Winter 2025 Course Descriptions

Major Restrictions

Major restrictions have been lifted from English courses! For more information, please refer to English Registration FAQ.

100-Level English Courses

ENG 101 Writing Your Way Through WWU 5cr

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

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

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

Overrides and capacity overrides are never granted for ENG101.

200-Level English Courses

ENG 201 Writing in Humanities: Pop Music 5cr

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

CRN: 10567 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael Patrick

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

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

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

ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101.

CRN: 10057 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

This writing-intensive course takes an approach of narrative theory – the study of stories, what they are, and what they’re good for – to help students develop the skills necessary to better understand and talk about the stories they encounter in their daily lives (both real and fictional). In particular, we will be taking a look at texts that aspire to be literary (in terms of complexity, use of literary devices, etc.) regardless of what medium they are; over the course of the quarter, we will be looking at a film, a graphic novel, a short prose novel, and more. Students will be encouraged to think about these texts not merely as ‘works of art’ that we’re assessing for educational purposes, but as carefully-crafted messages from authors to audiences meant to educate, persuade, make judgements about, explore ethical issues with, and consider how we interpret and act within the world around us. A series of shorter writing assignments and group/class discussions will culminate in a final essay in which students will choose their own literary text to analyze, break down and rebuild – in other words, coming up with a thesis that answers the question of ‘what is this story good for?’ and then extrapolating that answer through carefully considering both what lies within the text, as well as what contexts we need to view it through, whether social, political, cultural, ethical, etc.

CRN: 10163 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

CRN: 10422 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 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: 10568 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Troy, Eddy

In this course, we will develop our abilities to write analytically about literature through comparative analysis of film adaptations. But what is adaptation? In A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon provocatively reads the adapted literary work as analogous to the genetic mutations of a living organism:

Adaptation, like evolution, is a transgenerational phenomenon. Some stories obviously have more “stability and penetrance in the cultural environment,” as Dawkins would put it. Stories do get retold in different ways in new material and cultural environments; like genes, they adapt to those new environments by virtue of mutation—in their “offspring” or their adaptations. And the fittest do more than survive; they flourish. (32)

Throughout the course, we will put Hutcheon’s argument to the test, comparing our close readings of literary works to very brief segments of the relevant films. Our task will be to identify and analyze the formal differences across media to strengthen our analytical and close reading ability and to theorize the relative strengths and limitations specific to the cinematic and literary texts under consideration. In this way, we’ll practice substantiating critical, argumentative claims with textual evidence. Through discussion and examination of secondary literature, we will develop arguments that situate our readings in their political and cultural contexts, always with an eye to the question of the timeliness of our readings: What in the texts speak to us today, and why?

CRN: 10569 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

This course will explore how and why we write about literature in a digital age. We’ll discuss the differences between academic and popular literacies and consider what contemporary forms of writing, such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts have to do with writing critically about literary texts. Why do we read literature in a culture that is dominated by images? Why should we care about texts that may be centuries old? And is it true that people don’t read as much as they used to? This class will also explore the intersections between print literature and digital culture, by looking at innovative ways that contemporary writers are experimenting with literary form in the wake of digital technologies and new media. What do novels, films, and graphic novels have in common, for example, and how are they distinct from one another? How is writing an analytical paper similar to preparing for a TED Talk? What do videogames and literary narratives have in common? How can we be attentive to medium specificity while observing the ways that the “same story” can be told across various platforms or modalities? Finally, what are contemporary modes of literary expression and how can they help us understand our world and our selves in ways that enrich our experience?

English 202 Writing about Literature will emphasize “writing as process” as well as introduce students to different forms of pre-writing that can set the stage for a productive practice. We will work with multiple drafts, revising work with a focus on “re-visualizing” and “reframing.” You can expect to become fluent in peer review processes as well as editing as we work closely together in small and large group workshops. By the end of the quarter, you should be able to observe how readers’ comments/discussion--as well as your own creative content production—have the potential to change your own understanding of your project.

Assignments

Students will engage in diverse writing projects that will allow them to experiment with--and interrogate--various modes of print and digital literary production.

Required Texts

Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology, Joseph Tabbi (PDFs on Canvas)
Writing Machines, N. Katherine Hayles
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski

CRN: 10570 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Golden, Sean

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

ENG 203 Writing for Public & Professional Audiences 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 12186 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

English 203 is designed to provide you with instruction and practice in the creation of highly effective documents custom-tailored to specific professional and public audiences and their functional contexts. Writing in this field is focused creating texts that enable readers to make decisions, choose actions, or accomplish tasks. Audience-centered writers are therefore experts in rendering complex information in clear terms that their readers can understand, accurately determining the specific requirements of a target audience, and making careful selection and presentation of information for specific effect. Such writers present complex information with impeccable organization and clarity across many different kinds of documents: letters, reviews, reports, proposals, and presentations among them.

Successful audience-centered writers must be excellent researchers and fast learners. Increasingly, such writers must also be excellent visual designers, with a solid grasp of the effects of graphics and layout on reader response. In the 21st century, the production of text for professional and public audiences lies within the realm of design: writers for these audiences are document designers.

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

ENG 216 American Literature 5cr

CRN: 12518 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Laffrado, Laura

CONTENT: This course focuses on writing from the nineteenth-century United States, a racially charged period in which authors practiced resistance, outrage, entertainment, struggle, and deception in their work. We will read, analyze, interpret, and discuss a wide range of texts by writers of different race/ethnicities, genders, sexualities, and other identity markers.

ASSIGNMENTS & EVALUATION:

Requirements include exams, quizzes, lots of reading, and lots of thinking.

TEXTS:

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Beginnings to 1865
- ISBN 978-0-393-88617-7
Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature
- ISBN 978-0-939576-27-2

ENG 234 African-American Literature 5cr

CRN: 13873 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Prichard, Tony

Black Horror

Using Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved as a point of departure this course will examine Black Horror and how it has developed in literature and culture over the past five decades.

Required Texts

Compton, Johnny. The Spite House
Due, Tananarive. The Between
La Valle, Victor. Lone Women
Morrison, Toni. Beloved
Peele, Jordan Ed. Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror

ENG 235 Native/Indigenous Literatures 5cr

CRN: 12941 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Redwoman, Zoe

In this class, we will sample a small selection of Indigenous horror. As we read, we will consider how the authors we read respond and reframe or repurpose common horror tropes in their storytelling practices. We will also examine how these stories help us understand contemporary issues in Indigenous worlds and how contemporary issues in Indigenous worlds help us understand the Indigenous Horror we read.

300-Level English Courses

ENG 301 Writing&Public: Writing With Sound 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior status; or instructor permission. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday Nov 14 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 10279 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Cushman, Jeremy

Writing With Sound: Listening, Space, Agency.
In most of our workaday worlds, including our writing lives, screens and other kinds of visuals dominate. So it’s easy to overlook (overhear? underhear?) the pervasiveness of sound. But talk radio, ambient music, mobile device alerts, animal and human voices, and random noise all combine to form an ever-present sonic backdrop with and through which we engage our media ecologies, including the writing we do. Alone and together, differing sounds help write our
experience of, say, a group text conversation, an entertainment event, a political campaign, an educational venture, and on and on.

So together, we’ll obsess in this class about to the multiple and often surprising ways sound participates within our own workaday worlds. What that means is that we’ll do our best to unpack the wide-ranging and often neglected persuasive qualities of sound. We’ll practice (because it does take practice!) attending to the multiple and overlapping senses that sound activates, learning to treat sonic events as physical encounters that produce powerful if subtle arguments. What’s more, we’ll design, write, and produce our own sonic compositions that go to work in the world. My hope, in the end, is that we find ways into sound and its relationship to writing that allow all of us to ask new or different questions about our own communication practices and fields of study.

Note: To be clear, this is not a podcasting class (though we’ll be listening to some stuff that gets called a podcast). Podcasting is but one way to write for a public using sound. We’ll play around with podcasting. But mostly, we’ll be writing with sound in ways that are hard to categorize as
traditional podcasting.

One More Note: This course will often be organized as a project-based workshop (especially in the second half of the quarter). In addition to our readings and audio pieces about sound theory and affect theory, several of our class meetings will be opportunities for hands-on practice with digital audio tools that we can learn together. That kind of community work is gonna require regular attendance and active participation. You don’t need to know a single thing about audio production; you just need to be willing to jump in and see what happens when you push buttons!

