Department of English
300-level courses
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303 - Critical Approaches to the Study of Literature
303-01 MW 15:30-16:45 - C. Moraru
The course provides an introduction to literature study, interpretation, and research. This class will familiarize you with the fundamentals of literary criticism: its basic notions, methods, research tools, and resources. It revolves around certain approaches to literature, from the traditional to the more innovative ones, which come about in the wake of the “linguistic revolution” and its focus on language and textuality. We will use both primary and secondary materials to see how critics from late 19th-century historism to the most recent trends in identity studies interpret literature and its relations to culture. Our “supersection” course combines opening lectures by the instructor and discussion, with emphasis on the latter. It also requires group work and research of various kinds. Midterm and final exams (in-class).
303-02WI TR 12:30-13:45 - S. Yarbrough
This writing-intensive course will examine major theories governing contemporary literary studies, current conflicts and debates within the discipline, and the forms and conventions of contemporary critical writing and research.
303-03WI TR 15:30-16:45 - S. Yarbrough
This writing-intensive course will examine major theories governing contemporary literary studies, current conflicts and debates within the discipline, and the forms and conventions of contemporary critical writing and research.
315 - Postcolonial Literatures
315-01 MW 15:30-16:45 - A. Hartwiger
321 - Linguistics for Teachers
321-01 TR 12:30-13:45 - W. Beale
321-02 TR 15:30-16:45 - W. Beale
322 - The Teaching of Writing
322-02 T 13:30-16:20 - J. Reynolds
Prerequisite: University Reasoning and Discourse requirements must already have been met. For students seeking licensure in English, it is recommended that 321 be taken first. Principles of written discourse with a survey of techniques of teaching composition. Instruction in composing, editing, and criticizing written discourse. This course is designed for prospective high school English teachers and is required for “A” licensure.
323 - Literary Nonfiction
323-01 MWF 10:00-10:50 - R. Applegarth
Memoir and Autoethnography
This course is designed for writers from any major and any background who love to read high-quality nonfiction prose and who want to improve their own ability to write nonfiction that is provocative, powerful, thoughtful, and significant. Because writing well depends upon reading extensively, this course demands a great deal of reading; required texts include a practical manual, Writing the Memoir, an anthology of contemporary literary nonfiction, The Fourth Genre, and three book-length memoirs by Mary McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, and John Edgar Wideman. Writing activities will be varied, including many informal in-class exercises and three long pieces of literary nonfiction, 7-12 pages each, all of which will undergo multiple substantial revisions before final readings; one of these pieces, an autoethnography, will also require outside research. Additional requirements include active involvement in class workshops by reading critically and responding thoughtfully to peers’ writing and active participation in all class discussions and activities. Course discussions will range over a variety of subjects, from the techniques and strategies of published nonfiction writers to the murky realms of truth, art, ethics, and the relation between public action and private experience.
325 - Writing Fiction: Intermediate
325-01 TR 14:00-15:15 - H. Jones
326 - Writing Poetry: Intermediate
Pr. 221 or permission of instructor.
326-01 MW 15:30-16:45 - R. Bowman
331 - Women in Literature
331-01 TR 15:30-16:45 - M. Sanchez
“American Women Writers”
The traditional version: this course will offer a survey of women writers working in the United States from the late 18th century through the present day. The focus will be upon literary history and genre: how do women manipulate social conventions and mores in order to make their voices heard? What types of genres, styles, and forms are most often appropriated by women, and why? Are living writers exempt from the expectations and demands of their ancestors?
The untraditional version: we’re reading an invigorating mix of high art and commercial success, serious and entertaining, intellectually approved and culturally lamented. We start with a first lady’s letters, a slave girl’s poetry, and a Puritan’s snark; proceed through immigrants, flapper girls, and war; and end with award winners, chick lit, and shiny vampires. Course goals include becoming expert on U.S. women writers, and being smarter than your friends.
The reading list, whether you choose to be traditional or untraditional, will include canonical and noncanonical writers, as well as fiction and nonfiction. Authors may include: Abigail Adams, Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Maria Stewart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Zitkala-Sa, Zora Neale Hurston, Jhumpa Lahiri, Julia Alvarez, and Stephenie Meyer. Assignments will be composed of short essays and a final exam.
