres, including multimodal genres. We will collaborate and work together as we develop a teacher-writer practice to support our development as writers and skills as writing teachers. The goal of this course to discover and rediscover the joys of writing through collaborative writing processes and forms of self-study. Additionally, throughout the course we will practice designing, delivering, and revising writing activities and thinking through assessment strategies.

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

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 443

CRN: 20079 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Hardman, Pam

CONTENT: This course focuses on the teaching of skills related to reading, interpretation, and critical analysis of written texts and other media in secondary school classrooms. The course will also address the specifics of lesson and unit planning.

ASSIGNMENTS: Assigned reading; lesson plans; discussion plan and performance; teaching guide

TEXTS: may include Kelly Gallagher, Deeper Reading; Isabel Quintero, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces

ENG 451 Creative Wrtng Seminar:Fiction 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20122 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Magee, Kelly

English 451 is an advanced course in fiction writing with a special emphasis on motivation. What motivates you to write, and how can you maintain that motivation in the face of whatever life throws at you? What motivates your characters to do interesting things that you (and your readers) would want to follow along with? This emphasis on motivation will have you looking deeply into your characters’ psychology, asking again and again why people do what they do and writing to discover possible answers. It’s a course in empathy, in short, and one that will hopefully inspire you to write towards the real questions and subjects that fascinate you, whether or not you ever find answers. The class will practice advanced methods of creating voice and crafting narrative, including writing with urgency, using defamiliarization, building new worlds, and working with various forms of escalation. Writers can expect to write a lot words, and to put a great deal of effort into providing feedback for their peers during workshop. The course will culminate in a portfolio modeled on the types of submissions writers often do after graduation.

CRN: 20440 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 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.

ENG 453 Creative Wrtng Seminar: Poetry 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 353. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20335 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Wong, Jane

“Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” - Audre Lorde

English 453 offers you an opportunity to delve even deeper into your creative skills and spend dedicated time close reading the work of other poets – particularly your fellow poets in class. This course asks you to experiment with different craft moves through generative writing, delve deeper into the particularities of a poet’s work, reflect on rigorous revision and feedback, and articulate your own poetics. You will be writing poems, offering feedback for your peers, exploring the work of a poet in-depth, and crafting a chapbook of your own. Some questions we will wrestle with throughout the quarter include: where is the “heart” of the poem? What formal techniques do poets employ (or break) to achieve a particular experience and why? What is the relationship between form and content? What are the stakes of poetry today? When someone asks you the question “what do you write about?” (and they always will!), how will you respond? We will examine the craft of poetry (inherited and invented forms, lineation, rhythm, repetition, word play, image, metaphor, persona, hybrid forms, etc.) in the larger context of poetics: why poems exist, how they create and resist meaning, how they create different and impactful experiences for readers and why.

In addition to writing our own poems, we will engage critical essays on poetics as helpful frameworks (i.e. essays and letters from poets such as Audre Lorde, Federico Garcia Lorca, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Solmaz Sharif, and more), focus on the work of rising/prominent contemporary poets, and craft a chapbook collection as a culmination of our creative risk-taking. English 453 seeks to consider poetry not as a dusty old book, but as something alive, current, and full of potential today. We will also have two guest poets visiting this quarter (TBA)!

ENG 454 Creative Wrtg Sem: Nonfiction 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 21094 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

Welcome to English 454. In this class, you will continue to develop and sharpen the various elements and techniques of compelling creative nonfiction you learned in English 354. You will explore the work of established writers who work with numerous styles and forms of essay writing, including Braided, Ekphrastic, Flash, Segmented, and Hermit Crab, while engaging in generative writing exercises, drafting, peer feedback and revision with the ultimate goal of producing a final portfolio of submission-ready work.

ENG 459 Editing and Publishing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20382 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Gulyas, Lee

REQUIRED TEXT

The Business of Being a Writer, Jane Friedman. The University of Chicago Press, 2018.

COURSE GOALS

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.

CRN: 22472 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

Welcome to English 459! This class will ask you to engage in various exercises, activities, research, and projects related to the world of the writing, editing, and publishing in literary journals. By the end of this course, you will have gained a more complex understanding some of the nuances, complications, opportunities, and rewards of being a part of this community. Though we will cover an array of publishing elements, this course is geared toward literary journals, which are often a writer’s first interaction with the publishing world.

