Courses
ENGL-101C College Writing (3)
This course requires students to write personal and expository essays in response to texts and class discussion on a range of issues. Its goal is to improve students’ writing and critical thinking. Students work toward understanding texts and exploring and communicating ideas, as well as toward mastery of the conventions of written English. The course design encourages active participation and collaborative learning. Students who have taken a Freshman Learning Community may not earn credit for ENGL 101C.
Attributes: YLIB ZTRAENGL-103 Writing Workshop (.5)
This course provides additional writing support and instruction designed to reinforce the student?s classroom experience in the Learning Community.
Permission of the Writing Center Director is required for registration.
Attributes: YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: FreshmanENGL-104 Writing Workshop (.5)
This course provides additional writing support and instruction designed to reinforce the student?s classroom experience in any of the Research Based Writing (RW) classes.
Attributes: YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: FreshmanENGL-110X LC CriticalReading&Writing (3)
This course focuses on engaging students as writers and readers, building the reflective awareness needed for success in a wide range of college experiences. In this course, students will write consistently, receive feedback on their writing and give feedback to others, and practice conventions of academic writing. In addition, students will engage with challenging readings and begin putting others? ideas in conversation with their own. Building on the theme and topic of the specific Learning Community, readings in English 110 center on intellectual challenges and questions; in other words, course materials respond to and extend the conversations in academic communities of various kinds. Students who have taken a Freshman Learning Community may not earn credit for ENGL 101C.
Attributes: LC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: FreshmanENGL-150C P1 Stories that Matter (3)
This course introduces students, especially those majoring in disciplines other than English, to the principal genres of literature: poetry, drama, and prose fiction. (English majors, minors, and prospective majors should take ENGL 200C.) The course emphasizes the basic elements of literary analysis and interpretation and the imaginative power of language. It offers as well an introduction to seeing literature as a valuable means of understanding particular times, places, and cultures. Formerly titled: P1 Literary Types.
Students with credit for ENGL 102C or its equivalent may not register for this class.
Attributes: P1 YLIBENGL-155 Writing in the Digital Age (3)
This course explores how changes in technology affect writing as we know it. Students will both analyze writing produced on digital media and practice writing within these same media. A goal for the course will be to understand how we negotiate our identities in this hyper connected world.
Attributes: LC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: FreshmanENGL-180 Book Club (3)
Focusing on two or three books, this course introduces students to various methods of reading and writing, integrating practices from creative writing, literary studies, digital media, and rhetoric. Book Club offers a glimpse into the variety and pleasures of English studies.
Attributes: YLIBENGL-200C Literary Analysis (3)
In this course, designed for English majors and minors, students develop the ability to analyze literary texts closely and thoroughly. Students learn to apply the vocabulary of literary studies and to consider such external influences as biography and culture in their readings of poetry, drama, and prose works. The course also includes an introduction to the relationship between critical methods and literary theory.
Attributes: ENLT HHSM HHUM YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-201 Y SENGL-201 English Career Seminar (.5)
The objective of this course is to foster the academic success of students who are beginning the English major at St. John Fisher College. Students will explore career options and career preparation. This course, which meets for five one-hour sessions during the semester, is required of all students enrolled in ENGL 200C and strongly recommended for all transfer students majoring in English. Graded S/U.
Attributes: YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C Y D-ENGL-203C Hist of English Language (3)
This class goes back in time (figuratively) to explore how English came to be the language we speak today. We look at some important historical moments that made English such a hybrid language, we study the building-blocks of language (phonology, morphology, syntax), and we examine the way English is still changing and expanding (slang, dialect, new vocabulary).
Formerly titled: History of English
Attributes: ENLT YLIBENGL-204 P1 Nature Writing (3)
What does it mean to be green from a literary point of view? How has nature writing shaped the landscape of American culture and behaviors? In this course we will begin to answer those questions by reading and writing about the environment. Through the study of fiction, memoir, and scientific writing, students will explore their place in relation to the natural world while simultaneously cultivating literacy skills.
Attributes: AMHU ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-207C P1 Bible as Literature (3)
In this course, we read from the all-time best-selling book, an anthology of stories, poetry, songs, history, law and building instructions. We read the Bible as a literary work, with special attention to the themes, structure, and style of biblical narrative. The course considers selected books of both Hebrew and Christian scripture, along with works that adapt biblical materials to modern purposes, demonstrating the ongoing life of biblical texts in our culture.
Attributes: ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-209 Lit Magazine Practicum (1)
Under the guidance of the faculty-advisor, students will assume substantial editorial responsibilities to produce St. John Fisher?s national literary magazine, Angles. In addition, the course will introduce students to the professional sphere of literary publishing and the basic applications and skills required to publish a high quality literary magazine.
Attributes: YLIB ZEXLENGL-210 P1 Literature & Healing (3)
Are mind, body, and spirit separate entities, and how are they reflected in literature and affected by self-expression? This course will examine how creative and analytical writers have addressed issues of health, illness, and healing. Texts and discussions may include issues such as cancer, AIDS, and mental illnesses; fertility issues; grief; epidemics and war; drugs and altered states of consciousness; stages of life and death; the ethics of healing; and different cultures’ approaches to sickness, health, and healing.
Attributes: ENLT HHCF HHUM P1 YLIBENGL-211 P1 Young Adult Literature (3)
How young is a young adult? How adult is an adolescent? How dark can children?s literature be, before it crosses a border? Who establishes these borders ? teachers? Parents? Librarians? Publishers? In this course, we consider those questions and read YA lit both as works of literature and as texts for education. Students will explore current issues surrounding YA literature, such as censorship, multiculturalism, dystopian visions, sex and violence in art, and the place of the individual in society.
Attributes: ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-215C P1 News from Poems (3)
“It is difficult to get the news from poems,” wrote American poet William Carlos Williams late in his life, “yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” This course investigates both the kind of news that poems bring “about who we are and what we do; about what we know and what we dream” and the challenges of getting that news. Readings include poems in English reaching back to medieval ballads, but the course emphasizes the work of poets writing the news of our own time and considers forms of poetry ranging from the epic to the popular song. No special prior knowledge of poetry or poetic forms is expected.
Attributes: ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-220D P1 Black Writers in U.S (3)
Black writing in America is richly historical, international, and revisionary. We explore its sources in African culture, its often complicated relationship with traditional American culture, and its remarkable vitality. The primary focus of the course will be on Black writers of the 20th century, including Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Derek Walcott.