336 - Introduction to Chaucer
336-01 MW 14:00-15:15 - A. Vines
339 - Shakespeare: Early Plays and Sonnets
339-01 MW 15:30-16:45 - M. Dowd
We will read seven plays in addition to selected sonnets from the first half of Shakespeare’s career. Our primary focus will be on the comedies and histories, though we will also read one early tragedy. Particular attention will be paid to the structure and the language of the plays and to the ways in which these texts engage with the theatrical, historical, and social tensions of Elizabethan England. Class will consist of a combination of lecture and discussion. Assignments will include one reading quiz per play, two short papers, and two exams.
341 - Themes in Literature
341-01 TR 11:00-12:15 - J. Reynolds
Young Adult Literature
Critical study and evaluation of the genre; examination of modes and themes found in the literature; strategies of effective reading; study of the relationship of the genre to children's literature and adult literature; discussion techniques for teachers. Restricted to students seeking teacher certification.
341-02 MW 14:00-15:15 - R. Applegarth
Rhetorical Power and Practice
This course teaches rhetoric as an ancient art of practical wisdom and as a contemporary field of study, introducing students to the historical depth and contemporary breadth of rhetorical scholarship. Beginning with a thorough grounding in rhetorical terms and principles, this course asks students to use these principles in three major course projects, each of which requires adopting a particular role: rhetorical analyst, communication consultant, and historian of rhetorical practice. Required texts will include Crowley and Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students as well as articles and book chapters related to genre theory, research methods, and rhetorical criticism and theory. Individual student research—in the library, in databases, online, and in archives—will provide the primary documents under analysis in each project. In addition to these writing and research projects, substantial revision, participation in workshops, and active engagement with course readings, discussions, and activities are required.
345 - Victorian Literature
345-01WI TR 14:00-15:15 - M. Gibson
English 345 is an introduction to Victorian literature. We will read a variety of texts—poetry, prose non-fiction, and three novels. Readings will include poems by Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Rossetti’s, August Webster, Amy Levy, Toru Dutt, and perhaps some others. We also read Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, a novel by Dickens (you may have a choice here; I don’t want you to duplicate previous reading), and Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. You might get a start on the novels over the winter break. There will a two take home examinations and an analytical / research paper, along with considerable in-class and informal writing. The in-class writing will take various forms, from reading quizzes to imaginative exercises, to dialogues. You’ll be required to revise the paper, and to work on it in stages through the second half of the semester.
350- Twentieth-Century English Novel
350-01 TR 9:30-10:45 - K. Cushman
Twentieth-Century English Novel. This course will cluster around the giants of British modernism: Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Forster. The syllabus will also include such 30s figures as Greene and Waugh and perhaps a contemporary novelist. Much of the course will focus on stylistic and thematic aspects of modernist fiction. Midterm, perhaps a presentation, term paper, final.
358 - Modern Poetry
358-01 TR 12:30-13:45 - A. Cuda
This course will introduce students to the poetry and poetic theories of the major poets writing in America, England, and Ireland during the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Poets typically use verbal style to create the effect of a feeling, thinking “self” uttering the lines of the poem. We will explore how modern poets thought about the psychological make-up of this projected self (especially its emotional life), how their stylistic experiments fit into the history of lyric poetry, and how the different “schools” of poetry helped to set the stage for contemporary poetic practice. By the end of the semester, students should be able to (1) identify the unique styles of the poets whom we will study, (2) write clearly about those poets’ styles and thematic concerns, and (3) discuss the broader issues and theoretical questions associated with poetry as an art form in the modern period.
359 - Contemporary Poetry
359-01 MW 14:00-15:15 - S. Dischell
360 - The Eighteenth Century
360-01SI TR 14:00-15:15 - J. Evans
We will read and discuss a variety of British literature: fiction by Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Eliza Haywood; poetry by the Earl of Rochester, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Anne Finch; plays by William Wycherley and John Gay; and non-fiction by Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Mary Astell. We will explore some important cultural issues: nation and empire, the literary marketplace, gender roles. In this speaking-intensive section, you will make several presentations, among which will be an oral interpretation of poetry and a two-person project on an issue of The Spectator. You will also write short answer exams and two essays.