ENG 460 MultiGenreWrtg: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 20315 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Winrock, Cori

The Work of Art: Finding Form

“Doing and making are acts of hope, and as that hope grows, we stop feeling overwhelmed by the troubles of the world. We remember that we—as individuals and groups—can do something about those troubles.” —printmaker Corita Kent

How does an emotion become a building? A joke, a musical? A single image, a poem? At what moment does the intangibleness of an idea become the somethingness of a work of art? And how does an artist find their form—the one that will best express what they want to communicate, that will eventually turn all those many drafts into the shape of a completed piece? Using Adam Moss’s The Work of Art as a grounding source for imagining different takes on how artists’ work comes to be, this course will focus on the process for finding form. Specifically, we will look at writers whose work is not easily described by a single category, such as a lyric zombie novel, a spreadsheet diary, a breakup in footnotes. Over the course of ten weeks, we will consider what it means to invent the form a particular narrative needs, diving into work that often crosses boundaries between genres with subversive fervor. We will read work by writers such as Anne de Marcken, Jenny Boully, Sheila Heti, and Sun Yung Shin. Alongside researching, writing, and designing your own form, we will also delve into the sociocultural climate where boundary-pushing art is often born. By honoring form and the mess of process we will take part in a long tradition where to make is to hope.

CRN: 20565 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Dorr, Noam

Intensive study of topics in creative writing that cross genre boundaries, or that critique those boundaries. Opportunities to compose experimental or hybrid works. Repeatable with different instructors to a maximum of 10 credits.

ENG 462 Prof Wrtg: Defining Humanity 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: One course from ENG 301, ENG 302, ENG 371; or equivalent experience and instructor approval. Major restrictions will be lifted on February 27 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 22027 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Guadrón, Melissa

Special Topics in Technical and Professional Communication: Defining Humanity

We are currently living through a historical moment in which what it means to be human, and how we think of ourselves as people—whether that be in terms of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, ability, or class—is being dramatically and systemically challenged. At the heart of the study of Technical and Professional Communication is the core belief that technical documents perform and accomplish sociopolitical work, and as such, they have material, ethical, and political consequences. In this class, we will take a critical approach to investigating how technical writing has been used to rhetorically construct boundaries around who we are, as humans, and who we can be—legally, physically, and culturally. In doing so, we will explore texts—and the ideologies that support them—that expand who we are (e.g., the Respect for Marriage Act), as well as those that restrict who we are (e.g., the Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government Executive Order). Furthermore, we will explore texts that mandate how we can, and cannot, treat each other (e.g., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Along with engaging with required readings (technical documents, scholarly and community pieces), students in this course will have the agency and support they need to follow their own lines of inquiry into how technical writing, both historically and presently, shapes the identify categories most important to them.

ENG 464 FilmStds:BlackCinemaGeogrphs 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission.

CRN: 22221 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Rogers, Jamie Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm

Black Cinema Geographies: Thinking Space, Place and Race in Film

In Black Cinema Geographies: Thinking Space, Place and Race in Film, we will approach our study of film through two emerging and related subfields: Cinema geographies and Black geographies. Cinema geographies brings cinema studies together with the field of human geography to examine how film explores, exposes and at times creates human relationships to environment, land and landscape, space and place. Relatedly, the field of Black geographies explores historical, political, cultural, and economic processes that produce lived and imaginary racialized spaces. Our course will build frameworks for examining cinema as a site in which space -- lived and historical, social and political -- is both contested and constructed. Narrative filmmakers we may turn to include Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk, Moonlight, Medicine for Melancholy), Nia DeCosta (Candyman, Little Woods), Steve McQueen (Small Axe Series), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), and John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood), along with documentary and experimental filmmakers such as Arthur Jaffa, Cauleen Smith, Khalik Allah, Damani Baker and Sophia Nahli Allison.

ENG 466 Screenwriting 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or one from: ENG 350, ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday Mar 4 by 10:00am.

CRN: 22473 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Youmans, Greg Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm

The course introduces screenwriting with an emphasis on the art of storytelling. We will focus on the writing of narrative screenplays, both short and feature-length. To guide our efforts, we’ll explore and analyze a range of examples, both as screenplays and final films, ranging from art cinema to mainstream Hollywood movies. Although our focus will be on writing for film, we will also look at writing for television and possibly other formats as well.

Students will often work collaboratively in class on exercises geared toward developing stories, characters, dialogue, and screenplays. Although some time will be set aside for in-class writing, most of our time together will be devoted to inspiring and guiding the projects you’ll be working on outside of class. The term will culminate in substantial work toward a full treatment and at least ten polished pages of a feature-length screenplay.