Formerly titled: P1 Modern African Amer Lit
Attributes: AMHU CLTC ENEA ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-226C P1 Arthurian Legend (3)
A study of the historical beginnings and literary development of the legend of King Arthur. The course concentrates on medieval literature, the time in which the legend came to have wide popular appeal, but includes some examples of later use of the legend as well as Arthurian films.
Attributes: ENBL ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-230 P1 Literature of Travel (3)
Martin Buber said, “all journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” In this course, we investigate why humans willingly pull up stakes and travel to unfamiliar places – and write about the experiences. We read fiction and nonfiction narratives that investigate the human desire to leave home, see other lands and people, and learn about the self in the process. We also investigate anthropological theories about travel and its uses. Authors may include Mark Twain, Isabella Bird, Mary McCarthy, Bruce Chatwin, Mary Morris, Jon Krakauer, Andrew Harvey, Douglas Preston, and others.
Attributes: CLTC ENLT P1 WGST YLIBENGL-231C P1 Detective & Mystery (3)
Detective and mystery narratives raise fascinating questions about the process of reading and interpretation; the detective, like the reader/critic, reads “signs” in order to transform chaos into order. Beginning with the Old Testament and ending with The Silence of the Lambs (both novel and film), this course considers detective and mystery narratives by such writers as Poe, Conan Doyle, Collins, Sayers, Christie, Du Maurier, Hillerman, and others. By giving highbrow and lowbrow mysteries equal footing, the course challenges traditional notions of canonicity, including the distinction between literature and film. Students are responsible for applying major theoretical arguments to texts that focus on “reading,” while they study the changing cultural implications of “mystery.”
Attributes: ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-236D CC The American Dream (3)
What is the American Dream? What is “American”? This course explores the American Dream – the dream of financial success, independence, tolerance, religious freedom – through the eyes of disparate groups. We emphasize the problem of cultural integration/assimilation alongside attempts to define a diverse culture as “one nation, indivisible.”
Attributes: AMHU CC CLTC ENEA ENLT YLIBENGL-237 P1 Flash Fiction (3)
Whatever name you choose for it?short-short, sudden, minute, micro, or flash?don?t be fooled by the diminutive stature of this genre; powerful storytelling can be found in the briefest of forms. In this seven-week online course, students will learn and practice the process of writing and critiquing flash fiction. This course translates the traditional workshop format of creative writing courses into an online experience, and the majority of students? time each week will be spent reading, discussing, writing, and responding to very short works of fiction written by their classmates.
Attributes: ENWR P1 PCRW YLIBENGL-239D P1 Haunted Houses (3)
Haunted Houses are a staple of the gothic genre. In this class we will investigate the Haunted House “formula” and variations on it, seeking to understand how it is that haunted house stories “get you where you live.” If home is where we are supposed to feel most secure, why do we enjoy stories which threaten this comfort zone? Course material will include short stories and novels by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Edith Wharton and Henry James, as well as films and some psychoanalytic theory such as Freud’s “uncanny.”
Attributes: ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-248 P5 World Literature (3)
This course introduces students to a wide variety of literature from around the world, in translation, with attention to how such literature communicates the values and traditions of the cultures in which the writers live. The course will help students learn to analyze literature through written and oral assignments.
Attributes: CLTC ENLT ENWL P5 YLIBENGL-249 P1 Open Book:Read to Write (3)
We often hear that the more we read the better we write. In that spirit, this course will engage students in accomplishing two significant goals: to read actively and thoughtfully and to write creatively and critically. By analyzing a variety of written works that might range from a Shakespearean sonnet, to a popular novel or memoir, to a rap song, students will learn how close reading contributes to an understanding of the elements of the writer’s craft, including point of view, characterization, dialogue, image, and voice . At the same time, they will seek to improve their writing through imitation and practice.
Attributes: ENWR P1 YLIBENGL-251 P1 Int Creative Nonfiction (3)
Creative nonfiction is the happy accident of fact and craft at the intersection of journalism and literature. In this class, students will draw on stories from their lives and the larger world to write vivid, compelling prose about people and events as a way of better understanding the world around them. Students read the published work of others and share their own work in small groups with an eye toward improvement.
Attributes: ENWR P1 PCRW YLIBENGL-253 P1 Intro Creative Writing (3)
Does poetry, fiction, or play-writing light your fire? Would you like to spend a whole semester igniting your imagination and kindling your writing skills? Creative writing will help you to discover and nurture your unique writer?s voice through guided exercises. Students will share their own work in small groups with an eye toward improvement.
Attributes: ENWR P1 PCRW YLIBENGL-259 Argument and Persuasion (3)
What persuasive strategies make some people and groups more convincing than others? Have you ever “won” an argument only to lose something larger in the process? Why do we use war metaphors to describe the act of arguing? In this course we will examine our assumptions and experiences with making arguments and explore theories of persuasion from the fields of rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies. We will experiment with using language persuasively to become more aware of the rhetorical situation, including audience, genre, context, and purpose. Emphasis will be given to both raising awareness in students? personal approaches to argument, and also raising awareness of notable moments in the history of persuasion in social, cultural, and political contexts.
Attributes: ENWR YLIBENGL-261C Topics:Sexuality & Lit (3)
Sometimes gender and sexuality are portrayed in literature in ways that reinforce traditional gender stereotypes and sometimes in ways that break or transcend them. How does language?and literature specifically?shape sexuality and sexual politics? The course looks at LGBTQ issues in a wide variety of types of texts, old and new.
Attributes: ENLT WGST YLIBENGL-262P CC Coming to America (3)
This class gathers literary texts created by American writers of color in order to explore issues of racial and ethnic identity and difference. The texts chosen offer a sampling of the richness of American Literary and cultural traditions. The goal of this course is for students to develop an appreciation for a range of responses to the world, as seen through a variety of American eyes, and an awareness of the many different ways of defining a self and a community in American cultural and geographical spaces.
Attributes: CC CLTC ENEA ENLT YLIB
Formerly titled: CC Coming to AmericaENGL-264D P5 Topic:Politics & Lit (3)
As long as politics involves controversy and persuasion by words and images, literature will sometimes be inspired by, enlisted in, or blamed for these disputes and the social struggles they represent. Examining both traditional literary works and works intended to challenge and redefine our expectations of literature, the versions of this course will explore ways that books and authors, voluntarily and involuntarily, have been drawn into politics.