ENG 302 Technical Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101; junior standing. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday Nov 14 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 10306 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Sarkar, Rachel

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

CRN: 10346 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: 10391 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

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

CRN: 10426 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Sarkar, Rachel

CRN: 10945 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

CRN: 14016 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Guadrón, Melissa

Technical writing is the ethical communication of complex information from one party to another; technical writers create texts that explain ideas and present arguments for specialist and non-specialist readers. In this course, students, as developing technical writers, will produce technical documents in response to user-centered needs. These documents will help to develop students’ technical, rhetorical, and critical-thinking skills. Students will engage with a variety of technical genres including instructions, consent documents, accessibility audits, IMRAD research reports, and creative briefs. Along the way, students—individually and in collaboration with peers—will consider ethical, critical approaches to data collection, document design, and written communication.

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 Nov 18 by 10:00am. All major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 11773 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy

The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG307 or ENG317, do not take ENG 307.

The Middle Ages spanned 1000 years of some of the most dynamic and fascinating growth in world history. In this iteration of the class, we focus on the literature and culture of England, but this tiny island offers us a microcosm of the medieval period at large. We wrestle with ideas of kingship and heroism with Beowulf, watch the rise and fall of nations with Gildas and Bede, struggle with the purpose of life with the Wanderer and the Seafarer, and laugh at the double meanings of riddles. We’ll also experience tangible aspects of the period in the form of physical artifacts: you’ll get to touch a real medieval manuscript and even make your own masterpiece. The wonders of the medieval world await.

ENG 308 Seminar: Early Modern 5cr

CRN: 13875 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny

The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG308 or ENG318, do not take ENG 308.

Sci-Fi Before Swift

Who invented science fiction? SF scholar John Rieder asserts that SF has no single point of origin, and that SF is not any one set of texts but rather a practice for reading and drawing relationships among texts. In this seminar, our goal is to build a deeper understanding of genre theory and literary history. We will use contemporary conversations about SF to sharpen our understanding of 16th- and 17th-century literatures, and we will critically read 16th- and 17th-century literatures to deepen our understanding of SF. How are texts written hundreds of years ago connected to what Darko Suvin terms the literature of cognitive estrangement? To what Grace Dillon names Indigenous futurisms? To what Rieder calls the stubbornly visible colonial scenario beneath the fantastic script of SF?

You will build skills in close reading and strategic reading by examining works from the 16th and 17th centuries. You will also increase your facility with complex texts by responding to secondary sources from the 21st century. Writing assignments in this class work toward our final collaborative project, a digital anthology of excerpts from our course readings accompanied by our critical and creative responses to them.

ENG 309 Seminar: The Long 18th Century 5cr

CRN: 11096 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Loar, Christopher

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

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

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

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

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

ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

CRN: 11097 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Hardman, Pam

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

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, Fanny Fern, Pauline Hopkins, and Emily Dickinson, as well as examples of scrapbooks, samplers, embroidery, recipes, and quilting.

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

CRN: 11098 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Heim, Stefania

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

Narratives of Translation
Since the fracturing of language into a multiplicity of tongues at the Tower of Babel, drama has clustered around the fact and necessity of translation. Truisms about the art—the punning Italian proverb traduttore-traditore (translator-traitor) and the adage about “what gets lost in …”—testify to the persistence of both anxieties and fantasies about what it means to translate. In this course, we will take that drama as our subject. We will read widely across the 20th and 21st centuries, including contemporary thrillers where translation is a risky business tied to cannibalism or the destruction of empire; modernist allegories of translation that will make us question the very essence of language or literature; works of autotheory in what some are calling a new genre of “the translation memoir”; and hybrid, multilingual conceptual works that blur the boundaries between translation and poetry. We’ll ask: what’s so dangerous about translation? What does translation make possible? What does it obfuscate? How have our ideas about it and our judgements about what constitutes “good” translations and translators tracked political winds, structures of power, and literary movements during the last century? As we read, we’ll ground our explorations in translation theory, and we’ll stretch our understanding through our own creative translation exercises. Course texts will probably include: works by Jorge Luis Borges and Walter Benjamin, RF Kuang’s Babel, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s The Centre, Kate Briggs’ This Little Art, Yoko Tawada’s Scattered All Over the Earth, and Mónica de la Torre’s Repetition Nineteen.

ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10077 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 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, 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 preexisting 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 film, literature, and cultural studies.

ENG 314 Critical Theories & Prac II 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 11977 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Hardman, Pam

CONTENT: In this course we will explore contemporary critical and cultural theories in order to develop our own strategies for interpreting texts and culture. We will ask questions about what constitutes a “text,” a “sign,” and “ideology,” what distinctions (if any) exist between the canon and popular culture, how gender, race and class affect the production and analysis of texts, and how social identities are constructed. We’ll use the assigned readings as starting points for analyzing a variety of cultural products, such as literary texts, film, television, advertisements, the internet, and music. Most of the course will focus on theories articulated during the last half of the twentieth century, although we will place them in their historical contexts and discuss how they arose from previous ways of thinking. The goals of the course are to increase your abilities to critically interpret various texts and cultural phenomena, and to articulate these interpretations in your own writing, interweaving your own ideas with other theorists’ notions.

ASSIGNMENTS: Assigned reading; participation in class discussions; three question-response sets; one summary/analysis paper; one final mixed-media project.

TEXTS: Jeffrey Nealon and Susan Searls Giroux, The Theory Toolbox; weekly reading packets (provided in class)

CRN: 11978 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

This course will look at how practice and critical theory have intersected during the past fifty years. Each of the main texts for the course are in conversation with major components of thinking over the past two centuries. By looking at these authors and their various methodologies, we will examine not only what critical theory offers to English as a discipline but also to the intellectual lives of folks.

Required Texts

Katherine, McKittrick. Dear Science and Other Stories
Lyotard, Jean Francois. The Differend
Preciado, Paul. Testo Junkie
Sharpe, Christina. Making Post-Slavery Subjects
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature

ENG 318 Survey: Early Modern 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 11979 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 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 Survey: Early Modern Witches

Between 1450 and 1750, the rise of colonialism and capitalism coincided with the rise of witch hunts across Europe and the Americas. Christian authorities and other powerful men used the label to oppress people whose religious beliefs or practices contradicted dominant forms of Christianity, people who interfered with procreation or refused to procreate, and people who fought back against colonial violence. We will challenge those perspectives to explore the complex material, political, and cultural factors that shaped experiences and representations of gender, race, religion, and power in the early modern world.

In this course, you will build foundational skills for the English major by deepening your close reading and critical thinking practice and by examining a range of historical genres. Our reading list includes a dialogue, a romance, several trial records, some folk tales, and a scientific treatise that were all created before 1700 and that all feature discourses on witchcraft and representations of women, nonbinary people, and men as witches. We will also read a play, a satirical novel, and essays from the 20th and 21st centuries that critically reimagine and reframe the lives and complex identities of people accused of witchcraft before 1700. Our authors include anonymous storytellers, Leslie Feinberg, Charlie Josephine, Fernando de Rojas, Silvia Federici, Johannes Kepler, William Shakespeare, Sylvia Wynter, Mary Rowlandson, Lisa Brooks, Cotton Mather, Maryse Condé, and others. You’ll write two reader reports, learning and participation commentaries, and collaborative midterm and final exams.

ENG 320 Survey: The Long 19th C 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 11566 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Anderson, Katherine

The seminars and surveys time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG310 or ENG320 do not take ENG320.

Victorian Sexualities

Contemporary American culture tends to associate the Victorian era in Britain (1837-1901) with the sexual oppression, repression, and all-around prudery. This isn’t completely incorrect: it’s true that after the more freewheeling eighteenth century, new codes of public propriety arose in Britain. Victorian sexuality, then, was in some senses "repressed" and heavily regulated. Yet that is only one small part of a more complex cultural story. Humans have always existed with a spectrum of desires and viewpoints, and many of those who lived and wrote in nineteenth-century Britain were obsessed with sex and sexuality. Even when sexuality appears to be forbidden or censored, it is often front and center as a topic, if you know how to look. In fact, you don’t even have to look very far beneath the surface, or between the lines, to find evidence of a spectrum of sexualities and desires in Victorian art and writing. In this class, we’ll explore the nuances of that spectrum, and how Victorian genders and sexualities relate to our own. Topics considered in this course include sex work and the trope of the “fallen woman”; queer sexualities; gender fluidity; attitudes towards marriage (including interracial marriage, adultery, and bigamy); and sex trafficking, among others. We’ll consider these topics as represented in a range of some of the most important fiction, poetry, essays, and art produced in Britain during the nineteenth century.