371 - Literary Study of the Bible
371-01 TR 9:30-10:45 - C. Hodgkins
Substantial selections from both the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and from the New Testament—from Genesis through Revelation, from origin narrative, lyric poetry, and wisdom literature to epic, drama, gospel, and prophecy. Throughout the course, we will examine the texts through questions about its literary elements: genre, plot, characterization, figurative language, verse and narrative structure, etc. Secondarily, we will attend to historical and archeological contexts, and to varied theories of textual composition. Class will consist of lecture, discussion, and some group work. Regular reading quizzes, two examinations (midterm and final), one short psalm analysis paper.
371-02 TR 12:30-13:45 - C. Hodgkins
Substantial selections from both the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and from the New Testament—from Genesis through Revelation, from origin narrative, lyric poetry, and wisdom literature to epic, drama, gospel, and prophecy. Throughout the course, we will examine the texts through questions about its literary elements: genre, plot, characterization, figurative language, verse and narrative structure, etc. Secondarily, we will attend to historical and archeological contexts, and to varied theories of textual composition. Class will consist of lecture, discussion, and some group work. Regular reading quizzes, two examinations (midterm and final), one short psalm analysis paper.
373 - American Romanticism
373-01 TR 12:30-13:45 - M. Sanchez
“Literature and Its Malcontents”
The traditional version: in this course, we will be studying fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the American romantic period (late 1830s through the Civil War). Our goals will be to understand how romanticism developed in the U.S. , and how it aided the growth of our nascent literary marketplace and literary establishment.
The untraditional version: American romanticism, in its essence, is a cultural movement of individualism, anger, and striving for the divine. It was embraced by those who abhorred the status quo, and those whose burning intellects could find no refuge in ordinariness. Our authors include a former minster and a woman who thought of her writing as her “ministry”; an orphan, a bankrupt, and an escaped slave; dandies, agoraphobes, and a woman who introduces her main character by suggesting that said character may be “possessed.” This is not easy literature, but it is GOOD literature, period.
Authors: Emerson, Dickinson, Thoreau, Fuller, Hawthorne, Whitman, Stowe, Douglass, Wilson, Melville, Stoddard. Assignments: short papers and a final exam.
374 - Early African American Writers
374-01 MWF 9:00-9:50 - N. Morrissette
This upper-level course provides a survey of African American literature from its inception through the 1920s. Readings for the course consist of poetry, slave narratives, novels, essays, and short stories. Texts will be read through major historical periods of African American experiences and literary responses to them, with particular attention paid to responses to: 1.) slavery and Reconstruction—the evolution from slave narratives to autobiography to fictions; 2.) oral traditions and their incorporation into printed literature; and 3.) the Great Migration, the Great War, and the New Negro literary renaissances of the early twentieth century. Visual art, film and sound recordings will accompany the introduction of texts as contextual enrichment and to place the past in dialogue with our present-day views of history and culture.
374-02 MWF 11:00-11:50 - N. Morrissette
This upper-level course provides a survey of African American literature from its inception through the 1920s. Readings for the course consist of poetry, slave narratives, novels, essays, and short stories. Texts will be read through major historical periods of African American experiences and literary responses to them, with particular attention paid to responses to: 1.) slavery and Reconstruction—the evolution from slave narratives to autobiography to fictions; 2.) oral traditions and their incorporation into printed literature; and 3.) the Great Migration, the Great War, and the New Negro literary renaissances of the early twentieth century. Visual art, film and sound recordings will accompany the introduction of texts as contextual enrichment and to place the past in dialogue with our present-day views of history and culture.
382 - Modern British and American Drama
382-01 TR 12:30-13:45 - K. Cushman
The emphasis this semester will be on "classic American drama" Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes and Another Part
of the Forest, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, William Inge's Bus Stop, and Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead. Students will be required to see productions of the Hellman, Inge, and Wilson plays at the University of
North Carolina School of the Arts and UNCG. The reading list will also include works by Bernard Shaw, Harold Pinter, and August Wilson. Midterm, possibly a presentation, term paper, final.
390 - Writing Center Theory & Practice
390-01 MWF 10:00-10:50 - S. Littlejohn