Spring 2021 Topic: P5 Topic: Ireland in the Arts
Attributes: AMHU ENLT P5 YLIB
Students explore Irish political and cultural events of the past hundred years through literature, film, and music. This class traces Ireland’s movement from English imperialism to Irish nationhood and subsequent division; from the traumatic period of the Troubles to the Good Friday Peace Accord; and from membership in the EU and the economic boom of the Celtic Tiger to the current issues that place the country at the center of the Brexit debate.ENGL-266 Writing as Social Practice (3)
Does developing reading and writing skills as a writer for the college newspaper differ from developing them in a prison writing group? How does your context–at home, work, school, and play?shape your work with texts? This course introduces students to some of the most important issues underlying contemporary studies of literacy. Typically, the general public, as well as many teachers and researchers, assumes that to be ?literate? an individual has attained a particular level of reading and writing competence. However, since the 1980s “new literacy” research has successfully challenged that view. Literacy?the social practices surrounding texts?and our understanding of it is thoroughly entangled in a complex web of cultural values, beliefs, and practices. The objective of this course is to examine these interconnections and, in doing so, become more purposeful, stronger readers and writers. Note: Beginning Fall 2011, this course replaces ENGL 258 in the English major and Writing minor.
Attributes: ENWR YLIBENGL-268 P1 Fundamentals of Film (3)
This course will begin by defamiliarizing the apparent accessibility of film. It will acquaint students with the basic tenets of film studies, including the technical aspects of film production, visual communication theory, and theories of film “authorship.” Then we’ll study a wide variety of films, including early silent movies, canonical classics like Citizen Kane, and films from divergent genres and traditions, like The Draughtsman’s Contract, Do the Right Thing, and Friday the Thirteenth. Student writing will focus on three areas: on how technique (form) creates content; on theories of visual pleasure; and on the politics of film ideology.
Attributes: ENLT P1 PROD VDAP YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-270C Becoming a Writing Tutor (1)
The best way to learn something is to teach it. This course trains students to become writing tutors in the College’s Writing Center. The course covers the writing, critical reading, and communication skills necessary to become an effective writing consultant. Dedicated writers in all majors are welcome. In addition to the weekly class meeting, students will be part of the Writing Center staff; as such, they will spend two hours each week there both observing and tutoring. Graded S/U. Permission of the Writing Center Director required to register.
Attributes: YLIBENGL-271 Legal Writing (3)
This course is intended to be an introduction to reading and writing legal documents. Students in this course will learn the different kinds of legal documents lawyers rely on and create but will also learn methods of reading and analyzing that are crucial to work in the law. Individually and as groups, students will research, read, and analyze cases and write up their findings in the proper formats, primarily the legal memorandum and the legal brief. At the end of the semester, students will have an opportunity to present their findings as if they were arguing before a trial judge. Formerly titled: Intro to Legal Writing
Students must have successfully completed a 199C course to register.
Attributes: ENWR PCRW YLIB ZEXL
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-272 P2 Digital Feminisms (3)
Reliance on technologies is, and has been for some time, an essential component of daily life in contemporary America. However, while we frequently treat the technological artifacts around us as simple tools, doing so ignores the complex cultural forces that shape our technologies. This course will use feminist theory to explore the co-production of identity and technology, examining how each helps to shape the other. Indeed, first-wave feminism emerged at a time of great technological upheaval, and as technology has continued to change rapidly over time, so to has feminism.
Attributes: ENWR P2 YLIBENGL-273 Film History (3)
This course will survey the history of the film industry and film art from the late 19th century to the present day, considering such issues as the growth of the studio system, the emergence of film genres, and the work of important film directors.
Attributes: VDAP YLIBENGL-284 P5 Global Business Writing (3)
This course studies the many ways cultural practices and traditions inform public and professional writing throughout the world. The course examines how language, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, traditions, customs, and values affect communication across cultures. With this knowledge, class members will develop awareness in how cultural perspectives influence and shape human interactions, including the work of writers. Course participants will select a foreign culture and workplace context to research and present to peers.
Attributes: ENWR P5 PCRW YLIB ZCIV ZEXL
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-293 P1 Early Engl Literature (3)
This course covers literature written between 660 and 1660. In this thousand years, we study groundbreaking works of imagination, including the Old English epic Beowulf, Milton’s Biblical retelling Paradise Lost, and some of the earliest writings by women. Reading prose, drama, and poetry, we will focus on the development of ideas about gender, religion, politics, nation, and love.
Attributes: ENBL ENLT LRTR P1 WGST YLIBENGL-294 P1 Milton to Romantics (3)
John Milton, who published Paradise Lost in 1667 at the end of his career, influenced every major writer in English for the next 150 years, yet each responded differently to Milton as a literary forebear. What did Milton mean to writers as different as Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth, and what accounts for their differences? How do England’s changing literary tastes reflect the social and economic changes that made it, by 1820, the world’s foremost industrial power? Why do classical literary forms give way to native English models, lyric displacing satiric verse? How do the poems of Wordsworth and Blake reflect the revolutionary impulse felt throughout Europe? The course considers these among other questions. Besides Milton, it includes such writers as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray, Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.
Attributes: ENBL ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-295 P1 Literary Revolutions (3)
This course traces the evolution of English literature from the eighteenth century to present day, a period of extraordinary intellectual and social upheaval. The readings will investigate imaginative responses to debates between science and religion, the reorganization of communal life by the industrial revolution, the rise and fall of the British Empire, and the impact of multiple wars and shifting political realities. We will consider how writers responded to these conflicts and continuities, paying close attention to their explorations of questions of genre, power, and the status of literary writing.
Formerly titled : P1 English Lit 1830-1950; P1 Victorians to Moderns; P1 British Lit. Since 1700
Attributes: ENBL ENLT LRTR P1 YLIBENGL-297 P1 Readings in Amer Lit (3)
Beginning with the Puritan arrival in the “New World,” this course traces the development of an American national literature. Students will learn about history and culture by reading fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from a variety of literary periods. Topics such as race, religion, immigration, and expansion will surface in readings by a range of writers who explore the possibilities of American experience and of an American voice.
Formerly titled: Emergence of American Lit
Attributes: AMHU ENLT LRTR P1 YLIBENGL-298 P1 Modern American Lit (3)
This course surveys American literature representing a period that ranges from the consolidation of a national culture following the Civil War to the current paradoxical condition of a sole global superpower whose national culture has seldom seemed more fragmented. Topics to be explored include intellectual and imaginative responses to industrialization and urbanization, to the culmination of westward expansion and the loss of the frontier, to the integration of free African Americans and millions of immigrants into the culture and the economy, and to the challenges and responsibilities of world power. Readings include the work of such writers as Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wallace Stevens, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bishop, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, and others.