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

Course Objectives:

As a Literature and Culture Requirement survey, the primary objective of this course is to give you breadth of knowledge about the development of British literature over the course of the nineteenth century in relation to historical and cultural contexts. By the end of the quarter, you will have a better understanding of specific literary movements and significant innovations that emerged in the period and how they overlap (realism, the dramatic monologue, and aestheticism, to name a few), as well as a better understanding of nineteenth-century British history and culture: the issues, fears, and desires that emerged in relation to sexuality in said literature.

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

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 12191 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 321 do not take ENG 311 or ENG 321.

This seminar will explore one of the most important developments in contemporary literary study: the convergence of 20th-21st century narrative and digital technology. Basically, we’ll be looking at the ways in which literary artifacts have enlarged and redefined their territory of representation and range of technique and play, while maintaining their viability in a new media ecology. Specifically, we’ll be analyzing the relationship between experimental print texts and digital media, including canonical novels of high modernism and postmodernism, artists’ books, electronic literature, word-image texts, and interactive games. We’ll also be engaging in a new form of literary discourse--media-specific analysis--which attends to the specificity of form as well as to citations and imitations of one medium in another. As defined by N. Katherine Hayles, “media-specific analysis moves from the language of text to a more precise vocabulary of screen and page, digital program and analogue interface, code and ink, mutable image and durable mark, computer and book. Media-specific analysis insists that texts must always be embodied to exist in the world. The materiality of those embodiments interacts dynamically with linguistic, rhetorical, and literary practices to create the effects we call literature.”

Assignments

This seminar is focused on close reading and critical analysis of both print and digital texts. Students will have the opportunity to respond to texts critically and creatively and to employ experimental or hybrid approaches to textuality, inscription processes, and book/media form and format. Course work will include reading/viewing/playing a wide range of literary texts, including experimental fiction, poetry, video, artists’ books, and new media; participating in class discussions and small group work; and producing multimodal writing. In addition to learning how to read closely and write about texts analytically in this seminar, you will learn how to do media-specific analysis, a type of analysis required by today’s multimodal environment and expanding forms of literacy. Though course content will focus primarily on literary and graphic production, the class will prepare you to write critically about many different kinds of textual/rhetorical situations and will translate well to writing assignments you may encounter in college-level courses and beyond. Both creative writers and literature students should find this course useful to their work.

Required Print Texts

Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology, eds. Joseph Tabbi and Michael Wutz (print or Canvas PDFs)
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino
Sleeping with the Dictionary, Harryette Mullen
House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition, Mark Danielewski
Writing Machines, N. Katherine Hayles (print or Canvas PDF)

ENG 333 Global Lit: Scribes & Griots 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: This course is part of the Senegal Study Abroad Program. Courses in this program include additional student fees and application through WWU EdAbroad.

CRN: 13031 Instructor: Wise, Christopher

This course will explore literary and creative expressions of Africa from the time of the Ancient Egyptians to the present. Ancient African as well as more recent Islamic notions of speaking, writing, and other forms of communication will be situated in their proper historical setting and cultural context, including griot and written traditions. We will also explore questions of sorcery, the Abrahamic traditions, especially Islam and West African Sufism, and Africanization (or “Ajamization”) with special reference to the Sahelian setting. To this end, we will focus especially on two prominent Sufi orders in the Sahel: the Umarian Tijaniyya and the Muridiyya. In Senegal, we will meet and speak with prominent members of both orders.

Global Learning Senegal Program Website

Program Video

ENG 334 Texts Across N. Am and Eur 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 or equivalent.

CRN: 13879 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Winrock, Cori

Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale
The skeptic might ask: What is the purpose of a fairy tale these days when the wolf has already been cancelled? Why listen to old wives’ tales when global warming is sending Hansel and Gretel’s sugary little woods up in smoke? And yet, in April 2020 as lockdowns swept the nation Sabrina Orah Mark wrote in the Paris Review: “Once upon a time a Virus With A Crown On Its Head swept across the land... ‘Go into your homes,’ said the Virus, ‘or I will eat your lungs for my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.’” At our most vulnerable, it seems, Fairy Tales offer a way to make sense of our lives—opening a window onto sociocultural and community beliefs on topics such as power, gender, politics, who gets to save themselves, and who gets to tell their stories.

In this course, we will investigate the Fairy Tale as a complex narrative form and the ways it has traveled through time—from its transformation into a literary tale by Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy and Charles Perrault in France to the dubious gathering and nationalist tactics of the Brothers Grimm to Angela Carter’s second-wave revival of the form in the 1970s. We will look at historical trajectories as well as contemporary retellings—examining how Fairy Tales have persisted and been passed down as ways of
questioning established social orders as well as keeping communities safe. In our explorations, we will engage with a variety of forms from oral stories to those written down and bound, to adaptations reimagined as comics as well as those for the stage and screen. In the second half of the course, students will look at how the contemporary fairy tale allows writers to reclaim/retell/reframe their cultural stories—from a queer retelling of a Greek myth to a radical re-envisioning of a government document. Finally, students will seek out their own tale to trace/ track across time.

ENG 335 TxtsOutAm&Eur: Senegal 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: This course is part of the Senegal Study Abroad Program. Courses in this program include additional student fees and application through WWU EdAbroad.

CRN: 13031 Instructor: Wise, Christopher

This course will examine contemporary West African texts, including novels, films, speeches, as well as political and literary theory. Course concerns will include colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, neo-imperialism, third world literature and post-colonialism, decolonization, racism, négritude, and ethnic conflict, and related topics.

Global Learning Senegal Program Website

Program Video

ENG 336 Scriptural Lit 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 12942 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Loar, Christopher

In this course, we'll examine the Hebrew and Christian scriptures not as sacred texts but as literature. The Judeo-Christian Bible is a complex anthology, consisting of many different genres and literary modes. This anthology has, of course, had a profound effect on the course of world history. It is also absolutely fascinating to read, offering a remarkable range of characters and events.

This course will emphasize the Bible's narrative texts. (We have to limit our attention somehow--it's a huge book, impossible to treat thoroughly in ten weeks.) We will, however, consider a range of strategies for reading these stories. We'll spend most of our time on the Hebrew Scriptures, or Tanakh (which Christians refer to as the Old Testament), but we will spend some time with the Gospels as well. We will consider these narratives with an eye to their context and to the editorial practices that brought them together. We'll also consider the ways that their meanings continue to evolve and to respond to the contemporary world.

On successfully completing this course, you should have a much better understanding of the literary forms and styles found in these scriptural writings, and you should be able to read and understand them from a range of perspectives.

The course does not assume any prior knowledge of the Bible. It also, of course, welcomes students from any religious or spiritual background, including those with no experience or knowledge of any religious tradition. All students, whatever their background, will find this a welcoming course.

Course requirements will include a variety of writing assignments and regular engagement in the classroom.

ENG 337 Travel Writing in the Sahel 2cr

CRN: 13032 Instructor: Wise, Christopher

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101 or equivalent. This course is part of the Senegal Study Abroad Program. Courses in this program include additional student fees and application through WWU EdAbroad.

Global Learning Senegal Program Website

Program Video

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

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 10223 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Colen, Elizabeth

In this course we will read, respond to, and analyze a wide range of texts from women writers investigating various possible apocalypses. Through these texts we will analyze themes of survival, resistance, and identity in the face of societal collapse. Students will exercise and refine textual and cultural analysis skills, and will engage in critical discussions, creative writing exercises, and interdisciplinary approaches to explore how women envision and respond to apocalyptic scenarios. By the end of the course, participants will gain insight into the power of women's storytelling in redefining hope and resilience amid chaos.

