ENGL 104: Composition and Rhetoric

Taught by Dr. Melissa McCoul

Do you think of yourself as a writer? What have your experiences with writing been like? When you hear the terms “writer” or “writing,” “argument” or “research,” what kinds of images come to mind? By the end of this course, I hope you will think of yourself as a writer if you don’t today, and specifically as an academic writer. But more than that, I hope you will expand your definition of what writing is, and how the media in which we write shape the messages we produce. In this class, we’ll be analyzing—and writing in—a variety of genres including video essays, podcasts, narratives, and researched position papers. And we’ll consider how writing in and about digital media shapes our sense of ourselves and our world.

ENGL 107: Introduction to the Health Humanities

Taught by Dr. Sara DiCaglio

As events of the past several years show, our relationship to health is complex, with questions of how to care for one another, how to define health and embodiment, and how to live in relation to our bodies and one another as mediated by ideas of health playing important roles in the choices and experiences we live with. This course asks how the humanities and health interconnect—how do we think about, write about, read about, draw, and visualize our health, and what do these and other humanities-related practices do for larger questions of health-care and ethics? The Health Humanities is a growing, cross-disciplinary field that practices the analysis of health and illness within cultural activities and products. Students of the Health Humanities may use methods of analysis drawn from history, literature, philosophy, disability studies and bioethics, as well as those social sciences that “employ humanistic methods relevant to medical enquiry and practice, such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology,” in order to better understand the lived experience of health and illness (Jones et al, 4-5). Health Humanities serves to question the “two cultures” thesis that postulates the sciences and humanities are separate, arguing instead that our experience of health and illness is never only biological or cultural, but always both. Students with backgrounds and interests in health, science, medicine, the arts, and the humanities more broadly will benefit from the interdisciplinary skills developed in this course and larger field.

ENGL 207: Human Thinking and Digital Culture

Taught by Shawna Ross

This class will give you tools to think through the interdependencies between human thinking and digital culture. How do the technologies you use influence the way you think and behave? Conversely, how might we apply the thinking tools created by humanities fields to promote critical thinking about these technologies and to open up creative possibilities for using them in more positive ways? We will focus on six technologically dense sites of human action: education (including learning management systems, computer classrooms, and ChatGPT), work (particularly remote work and software suites designed for the office), the body (especially biotrackers, patient portals, cybernetic implants, and self-care culture), social life (from finding dates to texting your parents and looking up your ancestors online), entertainment (including gaming platforms and the growth of streamers), and artistic expression (especially fandom communities, influencers, bloggers, podcasters, and Instagram poets). To analyze these technologies, we will learn and apply concepts from philosophy, media theory, software studies, and the medical humanities. To take advantage of past writers’ insights about technology and human thought, we’ll read novels and non-fiction about technological history, watch skits and films related to social media, and close read websites and platforms to understand how their appearance and structure affects the way we think. Assignments may include digital ethnographies (profiling a particular Internet community), meme portfolios (creating your own memes), proposals (identifying and proposing solutions for some problem related to digital technology), and manifestoes (articulating your own values and best practices related to technology use).

Proposed Readings:

The assigned texts are Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet, Henry James's In the Cage, Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, and Martha Wells's All Systems Red. Online essays will also be assigned. Films/TV may include The Social Network, Only Murders in the Building, and Gossip Girl.

ENGL 210 Honors: Technical & Professional Writing

Taught by Dr. Matt McKinney

Focuses on writing for professional settings; correspondence and researched reports fundamental to the technical and business workplace—memoranda, business letters, research proposals and presentations, use of graphical and document design; emphasis on audience awareness, clarity of communication and collaborative teamwork.

Proposed Readings:

Howdy or Hello OER

ENGL 221/MODL 221: World Literature

Taught by Apostolos Vasilakis

Survey of world literature from the ancient world through the sixteenth century in relation to its historical and cultural contexts; texts selected from a diverse group of authors, traditions and genres. This course will examine some of the major texts of world literature, directing our analyses around a core group of central ideas. Reading and analyzing the texts in this focused manner, we will investigate the evolutions and transitions in the literary tradition, spanning from the ancient world through the sixteenth century. During this course we will see how a number of writers from different cultures (Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, and Shikibu) situate their stories within their own historical reality, and how they address and explore questions about what it means to be human, to make choices, to love, to act, to be.

Proposed Readings:

• Homer, The Odyssey

• The Epic of Gilgamesh

• Sophocles, Oedipus the King

• Virgil, The Aeneid

• Dante, The Inferno

• Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (selections)

• The Thousand and One Nights (selections)

ENGL 262/HISP 262: Introduction to Latinx Literary Studies

Taught by Regina Mills

This course introduces students to Latinx literature and Latinx literary studies. That is, we will read some key texts in Latinx literature and also learn about and apply a variety of methods and approaches to the study of Latinx literature. You can expect not only a diversity based in socio-historical context (e.g. 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), ethno-racial (e.g. AfroLatino/a/x), and national background (e.g. Cuban American, Mexican American, Dominican American) but also an exploration of the diverse literary traditions of people of Hispanic and Latinx descent in the United States, such as novels, memoirs, poetry, film, comics, and video games.