Graduate-Level English Courses

ENG 504 Seminar in Writing Poetry 5cr

CRN: 22864 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Wong, Jane

Notes & Prerequisites: Restricted to MFA only for the first phase of registration.

The Poetics of Engagement and Dissent

Audre Lorde writes: “Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” This graduate level seminar will explore the role of poetry as deeply engaging, resisting, and changing our current society. Who are we as poets in today’s world? How can we wrestle with the complexities and intersections of our personal and collective lives through language? With rigorous attention to the relationship between form and content, we will write poems in dialogue with prominent contemporary poets. As an active poetry community, we will revisit the stakes of poetry via seminar discussions, constructive feedback, and radical revision strategies. We will also welcome guest poets in our class, Patrycja Humienik, and more TBA!

Required Texts

Layli Long Soldier, Whereas
Diana Khoi Nguyen, Root Fractures
Danez Smith, Bluff
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Rocket Fantastic
Lucille Clifton, The Book of Light

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

CRN: 21719, Instructor: Wong, Jane

ENG 535 Studies in Nonfiction 5cr

CRN: 23516 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Dorr, Noam

Notes & Prerequisites: Restricted to MFA only for the first phase of registration.

Examines the characteristics, history, uses and criticism of nonfiction. Repeatable with different topics.

ENG 560 Studies in British Literature: Manuscript Culture 5cr

CRN: 22867 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Vulic, Kathryn

Manuscript Culture: Literary Production in Late Medieval England

In this class, we will read medieval texts in their manuscript context (in facsimile and in original medieval documents) to understand better how literate people in late-medieval England would have thought about reading and writing. Though we will be reading all texts in modern edited/published forms, we will also be able to examine the original manuscripts themselves, as either paper or digital facsimiles. We will also discuss medieval textual production, high and low literary tastes, and the different means through which an individual might have experienced a literary work (through the eyes, or if the person was illiterate, through the ears). Though the items on the reading list have mainly been chosen according to the significance of the manuscript(s) in which they survive, the readings nevertheless represent a wide range of medieval genres and literary tastes.

A secondary focus of this class will be the study of manuscripts as historical artifacts; students will receive general instruction in medieval paleography (the study of medieval handwriting) and codicology (the study of manuscript construction) and will learn some of the basic principles of manuscript creation and preservation. These experiences will help students to imagine better the medieval experiences of reading, composing, and physically constructing texts. Students will also have an opportunity to edit actual medieval manuscript fragments currently on loan in our library. To accomplish these secondary goals, our class will meet in the Special Collections library (6th Floor of Wilson Library).

This class is intended for graduate students of all backgrounds, and will serve as an introduction to some of the earliest recorded reflections on the social, political, material, and aesthetic stakes of writing. Students will develop a working understanding of Middle English language over the course of the quarter.

Class texts (bring hard copies to class):

Anonymous, The Pearl Poet, trans. Casey Finch (UC Press, 1993)
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Broadview, 2nd ed., 2012)
Clemens and Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Cornell UP, 2007)
Canvas excerpts from Piers Plowman (Norton, 2006) to print, annotate, and bring to class
Selected Middle English romances from TEAMS to print, annotate, and bring to class: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/tmsmenu.htm

ENG 575 Studies in Women's Literature 5cr

CRN: 23517 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Giffen, Allison

Domesticity and the Construction of Race and Gender in 19th-Century US Women Writers

In this seminar will examine texts by Black and white women writers in the United States, focusing on the nineteenth century. Our approach will be largely cultural and historical as we examine women writers’ complicated relationship to domesticity as it intersects with cultural constructions of race and gender. We will consider such questions as “How is race implicated in the construction of gender?” and “What is the relationship of scientific discourse to the construction of racial and gender identity?” We will also think about sentimentalism and its relation to reform and the rise of the middle class. Writers include Rowson, Stowe, Jacobs, Alcott, Wilson, Gilman, Dickinson, and Harper.

ENG 594 Practicum in Teaching 2 TO 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 501

CRN: 20080

ENG 597 MA Capstone Seminar 5 cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 501

CRN: 23927 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00am-12:00 pm Instructor: Rivera, Lysa

As a closing companion to ENG 501, this course supports second-year MA English students in developing and completing their Capstone Projects. Through collaborative writing workshops, students will create original work, share drafts, and critique peers’ projects. The course will also explore research methods, writing practices, and strategies for presenting work in academic, professional, and creative contexts.

