Spring 2027 English Courses

ENG 416 - Writing for Global Audiences

Instructor: Dr. Emily Legg CRN: 15038 TR 1:15 - 2:35PM SHD 237

What does it mean to write for an audience whose experiences, identities, and cultural perspectives may be different from our own? How do culture and identity shape the stories we tell, the language we use, and the ways we communicate with others?

In an increasingly interconnected world, writing moves across cultures, communities, and borders, often reaching audiences we may never have imagined. In this course, we'll explore how culture shapes the ways we write, read, and make meaning. We'll consider how our own identities and experiences influence our writing, examine the challenges of communicating across cultural differences, and think about what it means to write ethically and inclusively for diverse audiences. Through discussions, readings, and writing projects, we'll develop strategies for adapting our writing to different audiences while remaining attentive to the cultural perspectives and experiences that shape how people understand the world.

ENG 420 - Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Dr. TaraShea Nesbit CRN: 13759 MW 1:15 - 2:35PM BAC 2002

Prerequisite: ENG 320 or permission of instructor. May be repeated once for a maximum of 6 credits. Focus: Flash Fiction and the Short Story

Chinua Achebe wrote that, caught between being and knowing, we have no choice but to make and believe in some fiction. This workshop is where you make yours.

This is a course for writers who already have a few stories behind them and want to push further. We’ll focus on two forms that prize distillation, strangeness, and precision:

flash fiction and the short story. We’ll read Lydia Davis, Julie Otsuka, George Saunders, Natalie Diaz, Bryan Washington, Justin Torres, and others to discover how these writers do what they do—move us, delight us, surprise us—and how you might do the same, in your own voice.

Each week we’ll lift the hood on one element of craft: how a precise detail can make a story feel universal, how a story moves through time, how a character can stay a mystery even as we come to know them. Then you’ll put those tools to work in your own fiction. You’ll draft, workshop, and revise, with close reading (your classmates’ and your own) and play as the dual engines for discovering the story beneath the story.

Along the way we’ll keep asking: What makes a story “good,” and who gets to decide? What are experimental forms for? How does a flash fiction work like a short story, and how doesn’t it?

You’ll leave with two revised short stories, a flash piece, and a stronger sense of what you love in stories and how to make more of your own.

ENG 490M - Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Literature

Instructor: Dr. James Bromley CRN: 15744 MW 11:40AM - 1PM BAC 1022

CASB - Humanities (CASB) Long before “gay” and “trans” were categories, Renaissance English writers crammed the page and stage with amorous shepherds, cross-dressed heroines, intensely devoted friends, and metamorphosing bodies. In this course, we will explore how literature in the age of Shakespeare imagined desire and embodiment in ways that challenged rigid binaries of sexuality and gender. How can we read these works on their own terms, without forcing their representations into modern identity categories, while staying open to what they might have to say to us now? Readings will include work by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Lyly, and Margaret Cavendish alongside historical and critical texts.

ENG 495 Capstone in Literature - The Imitation Game: Representations from Plato to the Present

Instructor: Dr. Katie Johnson CRN: 13218 TR 2:50 - 4:10PM BAC 1007

Prerequisite: Senior standing CAS - Writing (CASW); Senior Capstone (SC) Our world is saturated with representations. From memes on social media, to experimental poetry, to the latest drop by a vocal artist, literary and performing arts are everywhere. Thinkers harkening back to Aristotle have reflected upon how to portray themes that are crucial to our democracy. This capstone will take up matters of representation and questions about how (or whether) representation matters. Should art (think largely here about literature, film, music, etc.) imitate life in a faithful way? Is that even possible? How does technology change how we think about the original artwork and the copy? What is the work of representation and artistic creations? How do we understand when something is misrepresented?

This course takes up questions such as these while also reading key thinkers, writers, and creative artists. We will explore the movements, debates, and the stakes of various representational strategies over time including theories of mimesis (Aristotle, Plato), satire and comedy (Oscar Wilde, George Saunders,) parody (Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña), simulacrum (Baudrillard), reappropriating aesthetics (Elena Ferrante, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Toni Morrison), art in the age of technology (Walter Benjamin) and the gap between image, text, and meaning (Barthes). The course will culminate in your own, or group, original project.

LIN 210K - Language and Syntax

Instructor: Dr. So Young Lee CRN: 15482 MW 10:05 - 11:25AM BAC 0027

CASC - Social Science (CASC); PA - Social Sciences (PA2A)

How are words combined to form sentences, and what makes some sentence structures possible while others are not? This course introduces students to the fundamental principles of syntax, the study of sentence structure in human language. Students will explore how sentences are organized, identify patterns across languages, and investigate the underlying rules that shape grammatical structures. Through hands-on activities, linguistic puzzles, and analysis of real language data, students will develop analytical and problem-solving skills while gaining a deeper understanding of how human language works and what it reveals about the human mind.