Proposed Readings:

While these readings are still subject to change, they may include:

Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don OR Who Would Have Thought It?

Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh, Caballero: A Historical Novel

Americo Paredes, The Hammon and the Beans (short stories)

Achy Obejas, We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (short stories)

Hector Tobar, The Tattooed Soldier

Julio Anta, Frontera (comic)

Minority Media, Papo & Yo (video game)

Alex Rivera, Sleep Dealer (film)

Javier Zamora, Solito: A Memoir OR Unaccompanied (poetry)

Angie Cruz, Dominicana (novel)

Jennifer De Leon, White Spaces: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing

Ruben Degallado, The Family Izquierdo (novel)

Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans (novel) OR Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories

ENGL 303: Approaches to English Studies (Sherlock Holmes, Then and Now)

Taught by Shawna Ross

Sherlock Holmes is immortal. Ever since A Study in Scarlet appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, the world’s first consulting detective has been its favorite. Though Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off his creation—infamously tipping him over the Reichenbach Falls—ultimately, Doyle could not withstand the enormous pressure from his audience, publishers, friends, and family (even his mother!) to revive Sherlock Holmes. In this class, we treat Doyle’s works as a way to think about literary studies in a way that goes beyond the canon and understands real-life reading habits as important. Along the way, you’ll meet the original Sherlock Holmes in our mission to orient you to the English major. As you encounter the original Holmes over three distinct units, you will learn about the relevant social, cultural, technological, criminal, political, and geographic intertexts that will make these stories come alive for you intellectually. In the first unit, Novels, we’ll read the first two Sherlock texts: the novels A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. We’ll learn about close reading, which is how English majors look closely at structure, style, diction, and punctuation to understand how literature works, word by word. In the second unit, Short Stories, we’ll zero in on “what makes Sherlock story a Sherlock story,” finding out Doyle’s secret recipe so that you can write your own tale. We’ll also discover some of the primary approaches to literary criticism, which look at gender, sex, race, class, empire, and other important cultural and historical formations. In the final unit, we’ll focus just on The Hound of the Baskervilles while learning how to perform research and write a literature research paper. For each course meeting, you’ll earn participation/attendance credit by turning in Exit Tickets: a few sentences about what you learned that day, written in the final 5 minutes of class. They may be submitted on Canvas (preferably) or, if you don’t like using devices in class, by physically turning in a handwritten statement as you leave the room. Each of the three units will require you to complete a very different type of assignment: a close-reading essay, a pastiche, and a research essay. As you complete these assignments, you’ll be viewing some film/TV adaptations of Doyle’s works to add some (more?) fun to the process.

Proposed Readings:

Arthur Conan Doyle. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories. Bantam Classics, 1986: ISBN 0553328255.

ENGL 303: Approaches to English Studies (Everyday Horrors: Literatures of Fear, Anxiety, and Dread Then and Now)

Taught by James Francis

The science fiction-horror text is no stranger to literary criticism; in its written and visual forms, scholars have unpacked the ways in which the hybrid genre often tackles and represents shared sociocultural—including religious and economic—terrors and apprehensions through thematic, symbolic, and metaphorical story elements. When we examine a specific time period and the sci-fi horror narratives produced during that era, we discover that the texts serve as historical time markers, responding to global concerns that link our transnational humanity and perspectives in remarkable ways. From early written works to the 1950s-1970s heyday period of sci-fi horror film texts (mostly adaptations), examining narratives from this time span will allow us to consider how past anxieties transition into fears of the early 21st Century zeitgeist. As an introduction to the English major, we will engage with various types of narratives (short story, novel, fiction film, television) that confront science and horror as natural aspects of everyday living and genres (separate and combined) that fascinate us and develop strategies for reading, interpreting, researching, and writing about the narratives to gain a communal understanding of representative concepts in literature, rhetoric, and creative writing. Students will help select the final written works for study, as well as have input on the adapted films we examine. If you are interested in this course and/or plan on enrolling, please take a moment to engage with the first poll that will determine which sci-fi horror texts will be studied for the semester: https://qfreeaccountssjc1.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_abLXzMj7An0APci Enrolled students will be notified of the course-development poll once registration closes and/or the course reaches enrollment capacity.

Proposed Readings:

“The Empire of the Ants” (Wells 1905)

Empire of the Ants (Gordon 1977)

“The Birds” (Du Maurier 1952)

The Birds (Hitchcock 1963)

I Am Legend (Matheson 1954)

The Last Man on Earth (Ragona & Salkow 1964)

The Omega Man (Segal 1971)

The Midwich Cuckoos (Wyndham 1957)

Village of the Damned (Rilla 1960)

Selected Episodes of The Twilight Zone (Serling 1959-1964)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson 1886)

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (Baker 1971)

Demon Seed (Koontz 1973)

Demon Seed (Cammell 1977)

“Children of the Corn” (King 1977)

Children of the Corn (Kiersch 1984)

"Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (Aldiss 1969)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg 2001)

"Trucks" (King 1973)

Maximum Overdrive (King 1986)

The Mist (King 1980) The Mist (Darabont 2007)

"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (Dick 1966)

Total Recall (Verhoeven 1990)

"Button, Button" (Matheson 1970)