ENG 339 Mythology and Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202

CRN: 12519 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Vulić, Kathryn

Course Description and Objectives: Mythological stories and literature often strive to explain the origins of things: how they began, but also how they changed to become the thing we know now. They also often strive to explain certain aspects of the human condition, including how people themselves can change over time. This quarter we will focus on mythological literature – a handful of foundational literary texts from a variety of cultures – that is interested in narrating changes, whether of personal opinions, bodies themselves, land formations, cultures, and more.

We are approaching all of these texts as literature, even though some of them form the basis for the spiritual or religious beliefs of a large number of people (for example Ramayana is a massively significant religious narrative for about a billion people). We will proceed with respect for those for whom these texts may have personal, cultural, or religious significance, while also trying to understand how the texts work as literary objects and, in many cases, as models of social and cultural practices.

Textbooks (the specific editions are extremely important):

The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by NK Sandars. Penguin Publishing, 1972. ISBN: 9780140441000.
Metamorphosis, by Ovid, translated by Stephanie McCarter. Penguin Classics, 2023. ISBN: 9780143134237.
Popol Vuh, translated by Dennis Tedlock. Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN: 9780684818450.
Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturluson, translated by Jesse Byock. Penguin Publishing, 2006. ISBN: 9780140447552.
Ramayana, by Valmiki, translated by William Buck. University of California Press, 2021. ISBN: 9780520383388.

Assignments: A range of assignments providing opportunities for historical research, creative responses, collaborative shaping of class discussion, and knowledge development. Contract grading model.

ENG 344 Film&Media Across North America and Europe: Post-Apocalyptic Film 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 14034 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Cosey, Felicia

Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm

Exploring Post-Apocalyptic Film

In this course, we will look at filmic depictions of humanity after the apocalypse. We will explore why audiences are so fascinated with the end of the world—and what these stories say about us today.

Through films like Children of Men, The Road, and 28 Days Later, we will tackle questions like: Why is the child often seen as humanity’s hope in these films? Why are post-apocalyptic stories surging in popularity right now? What do these narratives reveal about our fears around climate change, pandemics, and political instability? We will also look at how these movies reflect issues of gender and power: Why are so many of these stories led by father figures? Could these films imagine a future that challenges patriarchal systems? Together, we will examine why these stories often depend on old structures and what alternative visions might look like.

Expect plenty of discussions, short assignments, quizzes, and no textbook—just readings provided on Canvas that will help you understand the deeper meaning behind the explosions and chaos. You don’t have to be a film expert to join in. Just bring your curiosity about the stories we tell when the end is very freaking nigh.

Content Note: Some films screened may contain mature themes or graphic content.

ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or instructor permission. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10571 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Golden, Sean

Survey of contemporary young adult literature. The course may include critical, creative, and pedagogical projects for using YA literature in secondary schools.

ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10116 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Colen, Elizabeth

With emphasis on exposure and practice, this course is for students who wish to study, analyze, and experiment with three major genres of creative writing: fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, and techniques specific to each of them. Students will be expected to closely read and analyze published writing, generate their own work every week, effectively and responsively workshop their peers’ writing, and gain proficiency in the art of revision.

CRN: 10318 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Roach-Orduña, José

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

CRN: 11201 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

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

Required Textbook

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

CRN: 11981 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Winrock, Cori

The Observatory

‘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: 13880 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 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.

ENG 351 Intro to Fiction Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10003 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

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

Expect this to be an exciting and challenging course. We hope you will develop new ways of thinking, working, writing and communicating. We hope you will take risks. Count on being brave, respectful, and a hard worker.

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

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

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

CRN: 10404 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

English 351 is designed to introduce you to the craft and culture of writing fiction as well as the complex world of critique and workshop. We will read established authors of various identities and study the ways they make their writing shine through unique use of voice, description, language, dialogue, character development, and experimentation. While reading and studying these authors, you will begin your own journey into short story fiction writing with the help of various writing exercises and assignments, revision, and most importantly, your imagination and individuality.

ENG 353 Introduction to Poetry Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10078 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

As a participant in this course, you will be tasked with developing poetic works. We will do an intensive workshopping of the written work by you and your peers. And we will examine fundamental elements of poetry, including dramatic situation, speaker, metaphor, imagery, metrical conventions, sonic conventions, and traditional forms (e.g. villanelle, sonnet). Together, we will learn through reading, writing, discussing and reflecting. We will privilege our writing process, development, and respectful collaboration.

Expect this to be an exciting and challenging course. We will ask big questions and discuss the practical benefits of a creative life. We hope you will develop new ways of thinking, working, writing and communication. We hope you will take risks. For some, this will be their first time writing poetry. You do not have to write “magnificent” poems to do well in this course. You just have to be 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:

No Farther Than the End of the Street by Benjamin Niespodziany (Okay Donkey Press)
Surveille by Caitlin Roach (The University of Wisconsin Press)
An electronic device (e.g. smart phone) that will allow you to access podcasts

ENG 354 Intro to Creative Nonfict Writ 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10303 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Yeasting, Jeanne

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

ASSIGNMENTS: Assignments will include considerable reading of writing model creative nonfiction; weekly writing and revising of creative nonfiction; giving detailed peer feedback, including written feedback, using assigned guidelines; weekly reading response work; and completing a Final Project. Students may be required to work on a collaborative project and/or conduct research.

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

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Zadie Smith. Intimations: Six Essays. Penguin Random House (2020).
- paperback: ISBN 978-0593297612
Lex Williford and Michael Martone, editors. Touchstone Anthology of Creative Nonfiction. Touchstone (2007).
- paperback: ISBN 978-1416531746
Selected texts on Canvas

CRN: 11202 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Gulyas, Lee

Required Materials

Miller & Paola, Tell It Slant, Third Edition (only this edition will work), all other readings provided Canvas & Internet access, and ability to print out hard copies of your work

Paper or notebook. and pen or pencil for in-class writing

Course Description

This is a beginning level creative writing class that combines a creative component and the study of literature. We will explore a broad spectrum of content and form, as we strive to translate personal experience, perspective, and research into effective work. Students will submit drafts, provide feedback, and practice discussions in critical exploration of readings. Coursework will include in-class writing exercises, reading responses, writing assignments, and extensive revision. Since this is a five-credit course, the university expects fifteen hours of work per week: five hours in class and ten hours on your own.

ENG 364 Introduction to Film Studies 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 10265 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Rogers, Jamie

Film Viewing DAY/TIME: M 4:00-06:50 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.

ENG 365 Film Hist: Global Film History 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or ENG 202

CRN: 11099 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Odabasi, Eren Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm

This course offers a survey of key films, filmmakers, and cinematic trends that have influenced film history outside North America until 1960. The period between 1920-1960, shaped by two major World Wars, saw the emergence of significant cinematic movements such as German Expressionism, French Poetic Realism, and Italian Neo-Realism. We will unpack the social, historical. and political factors that informed these waves in European filmmaking. Additionally, we will expand the framework beyond Western Europe by studying important directors from Southeast Asia, the Far East and Latin America, rejecting the Euro-centric approaches that have traditionally dominated the field.

In our analyses of canonical classics from several different regions and time periods, we will discuss many different aspects of film culture ranging from various distribution and exhibition models to the invention of sound and other technological advances, or evolving spectatorship practices. Through a series of (re)discoveries from global film history, we will observe how well-known filmmakers of today are deeply indebted to the pioneers of the past.

TEXTBOOK:

The Oxford History of World Cinema, edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

This is a very large reader covering the entire film history, I highly recommend using the e-book version instead of purchasing an expensive copy. The e-book is available through Western Libraries.

FILMS:

(Tentative List)

The Peasant Women of Ryazan, dir. Olga Preobrazhenskaya, 1927
Limite, dir. Mario Peixoto, 1931
Prisoners of the Earth, dir. Mario Soffici, 1939
After the Curfew, dir. Usmar Ismail, 1954
Rules of the Game, dir. Jean Renoir, 1939
I Was Born, But…, dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1932
Rome, Open City, dir. Roberto Rosselini, 1945
Nosferatu, dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922
Passion of Joan of Arc, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928
The Music Room, dir. Satyajit Ray, 1958

400-Level English Courses

ENG 402 Writing & Community Engagement 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 302. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday Nov 14 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 10463 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Guadrón, Melissa

This course approaches professional writing as the ethical practice of shaping knowledge, values, and action. In this community-based, field-work course, students will gain professional writing experience by reciprocally partnering with local organizations. Working in teams, students will invent, design, build, user test, and implement documentation for their specific community partner.

