Summer 2024 Course Descriptions

200-Level English Courses

ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101  

CRN: 30166 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: IN-PERSON, MTWR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

Or... "How Nerds Won Culture.” This section of English 202 involves critical inquiry into the effects of literature that created and sustains what we might term “nerd culture”: the activities, properties, concerns, and texts of what is arguably the dominant mode of contemporary narrative production. The genres under our purview will include horror, fantasy, and science-fiction, and their various combinations and offshoots. 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 go beyond the page to include film, TV, and game narratives, both videogames and table-top, as well as web-based fandom.   

All of our study will assume that whatever form it takes, fictional narrative has the power to construct and inform our worldly experience, even our reality. 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. Here in the United States, in the early 21st century, much of this on-going narrative field is being informed by genre fiction, and we will consider these narratives as literature worthy of our close attention. Through intensive reading, discussion, activity, and writing we will further develop our ability to make meaning from these texts, 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. 

ALL TEXTS PROVIDED OR SHARED FOR FREE. Texts will comprise the written word as well as video and game texts. 

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.  

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300-Level English Courses

ENG 301 Writing and the Public: Hip Hop Culture 5cr

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

CRN: 30491 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE ASYNC Bridges, D'Angelo

In this course, students will examine the rhetorical possibilities and constraints of hip-hop culture in the United States. Drawing from scholarship, editorials, OP-EDs, news outlets, social media, and hip-hop lyrics, this course will examine the important ways African Americans have utilized hip hop to write and speak persuasively about their material and social conditions. The goal of this course is to expose students to the various rhetorical forms hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Kendrick Lamar, Cardi B, and others employ. Specifically, we will consider how they have used their lyricism to critique the America’s parochialism of African Americans. 

ENG 302 Technical Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior standing.  

CRN: 30119 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE ASYNC Brown, Nicole

This interdisciplinary course puts knowledge into action by communicating technical and disciplinary knowledge in accessible ways to a range of audiences. The course engages with an exciting rhetorical praxis that in addition to accessible design and writing strategies considers the influence of globalization and localization on information and information technologies. Paying attention to the behaviors of readers/users in relationship to cultural, social, economic, and ecological contexts, 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 contents, 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.

CRN: 30127 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE ASYNC Forsberg, Geri

English 302 is an introductory 300-level workshop course in technical writing offered by the English department. This 5-credit writing proficiency course will be available asynchronously this summer. The course focuses on the writer-reader relationship in various non-academic writing situations. Students will learn to identify their audience and objectives, organize content, and revise documents for readability. They will also read about technical writing and get hands-on experience writing and designing memos, resumes, letters, proposals, formal reports, and infographics. Students will work in small breakout groups, collaborate on writing, and give peer feedback. Finally, students will create a professional portfolio that showcases their best work. Once you finish the course, you will be ready to write professionally. 

ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 310 or ENG 320, do not take ENG 310.

CRN: 30397 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC, T 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher 

The Modern Era 

Course Description: Walter Benjamin called Paris, “Capital of the 19th Century.” After Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1799, French colonialism reached its apex in the mid to late 19th Century. This was the era when Baron Hausmann and his demolition crews destroyed sixty percent of Paris, which was a medieval city at this time, before reconstructing the modern urban landscape of Paris today. The “modern” was the theme of the era’s most important poets such as Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé. The 19th Century is sometimes called the “Belle Époque” (or the “Beautiful Era”) due to the flowering of the arts amid the great wealth generated by France’s imperialist ventures in Africa, Asia, and the West Indies. This was the era of Orientalism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Realism, and Naturalism.  In this course, we will study major authors of the era in translation: Balzac, Stendhal, Sand, Flaubert, Zola, Huysmans, Proust, and Colette. We will also discuss the translation of ballet, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture into poetry and prose.  We will compare the literature we study with paintings by Manet, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, etc., and the compositions of Debussy, Satie, Ravel, etc., Tchaikovsky ballets and the Ballets Russes.  We will also explore the rise of French imperialism in West Africa and its impact upon the arts. To this end, we will compare French and indigenous African poetry of the late 19th century, Tyam’s The Life of Al Hajj Umar. 