The Box (Kelly 2009)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (Wells 1896)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (Stanley & Frankenheimer 1996)

"The Colour Out of Space" (Lovecraft 1927)

Color Out of Space (Stanley 2019)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Matheson 1956)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold 1957)

ENGL 303: Approaches to English Studies (Art or Trash? Cultural Hierarchy America)

Taught by: Sally Robinson

In this honors section of ENGL 303, we will consider: who gets to decide on questions of literary value; relationships between mass culture and literary culture; the centrality of social class to cultural hierarchy; and the gendering of elite culture as “masculine” and popular culture as “feminine.” The course will be divided into two sections: 1) Modernism, and Middlebrow, and Mass Culture; and 2) Literary Fiction and Genre Fiction. We will also read widely in literary theory and criticism, and students will be introduced to key texts in cultural studies, debates the purposes and social functions of reading, and new ways of thinking about the vastly expanding literary and cultural landscape in the early 21st century.

Proposed Readings:

TENTATIVE: Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust Olive Prouty, Stella Dallas Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes AND But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes Jonathan Franzen, The Connections Stephen King, Misery Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Live of Oscar Wao

ENGL 303: Approaches to English Studies ("Not of an Age but for All Time": Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Appropriation)

Taught by Dorothy Todd:

This section of ENGL 303 focuses on the plays of William Shakespeare and interrogates the ways in which poets, novelists, directors, game designers, and even users of social media draw from and build upon the works of Shakespeare. We will consider both how Shakespeare’s works continue to speak to the most urgent issues of our day—national identity, sexual violence, systemic racism, the relationship between humans and nature—and how Shakespeare’s texts function as fertile ground for “play” in the form of computer games, memes, and fanfiction. In addition to practicing sustained close reading, students will be introduced to a wide variety of methodologies and critical approaches to literary studies that will prepare them for continued study in the English major. Since this is a writing intensive course, writing and research skills will also be a key focus of the course.

Proposed Readings:

William Shakespeare, Henry V

Lawrence Olivier (dir), Henry V (excerpts)

Kenneth Branagh (dir.), Henry V

Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”

William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing

Joss Whedon (dir.), Much Ado about Nothing

William Shakespeare, Othello

Keith Hamilton Cobb, American Moor

Shakespeare, King Lear

Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres

Empire – Fox TV show (excerpts)

Excerpts from Play the Knave (computer game), twitter, tumblr, etc.

English 303: Approaches to English Studies (Race, Medicine and Literature)

Section 901 Taught by Michael Collins

Race has been one of the fundamental organizing principles of post-Enlightenment Western society. It is inevitable, therefore, that ideas about race, racial identity, and racial differences should have affected medical concepts and medical practice. This course will use literature and selected texts from or about the history of medicine and/or disease to explore some of race’s effects on medicine, medical practice, particular groups of patients, the experience of doctors from underrepresented groups, and questions of medical ethics. Specifically, we will read stories by or about patients and doctors whose experience or health is impacted by the ideas about race, or about the relationship between race and disease, in the society around them.

Proposed Readings: Possible readings include Toni Morrison's Beloved, Audre Lorde's The Cancer Diaries, Rafael Campo's The Desire to Heal, Abraham Verghese's My Own Country and articles from medical and other journals.

ENGL 313: Medieval English Literature

Taught by Nancy Warren

This course provides a survey of Old and Middle English Literature. We will read Old English texts in modern translation and some Middle English texts in the original language. Readings include a variety of genres, including epic, romance, drama, life writing, lyric poetry, and devotional literature.

Proposed Readings:

Readings may include Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Letter on Virginity, the Guide for Anchoresses, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, cycle dramas, saints' lives, The Book of Margery Kempe, the Showings of Julian of Norwich, and Pearl.

ENGL 314: The English Renaissance

Taught by Kevin O'Sullivan

This course will provide a survey of the intellectual and artistic movement known as the English Renaissance, focusing in particular on literature written at the end of the sixteenth century. Discussions will begin with a broad investigation of the term ‘Renaissance,’ positioning the innovations that took place in England in proximity to analogous advances on the European continent. Throughout the semester, students will read broadly from authors working in three major literary forms—poetry, drama, and prose—and interrogate how these reflect the period of immense social, religious, and political upheaval during which they were composed. Together, we will seek to understand the relationship between these works and the wider culture of textual transmission in which they participated as well as the place of literature in an increasingly varied landscape of intellectual production.

Proposed Readings:

• Selections from Tottel’s Miscellany

• Sir Philip Sidney, _The Defense of Poesy_ and _Astrophil and Stella_

• Edmund Spenser, Selections from _The Shepheardes Calender_ and _The Faerie Queene_