Attributes: ENLT P1 YLIBENGL-306 Law & Literature (3)
Law and Literature is a growing field that includes both literary analysis of legal texts as well as the study of legal structures depicted in works of fiction. In both cases, work in the field examines how language helps us make sense of the everyday lives of citizens. The content of the course will shift each time it is offered: it might, for example, focus on novels featuring courtroom dramas, the writings of Supreme Court justices, or the history of censorship internationally. As in all 300?level English courses, students will improve their critical reading and writing skills, ability to interact with scholarship, and oral or digital communication skills.
Attributes: ENLT LEST THME YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D- OR ENGL-259 D- OR ENGL-271 D-ENGL-307 Writing Portfolio Seminar (1)
This course prepares students for careers that require excellent professional and public writing skills. In addition to revising previously written work for formal presentation, students will explore career options, develop a digital presence, and refine other essential documents, including a resume and cover letters.
Permission of instructor required to register.
Attributes: YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-312C P1 Shakespeare (3)
Shakespeare’s plays have been and are continually re-interpreted by critics, theatrical and film productions, and audiences. Students investigate what literary interpretation is and how it is affected by historical and cultural contexts, reading the assigned texts both as works of literature and as scripts for a stage performance. In addition, students study current critical approaches to these plays to develop a sense of their own cultural lens for interpreting Shakespeare.
Attributes: ENBL ENLT LRTR P1 YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-325 Topics: British Lit. (3)
Roughly thirteen hundred years, forty-five monarchs from ten houses, eleven wars that someone bothered to name, a Great Plague, a Great Fire, a Renaissance, two smallish islands, a global empire?safe to say that writers working in the British Isles have never lacked for material. Imagining their stories in three languages and forming and preserving their works through oral performance and transmission, monastic scribes, movable type, mass market presses, and digital publication–it’s safe to say, too, that these writers embody, and indeed helped to shape, the history of their countries and their culture.
Fall 2019 Topic: Before and After Jane Austen It is a truth universally acknowledged that most American adults can name at least two English authors: Shakespeare and Jane Austen. In the last 20 years there?s been a movie based on an Austen novel almost every year. In this class we?ll explore the English novel from its beginnings up through the 21st century through the lens of Austen?s work, and from a variety of theoretical perspectives, such as feminism, cultural materialism, and post-colonial theory, to understand the continuous and changing appeal of her novels. We?ll read some Austen, of course, as well as the novelists she read and the novelists who came in her wake and learned from her legacy. Students will read 200-250 pages each week, and will write two substantial papers.
May be repeated with different topics. Formerly titled: The Romantic Tradition
Attributes: ENBL ENLT LRTR YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-329 Film/Television Analysis (3)
In this course, students will view a variety of films and television programs through critical perspectives related to montage, genre analysis, narrative, psychoanalysis, gender, and fan studies. This course is designed equally for students interested in film and television studies and those focused on video production.
Attributes: ENLT VDAP YLIB
Pre-requisites: COMM-231 D- OR COMM-261 D- OR COMM-264 D- OR ENGL-200C D- OR ENGL-268 D- OR ENGL-273 D-
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-335 Studies in AFAM Literature (3)
This course will explore the work of African American writers who sought, largely between about 1965 and 1975, to create what we might think of as a Black nationalist cultural movement that paralleled the Black nationalist and Black Power political movements of the time. We?ll read poetry, plays, novels, cultural analysis, and philosophical arguments by such writers as Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ishmael Reed, Nikki Giovanni, and several others. Beyond the individual works themselves, we will consider the political and social background of the movement, its similarities to and differences from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the idea of a ?Black Aesthetic,? and questions of the movement?s enduring influence.
Attributes: CLTC ENEA ENLT YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-336 Studies in Native Amer Lit (3)
This course explores the means, styles, and purposes of self-representation, at both the individual and the communal levels, in a variety of texts by Native American writers. Themes and issues might include the struggle for cultural authenticity, the experience of conquest and the idea of the reservation, ideas of nationhood and the relations of tribal nations to the United States, and the pluralism of cultures within the Native American community itself.
Attributes: CLTC ENEA ENLT YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-337 Ethnic Literature (3)
Ethnicity has a complex history in this nation whose motto is “E Pluribus Unum” (from many, one). This course examines literary representations of ethnic identity and culture, inviting students to explore definitions of ethnicity and to consider such questions as: What is the difference between race and ethnicity? How might we define ethnicity in an increasingly multiracial world? How do we handle the practice of discrimination in today?s world? What is the role of the literary arts in addressing these questions?
Formerly titled: Ethnicities in/and Literature
Attributes: CLTC ENEA ENLT YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-339 American Literatures (3)
This course explores the ways in which Amerian Writers have conceptualized the American experience and America as a nation. The plural in the title is deliberate; variety is a key concept. Possible areas of focus include key genres such as Romance, realism, regionalism, and naturalism; central themes such as race and ethnicity, religion, technology and the self-making narrative; and repeated motifs such as the American Adam and the American abroad.
Attributes: ENLT LRTR YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-342 Topics:Literary Genres (3)
People may be fans of many different sports, but we have different sets of expectations depending on whether we?re on our way to see football, baseball, or tennis. Readers? expectations vary, too, when we approach a poem, a play, or a novel. And the same is true for players and writers. Even the athletic skills that are almost always valuable?eye-hand coordination, for example, or basic strength and speed?are applied in different ways and proportions in different games. Writers, too, tend to specialize, and to see themselves and their work as participating in a continuing history specific to traditional literary genres.
Topics for this course may concentrate on the general features, contexts and possibilities of poetry, drama, or prose in general or a narrower focus, such as science fiction, lyric poetry, or memoir.
Spring 2019 Topic: The American Novel This course will explore the American novel, from Hawthorne, through the Modernists, to the present.
Course may be repeated with different topics. Formerly titled: Studies in the Novel
Attributes: ENLT THME YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-344 Topics Lit & Pop Culture (3)
The various forms of popular culture have their own sets of styles and conventions, just as the traditional arts do, that help us to define them and to recognize innovation within them. Topics covered in this course will focus popular genres such as graphic novels, mass market films, TV series, music videos, genre fiction (e.g., romances, detective novels, westerns) to investigate both the nature of the forms themselves and what they may tell us about their social and cultural contexts.
May be repeated with different topics. Formerly titled: Popular Genres
Attributes: ENLT THME YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-346 Narrative and New Media (3)
Technologies shape the way people read, create, and analyze texts. In this class we?ll explore some of the new tools through which people are approaching literature in the digital age. Possible areas of focus include transformational media like online fan fiction, tools for multi-media presentations of a text, coding literary texts, and data mining resources for texts.