Course Requirements: Students will write a research paper of 6-8 pages, a final essay exam, other writing assignments on the course reading and lectures.  They will be required to attend one synchronous Zoom meeting a week for six weeks [Tuesday mornings, 8:00 am to 10:00 am]. During this meeting, the professor will respond to questions, and the class will discuss the reading together. Students will also be required to attend at least one Zoom conference to discuss final papers. Students will also be assigned to small groups to meet over Zoom. During small group meetings, they will discuss course readings with their peers. They will also prepare a presentation on their group’s selected author and text (see the list below). Otherwise, all course work is asynchronous. This will include film viewings of films and video lectures, as well as online writing assignments submitted over Canvas. Although the course concludes the last week of July, students will have the option of completing their final assignments by mid-August. 

Texts: 

• Walter Benjamin, “Paris – Capital of the 19th Century” 
• Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen 
• Gustave Flaubert, Three Tales 
• Paul Verlaine, Selected Poems 
• Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell 
• Muhammadu Tyam, The Life of Al Hajj Umar 
• Emile Zola, The Masterpiece 
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way 

Group Texts: 

• Honoré de Balzac, Eugenie Grandet 
• Stendhal, The Red and the Black 
• George Sand, The Country Waif 
• Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature (À Rebours) 
• Colette, Gigi, and The Cat 

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

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 311 if you have already taken ENG 321 or 311.

CRN: 30295 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC, W 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Rivera, Lysa

English 311 centers black U.S. writers from the twentieth century to the contemporary moment. Working across genres – novels, short stories, poetry, and hybrid forms – it also introduces students to many of the most important periods, political concerns, and aesthetic questions that are more or less unique to black U.S. literary histories. From the New Negro period to the Civil Rights era to what bell hooks calls “Postmodern Blackness,” this course provides a strong foundation for more advanced study in African-American literature. As we read texts from different genres and decades, we will work together to cultivate a deep appreciation for the rich, subversive, and varied ways in which African American writers have participated and intervened in shaping American literary traditions. 

ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202  

CRN: 30262 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE ASYNC Cushman, Jeremy W.

The thing about engaging with what gets called ‘critical theory’ or is that it gives us the chance to jump into a pretty heated and certainly long-running squabble. And it’s a squabble that, whether you’re currently conscious of it or not, shapes how you understand and respond to the worlds in which you act. To say the least, this is a squabble that matters.  

So the whole point to our time together this summer is all about giving you the chance to work out the possible ways ‘theory’ can help you make different kinds of sense of the differing ‘texts’ you encounter. That is, I want the class to help you practice reading all the varied kinds of ‘texts’ that matters to you across and with this ancient squabble called ‘theory’—‘texts’ like Marvel movies, long emails from the university’s president, short stories, intimidating healthcare documentation, a Netflix series, and on and on. Theory, even (and I think especially) theory that predates Christianity and the Enlightenment, has an awful lot to say to us about the critical ways we make meaning out of the ‘texts’ or material that matters to us.  

So we’ll jump into this squabble around 500 BCE, and try to make some sense of the people who get called the ‘Pre-socratics,’ or the Sophists. We don’t have much from these writers and thinkers, just torn fragments of text and notes that some of their students left behind. But the stuff we do have is wonderfully weird and sometimes profound. Their work seemingly anticipates much of our own squabbles about truth, justice, and living in right relationship with others and with the natural world.  

Then we’ll turn to philosophers who, many say, have structured what we call the Western Tradition: Plato and his student Aristotle. The squabble between the Sophists and Plato/Aristotle is legit. So we’ll dwell here for a bit before turning to people that began to transform this squabble into wildly influentially ideas about political, educational, and religious institutions.  

After that, we’ll quickly (because we don’t have time to go slow) make our way through other thinkers that jumped into the squabble as it carried on. These are the thinkers, writers, ‘theorists,’ and ‘philosophers’ that, while you’ve maybe never read them, they’ve helped shape your underlying understanding of identity, reason, love, religion, history, and other giant conceptions that allow us to interpret our world one way rather than another.   

Texts: There’s no required texts to buy for the course because our original sources are in the ‘public domain,’ and I’ll be sending along the more contemporary essays about these texts. 