ENG 598 Seminar in Teaching English 5cr

CRN: 21327 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Celaya, Anthony

This course explores theories, methods, and practices for conducting research on the teaching of English. Specifically, we will learn about practitioner research methods that position the teacher as a researcher in their own classroom. Teacher-researchers often develop research questions to explore their experiences and to evaluate their teaching methods. For example, if a teacher develops or adapts a new practice or assignment, how will they know if the practice or assignment was successful? And how might this research provide insight into future revisions and refinements? Along with research into academic success, practitioner research also invites questions about the fundamental goals of teaching and schooling, such as: how are our teaching practices fostering civic engagement and engaging students in critical inquiry.

Students will develop a research plan to enact in their classroom, whether here at Western or in their future career. Additionally, we will explore venues for potentially sharing of practitioner research, such as conferences, columns, and journals. Therefore, this course requires active and ongoing development of materials through teacher conferencing and workshops.

The goal for this course is to prepare students to engage in classroom-based research and share their findings with the wider education community. Whether you plan to teach in higher education, community organizations, or elementary/secondary schools, this course will prepare you to be a teacher-researcher and contributing meaning-maker in those spaces.

Spring 2025 Course Descriptions

Table of Contents

100-Level English Courses

200-Level English Courses

300-Level English Courses

400-Level English Courses

Graduate English Courses

Major Restrictions have Lifted!

Course Descriptions

100-Level English Courses

ENG 101 Writing Your Way Through WWU 5cr

200-Level English Courses

ENG 201 Writ in Hum: Political Resistance 5cr

CRN: 21713 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Holland, Cindy

ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

CRN: 20109 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Redwoman, Zoe

CRN: 20203 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

CRN: 20563 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

CRN: 20569 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

CRN: 20570 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Bell, Michael

CRN: 20920 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: McGuire, Simon

CRN: 21497 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Redwoman, Zoe

ENG 216 American Lit: Haunted America 5cr

CRN: 22855 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Prichard, Tony

ENG 227 Queer Literature 5cr

ENG 239 Latina/o Literatures 5cr

CRN: 22857 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Roach Orduña, Caitlin

300-Level English Courses

ENG 301 Wrtg Stds:Comics&GraphicTexts 5cr

CRN: 20071 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Lucchesi, Andrew

ENG 302 Technical Writing 5cr

CRN: 20119 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Brown, Nicole

CRN: 20273 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

CRN: 20324 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

CRN: 20373 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Guadrón, Melissa

CRN: 20441 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Sarkar, Rachel

ENG 307 Seminar: Medieval 5cr

CRN: 21943 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy

ENG 308 Seminar: Early Modern 5cr

CRN: 21715 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny

ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

CRN: 21089 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Hardman, Pam

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

CRN: 21090 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

CRN: 20072 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

CRN: 22469 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Troy, Eddy

ENG 314 Critical Theories & Prac II 5cr

CRN: 21946 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

ENG 317 Survey: Medieval 5cr

CRN: 22013 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Vulic, Kathryn

ENG 318 Survey: Early Modern 5cr

CRN: 21948 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny

ENG 319 Survey: The Long 18th Century 5cr

CRN: 21091 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Loar, Christopher

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

CRN: 20332 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Yeasting, Jeanne

ENG 342 Studies in Literary Genres: Graphic Novels by Asian American Authors 5cr

CRN: 21716 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

CRN: 20313 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Golden, Sean

ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr

CRN: 20120 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Gulyas, Lee

CRN: 20378 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

CRN: 21202 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

CRN: 21949 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Roach Orduña, Caitlin

CRN: 21950 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Winrock, Cori

CRN: 23512 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Roach Orduña, José

ENG 351 Intro to Fiction Writing 5cr

CRN: 20254 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

CRN: 20379 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Magee, Kelly

CRN: 22859 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Trueblood, Kathryn

ENG 353 Introduction to Poetry Writing 5cr

CRN: 20073 DAY/TIME: MWF 2:30-3:50 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

CRN: 21498 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

ENG 354 Intro to Creative Nonfict Writ 5cr

CRN: 20271 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Roach Orduña, José

CRN: 20438 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

ENG 364 Introduction to Film Studies 5cr

CRN: 20380 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Rogers, Jamie Ann Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm