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English Department

Courses & Requirements

Course Highlights 2023-2024 Academic Year

  • Fall 2023

    During Academic Year 2023-24, the English department is hosting two wonderful visiting professors: Erica Mena and Kaitlin Staudt.

    Here the courses they will be offering this fall. Please register during add/drop!!

    EGL 119 NEW: Decolonial Poetries Mena

    MWF 11:45-12:50 LIPM 012+
    In this course we'll read and critically engage with contemporary poets writing predominantly in English from a decolonial perspective. From the intersection of poetics, aesthetics, decolonial (and anti-colonial) theory, and social justice in the arts, we will explore what a poetics of reading and writing decoloniality entails. By centering our exploration on poets who write from ongoing colonial experiences, we’ll build an understanding of the work of poetry in decolonial imaginings. We will explore how decolonial poetic practices work against racism, colonialism, and other contemporary systems of oppression, and consider how decolonial poets respond to and engage with these systems both overtly and through their aesthetics. Students will develop an understanding of both traditional and experimental     poetics, along with decolonial theories. LIT, WAC

    EGL 242 (was 204) NEW: Experimental Writing Workshop Mena

    MW 3:05-4:45 KARP 101+
    Experimental writing explores language as a medium in unexpected and often surprising ways. This course will focus primarily on poetry, though poetry defined somewhat broadly, including mixed media, visual, and prose poetry. We’ll read a variety of experimental texts, using them as launch points for our own experimental writing practices. This generative workshop will focus on the creation of new work using experimental techniques, while learning to engage deeply in reflective reading practices with each other’s work. We’ll experiment with constraint, computational poetry, hybrid and mixed media poetry, and generally be open to as many processes and approaches as we can. The goals of our workshop time, and our readings, will be to encourage you to develop new modes, skills, and techniques for writing creatively. LIT, CAD, WAC

    EGL 252 (was 207) NEW: Lit of the Islamic World Staudt *BIPOC req

    MWF 9:15-10:20 LAMT 002+
    The Islamic World and Global Literary culture course asks how two designations of the global – world literature and the Islamic world – think through the concepts of globalization and community. Using insights drawn from recent literary, sociological, and theological research we will consider the important and dynamic role of religion, specifically Islam, in contributing to cultural identity on a global scale.

    Students will engage with literary and theoretical texts that have been produced within, by, and about these communities to explore how authors reckoned with the world community envisioned by Islam and how Islamic authors, both practicing and non-religious, have been received into the global literary sphere. In addition to reading canonical novels, topics covered will include critical and cultural theories related to world literary study such as orientalism, the role of translation, literary prize culture, non-Western feminisms, and minority studies. Students will read a challenging and engaging range of texts, including novels, essays, short stories and travelogues produced by artists engaging with diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds drawn from the Arab World, Turkey, the Indian subcontinent, as well as from diaspora communities in Europe and America. LIT, CHF, LCC, WAC

    EGL 262 NEW: Global Modernisms Staudt *BIPOC req

    MWF 11:45-12:50 LIPM 100+
    While traditionally modernism has been considered a largely European and North American affair, in recent years scholars have sought to contest and expand this canon. New research has shown that modernism existed all over the world, from Africa and Latin America, to the South Pacific and East Asia, and on all continents in between. This course introduces students to a new globally expanded understanding of modernism, while asking them to actively contribute to the ongoing expansion of the canon. We will work with new scholarship and archival materials, in order to better understand what happens to modernism as it spreads around the world.

    Writers studied may include African writers such as Chinweizu, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Wole Soyinka; Caribbean writers such as Claude McKay and Aimé Césaire; Japanese poets, such as Hirato Renkichi and Chika Sagawa; Chinese writers such as Lu Xun and Eileen Zhang; Indian writers from Tagore and the Indian Progressive Writers Association to the 1960s avant-gardes; and Turkish modernists including Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and the Garip poets.

    Students will have the opportunity to work with texts in any languages they may read, or to work exclusively in English (including in translation). By exploring literary criticism on modernism in its historical and global contexts, students will gain an understanding of major debates which have shaped modernist studies across the twentieth century including New Criticism, feminist studies, postcolonial studies, as well as more recent debates on the global turn including weak theory and “bad” modernisms. Students will also improve their writing and independent research skills through an anthology project that invites them to contribute to the ongoing canonization of global modernist texts through producing scholarly annotations, introductions, and digital editing. LIT, CHF, LCC, WAC

    PS. We will soon tag these courses with the appropriate Critical Questions labels and how they may count toward other departments or interdisciplinary programs.

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