• Anne Lock, _A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner_

• Lady Mary Wroth, _Pamphilia to Amphilanthus_

• Thomas Kyd, _The Spanish Tragedy_

• Christopher Marlowe, _Doctor Faustus_

• Anonymous, _Arden of Faversham_

• Thomas Dekker, _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_

• Thomas Deloney, _Jack of Newbury_

• George Gascoigne, _The Adventures of Master F.J._

• John Lyly, _Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit_

• Thomas Nashe, _The Unfortunate Traveller_

ENGL 316: Eighteenth Century English Literature and Culture

Section 500 taught by Margaret Ezell 

Period course in English poetry, prose and drama of the 18th century. Prerequisite: 3 credits of literature at 200-level or above. This course will over a wide survey of eighteenth-century English literature in its historical and cultural context. We’ll learn about the “long 18th Century,” which scholars define as lasting from 1660-1790s (and why it seems to last so long), organized into three sections. This is an exciting time in English history and literature, with new innovations in the theater (real women playing women’s parts on stage that are written by real women!), the creation of viable commercial authorship practices thanks to the creation of copyright, colonial expansion and encountering new cultures, questions about the status and roles of women in the family and in society as a whole, and new literary forms including newspapers and magazine, novels, and new types of poetry. Some of the authors we may read include the Earl of Rochester, John Bunyan, John Dryden, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Samuel Johnson, and Mary Wollstonecraft. The course will be historicist in orientation, engaging such issues as the material culture of literary life, performance studies, the formation of national and regional identities, conflicting religious cultures, and gender identity, but it will also seek to strengthen students’ abilities to read texts for their formal and aesthetic values. Assignments will be focused on improving students’ critical reading, writing, and research skills and may include multiple shorter response essays, editing and annotation projects, and a longer final paper.

Proposed Readings:

A mixture of poetry, fiction, drama, and popular writing probably including The Pilgrim's Progress, Oroonoko, Love in a Maze, The Rape of the Lock, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, excerpts of Gulliver's Travels, and The Rambler Essays

ENGL 317: Early British Drama

Taught by Kevin O'Sullivan

This course will provide an overview of British drama from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Discussions will begin with a contextual overview of dramatic forms and theatrical history relevant to the late medieval period through the ‘golden age’ of early modern drama during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Throughout the semester, students will critically respond to canonical as well as lesser-known texts representing a wide array of dramatic genres—the morality play, chivalric fantasy, city comedy, revenge tragedy, closet drama, and villain play—and investigate how these respond artistically to the social and political issues of the day.

Proposed Readings:

Thomas Kyd, _The Spanish Tragedy_

Anonymous, _Arden of Faversham_

Thomas Dekker, _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_

Thomas Heywood, _The Four Prentices of London_

Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, _The Roaring Girl_

Elizabeth Cary, _The Tragedy of Mariam_

John Webster, _The Duchess of Malfi_

Christopher Marlowe, _Doctor Faustus_

Ben Jonson, _The Alchemist_

Philip Massinger, _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_

James Shirley, _The Bird in the Cage_

ENGL 323: The American Renaissance

Taught by: Ira Dworkin

When F.O. Matthiessen defined the “American Renaissance,” he sought to characterize American literature of the period from 1830 to 1860, specifically writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Herman Melville. This era of cultural production was, in fact, even more vibrant than Matthiessen’s characterization indicates. Beyond these five men, a much wider multiracial array of literary figures was both explicitly and implicitly part of the same national conversations that dominated that era, and sought to engage questions of reform, resistance, colonialism, slavery, gender, and revolution. This course will consider the full breadth of U.S. literary production in the decades leading up to the U.S. Civil War.

Proposed Readings:

In addition to writings by Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, and Melville, we will also read works by Edgar Allan Poe, William Apess (Pequot), Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Margaret Fuller, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwe), David Walker, John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee), Theodore Winthrop, and Harriet Jacobs.

ENGL 330: Arthurian Literature

Taught by Jennifer Goodman Wollock

An introduction to the legend of King Arthur and Arthurian literature from the beginning (around 500 CE) down to the present. This great story of kingship, knightly fellowship,, and courtly love is one of the most influential narrative threads in literature, with ties to international folklore, art and culture, world history, political theory and social justice, chivalry and human rights. The adventures of King Arthur and his knights and the women who ride with them deserve our attention and understanding.

Proposed Readings:

James Wilhelm, The Romance of Arthur (anthology), paperback; Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Wife of Bath's Tale," (online); Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. Eugene Vinaver (Oxford paperback); Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King (paperback); and a more recent Arthurian work of your choice.

ENGL 334 (Summer I): Science Fiction Present and Past

Taught by Apostolos Vasilakis

In this course we will focus on science fiction literature spanning from the 19th to the 21st century. Starting with Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein we will read some of the most important writers and works of the genre and will explore the evolution of the genre. We will discuss how these stories satisfy the human desire and imagination to explore other worlds, space, time, and our relationship to the other. We will see how these stories question our (often fixed) perception of what is human and inhuman, shape or influence our understanding of technological progress, and redefine the relationship between the fictional and the real.

Proposed Readings:

Shelley: Frankenstein

Forster: “The Machine Stops”

Zamyatin: We

Capek: R.U.R.