Attributes: ENLT VDAP YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-347 Studies in Postcolonialism (3)
This course will introduce students to postcolonial theory to help them develop an understanding of the historical forces and literary influences shaping writers in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. Reading classic literature of Empire along with emerging literature from the postcolonial world, students will put texts into dialogue with each other and examine how the experience of colonization affects individual authors and the process of cultural production.
Attributes: CLTC ENLT ENWL WGST YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D- OR ENGL-214D D- OR AMST-216 D- OR WGST-214D D-ENGL-348 Women Writers (3)
An exploration of major works of English and/or American women writers often grouped by historical period. This course will attempt to discover common themes and images in women’s writing that we will place in a cultural and historical context. Mindful of the astonishing variety in this literature, students will try to discern whether there is what Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar call “a strong continuity” in the writings of English-speaking women, and if so, to what degree, as Virginia Woolf contends, books (particularly by women) “continue each other”.
Attributes: ENLT THME WGST YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-349 Major Authors (3)
In addition to studying the literature of an author or group of authors in depth, students will examine the literary and social context which brought these authors to a place of prominence and the ways in which literary critics have approached their work.
Attributes: ENLT THME YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-351 Language of Animals (3)
Humans have long assumed that we are the only species on the earth that creates complex, multivalent languages. But researchers have consistently shown that animals use sign systems that have been ignored or underestimated by human beings, what we might call “animal languages.” In addition, humans? assumptions about the emotional and intellectual complexity of animals have been unsettled by evidence that animals think, feel, create, and communicate in ways that were previously unknown to us. What is our relationship to animals? Why do we identify with them as children, love some them as pets, but eat and abuse them in other circumstances? In this course, we?ll pair some of the biological findings about animal languages with literature written about animals, interrogating our relationship with animals, the beings that naturalist Henry Beston called “other nations, caught with us in the net of life and time.” Formerly titled: Literature & Other Discourses.
Attributes: ENLT YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-352 Rhetorical Theory (3)
This course explores aspects of classical rhetorical theory in contemporary forms of communication, both digital and traditional. Students use the tools of classical rhetoric to answer questions: how does persuasion work? What are the distinctions between informing, entertaining, and persuading an audience? How does moral stance affect the ability to make an argument? How do invention, style, and organization interplay with argument? Students will learn to write and speak persuasively and to think critically about both contemporary and classical rhetoric.
Attributes: ENWR ENWT THME YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-259 D-ENGL-353 Rhetorical History & Trad (3)
Can the silence of a Quaker Meeting be rhetorical? What rhetorics are embedded in the patchwork quilts that helped fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad? What are the main rhetorical strategies of the presidential campaigns and how have they appeared in the rhetorical choices of presidents? This course examines the rhetorical features of social, ethnic, religious, or political groups. We will read methods for analyzing cultural rhetoric in order to explore the underlying assumptions, beliefs, and values that shape the identities and purposes of groups. Central to this approach is that all artifacts from a group are rhetorical, and so we will “read” traditional artifacts like sermons, speeches, letters, and essays, but also art, film, clothes, photos, bumper stickers, and so forth in our work to make sense of the traditions of the groups under investigation.
Attributes: ENWR ENWT LRTR YLIB ZCIV
Pre-requisites: ENGL-259 D-ENGL-355 Professional Writing: Tpcs (3)
A professional writer is no mere machine, programmed to spew out formulas for easily identifiable occasions. Therefore, this course emphasizes decision-making processes that inform the ethical and effective design of professional texts. To ground our studies, we will explore principles and advanced practices of professional communications situations where the stakes often involve monetary, human, or other valuable resources. Rhetorical principles of context, audience analysis, document design, and assessment are applied with professional rigor. Students may have the opportunity to work in collaboration with a community organization to design workplace documentation in digital or other formats, including grants, handbooks, letters, reports, and technical documents. In addition, students develop a portfolio of revised documents. Students will advance critical skills in language use, such as grammar, structure, and tone as they work to complete substantial professional projects.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB ZCIV
Pre-requisites: -
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-356 Editing and Publishing (3)
The world of editing and publishing is filled with exciting challenges that demand specific skills: guiding a writer to complete an article or book for publication; collaborating with a team of editors, graphic designers and marketers to get a book to readers; or putting out an online publication, such as a monthly newsletter or journal, for a trade publisher or a not-for-profit. This course introduces many of the essential skills needed for editing and publishing at the professional level. Writing, editing, and in-class critiques will be a regular feature of a course that teaches grammatical and rhetorical competency. Readings, activities, and projects involve analysis of diverse genres and contexts for editing, including a focus on how evolving technologies affect publication. Practice in editing sample texts will be supplemented by projects, including revision and editing a text of one’s own for a specific purpose, audience, and publication; and collaboration with a community partner on a text bound for publication.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR VDAP YLIB ZCIV
Pre-requisites: -
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-359 Technical Writing (3)
This course focuses on technical and instructional communication?the presentation of specialized information in an accessible way to a variety of different audiences, but audiences who, no doubt, will expect clarity, accuracy, and professionalism from you. This class teaches the key skills of effective technical writing including careful selection of both textual elements (word choice, tone, style) and visual design elements (font choice, layout, color). We will focus on the process of writing (including the planning, drafting, and revising stages) and look carefully at the work that goes into the final polished product. Assignments may include, but are not limited to, instructions, specifications, documentation, and usability testing.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB ZEXL
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-361 Writing with New Media (3)
What does it mean to be a writer and reader in the 21st century? How have developments in digital media required writers to consider the visual in addition to the verbal as well as interactivity? How do conflicting interpretations of copyright law impact creativity? This course focuses on the emerging area of digital writing studies, and we will discuss texts and new media works both scholarly and popular addressing such issues as the impact of information technology on research and teaching/learning, the social and cultural dimensions of technology, and models of writing associated with digital media.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR VDAP YLIB
Pre-requisites: -
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-370 Gender and Writing (3)
Social differences of every kind are reflected in the way we write. Differences such as age, social class, and ethnicity inform our beliefs and values; they shape our experiences and how we express those experiences to others. This course examines how gender shapes written communication. It draws on a variety of research fields, including feminist theory, literacy studies, rhetorical theory, and literary studies to define concepts such as masculinity and femininity. Course readings and projects explore how critics, writers, and artists imagine the relationship between gender and writing.