Class Structure:  

• Monday: You’ll get an assigned text from one or two of our ‘theorists.’ You’ll also get a recorded, podcast-style, ‘lecture’ from me about that week’s ‘theorists.’ (Plus, I'll run an optional meeting whenever most people are available)  
• Wednesday: You’ll write responses to my prompts about that week’s reading and my ‘lecture.’  
• Thursday: Early on in the class, I’ll send along examples of how to practice reading differing ‘texts’ or material across and with the ‘theorist’ and ‘philosophers’ that we’re engaging. About a quarter of the way through the class, I’ll start sending prompts for you to do this kind of work on your own. That work will be ‘due’ the following Monday. Then it all starts again.  

ENG 320 Survey: The Long 19th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 310 or ENG 320, do not take ENG 320.

CRN: 30391 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC, T 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

The Modern Era 

Course Description: Walter Benjamin called Paris, “Capital of the 19th Century.” After Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1799, French colonialism reached its apex in the mid to late 19th Century. This was the era when Baron Hausmann and his demolition crews destroyed sixty percent of Paris, which was a medieval city at this time, before reconstructing the modern urban landscape of Paris today. The “modern” was the theme of the era’s most important poets such as Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé. The 19th Century is sometimes called the “Belle Époque” (or the “Beautiful Era”) due to the flowering of the arts amid the great wealth generated by France’s imperialist ventures in Africa, Asia, and the West Indies. This was the era of Orientalism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Realism, and Naturalism.  In this course, we will study major authors of the era in translation: Balzac, Stendhal, Sand, Flaubert, Zola, Huysmans, Proust, and Colette. We will also discuss the translation of ballet, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture into poetry and prose.  We will compare the literature we study with paintings by Manet, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, etc., and the compositions of Debussy, Satie, Ravel, etc., Tchaikovsky ballets and the Ballets Russes.  We will also explore the rise of French imperialism in West Africa and its impact upon the arts. To this end, we will compare French and indigenous African poetry of the late 19th century, Tyam’s The Life of Al Hajj Umar. 

Course Requirements: Students will write a research paper of 6-8 pages, a final essay exam, other writing assignments on the course reading and lectures.  They will be required to attend one synchronous Zoom meeting a week for six weeks [Tuesday mornings, 8:00 am to 10:00 am]. During this meeting, the professor will respond to questions, and the class will discuss the reading together. Students will also be required to attend at least one Zoom conference to discuss final papers. Students will also be assigned to small groups to meet over Zoom. During small group meetings, they will discuss course readings with their peers. They will also prepare a presentation on their group’s selected author and text (see the list below). Otherwise, all course work is asynchronous. This will include film viewings of films and video lectures, as well as online writing assignments submitted over Canvas. Although the course concludes the last week of July, students will have the option of completing their final assignments by mid-August. 

Texts: 

• Walter Benjamin, “Paris – Capital of the 19th Century” 
• Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen 
• Gustave Flaubert, Three Tales 
• Paul Verlaine, Selected Poems 
• Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell 
• Muhammadu Tyam, The Life of Al Hajj Umar 
• Emile Zola, The Masterpiece 
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way 

Group Texts: 

• Honoré de Balzac, Eugenie Grandet 
• Stendhal, The Red and the Black 
• George Sand, The Country Waif 
• Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature (À Rebours) 
• Colette, Gigi, and The Cat 

ENG 321 Survey: The 20-21st Centuries 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 311 or ENG 321, do not take ENG 321.

CRN: 30398 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC, W 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Rivera, Lysa

English 321 centers black U.S. writers from the twentieth century to the contemporary moment. Working across genres – novels, short stories, poetry, and hybrid forms – it also introduces students to many of the most important periods, political concerns, and aesthetic questions that are more or less unique to black U.S. literary histories. From the New Negro period to the Civil Rights era to what bell hooks calls “Postmodern Blackness,” this course provides a strong foundation for more advanced study in African-American literature. As we read texts from different genres and decades, we will work together to cultivate a deep appreciation for the rich, subversive, and varied ways in which African American writers have participated and intervened in shaping American literary traditions. 

ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or instructor permission.  