Lem: Solaris

Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness

Delany: Nova

Okorafor: Binti

ENGL 351/FILM 351: Advanced Film (Auteur Theory)

Taught by James Francis

Auteur Theory—of German and French inception as a cinematic concept—represents a critical perspective in which a film's director can be recognized as the author of the text as reflected by a particular stylistic "voice" comprised of narrative themes, camera technique, dialogue, and other filmic elements, inclusive of the score and/or soundtrack. The auteur moniker is bestowed to those filmmakers whose work contains several films that align to their own particular artistic vision in the way we might recognize the collected literary works of Shakespeare, Octavia Butler, Jane Austen, Junji Ito, or Patricia Highsmith. As most contemporary filmmakers acknowledge filmmaking to be a collaborative process with the director acting as manager or guide for the production of its many authors (contributors to the way the text is put together through writing, acting, editing, etc.), auteur theory has been seen as throwing an elitist wrench into the concept of cinematic authorship; however, that debate is quite often met with a tempered understanding that the theoretical concept is merely a way to categorize and comprehend a singular director's contribution to cinema. Our course will examine and test auteur theory perspectives through an investigation of three filmmakers and selected works (four maximum) from their filmographies. Students will help select the directors for study, as well as have input on the films we examine from the selected artists. If you are interested in this course and/or plan on enrolling, please take a moment to engage with the first poll that will determine which directors will be studied for the semester: https://qfreeaccountssjc1.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_er4BTxaUKv4ienI Enrolled students will be notified of the course-development poll once registration closes and/or the course reaches enrollment capacity.

Proposed Readings:

Danny Boyle

Kathryn Bigelow

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Spike Lee

Lars Von Trier

Alfred Hitchcock

Paul Thomas

Anderson Alfonso

Cuarón

Pedro Almodóvar

David Cronenberg

Ang Lee

Todd Solondz

Gregg Araki

Luc Besson

Quentin Dupieux

Baz Luhrmann

Todd Haynes

Larry Clark

Harmony Korine

Michael Bay

Julia Ducournau

Xavier Dolan

Brandon Cronenberg

Barry Jenkins

ENGL 354: Modern Rhetorical Theory

Taught by Jason Crider

This course serves as an overview of some of the major theories and theorists of rhetoric in the 20th and 21st centuries. What is the relationship between rhetoric and culture? Rhetoric and (post)modernity? How does rhetoric function as a method of literary interpretation or cultural criticism? How does rhetoric function differently in oral, textual, and digital contexts? How has rhetoric been traditionally theorized and taught as an academic discipline? Students will explore a broad range of rhetorical theories over the course of the semester and practice applying them to their contemporary historical moment.

ENGL 355: Rhetoric of Style

Section 901 Taught by Dr. Matt McKinney

Everything you read, every show you watch, every conversation you have has a feeling, a tone, a shape about it that influences how you respond, how you feel about it, and what you do afterwards. This elusive character is what we’re trying to get at by bringing together these two words “Rhetoric”and “Style.” Can we systematically and rigorously examine this underlying sense of language, this shaping of responses, this variety of rhetorical power underlying our communication? Our approach will combine an intuitive development of style (getting a feel for it) with a more analytic and conceptual comprehension of stylistic form (dissecting through terms, grammar, etc.),with the understanding that some will favor one over the other, but all will benefit from both approaches. Both Rhetoric (as the study of persuasion) and Style (as the study of the shape of communication) do not deal with any one topic. To help focus our examination of style, we will use a common theme: American culture and American identity. We are using this because: It is a topic familiar to everyone; There is an incredible variety in ways of writing about American culture and values; Many periods in American history (including the present) have greatly altered and complicated the rhetorical context in which we speak about American culture(s). A whole variety of emotional responses are associated with speaking about our relationship to American culture(s) and identit(ies). People get emotional about this topic. They get defensive. They wax poetic. They get annoyed, frustrated, tired, excited (then bored and lose interest). Sometimes writing about American culture is political; sometimes it’s personal; sometimes it’s both. Sometimes there is an agenda; sometimes the writer is just trying to capture an experience. Our texts will include this whole array: from poetry to speeches to court documents to scholarly texts, we’ll consider how different stylistic modes work within this same constellation of concerns. Whatever your opinions and feelings about American culture(s), values, norms, taboos, identity(ies) and your relationships with each—these will all set the stage for reflecting on style and rhetorical effects. At the same time, to effectively analyze the rhetoric and style of these writings, we’ll need to reflect on the variety of ways people approach these topics, getting a bit of distance from our own opinions and feelings so that we can examine all of the possible stylistic choices involved. Following this attitude, we will all be respectful of the different avenues for communicating about American culture while all learning to untangle their relation to stylistic elements.

Proposed Readings:

Performing Prose (ecopy available via Evans) and a variety of texts relevant to US history and culture (speeches, songs, poems, essays, etc.).

ENGL 356/FILM 356 (Summer II): Literature and Film (Gothic Literature into Modern Horror: H.P. Lovecraft)

Taught by James Francis

The horror narrative, from its beginnings in Gothic literature to its evolution into the modern horror film, represents the umbrella concentration of material for the summer session. Our objective is to unlock various understandings about horror as a genre: its staple elements, narrative structures, themes, motifs/tropes, symbols/metaphors, and meanings through historical and cultural lenses over time. One end-goal is to work toward informed responses to the question: What can we learn from horror? As a point of focus, our course will feature a deep dive into selected short-fiction works by H. P. Lovecraft as weird fiction (cosmic horror); analysis of film adaptations from the author's writings; an examination and identification of Lovecraftian themes, motifs, tropes, etc. that serve as his writing style and aesthetic; and how the author's style of writing does or does not translate into the films made by the different directors who may have their own auteur styles. Students will help select the Lovecraft texts for study, as well as have input on the adapted films we examine. If you are interested in this course and/or plan on enrolling, please take a moment to engage with the first poll that will determine the course-content overview and which Lovecraft short stories will be studied for the summer session: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VD39CP7 Enrolled students will be notified of the course-development poll once registration closes and/or the course reaches enrollment capacity.