ENG 403 Film and Media Theory 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission

CRN: 12946 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Cosey, Felicia

Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm

This course introduces major theories and critical approaches in film and media studies, focusing on leading criticisms from the mid-20th century to the present. We will examine theoretical frameworks that have shaped how we analyze, interpret, and understand film and other audiovisual media.

Throughout the quarter, we will explore a range of critical perspectives, including realist film theory, ideological approaches, feminist film theory, postcolonial criticism, and more recent developments in film practice and digital media theory. We will consider questions such as: How do formal elements and technological aspects of film construct meaning? How do ideological frameworks and cultural contexts shape both filmmaking and spectatorship? How can we critically examine representations of gender, sexuality, race, and other identities on screen? What is the relationship between film and media and broader social, political, and technological forces?

The goal of this course is for you to develop a toolkit for analyzing moving images and to hone your skills in analytical viewing, critical thinking, and academic writing about film and media.

Coursework will include short assignments, discussion facilitation and analysis, and a final research paper applying a theoretical concept to a film or media text of your choice.

Required Text:

Corrigan, Timothy, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj, eds. Critical Visions in Film Theory. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011.

Content Note: Some films screened may contain mature themes or graphic content.

ENG 406: Cultural Theory: Reproductive Justice and Sexual Agency

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 313 or ENG 314; two courses from: ENG 307-347, ENG 364 or ENG 371.

CRN: 14230 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-3:50 pm Instructor: Lee, Jean

What might be somatic and cognitive responses to the wave of anti-abortion laws and the rise of global fascism? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “[t]here is no hierarchy of oppression”; as a “Black, feminist, lesbian, socialist, poet, mother…I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only.” This prescient intersectionality is central to Reproductive Justice movement (RJ) and the enactment of BIPOC feminist and queer sexual agency. RJ's analysis foregrounds BIPOC treatment by medical institutions, settler colonialism, imperialism, and modern capitalism. Given this depth of knowledge, RJ organizes around three core tenants: the right to have children, the right to not have children, and the right to nurture children in a safe and healthy environment. Thus, it expands far beyond the mainstream feminist and reproductive rights movements' concern about the right to an abortion. It foregrounds access to abortions as not hierarchized above concerns about housing, abolition, environmental justice, labor, immigration, the military industrial complex, education, agriculture, foreign policy, taxation, education, etc., but in intimate conversation with them. We will also engage with BIPOC feminist and queer studies to explore how communities embody, speak about, and transform, as bell hooks theorizes, “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy." Crucial to these processes is understanding how we can work through grief and theorize pleasure as political practice. We will closely read scholarship, literature, and art to understand how racialization of sex and the sexualization of race impacts flourishing, activism, life chances, and liberation.

Please be aware that this course will regularly address sexual, gender, racial, state, and economic violence as interlocking structural oppressions which may cause intergenerational trauma.

ENG 408 Cultural Studies: Scribes & Griots 5cr

CRN: 13033 Instructor: Wise, Christopher

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 313 or ENG 314; two courses from: ENG 307-347, ENG 364 or ENG 371. This course is part of the Senegal Study Abroad Program. Courses in this program include additional student fees and application through WWU EdAbroad.

This course is reserved for students who enrolled in ENG 333 or 335 as a 400-level course. ENG 408 students will be required to write lengthier final papers than ENG 333/335 students that include research into secondary sources.

Global Learning Senegal Program Website

Program Video

ENG 408: The Serial Killer in Popular Culture

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 313 or ENG 314; two courses from: ENG 307-347, ENG 364 or ENG 371. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 11562 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Anderson, Katherine

The Serial Killer in Popular Culture

From ongoing attempts to identify Jack the Ripper, nineteenth-century London’s mysterious murderer, to the devilishly charming depiction of Villanelle in the BBC’s Killing Eve, Anglo-American popular culture is obsessed with depictions of sadistic killers. Whether they’re based on true crime or entirely fictional, these stories frighten and intrigue us, but more importantly, they emphasize the centrality of horrific violence to Anglo-American culture. Here in the Pacific Northwest, serial killer lore abounds, as in the media attention surrounding Ted Bundy, who grew up in Seattle and still fascinates the popular imagination in Washington and beyond.

In this class, we’ll examine representations of the serial killer in relation to cultural anxieties over public and private spaces, race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion, among other things. Together, we’ll read, think, and write critically as we analyze a variety of cultural narratives. Some of the questions we’ll consider include: What is it that makes the figure of the serial killer so compelling? Why, for over 100 years, have authors told serial killer stories, and how—through critical analyses—might we use these stories to learn something about human nature and history? How can we enter existing conversations on this topic in both academia and pop culture? Why do we single out the serial killer from other forms of murder and violence? What are the fears and desires that we embody in the serial killer, and how do representations of the serial killer transform in response to changing cultural demands? Ultimately, what do cultural constructions of the serial killer teach us about ourselves?

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

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

Increased ability to:
- perform nuanced close reading and effective critical analysis
- analyze the significance of violence in Anglo-American culture and psyche
- analyze literature (in multiple modalities) and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical and social context as well as our contemporary moment
- compare and contrast texts of different forms or genre
- express interpretations clearly and compellingly, writing cogent literary criticism
Increased autonomy in:
- assessing literary texts and critical arguments (across disciplines)
- participating in an ongoing academic conversation that involves multiple disciplines
- Increased self-awareness of personal reading, writing, and methodological practices.

Required Texts:

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886; Penguin, ISBN: 9780141439730)
Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse (1996; Scribner, ISBN: 9780684836270)
Chelsea Summers, A Certain Hunger (2020; The Unnamed Press, ISBN: 9781951213435)
Additional required short texts made available as pdfs
Wes Craven, Scream (1996)
Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho (1960)
HBO’s Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children (2020, 5 episodes)
Showtime’s Dexter season one (2006)
BBC America’s Killing Eve season one (2018)

ENG 410 Literary History: Medieval Comedy and Romance 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 are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 11368 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Vulić, Kathryn

Course Description and Objectives: The genre of comedy and romance have been around for centuries, but these genres have changed substantially over the years. This course will focus on the medieval genres of comedy and romance, specifically highlighting Dante’s Divine Comedy (Commedia, in Italian), and Chaucer’s romance Troilus and Criseyde, though we will also read other materials that will offer context for each of these works so we can see how they are drawing on and responding to ideas circulating at the time.

For a medieval reader, a comedy is a text that had a positive ending. It may have had moments of humor, but that was not likely to be its defining quality. The Divine Comedy is a comedy in the sense that the dreamer works his way through all of the regions of the afterlife, from hell to purgatory to heaven (thus ending positively). Likewise for this reader, a romance would have been a story told in the tradition of early romance-language storytelling, meaning that they would be stories about the nobility and their hopes and anxieties. While medieval romances are traditionally believed to feature a knight in shining armor and a damsel in distress, we will discover that the opposite is usually true (knights are frequently very much in distress, and damsels frequently have a metaphoric armor of some kind). This quarter we will focus on the early literary history of both genres.

Assignments and evaluation

A small research project that focuses on one of the major terms, events, people, or institutions of the Middle Ages – 10%
A project exploring a post-medieval interpretation of one of our two class genres – 10%
A daily reading journal – 30%
A formal research paper of 10 pages plus bibliography, investigating an interpretive issue with support from critical, historical, or linguistic research (this project will be divided into several stages, including an annotated bibliography, outline, and drafts, and the overall grade will be comprised of the grades of the various parts) – 50%

Tentative reading list (check with instructor before purchasing books; the editions matter, and for some of these, we will just be reading excerpts that will be made available on Canvas)

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, as well as substantial excerpts from Purgatorio and Paradiso, as well as contextual supplements including Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love (offered as excerpts on Canvas)
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, plus individual short romances from the Canterbury Tales, as well as contextual supplements including Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love (offered as excerpts on Canvas)

ENG 418 Senior Seminar: Witches 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: 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 Nov 18 at 10:00am, then opens to literature juniors. Opens to all English majors and non-majors on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10348 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Warburton, Theresa

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

Witches

Witches are so ubiquitous in global literatures as to seem timeless. In both literal and figurative senses, they often carry multiple dimensions with them including telling projections of the broader societies in which they live and, more importantly, from which they are often forcibly excluded. Rather than attempt to survey the incalculable iterations and expressions of witchy characters, topics, themes, and forms throughout the history of literatures in English, this course aims instead for a deep dive into some contemporary representations of witches across genres with a special emphasis on longer-form fiction. In engaging with these texts, we will anchor our work together in the following question: how does the literary use of witches and magic allow authors to make relevant social, political, and cultural commentary? In this, this course is not an inquiry into the history of witches and witchcraft, but rather is an examination of their use as literary figures in order to help us understand what characteristics they carry that make them such a rich, provocative, and meaningful cultural flashpoint.

