Courses
ENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
Fall
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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
Fall & Spring
Restrictions: Including: -Class: FreshmanENGL-150C P1 Stories that Matter (3)
In this course, students will read texts that have had an impact in some way. For example, they may be “firsts” (for example, the first short story written on a new media platform) or they may have spoken to an important cultural moment (for example, the BLM movement or the pandemic). The course allows students to explore literature as a path to understanding 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-180 Book Club (3)
This course focuses on two or three texts on a common topic, allowing students to explore how authors adapt a story to their own purposes. The course integrates creative writing and digital media as approaches to discussing literature. Past topics have included Storytelling (Arabian Nights) and Journeys (The Odyssey).
Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
SpringENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENLT HHSM HHUM YLIB
Variable
Pre-requisites: -ENGL-201 English Career Seminar (1)
The objective of this course is to foster the academic success of students who are beginning the English major at St. John Fisher University. 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.Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
Variable
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
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENLT YLIB
Spring – Odd YearsENGL-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-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-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENLT P1 YLIB
FallENGL-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-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-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENWR P1 PCRW YLIB
VariableENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENWR YLIB
FallENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENLT P1 PROD VDAP YLIB
Fall
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.Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
Fall & SpringENGL-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.
Students must have successfully completed a 1299C course to register.
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENWR PCRW YLIB ZEXL
Fall
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-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 1700Typically offered:
Attributes: ENBL ENLT LRTR P1 YLIB
VariableENGL-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
Typically offered:
Attributes: AMHU ENLT LRTR P1 YLIB
VariableENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
Fall & Spring
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-332 Borderlands Literature (3)
Unlike people, ideas and experiences are not limited or contained by borders. In fact, one of the markers of transformative literature is that it works well and even gains meaning through translation, be that translation from one language to another or cultural experiences. In this course, students will read, analyze, and respond to text that originates outside of the United States. Through our engagement with these texts, students will better understand and connect to the experience of those beyond their borders through in-depth discussions with peer groups and a wide range of projects.
Attributes: DEI YLIBENGL-335 Studies in AFAM Literature (3)
This course will explore the work of African American writers throughout American history. Students will learn about African American history and culture by reading fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from various literary periods. In addition, we’ll read folklore, poetry, plays, novels, cultural analysis, and philosophical arguments by such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. De Bois, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and several others. Beyond the individual works themselves, we will consider the political and social background of various African American movements and genres. Examples include the abolitionist movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and Afrofuturism.
Attributes: CLTC ENEA ENLT YLIB
Pre-requisites: -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- OR ENGL-259 D-ENGL-337 Multicultural Literature (3)
Multiculturalism has a complex history in this nation whose motto is “E Pluribus Unum” (from many, one). This course examines literary representations of multicultural 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 multiculturalism 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?
Attributes: CLTC ENEA ENLT YLIB
Formerly titled: Ethnicities in/and Literature
Pre-requisites: -ENGL-339 American Literatures (3)
This course explores the ways in which American 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- OR ENGL-259 D-ENGL-342 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.
Attributes: ENLT THME YLIB
Pre-requisites: -ENGL-344 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 on 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.
Attributes: ENLT THME YLIB
Pre-requisites: -ENGL-346 Hacking the Humanities (3)
What are the digital humanities? To some, the term defines new practices of reading and writing. To others, it’s a set of research methods. Still others say it won’t be long before the Digital Humanities just are the humanities. But how did we get there? In this course, we will explore how radical print practices—Choose Your Own Adventure Novels, conceptual poetry, reorderable narrative, image-text—inform central innovations of interactive, multimodal digital literatures. We will experiment with digital research methods, and we will discuss how digital interventions have provided new ways of imagining audience and access in 21st century humanities study.
This course was formerly titled: Narrative and New Media
Attributes: ENLT VDAP YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanENGL-347 Studies in Postcolonialism (3)
Studies in Postcolonialism features art and criticism that helps us understand the cultural impact of imperialism on the colonizer and colonized. Our focus is on the discursive forms of resistance that emerged during and in the aftermath of empire. A general survey of postcolonial theory and criticism will occupy most of the course, along with a focus on the artistic productions of specific regions, and how authors from these regions express the violent legacies of settler colonialism, the ongoing processes of de-colonization, and the evolving forms of neo-colonialism. Taking an interdisciplinary, intersectional approach, we will examine issues of language, identity, transnationalism, diaspora, race, gender, and sexuality as they arise within individual texts. Questions include: what literary forms and languages do postcolonial writers use, and why? How do they negotiate between colonial and indigenous cultural traditions—and when, why, and how does that binary begin to break down? How are literary form and politics related to one another? What are some problems with the very term “postcolonial”?
Attributes: CLTC ENLT ENWL WGST YLIB
Pre-requisites: -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-352 The History of Argument (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- OR ENGL-200C 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-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-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-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-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:
ENGL 378 Section 01 Topic: Audio & Visual Storytelling
Attributes: ENWP ENWR PCRW YLIB
Pre-requisites: -ENGL-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- OR ENGL-200C D-ENGL-420 Senior Seminar (3)
This seminar-style course allows students to further develop their work on a favorite text or a paper written in a 300-level course. Students choose a critical perspective to explore and apply to their work. Students engage in peer review and share their work at the end of the semester to an audience beyond the ENGL 420 class.