CRN: 30082 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE ASYNC Celaya, Anthony Stephen

Young adult literature (YAL) might conjure images of blockbuster successes (Harry Potter, Hunger Games) or superficial depictions of teenage drama (Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars), however in this course we will explore the incredibly diverse field to foster a more complex and critical understanding of young adult literature. We will learn about the history of young adult literature and explore a variety of contemporary topics within the field, including: reading for joy, dystopian novels, LGBTQ+ representation, nonfiction YAL, and other relevant sociocultural issues.

We will read and discuss a variety of YA novels as a class. For each week, you will chose one YA novel from a curated selection of 2-3 books that reflect our given topic for the week. You will have the opportunity to discuss your selected curated novel in small groups, and engage in larger discussions drawing from your selected novel with readers of other texts.

Some of the curated choice novels that you will choose from include:
• With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
• Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
• Mexican Whiteboy by Matt de la Peña
• Dry by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
• The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
• The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg
• Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
• Felix Ever After by Kacen Callendar
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, & You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School by Tiffany Jewell
• Accountable by Dashka Slater

In addition to the curated novels, you will read three young adult literature novels of your choice with at least two novels coming from the Walden and/or Printz award lists.

CRN: 30823 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE ASYNC Hardman, Pam

This is an asynchronous, online, 6-week course. You’ll have assignment deadlines each week but no required class meetings.  

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

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

ASSIGNMENTS: Reading responses; discussion board questions and responses; mixed-media assignments; final project 

ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101  

CRN: 30078 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: IN-PERSON, MTWR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

As a participant in this course, you will learn through activities, reading, writing, discussing and reflecting. Together, we will examine the fundamental elements of fiction and poetry. We will explore a diverse body of published works. And, foundational to the workshop process, we will discuss the working drafts by our peers. Above all, we will privilege writing process and development.  

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 ask that you obtain an electronic device (e.g. smartphone) that will allow you to access podcasts (anything I require or recommend you listen to will be on a Spotify playlist). 

CRN: 30441 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE, MTW 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

This course will introduce you to the art of writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. We will read established authors from various backgrounds and cultures and study the ways in which they make their writing “work” through unique use of voice, description, language, humor, character development, and experimentation. While reading and studying these authors, you will begin your own journey into writing with the help of various writing exercises and, most importantly, your imagination and individuality. (Class meets virtually via Zoom every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, for one hour, fifty minutes through the 6-week quarter.) 

ENG 351 Intro to Fiction Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350.  

CRN: 30824 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC, MTW 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Trueblood, Kathryn

“Art comes in the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you…”—Robert Olen Butler 

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. 

Scenes then Stories: The quarter system moves at a hectic pace, and many stories are underdeveloped as a result. Students are under pressure to create a beginning, middle, and ending and exploration of character is often sacrificed. So, we will be moving from exercises to scenes and then to full stories.  Scenes are the dramatic building blocks of stories and novels (as opposed to summaries, chronologies, or treatments for novels). By writing them, you should feel what it’s like to inhabit your characters.  

Texts:  

• The Art of the Short Story, edited by Dana Gioia (hereafter referred to as The Short Story)   
• The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Writer's Guide by Michael Kardos, any edition (hereafter referred to as Craft of Fiction) 

ENG 353 Introduction to Poetry Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350.  

CRN: 30366 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC, TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Shipley, Ely

This course focuses on the practice of reading and writing poetry. While the primary concern is student writing, we work from the basis that in order to become better writers, we also must become better readers. We will explore a range of poetic traditions and contemporary developments and spend the quarter reading, writing, and discussing poetry through focusing on elements such as metaphor, image, rhythm, sound, line, and dramatic tension. You will be responsible for not only submitting original work, but also for offering thoughtful observations to each work discussed. We become better writers through reading, thinking and feeling intensely, learning from our own work, the work of others, and above all, by practicing.  

ENG 364 Introduction to Film Studies 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101.  

CRN: 30367 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC: MW 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

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

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

Textbook: 

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

York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2024. 

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

Film screenings for this class are asynchronous. All the films will be made available for online streaming through WWU libraries. 