Proposed Readings:

"Dreams in the Witch House"

"The Call of Cthulhu"

"Dagon"

"The Colour Out of Space"

"Herbert West--Reanimator"

"From Beyond"

"At the Mountains of Madness"

"The Unnamable"

"Pickman's Model"

"The Dunwich Horror"

Lovecraft Country (TV series)

ENGL 360: Literature for Children

Taught by Dr. Melissa McCoul

Maybe you grew up reading Harry Potter or Holes, Nancy Drew or the Narnia stories. Maybe you were a comic-book kid. Whatever your personal predilections, you probably already have a pretty good sense of what children's literature is. But as soon as you try to define it, you'll find that safe-seeming category becomes slippery. In this course, we will begin to tease out the boundaries of this capacious category called “children's literature.” What counts? Who decides? What differentiates writing for children from writing for adults? Why should we, as adults, read children’s literature? In this course, we will explore a range of children’s literature in English, including picture books, poetry, contemporary novels, historical fiction, and fantasy. Our task is to think critically about what these books can tell us about how we (and others) understand childhood, how those definitions have changed over time, and how these books participate in larger movements of history, culture, and literature.

ENGL 361: Young Adult Literature

Sections 500 & 501 Taught by: Kalani Pattison

In this course, we will survey adolescent and young adult literature (YA lit) from the twenty-first and latter half of the twentieth century, though we will briefly discuss well-known older works for context. We will explore: -A variety of forms (novels, short stories, and poems) in the various genres of historical fiction, realistic fiction, fantasy, and science-fiction. -Works by authors from a variety of cultures and ethnicities. -How these works both express notions of the nature of adolescence and shape those notions within a culture, paying particular attention to characters’ growth into virtuous, compassionate, wise(r) adults -Conceptions of justice, power, gender, language, and communication. In our explorations, we will apply principles of literary analysis to the texts that we read, and discuss how these texts might appeal to or be read by younger readers, but we will not discuss teaching practices (this is not a course focused on pedagogy). Students will read assigned texts, write brief daily responses and longer arguments, complete a creative argument project, and have chances to lead discussion and make presentations.

Proposed Readings:

Feed by M. T. Anderson; Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore; Mare's Ware by Tanita S. Davis; Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham; Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger; Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall; The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin; Nimona by (Noelle, N.D., Nate) Stevenson; Instead of Three Wishes by Megan Whalen Turner

ENGL 365/RELS 360: The Bible as Literature

Taught by Dr. Katayoun Torabi

The Bible is a compilation of texts of a variety of forms--including laws, instructions, poetry, prose, apocalypses, and prophecies, among other genres--written in many languages, over the course of many years. Students in this class will read the Bible as a work of literature in English, using the King James Version, with a particular focus on character development in the Bible, rhetorical strategies, narrative structures, and how various literary modes have influenced readings of the text through time. No previous background in reading the Bible or any foreign language is expected.

Proposed Readings:

The King James Version of the Bible

ENGL 374/WGST 374: Women Writers

Taught by Nancy Warren

This course focuses on medieval and early modern texts written by women. As we interrogate the ways in which women participate in literate and literary practices, we will consider such topics as clerical anti-feminism, women's education, mysticism, and romance. Our aim will be to situate texts in their historical and cultural environments as we bring to bear a range of theoretical and critical approaches.

Proposed Readings:

Readings may include the Lais of Marie de France, the Roman de Silence, The Book of Margery Kempe, the Showings of Julian of Norwich, Catalina de Erauso's Memoir of a Lieutenant Nun, Amelia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Grace Mildmay's Autobiography, and Aphra Behn's The Widow Ranter.

ENGL 377: British Novel to 1870

Section 500 Taught by Mary Ann O'Farrell

This course will focus on the history and development of the British novel and on the many pleasures to be taken in reading it. We will also consider some preoccupations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as these are developed in the novels we read. Some of our interests in class discussion and as readers will include: money and marriage, manners and style, publishing and reading practices, bodies and things, majority and minority of character, business and politics, spinsters and bachelors, ways of knowing, work and words, laughter and blushes and tears.

Proposed Readings:

Readings will likely include works by such authors as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Wilkie Collins, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, and the anonymous author of The Woman of Colour: A Tale.

ENGL 395: Topics in Literature and Medicine: Graphic Medicine

Taught by Sara DiCaglio

Bodies are strange! And the ways that we understand embodiment and health--as we particularly know given the last few years--is vitally important to our ways of being in the world. This course will serve as an introduction to the growing field of graphic medicine, a field in which comics are used to consider issues related to health such as illness, medicine, disability, and caretaking. Within the course, we will examine graphic works written from the perspective of caregivers, patients, and doctors. We will ask what about comics makes them particularly suitable for the telling of stories about health and care, learn how to critically examine visual narratives, and examine the links between graphic medicine and the larger field of health humanities. We'll also make stuff! Strange and interesting stuff! That is, in addition to more traditional writing, students will devote a portion of the course’s time to the creation of their own comics and visual artifacts about issues in health and medicine. No artistic experience, skill, or confidence required (at all!). This course will be of interest to students interested in the health humanities, in bodies and literature, in gender, in disability, and in the ways that different forms and mediums--including less traditional ones--can tell stories.