Because this is an upper-level literature course, students can expect to develop a strong reading practice predicated on dedicated and substantial reading assignments coupled with practical work in writing and analysis. Students should expect to read a novel-length work and complete a short written assignment every week with a longer, comparative final assignment that will go through proposal stages during the quarter. Possible readings for the course include Quan Barry’s We Ride Upon Sticks, Rivka Gelchen’s Everybody Knows Your Mother is a Witch, Cherie Dimaline’s VenCo, Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Emily Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines, Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, and Brenda Lozano’s Witches.

ENG 418 Senior Seminar: Emily Dickinson 5cr

CRN: 10349 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Giffen, Allison

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

Emily Dickinson and 19th-Century Literature and Culture

This course offers an intensive study of the work of Emily Dickinson. While the poems will always be our central focus, we will read them in the context of Dickinson's biography as well as her cultural, historical and literary moment. In addition, we will be attending to Dickinson’s idiosyncratic methods of literary production and distribution. We will look to her use of variants, her decision to bind her poems into handmade chapbooks called “fascicles,” and her inclusion of hundreds of poems into her letters. We will also consider the editorial decisions that went into the many and varied editions of Dickinson’s poetry as we read the poems in manuscript as well as print.

ENG 423 Major Authors: Audre Lorde 5cr

CRN: 10266 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Pagh, Nancy

Audre Lorde

In this course we explore Audre Lorde (1934-92), self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet” who dedicated her life and creative talents to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and homophobia. Through Lorde’s poetry, biomythography, critical essays, speeches, and experimental life writing, we will consider how this Twentieth-century public intellectual has remained an essential voice to today’s intersectional feminism, queer theory, and race studies.

Our work together will focus on close reading and response, query and analysis, and the drafting and revision of a researched paper using peer-reviewed sources. Examining the rich body of Lorde’s writing, we will attend to patterns that emerge in these varied forms of expression and the themes that surface across them—central among these, as Allison Kimmich notes in Feminist Writers, that “differences in race or class must serve as a ‘reason for celebration and growth.’”

Required Texts:

The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name – A Biomythography

ENG 423 Major Authors: Dionne Brand 5cr

CRN: 10552 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Rogers, Jamie

Dionne Brand

This course will focus on the revolutionary poet, novelist, filmmaker, essayist, and activist Dionne Brand. Born in Trinidad and Tabago in 1953, Brand came of age in Toronto where she wrote her first published poem: “Behold! The Revolutionary Dreamer.” Like her later work, this early poem evokes Black libratory thinking and encourages the inward-looking study of subject formation within a colonial regime. Always pushing at the boundaries of form, Brand’s work contends with what she calls a “tear in this world:” slavery and its afterlife, and their imbrication within histories of colonialism, capitalism, anti-Blackness, misogyny, and heteronormativity. In this class, we will read across the range of her work, from essays and films to novels and poetry, contextualizing it within the historical, political, and geographic spaces it addresses and putting it into dialogue with contemporary Black studies scholars such as Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, and Katherine McKittrick.

Content Notification: The texts we will grapple with in this class often represent difficult material, ideas and histories, including slavery and incarceration; gender, sexual and racial violence; racism, misogyny and transphobia; suicide and self-harm. Please consider your well-being when choosing to enroll in this class.

ENG 441 Language and the Sec Classroom 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 301, ENG 302 or ENG 371; ENG 347; ENG 350, ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354; two from: ENG 307, ENG 308, ENG 309, ENG 310, ENG 311, ENG 317, ENG 318, ENG 319, ENG 320 and ENG 321. Major restrictions do not lift.

CRN: 11986 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Celaya, Anthony

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

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

ENG 442 Studies in Literacy 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: One course from: ENG 202, ENG 301, ENG 302, ENG 371 or instructor permission. Major restrictions will be lifted on Thursday Nov 14 by 4:30pm.

CRN: 13883 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Holland, Cindy

What is literacy? What does it mean to be literate in North American society? And what happens when literacies oppress? In the first part of this course, we’ll examine literacy as a concept and as the performance of a “social identity” that often involves reading and writing, but also includes a host of distinctive ways of being. Drawing on a variety of literacy theories and narratives for insight, we’ll explore how literacy can be used to empower and liberate as well as to regulate and oppress. Using non-fiction writing, we’ll explore the impact of developing new literacies in our own or another person’s life.

In the second part of the class, we will ask what happens to people who are forced to adopt and perform alternate identities in order to fit in, or even to survive? We’ll engage with narratives of Native Americans forced into Western schooling—beginning in the Colonial era and continuing through today—to understand how American education impacts peoples whose worldviews differ markedly from the Western mainstream. Students will have considerable latitude in what they choose to produce as final projects.

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

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 301, ENG 302 or ENG 371; ENG 347; ENG 350; ENG 441 or concurrent or MLE 444 or concurrent; and two courses from: ENG 307, ENG 308, ENG 309, ENG 310, ENG 311, ENG 317, ENG 318, ENG 319, ENG 320 and ENG 321. Major restrictions do not lift.

CRN: 10081 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Celaya, Anthony

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. Additionally, throughout the course we will practice designing, delivering, and revising writing activities and assessments.

Students will:

Write in a variety of genres.
Read and discuss research, articles, and chapters on methods for teaching secondary composition.
Access a variety of resources when planning and designing writing activities.
Design, deliver, and revise writing assignments and writing lessons.
Develop an understanding of compositional strategies beyond scripted curricula and formalized modes.
Discuss, collaborate, and interact with classmates and future colleagues.

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

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 443. Major restrictions do not lift.

CRN: 10553 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: VanderStaay, Steven

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

ENG 451 Creative Wrtng Seminar:Fiction 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10117 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

English 451 is designed to introduce you to the craft and culture of writing fiction as well as the complex world of critique and workshop. We will read established authors of various identities and study the ways they make their writing shine through unique use of voice, description, language, dialogue, character development, and experimentation. While reading and studying these authors, you will begin your own journey into short story fiction writing with the help of various writing exercises and assignments, revision, and most importantly, your imagination and individuality.

CRN: 10464 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Trueblood, Kathryn

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

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

TEXTS:

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

ENG 453 Creative Wrtng Seminar: Poetry 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 353. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10299 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Roach-Orduña, Caitlin

An advanced course providing disciplined expression in a variety of modes of writing poetry. Repeatable with different instructors to a maximum of 10 cr.

This advanced poetry seminar invites students to investigate the dynamic power of the poetic line as a fundamental unit of meaning making in poetry and to experiment with poetic techniques in their own writing practice. Across works from poets like Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Danez Smith, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Julia Anna Morrison, Dean Rader, Philip Metres, Nicole Sealey, and Kevin Young, among others, students will explore the relationship between form and content and will examine how sound, image, metaphor, and tone shape meaning. We will look at how lineation shapes voice; how it generates, encourages and manipulates ideas and images; how it constructs pacing; and how it influences the reader’s experience (and pushes the boundaries) of language. Through close reading and discussions, and through the regular practice of writing exercises and workshops—ranging from ekphrasis, erasure, documentary, and epistolary, to name a few—students will examine and employ techniques and fundamentals of poetry to see how meaning making happens in a poem. This course requires consistently active participation, thoughtful, respectful and collaborative critique, and an openness to exploring what poetry is, what it can do, and what it must do in today’s world.