• Before Midnight (d. Richard Linklater, 2013) 
• Run Lola Run (d. Tom Tykwer, 1998) 
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (d. Pedro Almodovar, 1988) 
• Persepolis (d. Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, 2007) 
• Searching for Sugar Man (d. Malik Bendjelloul, 2012) 
• The Rider (d. Chloe Zhao, 2017) 
• The Passenger (d. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975) 
• Beijing Bicycle (d. Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001) 
• Nine Queens (d. Fabian Bielinsky, 2000) 
• Kung Fu Hustle (d. Stephen Chow, 2004) 
• Only Lovers Left Alive (d. Jim Jarmusch, 2013) 
• Capernaum (d. Nadine Labaki, 2018) 

CRN: 30825 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

The course covers the key concepts in film studies. The basic terms and concepts
regarding the production, theorization, and analysis of film will be introduced.

The viewings in the course will provide look variety of films throughout the history of
cinema in order to practice employing the terms and concepts.

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400-Level English Courses

ENG 406 Topics: Contemporary Indie Comix and Intermedial Theory 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: Not enforced over summer session.  

CRN: 30571 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: ONLINE SYNC: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

Course Description: This course will introduce you to the radical creativity of the Indie comix scene that largely originated in Seattle. Focusing on handmade comics and contemporary Indie presses, we will explore the intersectional themes of identity, community, and agency. Through our diverse range of texts, we will try to articulate and understand the strange, the beautiful, the complex, and the interesting . . . in these graphic narratives. The selected texts feature marginalized and under-represented characters and themes, including topics such as love and friendship (relationship building), depression, sexuality, resiliency, 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 write about comix and create your own small comix in the course. No artistic experience or illustrating talent is required for the Studio Comix assignments. Students receive full credit for playing with the prompts! Additionally, contemporary critical media such as multimodal blogs and/or podcasts will be used to engage in critical analysis rather than the traditional essay. 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. You will have the opportunity to write 3 multi-modal blogs during the quarter as well as practice your own comic-making with Studio Comix exercises that come with full credit for completing the assignment! No artistic experience or illustrating talent is required. This seminar is geared for both literature and creative writing students as well as students in other majors who are interested in comix. 

Required Texts 

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

ENG 410 Studies in Lit History: Black Cookbooks as Memoir 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: Not enforced over summer session  

CRN: 30572 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: IN-PERSON, MTWR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Lee, Jean

Black Cookbooks as Memoir  

Course Description: How do cookbooks function as archives of ancestral memory, individual experiences, history, and culture? This class engages with the history of Black diasporic cookbooks as memoir, especially as this genre coincides with travel writing about the Great Migration or travels to the Caribbean and Africa. Culinary memoir analyzes how Black writers use cookbooks to share personal and collective stories about complex processes that construct the Black diaspora (migration, enslavement, diaspora, survival, healing, and freedom). We will read cookbooks by scholars, community leaders, literary authors, and chefs alongside literary memoirs, documentaries, and scholarship in food studies. The course culminates in a dinner party based on a menu inspired by research projects. Note: there will be no required purchases for this class. All cookbooks and reading materials will be available on Canvas or at library reserves. 

ENG 459 Editing and Publishing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354  

CRN: 30274 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: IN-PERSON, MTWR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Magee, Kelly

Welcome to the other side of creative writing! In this fast-paced, collaborative course, students will choose a project that fits their interests and career ambitions, and then write and edit content for it—either a group zine (a small magazine) or an individual chapbook (a small book). The class will form Editorial Groups that will get experience in soliciting creative work, providing different kinds of edits—content, line, proofread, fact check—and funding and promoting creative projects. From there, students may elect to stay with their group projects or move to their own book-length works-in-progress, crafting cover letters, queries, synopses, promotional materials, and cover treatments. Whatever your interests in editing and publishing—from individual poems and prose to books and magazines—this class is for you! No experience necessary, but grammar geeks and punctuation nerds are especially welcome.  

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English Graduate Credits

ENG 690 Thesis Writing 2 TO 10cr

CRN: 30007 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: TBD Online Course. No scheduled meeting time.

ENG 699 Continuous Enrollment 2cr

CRN: 30120 MODALITY/DAY/TIME: TBD Online Course. No scheduled meeting time.