Proposed Readings:

Texts may include works such as Understanding Comics (McCloud), Graphic Medicine Manifesto (Squier, Czerwiec, Williams, et al), Special Exits (Farmer), Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michaelangelo, and Me (Forney), Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 (Czerwic), Mom’s Cancer (Fies), and others.

ENGL 414: Milton

Taught by Margaret Ezell

This upper-level course focuses on writings of John Milton (1608-1674) in the context of the complicated political, religious, and social upheavals that occurred during his lifetime. This historically oriented course will be investigating how his classical training merged with his profound Christian beliefs, and how his early political writings—the nature of power and authority in government as well as in the family--raise issues he explored in Paradise Lost at the end of his life. Beginning with Milton’s early career writing courtly entertainments for some of England’s most powerful families, Comus: The Masque Performed at Ludlow Castle, and his early success as poet, we will then explore his reactions to the English Civil War and the trial and execution of England’s King Charles I. We will read contemporary political writings from the war years together with Milton’s political pamphlets, including his writing on freedom of the press, Areopagitica, on marriage and divorce, and on the limits to a King’s authority. We will conclude with Milton’s Paradise Lost, his epic poem retelling the creation story and the loss of Eden. Assignments may include several short editing/ annotation exercises, short response essays, and a final longer research essay.

Proposed Readings:

• Norton Critical Edition, Paradise Lost 3rd ed.( ed. Gordon Teskey, 2005)
• Norton Critical Edition, Milton’s Selected Poetry and Prose (ed. Jason Rosenblatt, 2011)
• Cambridge Companion to Milton, 2nd edition (ed Dennis Danielson)

ENGL 415: Studies in a Major Author (Stephen King)

Taught by James Francis

A major author most often represents a writer who has contributed to the literary landscape in some measurable manner by readers and scholars. Names such as T. S. Eliot, Diane De Prima, and Allen Ginsberg come to mind regarding celebrated poets; Tennessee Williams is considered a master of the stage play; Ursula K. Le Guin is held in high esteem for short-form stories and novels within speculative fiction; and in visual spaces, Spike Lee is a revered auteur filmmaker whose works highlight various aspects of the Black lived experience. And these are only a few names we might label as major authors within the U.S. Beyond stateside references, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Haruki Murakami, Gabriel García Márquez, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and more would be added to the list. In and outside of the states, these authors are well-known and studied for critical contributions to literature. But what about the popular writers whose sheer volume of works forces critics to assume quantity over quality? In literary spaces, the popular—and quite often mainstream—writer is often designated as less than in value and/or contribution to writing. The profits reaped by the popular writer alone give way to assumptions of money over substance. Thus, contemporary, popular pens such as Stephenie Meyer (the Twilight saga), E. L. James (the 50 Shades series), and R. L. Stine (the Goosebumps series), or writers from earlier eras like Agatha Christie (mystery-detective fiction), do not always receive the same critical evaluation as major authors. If, however, there is one writer who continues to stand the test of time and has battled the label of popular writer to become a major author in a more valued sensibility, that would be Stephen King. Our course will read selected works by King that focus on the theme of isolation and the writer-protagonist. As an often-designated horror-fiction writer—with associations to supernatural and sci-fi genres—we will examine his thematic writings with a close look into genre studies while simultaneously investigating his biography, views on writing, and selected film adaptations of the written texts for comparable study in adaptation and translation. Students will help select the final written works for study, as well as have input on the adapted films we examine. If you are interested in this course and/or plan on enrolling, please take a moment to engage with the first poll that will determine which King narratives will be studied for the semester: https://qfreeaccountssjc1.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_56jQUez9C6TMnIi Enrolled students will be notified of the course-development poll once registration closes and/or the course reaches enrollment capacity.

Proposed Readings:

"Trucks"

"1408"

"Children of the Corn"

The Body

Misery

The Shining

Salem’s Lot

Secret Window, Secret Garden

The Mist

Bag of Bones

Cujo

Gerald's Game

The Dark Half

Rita Hayworth

Shawshank Redemption

ENGL 433: Digital Humanities Theory & Practice

Taught by Dr. Katayoun Torabi

Are you interested in how computers affect our understanding and study of cultural heritage: literature, history, art, religion, philosophy, etc.? Do you want to learn how to use open-source software to analyze source material, make arguments, and present your ideas to the public? If so, this cross-listed course is for you. Whether you want to make more engaging class presentations, pursue a career that engages the public online, or develop technical skills that will set you apart, this course will help you do that. You will learn about how computers are used to conduct humanities research and the impact of technology on different fields of study. You will also use digital tools to visualize literary analysis, create digital maps, and analyze social networks. No extensive technical skills are required for the course and no one disciplinary approach will be favored. DHUM/ENGL/HIST 433 are stacked with DHUM 601. If this interests you, sign up for DHUM (Digital Humanities)/ENGL/HIST 433.