ENG 454 Creative Wrtg Sem: Nonfiction 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 354. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10286 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Dorr, Noam

Experiments at The End of The Essay

No writing is as wild and unexpected as the essay, and yet it has such a staid reputation—it can be as outrageous as going to a funeral dressed like a disco ball, yet most people still imagine it sitting on a couch wearing a sensible sweater vest. But through the strangeness of its form as well as the complexity of its content, the creative nonfiction essay invites weirdness, creates space for a mind to unfold on the page, prompts us to perform a totally unexpected dance, and asks us to playfully consider an ever expanding set of questions.

In this advanced creative nonfiction workshop we will delve into the deeper meaning of the essay and experiment with its edges. Through writers such as Valleria Luiselli, Julio Cortázar, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, and Bhanu Kapil, we will ask the essay deep questions: What can the essay do that no other form can? What kind of choreography can an essay create? Why is this form so endlessly fascinating? While we will primarily examine the essayistic in its creative nonfictional manifestations, we will also expand our search to texts that would normally fall under other genres in order to see what is possible when we introduce the essayistic into other forms such as novels, poems, film, and interactive multimedia.

ENG 455 Living Writers 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: One from: ENG 351, ENG 353, ENG 354. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 12525 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Magee, Kelly

This multi-genre creative writing course will have an emphasis on contemporary working writers, including those in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, as well as those working in crossover and combinations of these modes. This course has an emphasis on the creative process, especially creating work inspired by the writers who will visit class. Over the quarter, working writers will attend class to discuss their writing and their process, and students will experiment with these different ways of composing creative writing. One component of the course is hearing from local writers affiliated with WWU—professors, alumni, and students—and within the greater Western Washington area. Students with backgrounds in all genres are welcome, and there will be many opportunities to get feedback on in-progress and finished work.

ENG 457 Special Topics Poetry Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 353. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 12526 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Roach-Orduña, Caitlin

This poetry workshop invites students to engage deeply with both the craft and social urgency of contemporary poetry. Through a wide-ranging study that includes poets such as Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Mosab Abu Toha, Paul Hlava Ceballos, Joshua Jennifer Esponza, Reginald Dwyane Betts, Dean Rader, Kyle Carrero Lopez, Wendy Trevino, Solmaz Sharif, and Guantánamo detainees who have composed lines of poetry by scratching language onto styrofoam cups with a pebble because they were not allowed to use pen or paper, students will read, discuss, and write poetry as a means of interrogating geography, the idea of justice, and the role of poetry in our contemporary landscape. In writing their own poems, students will experiment with various forms, including ekphrasis, erasure, narrative, sonnets, and open form, with an emphasis on cultivating their unique voice while reflecting on the poetic form’s capacity to bear witness, confront history, and transform perspective. This course requires consistently active participation, thoughtful, respectful and collaborative critique, and an openness to exploring what poetry is, what it can do, and what it must do in today’s world.

ENG 459 Editing and Publishing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10572 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am 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.

ENG 460 Multi-Genre Writing: The Lyric Essay 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 11237 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Roach-Orduña, José

The Lyric Essay

The lyric essay is a form that challenges, evades, transcends, maybe even obliterates genre conventions. It’s usually tied to the truth in a way that resembles nonfiction, but its route to the truth is completely unlike it – it bucks narrative throughlines, discursive logic, and rhetorically sound arguments in favor of this quality we call the lyric. From poetry the lyric essay often borrows its economy of language, its sensuousness, its multiplicity, its treatment of language not only as a vehicle for meaning, but the material of meaning itself. The lyric essay is often playful in form, usually, but not always, looking strange and unlike prose on the page. In this class we will read and discuss lyric essays, we will do a suite of creative writing exercises specific to this hybrid and unconventional form, and each student will write a lyric essay to be workshopped in class.

Required Texts: The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins ed. Zoë Bossiere and Erica Trabold

ENG 460 Multi-GenreWriting: The Art of Play 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 10330 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Dorr, Noam

The Art of Play

Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and we must begin anew. –Julio Cortázar

One challenge of taking ourselves seriously as writers is that we become so focused on perfecting our craft that we lose the wonder and risk-taking of being beginners. This course is all about beginning again—inviting playfulness and messiness back into our artistic practice. Through constraints offered by forms that live off the page, we will ask how our writing changes when we engage with physical movement, prioritize other sensory modes, and delve into material-making processes. Over the course of the quarter, we will borrow from the performing arts (music, dance, theater), visual arts, digital media and other practices to redraw our horizon and imagine our work into and out of unexpected containers. As we engage with open-ended play we will continuously ask how these experiments return us back to our writing and obsessions as altered artists.

ENG 464 Topics in Film: Puzzle Films 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission.

CRN: 12948 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Youmans, Greg

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

Puzzle Films

In this course we will use the tools of narratology to analyze films and other media texts that present elaborate puzzles of time, space, and identity for viewers to solve. From doppelgangers to con artists and from time travel to nested dreams, how have movies, TV shows, and video games toyed with our expectations and to what ends? In addition to building skills in the theory and analysis of narrative and narration, we will trace the history of puzzle films from the dawn of the last century across various developments in media storytelling and technology straight through to today’s AI. Some of the filmmakers whose work we may explore are Alfred Hitchcock, Chantal Akerman, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Justine Triet, and Satoshi Kon.

ENG 466 Screenwriting 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or one from: ENG 350, ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354. Major restrictions are lifted on Tuesday Nov 19 by 10:00am.

CRN: 12244 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Youmans, Greg

Film Viewing: M 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 indie films to mainstream Hollywood movies. Although our focus will be on linear narrative storytelling, we may also look at examples of screenwriting for other genres and formats, such as television, online video, and interactive storytelling.

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 pages of a feature-length screenplay.

Graduate-Level English Courses

ENG 502 Seminar in Writing Fiction 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: Restricted to MFA students for the first few days of registration.

CRN: 12949 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Guess, Carol

This workshop will focus on writing short fiction. Assignments include two original short stories and several short pieces.

ENG 506 Sem Creative Wrtg: Multigenre 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: Restricted to MFA students for the first few days of registration.

CRN: 13884 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Magee, Kelly

The theme of this multi-genre writing workshop is “Speculative Writing,” and together we’ll examine short and book-length works of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction that incorporate elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The category of “speculative literature” is permeable, broad, and in flux, and there are many subgenres and styles grouped under it, including work that engages with the supernatural, futuristic, and fantastic. There are even subsets of “speculative poetry” and “speculative creative nonfiction,” so writers working in any genre are welcome in this course. Broadly, this is any work that reflects reality not as it is, but as it could be—given some single or set of crucial differences: a different past, different technological innovations, different futures, different power structures, different planets, different laws of physics…. The power of speculation is in its ability to imagine new and different futures, whether to serve as a warning or a source of hope. And, as many writers have pointed out, what is speculation for the mainstream may be reality (or history) for marginalized populations. We’ll discuss what’s included and excluded from this category, and why it’s so attractive to contemporary writers—especially those who use it to make space for marginalized identities.

The class will be primarily concerned with the discussion of student-produced work, with smaller emphases on writing exercise to practice new modes. While students will be free to write in any genre or blend of genres, my hope is that the ideas and techniques behind speculative writing can vitalize any kind of project, from small moments to the defining apparatus. Students can use speculation to begin new work, develop in-progress work, or add depth to existing work. Assignments will be open-topic and open-genre, so all different kinds of writers are welcome in this class! Writers will also be supported on longer projects, such as theses-in-progress, as well as single, shorter, or experimental work.

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

CRN: 10084 Instructor: Wong, Jane

ENG 510 Topics in Rhetoric: Disability Rhetoric 5cr

CRN: 10241 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Lucchesi, Andrew

Disability Rhetoric

This class focuses on the ways disability identity, expression, and community have deep connections to rhetorical traditions both ancient and contemporary. Topics will range from the rhetoric of personal disclosure, to the power of community writing about disability, to the ways disabled voices promote accessibility and activist reforms. We will draw from the Disability Justice principles of intersectionality, cross-movement solidarity, and collective liberation. What does it mean to question what is normal, or to move beyond individualist binaries of ability and disability? How can we be attentive to the connections between embodiment and rhetorical agency? Projects for this class will include recording public-facing videos and writing original research papers or creative projects on topics of your choosing.

Here is a list of books I am considering. Most texts are available for free as ebooks through the library.

