English classes in our department range from general survey courses to classes that offer a more in-depth look at a literary genre, writer, literary time period, and theoretical approach. Below is the list of English courses offered in Fall 2025. Please see the University Catalog for a complete list of courses offered by our department.
| ENGL 106 Introduction to Literary Studies | Dr. Christina Jarvis Section 01 Section 02 | Exploring the theme of “human journeys,” this course offers an overview of the major areas within and current approaches to literary studies. In addition to gaining practical research and analysis skills, students will discover and spread literary joy through engagement projects, such as "Lit bombs." |
ENGL 124
| Mary Weiser Section 01 | This course, based on immersion in American literature and narrative representation of the American Dream, is designed to expose students to a range of historical and current texts. Students will examine how a sense of national identity shapes individual understandings and visions of what’s possible in the context of social and political climates in America. |
| ENGL 124 American Fictions | Dr. Bruce Simon Section 02 | This section will address four themes: American origins and mission, slavery and freedom, migration and travel, and utopianism and apocalypticism. |
| ENGL 124 American Fictions | Rebecca Cuthbert Section 03 Section 04 | These sections of American Fictions will explore and discuss both the recorded and the real American narrative through its individual ghosts stories. We will start with indigenous cultures and read our way to contemporary authors. |
| ENGL 131 Word and Image | Dr. Susan Spangler Section HR | We will study the interrelation of words and images through graphic memoirs in this reading/writing workshop. Write your own graphic memoir throughout the class to make sense of your life experiences. |
| ENGL 132 Word and Sound | Alison Pipitone Section 01 Section 02 | This is an online/asynchronous course, open to students with or without songwriting experience. Students will complete assignments on lyrics; music; production; close listening- and more! We will also explore the concept of Resilience in songs, using three eras in history as a starting point. |
| ENGL 144 Reading Humanity | Prof. Daniel Laurie Section 01 | This section of Reading Humanity focuses on group dynamics and the sense of belonging. The key questions we will consider are: What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to be an outsider? And what’s at stake in conformity? |
| ENGL 144 Reading Humanity | Dr. Emily VanDette Section 02 Section 03 | These sections of Reading Humanity focus on the theme "Representing Animals," and the course explores depictions of animals in literary works, philosophical discussions, and examples from art history. |
| ENGL 167 Border Crossings | Dr. Ici Vanwesenbeeck Section 01 Section 02 | This section of the course, “Border Crossings: Away from Home” will focus on the experience of refugees, exile, and migration in parts of the world affected by war, conflict, and political unrest. Students will study literary narratives (multi genre) about homelessness, displacement, memory, nostalgia, melancholia, in specific relation to war and armed conflict. |
| ENGL 167 Border Crossings | Dr. David Kaplin Section 03 | The Romantic Movement developed in Western Europe, but it has influenced writers across the globe from the nineteenth century to the present day. This course explores Romantic influences in the literatures of Russia, India, and Japan with a focus on how writers incorporate Romantic themes and conventions into their own literary traditions. |
| ENGL 167 Border Crossings | Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck Section 04 | Can the Holocaust be represented? To capture the scope and magnitude of the Nazi atrocities has been said to lie beyond the limits of literary or artistic imagination, even as artists have recognized the need to do so. This course offers an overview of how various writing types sought to bear witness to the Holocaust. |
| ENGL 215 Detective Fiction | Dr. David Kaplin Section 01 | Detective stories often enact the psychological and social anxieties of their times. We will study classic and contemporary mystery plots, legendary detectives, and the disquieting social issues that still lurk within these stories even after the criminals have been caught. |
| ENGL 227 Stage/Screen (Ancient Greeks, Roman Freaks, Cinematic Geeks) | Dr. Shannon McRae Section HR | Are you or a loved one obsessed with ancient Rome? Now you can have friends! We read Greek plays, Greek and Roman myths, and Roman satire and watch recent movies that interpret them. You'd be surprised how different and how much the same we are now than back then. |
| ENGL 227 Stage/Screen | Dr. Ann Siegle Drege Section 02 | Change is difficult! Together we'll read plays and screen films that explore ways we humans handle change. |
| ENGL 240 African American Lit and Culture | Dr. Saundra Liggins Section 01 | This course explores African American literary and cultural expression from its origins to the present, emphasizing how Black Americans have resisted oppression, affirmed identity, and imagined new possibilities for freedom. |
| ENGL 274 Social Justice and the Written Word | Dr. Saundra Liggins Section 01 | Using a foundation of the themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion, in this 100% online course we will how the written word is used as social critique and to effect social change. Our specific focus will be on literature and speeches of the Civil Rights Movement. |
| ENGL 274 Social Justice and the Written Word | Dr. Christina Jarvis Section 02 | This course will explore key U.S. social justice movements and voices from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In addition to examining central principles, strategies, and ideas from these movements, we will analyze the societal factors and individual and group identities that inspired people to create social change. |
| ENGL 274 Social Justice and the Written Word | Mara Beneway Section 03 | Personal narratives have a profound impact on our society, as “social justice has always depended upon the testimonies of the oppressed” (Febos). In this course we will discuss, contextualize, and write narrative-driven, nonfiction texts using some of the most celebrated American authors such as Toni Morrison and Joan Didion as models. |
| ENGL 275 Black Women Writers | Dr. Saundra Liggins Section 01 | This class gives students the opportunity to read texts by Black women to see the world the way that they did (or still do) while also seeing our world through their perspectives. |
| ENGL 280 Intro to Film | Dr. Shannon McRae Section 01 | Everybody watches movies, and everybody has opinions about them. But would you like to see more deeply into them, to understand them on multiple levels? Yes you would! |
| ENGL 296 American Identities | Dr. Bruce Simon Section 01 | What has it meant, what does it mean, what could it mean, what should it mean to be an American? This semester, we will focus on the power and future of the stories we tell ourselves and each other about “America." |
| ENGL 302 British Literary Landmarks | Dr. Shannon McRae Section 01 | Sometimes, somebody writes a thing and everybody goes "WTF? This is different!" Except it's British, so they don't say WTF. They way "what ho!" or "blimey!" or something. Let's see what they were on about! |
| ENGL 303 Global Literary Landmarks | Dr. Jeanette McVicker Section 01 | What's a literary landmark? A text that shakes up the tradition or expectations of what a text can or should do. We'll read some cool texts that challenge genre, norms, who can speak and how these changed the direction of interpretation, pedagogy and culture. |
| ENGL 373 Grammar for Everyone | Dr. KimMarie Cole Section 01 | Every native speaker of a language or dialect knows that language well. Usually that's unconscious knowledge. This semester we'll explore and play to bring those ideas to our conscious awareness and experiment with how to make effective choices when we speak and write. |
| ENGL 399 Feminist Lit. Recovery Theory | Dr. Emily VanDette Section 01 | Have you ever wondered HOW so much valuable women’s writing has been marginalized or erased throughout history, and HOW feminist literature scholars work to recover it? This course focuses on feminist theories and the role of digital humanities in the recovery of women’s literature. Students will also work on transcription and editorial projects to practice feminist literary recovery. |
| ENGL 412 Shakespeare:Romance and Comedies | Dr. Ici Vanwesenbeeck
| This is a great course for anyone who wants to delve deep into Shakespeare's late romances and early comedies, and learn about patronage, theatre, and literary norms in Shakespeare's England. |
| ENGL 427 Major Authors:Baudelaire, Zweig, Heaney | Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck Section 01 | This course will focus on three major writers that were also major translators. How did their engagement with foreign-language writers shape their own work, and vice versa? |