Attributes: ENWR ENWT THME WGST YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-259 D-ENGL-371 Creative Writing:Fiction (3)
In this course, students will give and receive detailed critical evaluation of short stories and chapters of novels. Students will leave the course with several works of short or longer fiction, according to their own preference.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-251 D- OR ENGL-253 D-ENGL-372 Creative Writing:Poetry (3)
In this course, students will give and receive detailed critical evaluation of poetry. Students will leave the course with a collection of poems.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-251 D- OR ENGL-253 D-ENGL-374 Playwriting (3)
In this course, students will give and receive detailed critical evaluation of plays. Students will leave the course with several short plays or substantial scenes from a longer play.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-251 D- OR ENGL-253 D-ENGL-376 Creative Writ: NonFiction (3)
In this course, students will give and receive detailed critical evaluation of different types of creative nonfiction. Structure, voice, character and scene will all receive emphasis in the course. Students will determine their own semester projects.
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-251 D- OR ENGL-253 D-ENGL-377 Audio and Visual Storytelling (3)
This course explores modes of storytelling beyond the written word and the material page. Students examine literary texts that add to the traditional experience of creative writing through a range of audio and visual forms; discover techniques for crafting compelling and artful literary projects in nontraditional media; and use technology and software applications to apply these techniques in their own original audio and visual creative writing. This course takes the shape of a creative writing workshop, where students share and respond to works-in-progress, offer constructive criticism to their peers and apply the critiques they receive in revising final drafts.
Attributes: VDAP YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-378 Topics in Advanced Writing (3)
This course explores a specific type of writing, according to the interest of the instructor. Past topics have included Young Adult Fiction, Detective Fiction, Humor Writing, and Sports Literature. In this course, students will give and receive detailed critical evaluation of different types of creative nonfiction. Students will determine their own semester projects. Spring 2020 Topic: Audio & Visual Storytelling
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB
Pre-requisites: ENGL-251 D- OR ENGL-253 D-ENGL-380 Visual Rhetoric (3)
Developing a critical awareness of the way images, both moving and still, are constructed to convey particular messages is an important part of rhetorical awareness in the digital age. This course will explore various theories of visual rhetoric, using them as a lens through which to approach a variety of texts. Artifacts being analyzed in the course include graphic novels, film and television, advertisements, memorial spaces and museums.
Attributes: ENWR ENWT VDAP YLIB
Pre-requisites: -
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-381 The Rhetoric of Hate (3)
Hate crimes and acts of symbolic and physical violence against particular people and groups can usually be tracked to specific cultural discourses and worldviews. In this course, students learn how rhetorical histories of hate have formed the foundations of genocide, racial supremacist ideologies, homophobia, and sexism. We will also study how these developments have been resisted by forces seeking social justice. Through the lens of rhetorical and cultural theories, we will analyze the historical, political, and economic contexts that have produced the rhetorics of hate and the rhetorics of social justice in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Attributes: ENWR ENWT YLIB ZCIV
Pre-requisites: ENGL-259 D-ENGL-382 Digital Literacies (3)
The popularity of blogging, social networking sites, and Twitter mean more people are writing more words than ever before, and that writing can be read and commented on instantly. As a result, people are not just consuming media but also producing media. What it means to be a writer and reader is changing. Literacy is in a transitional period, and these new ways of writing and reading are called “new literacies.” In our readings, discussions, and projects we will consider the social, cultural, and legal implications of digital media and the new conditions for literacy.
Attributes: ENWR ENWT VDAP YLIB
Pre-requisites: -
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-420 Senior Literature Seminar (3)
This is the capstone course for senior English Department majors, culminating in an extensive research paper (20-25 pages) of each student?s design, along with an oral presentation. During the semester, students read articles from academic journals in order to become familiar with critical perspectives on literary and cultural texts. In their research papers, the students then situate their own critical perspectives on a text (or texts) within the context of established critical discourse.
Attributes: ENLT YLIB ZCAP
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-425 Senior Experience (3)
This capstone course for senior English Department majors is a writing seminar open only to senior English majors with a writing concentration and senior writing minors. The course culminates in an extensive project of each individual student?s own design. Each project includes a substantial written component and an oral presentation. During the semester, students read scholarly and other texts in order to become familiar with critical and rhetorical perspectives on writing. Students then situate their own writing and critical perspectives on a text (or texts) within the context of established critical discourse.
Attributes: ENWR YLIB ZCAP
Pre-requisites: ENGL-259 D-ENGL-475 Washington DC-Internship (6 TO 9)
Washington Experience semester is offered through The Washington Center. Permission of the advisor, department chair, and TWC liaison (Dr. Monica Cherry) is required to register.
Attributes: YLIBENGL-476 WashDC Experience-Sem (3 TO 6)
Washington Experience semester is offered through The Washington Center. Permission of the advisor, the department chair and TWC liaison (Dr. Monica Cherry) is required to register.
Attributes: YLIBENGL-477 WashDC Experience-Forum (1 TO 3)
Washington Experience semester is offered through The Washington Center. Permission of the advisor, the department chair and TWC liaison (Dr. Monica Cherry) is required to register.
Attributes: YLIBENGL-490 Internship (1 TO 3)
Through the department’s internship program, eligible junior and senior majors may earn academic credit for supervised off-campus work in business and industry. No more than three credits earned in an internship will be counted toward the major. Permission of the internship coordinator is required to register.
Attributes: YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Major: English, English -Class: Junior, SeniorENGL-496 Independent Study (.5 TO 3)
In consultation with a given instructor, the student decides on a topic for consideration. A written proposal, approved by the instructor, is then submitted to the department chair for approval. The student’s independent study culminates in a paper of approximately 25-30 pages. Completion of the Independent Study/Tutorial Authorization form is required.
Attributes: YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: SeniorENGL-498H Honors in English (3)
A one- or two-semester sequence of independent study during the senior year, culminating in a thesis. Upon completion of the project, a student receives three or six hours of 400-level credit toward the major. The candidate should carefully select a member of the department to direct the project. The advisor works with the student over the semester, evaluates the student’s performance and determines a final grade. No later than the end of the junior year, the student should consult with their director and submit a detailed description of the project to the chair of the department for approval. Completion of the Independent Study/Tutorial Authorization form is required.
Attributes: YLIBENGL-499H Honors In English (3)
A one- or two-semester sequence of independent study during the senior year, culminating in a thesis. Upon completion of the project, a student receives three or six hours of 400-level credit toward the major. The candidate should carefully select a member of the department to direct the project. The advisor works with the student over the semester, evaluates the student’s performance and determines a final grade. No later than the end of the junior year, the student should consult with their director and submit a detailed description of the project to the chair of the department for approval. Completion of the Independent Study/Tutorial Authorization form is required.