Black Disability Politics by Sami Schalk
Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness by Remi Yergeau
Disability Rhetoric by Jay Dolmage
Mad At School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life by Margaret Price
Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life by Margaret Price
The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepsna-Samarasinha (new $20)
Graphic Public Health: A Comics Anthology and Road Map
Sensory: Life on the Spectrum by Bex Ollerton (new $17)
Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People, A Disability Justice Primer (ebook $7, print $21)

ENG 540 Studies in Global Lit: Afro-Pessimism/Black Joy 5cr

CRN: 11987 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Lee, Jean

Afro-Pessimism/Black Joy
Afro-pessimism is a critical framework which interrogates how attempts to allay Black suffering by appealing to a shared humanity or theories of liberation (feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, etc.) only entrench the ways “Black people are positioned, contained, and punished…both excluded from and necessary to the category of the Human.” Yet some critics of Afro-pessimism argue that it essentializes and exceptionalizes Black suffering, papers over substantial material changes in racial justice, and preempts a coalitional politics and a more, dare I say, “optimistic” hope for a Black futurity not overdetermined by trauma and violence. Concurrently, there has been a proliferation of the Black Joy movement. For instance, the nonprofit, Upset Homegirls, claims that their Black Joy project does not to erase Black pain but “affirm[s] that I am not a victim. I am agent of change. It rejects the idea that violence…injustice, discrimination, prejudice, and dominance over others are normal and acceptable actions.” In this class, students will engage with Afro-pessimist deconstructions of humanism through Black scholars such as Frank Wilderson, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Sylvia Winter, Fred Moten, Calvin Warren, and Marquis Bey. This class also queries the resonance or dissonance between the aforementioned academic and activist turns in the early 2020s.

ENG 550 Studies in American Literature 5cr

CRN: 12951 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Laffrado, Laura Fernandes

American Auto/biographics

CONTENT: In this seminar we’ll read American autobiographical texts from the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century. We’ll look at stories of selfhood by Black, Native, and White authors. We’ll pay close attention to how gender and racial identities are blurred in these texts and in the ways the texts were received. We’ll think about self-representation, subject formation, and other autobiographical practices. On our way, we’ll consider American puritanism, domestic violence, gender, genre, race, and capitalism, among other issues.

While this isn’t a seminar in pedagogies, the texts and contexts of this seminar provide solid preparation for those who might go on to teach an American literature survey. Past participants in this seminar have subsequently had their seminar papers published, have presented parts of their seminar papers at national academic conferences, and have successfully used their seminar papers as writing samples for applications to doctoral study and law school.

Note: As with much early American writing, the readings contain scenes/subjects that may be triggering for some readers.

ASSIGNMENTS: Regular reading, oral presentations, and a 15-20 page seminar paper.

EVALUATION: Evaluation based on seminar participation, oral presentations, and the seminar paper.

TEXTS:

K. Z. Derounian Stodola (ed.), Women's Indian Captivity Narratives
Abigail Abbot Bailey, The Memoir of Abigail Abbott Bailey
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano
Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Sarah Winnemucca, Life Among the Piutes
James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Ella Higginson, Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature

Most if not all texts will be available at no cost online.

ENG 580 Studies in Film: Spirituality in Global Cinema 5cr

CRN: 12527 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Odabasi, Eren

+ Film Viewing: W 5:00-7:50pm

Note: The film screening time conflicts with the weekly meetings of graduate student instructors and will be rescheduled. Please stay tuned for updates.

This graduate seminar explores multiple theoretical approaches to spirituality in global cinema. Since Paul Schrader first formulated the transcendental style in the early 1970s, several scholars have inquired about what makes certain films contemplative, profound or spiritual. How do films move beyond questions of narrative progression or ideology to explore universal, timeless, and often abstract themes about the human condition? In order to answer this question, Gilles Deleuze developed the notion of “time-image” while Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky made a series of poetic, unclassifiable films about time, faith, and the human soul before writing a book that summarized his approach to cinema. Then the “slow cinema” movement emerged, utilizing stillness and filmic duration to create a similar, albeit distinct sense of spirituality and transcendence.

What are the common thematic and stylistic elements that characterize cinematic portrayals of spirituality? This seminar aims to offer a range of possible answers to this question by tracing the lineage outlined above. Throughout the quarter, we will discuss canonical films by various important directors and work towards a mid-length research paper as a part of our inquiry.

FILMS:

The Mirror, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975
Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979
Nostalghia, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983
An Autumn Afternoon, directed by Yasujiro Ozu, 1962
Au Hasard Balthazar, directed by Robert Bresson, 1966
Ordet, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955
Winter Light, directed by Ingmar Bergman, 1963
Tree of Wooden Clogs, directed by Ermanno Olmi, 1978
Uzak, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002
The Turin Horse, directed by Bela Tarr, 2011

BOOKS:

Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Paul Schrader, University of California Press, 2018.

Sculpting in Time. Andrey Tarkovsky, University of Texas Press, 1989.

Poetics of Slow Cinema: Nostalgia, Absurdism, Boredom. Emre Caglayan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Winter 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

100-Level English Courses

ENG 101 Writing Your Way Through WWU 5cr

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

200-Level English Courses

ENG 201 Writing in Humanities: Pop Music 5cr

CRN: 10567 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael Patrick

ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

CRN: 10057 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

CRN: 10163 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Ellis, Dennin

CRN: 10422 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Redwoman, Zoe

CRN: 10568 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Troy, Eddy

CRN: 10569 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

CRN: 10570 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Golden, Sean

ENG 203 Writing for Public & Professional Audiences 5cr

CRN: 12186 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

ENG 216 American Literature 5cr

CRN: 12518 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Laffrado, Laura

ENG 234 African-American Literature 5cr

CRN: 13873 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Prichard, Tony

ENG 235 Native/Indigenous Literatures 5cr

CRN: 12941 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Redwoman, Zoe

300-Level English Courses

ENG 301 Writing&Public: Writing With Sound 5cr

CRN: 10279 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Cushman, Jeremy

ENG 302 Technical Writing 5cr

CRN: 10306 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Sarkar, Rachel

CRN: 10346 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

CRN: 10391 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

CRN: 10426 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Sarkar, Rachel

CRN: 10945 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

CRN: 14016 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Guadrón, Melissa

ENG 307 Seminar: Medieval 5cr

CRN: 11773 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Amendt-Raduege, Amy

ENG 308 Seminar: Early Modern 5cr

CRN: 13875 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny

ENG 309 Seminar: The Long 18th Century 5cr

CRN: 11096 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Loar, Christopher

ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

CRN: 11097 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Hardman, Pam

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

CRN: 11098 DAY/TIME: MWF 02:30-03:50 pm Instructor: Heim, Stefania

ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

CRN: 10077 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Troy, Eddy

ENG 314 Critical Theories & Prac II 5cr

CRN: 11977 DAY/TIME: MWF 11:30-12:50 pm Instructor: Hardman, Pam

CRN: 11978 DAY/TIME: MWF 01:00-02:20 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

ENG 318 Survey: Early Modern 5cr

CRN: 11979 DAY/TIME: TR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Forsythe, Jenny

ENG 320 Survey: The Long 19th C 5cr

CRN: 11566 DAY/TIME: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Anderson, Katherine

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

CRN: 12191 DAY/TIME: TR 04:00-05:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

ENG 333 Global Lit: Scribes & Griots 5cr

CRN: 13031 Instructor: Wise, Christopher

ENG 334 Texts Across N. Am and Eur 5cr

CRN: 13879 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Winrock, Cori

ENG 335 TxtsOutAm&Eur: Senegal 5cr

CRN: 13031 Instructor: Wise, Christopher

ENG 336 Scriptural Lit 5cr

CRN: 12942 DAY/TIME: TR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Loar, Christopher

ENG 337 Travel Writing in the Sahel 2cr

CRN: 13032 Instructor: Wise, Christopher

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

CRN: 10223 DAY/TIME: MWF 08:30-09:50 am Instructor: Colen, Elizabeth

ENG 339 Mythology and Literature 5cr

CRN: 12519 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Vulić, Kathryn

ENG 344 Film&Media Across North America and Europe: Post-Apocalyptic Film 5cr

CRN: 14034 DAY/TIME: TR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Cosey, Felicia

Film Viewing DAY/TIME: T 04:00-06:50 pm

ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

CRN: 10571 DAY/TIME: MWF 10:00-11:20 am Instructor: Golden, Sean

ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr