All three of these courses carry the pre-requisite of first-year writing (ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011).
ENGL 1701-003: Creative Writing I
Instructor: Ellen Litman
This introductory class will concentrate on poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students will learn by writing original work, reading and discussing the work of published authors, responding to their classmates’ stories, poems, and essays, and trying to help one another. We’ll begin by doing a series of exercises, eventually working our way toward producing three to four poems, one finished piece of creative nonfiction, and one short story, all of which we will workshop in class. Students should be prepared to read and write a lot and actively participate in class and online discussions.
ENGL 2409-001: The Modern Novel
Instructor: Margaret Breen
This is an exciting reading-intensive course. We will be reading a selection of significant novels of the last 125 years from a range of cultural contexts—novels important for both the stories they tell (stories regarding alienation, resilience, resistance, violence, memory, and forgetting) and the ways in which those stories are told (ways regarding narrative technique, point of view, plot construction, metaphor, and so on). In short, this is a course on the modern novel, where “modern” refers to both the new kinds of stories these texts recount and the innovative formal means that facilitate and create that recounting.
Likely texts: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011), Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone (2017 [2015]), Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox (2018), and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)
Likely assignments: a short, 75-minute essay exam; a 5-6 essay or creative project; a final 6-8 page essay or creative project.
CA 1.
ENGL 3122-001:Irish Literature in English since 1939
Instructor: Mary Burke
Open to juniors or higher.
This Honors course will situate contemporary Irish drama, prose, and poetry in its evolving historical, social, linguistic, and political contexts. No previous knowledge of Irish writing or culture is assumed. Authors to be discussed include Elizabeth Bowen, Seamus Heaney, Martin McDonagh, Glenn Patterson, and Claire Kilroy. Some contemporary Irish films or films on a contemporary Irish theme (e.g. McDonagh’s 2005 Oscar-winning short) will be considered alongside the literary texts. Group discussion will be at the center of class. Writing: a practice essay, a midterm paper, a presentation, film reports, and a final exam.
CA 4-Int.