Typically offered:
Attributes: ENLT YLIB ZCAP
Fall
Pre-requisites: ENGL-200C D-ENGL-425 Senior Experience (3)
This capstone course for senior English Department majors is a seminar-style course culminating 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) of their choice, 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.
Attributes: YLIB
Permission of the advisor, department chair, and TWC liaison (Dr. Monica Cherry) is required to register.ENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
Fall & Spring
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)
Students may earn Honors in English by completing a one- or two-semester sequence of independent study during the senior year, culminating in a paper or project. Upon completion of the paper/project, a student receives three (for 1 semester) or six (for 2 semesters) hours of 400-level credit toward the major. The student selects a faculty advisor, who works with them during the development and completion of the paper/project and determines the final grade. The project ends with the student sharing their work with department faculty and/or the wider public. Completion of the Independent Study/Tutorial Authorization form is required.
Typically offered:
Attributes: YLIB
SpringENGL-499H Honors In English (3)
Students may earn Honors in English by completing a one- or two-semester sequence of independent study during the senior year, culminating in a paper or project. Upon completion of the paper/project, a student receives three (for 1 semester) or six (for 2 semesters) hours of 400-level credit toward the major. The student selects a faculty advisor, who works with them during the development and completion of the paper/project and determines the final grade. The project ends with the student sharing their work with department faculty and/or the wider public. 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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: LC YLIB
Spring
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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: LC YLIB
Fall
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman -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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: RW YLIB ZRES
Fall & Spring
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman, Sophomore -Attribute: New Core 20-21ENGL-2101 Law, Society & Justice (3)
This course addresses issues of law, society, and justice through an analysis of literature, history, journalism, social theory, and film. It will also give participants experience addressing these issues through acts of civic engagement. As an exploratory course, we will use our collaborative academic learning to examine and understand structural, historical, and cultural assertions about justice. Our goal is to leave with new tools and experiences that help us perceive and understand the legal system’s effects and resonances in our everyday lives; understand our own ability to respond to these effects through individual and communal contributions; identify and critically examine the foundations of our own positions on issues related to the
legal system, namely crime, punishment, and incarceration.Typically offered:
Attributes: CCE YLIB
Spring
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 ZCIV
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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.Typically offered:
Attributes: CCE YLIB ZCIV
Spring & Summer
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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,
Typically offered:
Attributes: CCE ENWR PCRW YLIB
Fall – Odd Years
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: CIA YLIB
Spring – Even Years
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: CIA YLIB
Fall, Spring & Summer
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: CIA PCRW YLIB
Fall & Spring
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-2273 Exploring Film History (3)
This course explores the history of film from the early 20th century to the present day, considering such issues as film genres, technology and film art, the representation of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality, and the work of important film directors and artists.
Attributes: CIA YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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 YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-2320 AFAM Literature & Culture (3)
In focusing exclusively on works produced by African Americans, this course seeks both to demonstrate the contributions of Black artists to the composite of American culture and to explore some ways in which these works create a parallel tradition of their own. Clearly, in a single semester, we can examine only a sample of the available material, but our sample is broad-based and representative, including prose fiction, poetry, autobiography, and other media. The thematic emphasis of the course centers on the processes of self-identification and self-representation by African Americans. These processes are inevitably—and interestingly—multi-faceted, since self-identification and self-representation have both individual and collective (or communal) dimensions, and because they are likely to have reference points in both a specifically African-American culture and in the surrounding Euro-American one. The largely chronological arrangement of our texts—from the 1840s to the 2000s—is designed to make it easier to see links between the concerns and even the forms of cultural expression and the surrounding historical, sociological, and political circumstances.
Attributes: DEI YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-2348 Books Without Borders (3)
Reading a work of literature is in fact seeing the world through the eyes of another person. In this course, students will read, analyze, and react to World Literature texts written in or translated into English. Through their discussions of fiction, students will become more aware of how their own biases, judgments and cultural perspectives inform their reactions to the descriptions of lives lived in different ways from their own. Students will explore these reactions in deep discussion with peer groups.
Attributes: DEI YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: DEI YLIB
Variable
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: DEI YLIB
Fall
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-2376 Intercultural Communication (3)
Knowledge of effective intercultural communication practices prepares us to function in a multicultural society and a global economy. In ENGL 2376, class members will become aware of the many ways cultural practices and traditions inform communication throughout the world, especially in professional contexts. We will study how language, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, traditions, customs, and values affect communication across cultures. With this knowledge class members will develop awareness in how varying cultural perspectives influence and shape human interactions, including those living and working in diverse communities. Scholarship in fields such as professional writing, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, and intercultural communication informs the curricular work.
Attributes: DEI YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, SeniorENGL-3990 Adv Research-Based Writing (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.
Typically offered:
Attributes: AWC YLIB
Fall, Spring & Summer
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21; Excluding: -Class: Freshman, Sophomore