Proposed Readings:

Johanna Drucker's The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship, (2021)

ENGL 434: Advanced Studies in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Climate Fiction)

Taught by Jason Crider

This class will study works of science fiction and fantasy that focus on climate change, mostly from the rapidly emerging genre of climate fiction. Texts will explore the realities of the global climate crisis, the relationship between humans and their shifting environment, and the incongruities of the modern world against the backdrop of collapsing ecosystems. This class will also explore the evolution of the field of ecocriticism, the many subgenres of climate fiction (such as solarpunk), and the history of environmental literature that informs this urgent moment of climate change fiction.

Proposed Readings:

Readings may include works like Philippe Sqarzoni's Climate Changed, Emmi Itäranta's Memory of Water, Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Nnedi Okorafor's Noor, and Chen Qiufan's Waste Tide. Additionally, this class will feature a number of short stories, films, and videogames.

ENGL 462: Rhetoric in a Cultural Context (Rhetoric of Popular Culture)

Taught by Dr. Matt McKinney

Interested in discussions of hegemony and class in The Last of Us or Euphoria? Applying psychoanalysis to Elden Ring, Chainsaw Man, or the newest Pixar movie? Analyzing the subversion of gender and racial tropes in Megan Thee Stallion’s latest single? If so, this course might be for you! Instead of focusing on more traditional, literary, or “high-brow” texts, this course uses popular culture as an access point for better understanding rhetorical frameworks and concepts. Movies, fashion, television shows, video games, podcasts, comics, musical genres, and even memes often serve as ideological and cultural mirrors for our society. By analyzing these mirrors, we can not only learn more about ourselves and the values instilled in us, but actively work to change those values for the better. The assigned textbook and readings provide critical frameworks for you to apply rhetorical theory and analysis in a pop culture context. While we will also examine some preselected pop culture artifacts as a class (such as Cowboy Bebop), you will have plenty of opportunities to apply course concepts to texts of your choice. This is partially to account for the minute-to-minute changes in the landscape of pop culture, and also to ensure that we focus on texts that are of interest to you specifically.

Proposed Readings:

Barry Brummett's Rhetoric in Popular Culture (6th edition), assigned readings and pop culture texts on Canvas.

English 481: Senior Seminar (Law and Literature)

Section 803 Taught by Michael Collins

Crime, detection, trial, punishment, rehabilitation, freedom: This is the familiar cycle of justice in the United States and many other nations. The whole of this cycle, as well as the legal and theoretical framework in which the cycle unfolds, is the subject matter of the interdisciplinary subfield of literary criticism and legal studies that is known as“Law and Literature. This class will explore works that represent, theorize, or condemn all of part of this cycle of justice. Specifically, we will read and analyze literary works by or about lawyers, prisoners, activists and landmark cases.

Proposed Readings:

Possible readings include Sarah Weddington's A Question of Choice, Franz Kafka's The Trial, Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Piper Kerman's Orange is the New Black, Yuri Herrera's The Transmigration of Bodies, Ha Jin's Waiting, Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, and Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, as well as selected legal documents and essays by lawyers about selected cases or theories.

ENGL 481: Senior Seminar (Blindness and Representation)

Section 902 Taught by Mary Ann O'Farrell

Blindness has long been a preoccupation of literature, film, art, and philosophy. Blind prophets and beggars, blind sensualists and blind virgins, blind musicians and teachers, and even blind photographers and martial arts experts have been featured in both imaginative and theoretical texts. Thinking about blindness has permitted writers, artists, and film-makers to think at the same time about knowledge and ignorance, about sexuality, about the perceived experience of the sensual body, about vulnerability and its defenses, about language, and about race and class. Scholars and activists at work on disability have found blindness interesting because it has been both exemplary (it is thought the most frequently imagined form of disability) and exceptional (as the disability that, it might be argued, has been most frequently made into a metaphor). In this class, we will read, think, and write about blindness as it has been represented across genres and disciplines during the period from the Enlightenment to the present. Together, we will consider such topics as blindness in relation to gender and sexuality, blindness and race, blindness among the other senses, blindness and genre, blindness as a way of confronting questions about how we know things, blindness and the body, blindness as metaphor, and the “cool blindness” of recent work in disability studies.

Proposed Readings:

The texts we work with will involve novels, short stories, autobiography, art, and film chosen from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. We will also read some classic essays in disability studies to help us think about the work we are doing. Feel free to email me with any questions.

ENGL/HIST/MODL 489: Special Topics In (Interrogating Cultural Texts as Data)

Taught by: David B. Lowe

Concepts, tools, methods, and approaches to computationally manipulating cultural texts such as large text corpora (e.g., JSTOR, HathiTrust, National Digital Newspaper Program, or social media archives) to probe for connections between cultural phenomena by identifying patterns of meaning, from linguistic etymologies to cultural biases. Open to all majors.

This course fosters critical thinking using tools and methods from the fields of Information Retrieval and Data Science, specifically Natural Language Processing (NLP), to extract meaningful findings from texts as data.

Proposed Readings: Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python. Melanie Walsh (2021)