Attributes: YLIBENGL-1010 Critical Reading & Writing (3)
This course focuses on engaging students as writers and readers, building the reflective awareness needed for success in a wide range of college experiences. In this course, student write consistently, receive feedback on their writing and give feedback to others, and practice conventions of academic writing. In addition, student engage with challenging readings and begin putting others’ ideas in conversation with their own. Building on the theme and topic of the specific Learning Community, readings in this course center on intellectual challenges and questions; in other words, course materials respond to and extend the conversations in academic communities of various kinds. Student who have taken a Freshman Learning Community may not earn credit for ENGL 1010, ENGL 101C or ENGL 110.
Attributes: LC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman -Attribute: New Core 20-21ENGL-1054 Reading the Court (3)
The Supreme Court of the United States has a unique role in our culture, in the way it both reads our norms and articulates them. The language of its rulings is enormously influential throughout American society, in ways we rarely recognize. In this course, we read many important Supreme Court decisions, personal narratives of several individual justices, essays on the role of the Court, and fictional representations of the Court. The class is largely discussion-based. Assignments include traditional writing, legal writing, and mock trials.
Attributes: LC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman -Attribute: New Core 20-21ENGL-1070 Writing in Context (3)
Viewing writing as a practice and a social activity, this course helps students see the academic experience as a process of inquiry, discovery, and communication. Building on the theme and topic of the specific Learning Community, this course features reading materials that explore contemporary social and cultural questions. Students enter into conversations about these questions by working on informal and formal assignments, receiving feedback, and practicing conventions of academic writing.
Attributes: LC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman -Attribute: New Core 20-21ENGL-1138 Computers Reading SciFi (3)
This course covers statistical techniques for textual analysis. Reading works of science fiction with the help of computers, students learn skills of data collection and preparation, various approaches to coding and describing such data, and using those statistics to draw conclusions about the texts. Students explore the strengths and limitations of four forms of analyses – distant reading, content analysis, sentiment analysis, and semantic analysis – and examine the ethical stances that each approach brings to textual analysis.
Attributes: DA YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman, Sophomore -Attribute: New Core 20-21ENGL-1299 Research-based Writing (3)
Students study and practice skills central to academic and professional research through the development of independent, inquiry-based projects. In their projects, students assert, support, and integrate their own positions into a scholarly conversation based in research. Students develop competency in the location, evaluation, analysis and documentation of sources that represent a range of different perspectives on important issues.
Attributes: RW YLIB ZRES
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman, Sophomore -Attribute: New Core 20-21ENGL-2102 Community-Based Writing (3)
In ENGL 2102, students will gain knowledge, skills, and perspectives needed to contribute meaningfully as citizens in a diverse and complex society by studying civic engagement, citizenship and participating in a semester-long community-based writing project. These experiences help ensure a commitment to collaboratively working across and within community contexts and structures to achieve civic aims in a democracy. Learning will be collaborative both within the class in small groups and collaborative as these groups work with a not-for-profit organization situated in the Rochester community. Students will do both conventional academic reading and writing and writing with and for the community, in a direct and/or supporting role, depending on the partner and project. Potential partners may include schools, community centers, youth centers, and nursing homes.
Attributes: CCE YLIB ZCIVENGL-2121 Bridges Across Divides (3)
This course is both content and skills based. In terms of content, we will review historical and contemporary efforts in civic engagement on race and other issues affecting marginalized populations. Primary texts we will examine include selected work by Frederick Douglass, including his Narrative, his speeches delivered in Ireland on the cusp of the purchase of his freedom, and his second autobiography, published after his Irish visit. Furthermore, we will study contemporary stories published online by the group Black and Irish. In terms of skills, we will learn how to communicate with others through methods including Sustained Dialogue about racial and cultural experiences including marginalization and privilege. Socioeconomic, identity, religious, and political topics are issues that may be explored to expand common ground in our Fisher experience. Cross cultural connections with citizens in movements in Ireland and Northern Ireland will expand our global understanding of commonalities in civic engagement. A final project will ask students to apply what they?ve learned by identifying issues they can address at Fisher and working in groups to address them through various actions.
Attributes: CCE YLIB ZCIVENGL-2190 Science Writing for Public (3)
This course teaches the craft of writing and speaking about science research for general audiences. Our class sessions cover reading science research, writing explanatory and narrative prose, finding the most interesting news angles in published research, interviewing scientists, writing key story elements with creativity and accuracy, responding to editing, and presenting our work. Through course readings, class activities and research projects, we experiment in the range of work that science communicators perform, develop an understanding about the ethical and civic challenges of the work, learn about science communication as a career, and enhance your oral and writing communication skills all along the way,
Attributes: CCE ENWR PCRW YLIBENGL-2210 The Bible as Bestseller (3)
In this course, we study the Bible as a literary document, with attention to genres, characters, and language. We look at the narrative forms included in the Bible and discuss how they are common to stories we still tell and offer ways of storytelling that are popular and enduring. Students become familiar with the tools used when looking at literature to understand and interpret texts, especially those from a time far removed from the present.
Attributes: CIA YLIBENGL-2212 Shakespeare on Film (3)
Shakespeare wrote his plays to be seen on stage, and many people think if Shakespeare were alive today he would be making movies. In this class we spend plenty of time reading his works to understand his use of plot, character, structure, language and genre; we also put ourselves in the position of Shakespeare’s audience. Viewing multiple film versions of several plays, we consider how various interpretations are projected on screen and we discuss what is gained and lost by close and loose adaptations of Shakespeare’s works.
Attributes: CIA ENLT VDAP YLIBENGL-2214 Gender in Lit&Visual Arts (3)
Gender is one of our most powerful sorting mechanisms. It structures behavior, organizes social life, and puts boundaries around identity formation. We therefore “read” gender everywhere: in our language, on people’s bodies, in advertisements, in the dynamics among family members and peers, in classrooms and workplaces, and in sacred, literary, legal and instructional texts. In this class, we examine the ways that knowledge has been constructed about gender. We develop our understanding by examining literary and artistic works that feature the problems, perils and potentials of gender expression. Through fiction, film, visual arts and scholarly essays, we work to define gender, understanding how it intersects with racial, class, ethnic, and cultural differences, and how our notions of gender difference have changed in advances in civil and human rights. We use reading, writing, discussion and artistic design not just to absorb information about gender, but understand gender in ways that enhance our own lives.
Attributes: CIA YLIBENGL-2218 Theater and Culture (3)
Plays are different from novels and movies in numerous ways, but primarily they differ because they are temporal; the script may exist in a more or less permanent state, but the play, the thing that the script is only an outline for, exists only during its performance by live people in front of live people. Moreover, plays are written with the understanding of the theatrical conventions of the playwright’s own place and time, but are performed within an understanding of the conventions of the actors’ place and time. As we go through the semester, we read a handful of plays and we learn about these theatrical conventions to be able to understand how a play makes meaning.
Attributes: CIA YLIBENGL-2237 Storytelling in Brief (3)
In this course, students will explore the process of creative writing in flash fiction. Through reading, discussing, and generating fictional stories in the briefest of forms, students will learn about the characteristics unique to this subgenre of fiction writing as well as to investigate what properties all forms of creative writing share. Above all, a successful writer has learned to do one thing extremely well: they keep at it. This course will take that as its motto, and will require students to bring commitment and focus to every step of the creative writing process from finding inspiration to producing finished works. In addition, this course will introduce students to contemporary literary publishing and literary magazine culture. Through readings and assignments, students will explore a range of current literary magazines and begin to understand the variety of aesthetics they promote, the audiences they reach, and the communities they help form.
Attributes: CIA YLIBENGL-2247 War in Literature and Film (3)
This class takes an inclusive, multi-faceted look at our nation at war – at war with racial “others,” at war with itself, at war abroad – and how war has affected not only soldiers who fight but also non-combatants. It examines depictions of U.S. wars in literature and films, from the colonial era’s “Indian wars” to the Vietnam war. Course texts include novels, short fiction, films, poems, feature films, and documentaries.
Attributes: CIA ENLT YLIBENGL-2255 Creative Writing Now! (3)
In this course, students explore the process of creative writing in three genres: creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Throughout the semester, students read, discuss, and generate creative writing to learn about the characteristics unique to each genre as well as to investigate what properties all creative writing shares. Above all, successful writers learn to do one thing extremely well: they keep at it. This course takes that as its motto, and requires students to bring commitment and focus to every step of the creative writing process from finding inspiration to producing finished works. In addition, this course introduces students to contemporary literary publishing and literary magazine culture. Through readings and assignments, students explore a wide range of current literary magazines and begin to understand the variety of aesthetics they promote – including Fisher’s own literary magazine, ANGLES.
Attributes: CIA PCRW YLIBENGL-2260 Reading/Writing – Social Power (3)
For most of us, our understanding of literacy is based in our experiences of reading and writing in school, and through literacy tests that claim to measure our reading and writing aptitude. This course is designed to help you develop a more complex view of literacy by exploring theories of reading and writing in school, outside of school and in everyday life. Our ability to be literate in a specific community – for example, working your way up in a company – determines our ability to have power over our own lives, our ability to change minds and have influence, and our ability to have access to resources we need to flourish and grow. Literacy, in other words, is about access to power, or barriers to power. Along with theories of literacy, we study the history of reading, writing, and their relation to social power in the United States. Our course rests on the assumption that literacy is not a stand-alone set of skills, but rather is a set of socially constructed and culturally mediated practices, best examined in relation to the institutions that sustain them. We examine this assumption through a variety of activities – classroom based and public, theoretical and personal, collaborative and independent – all of which ask you to grapple with research on literacy and apply it in ways that enrich you personally and deepen your understanding of the relation among reading, context, and agency.
Attributes: CIA YLIBENGL-2263 The Image and the Word (3)
What exactly do we mean by reading? To take in, to grasp? What does it mean to see? To recognize, to understand? What is the relationship between the written and the visual? These are the fundamental questions of the course that we return to over and over again, albeit with difference and nuance at each step. Through a consideration of photography, film, literature, and other media, we explore three central questions:what is the relationship between what we see and what we understand, or between what we see and what we believe, or even between what we see and what we know? The course includes multiple structured units of inquiry that culminate in two exams and two essays, through which students can demonstrate their skill of analysis using the ideas of that unit.
Attributes: AMHU CIA ENLT YLIBENGL-2307 Transgender Lit (3)
This course will examine the broad range of literature and non-fiction by and about trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people. The class will study what makes literature trans/gender-expansive, who is framing the discourse on trans and genderqueer bodies and identities, and how those narratives are being solidified. Students will be studying the formal elements of literature from character development, theme, plot, and syntax, to structural questions of how trans and gender-expansive writers work with exposition, narrative, argument, and description. Students will also be exploring the relationship between trans and genderqueer narratives and social justice, as well as investigating relationships of power and privilege, and examining current legal policies that impact trans lives. The readings include literature, nonfiction, and trans theory, all focusing on 20th and 21st century material.
Attributes: DEI YLIBENGL-2360 Imagining the Amer Dream (3)
This course investigates notions of success in America today and in the past. We will bring a historical perspective to our work, beginning with a consideration of John Winthrop and Ben Franklin and moving forward from there to the present. Guiding themes will include the relationship between financial gain and virtue, the role of education, the availability of opportunity for all Americans, and the relationship between individual success and community success.
Attributes: DEI YLIBENGL-2362 Multicultural America (3)
?Multicultural America? provides an introduction to literature (printed and film) by and about various US ethnic groups. Students will analyze common cultural beliefs about America/Americans, e.g. American democracy and equal opportunity, cultural assimilation/the American ?melting pot? vs. preserving one?s culture-of-origin, and the American meritocracy. Students will address immigration to the US (past and present); identity politics; ?passing?; bigotry; hate crimes; ?racial uplift,? and the American meritocracy. Students will also learn how cultural differences/beliefs continue to affect contemporary American culture, business, and politics. ?Cultures? in this class are defined as the social/cultural norms of largely racial, socio-economic and/or ethnic groups, defined by those within the group and defined by those in the majority (i. e., mainstream Anglo Americans). This course typically includes texts/assignments about Asian-American, Native American, Mexican/Latino, and African-American peoples, as well as First-Generation/Second-Generation dynamics and illegal immigrants.
Attributes: DEI YLIBENGL-3990 Adv Research Based WR (3)
Students develop an inquiry-based project by conducting in-depth research using discipline-specific practices that result in transferable research and writing. Students build on the critical thinking and writing competencies they have previously acquired to engage topics and ideas in the field. Students formulate important questions or problems, identify and examine appropriate sources, and use evidence in order to substantiate their own claims. They acknowledge and address alternative explanations in scholarly conversations and revise their work accordingly. Outcomes of the project are communicated in both written and oral forms or on other media platforms.
Attributes: AWC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Junior, Senior