Featured Courses

HRTS 3298-002: (Variable Topics) Social Documentary in Theory & Practice

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Instructor: Catherine Masud

This is a special opportunity to learn from an internationally award-winning filmmaker. The small Honors course is intended for those of you who are interested in creating documentary films as part of your scholarly and/or creative work. 

This course will be of special interest to students with a dual interest in human rights and film studies who would also like to have practical training in documentary film production. The course aims to open students’ eyes to the tremendous power and possibility of the documentary form as a vehicle of social discourse and change.

The first half of this course will examine the documentary from a historical, ethical, and aesthetic perspective to provide a theoretical grounding for students, with a particular focus on documentaries that address social and political themes. Some of the topics to be addressed include the evolution of the documentary genre, the modes and models of documentary, the rhetorical, narrative, and poetic documentary ‘voice’, and the question of ‘social impact’. Major milestones of the non-fiction genre will be studied along with lesser known short form documentaries that illustrate specific aspects of technique, style, and content. The second half of the course will provide students with a practical framework for discovering their own documentary voice. Students will be guided through the process of pre-production, shooting and editing as they create their own short form documentaries on a social issue of their choice.

ENVE 3995-001: Brownfield Redevelopment (Conversion Opportunity)

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Instructor: Maria Chrysochoou

While this is not an Honors course, Prof. Chrysochoou welcomes Honors students of all majors and would be happy to offer Honors conversions for interested students.

How do you get from an abandoned, potentially polluted property to a micro-brewery or modern apartment complex? 

Connecticut has a rich industrial history, which has resulted in thousands of abandoned sites throughout the state. The investigation, remediation and redevelopment of these sites requires skilled personnel in environmental law, financial and real estate analysis, land use and urban planning, public policy, environmental science and engineering and landscape architecture.

The course will bring students in contact with active professionals and CT municipalities, who will provide practical knowledge of the process, with real world examples.

  • Learn the issues from professionals
  • Work with CT communities on real projects
  • No prerequisites
  • All majors welcome

There will be an optional follow-up practicum to ENVE 3995 in the Spring.

Check out cbi.uconn.edu for more information about the Connecticut Brownfield Initiative. It was also featured in this UConn Today article.

ENGL 3218W-001: Ethnic Literatures of the United States

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Instructor: Veronica Makowsky

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800; open to juniors or higher, or others with permission of the instructor.

What is an American? How does ethnicity affect one’s sense of identity? How do class, race, sexuality, gender, generation, and location(s) interact with ethnicity to form or challenge identity or to suggest identities contingent upon context? In addition to these broad questions about ethnicity and identity, this course also considers how movement over time and space (within the US, to the US, from the US, and globally) may lead to unstable or fluid senses of identity. We will read a play, short stories, novels, and autobiographies. The texts encompass Native American works (Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories (excerpts) and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House); African American works (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and August Wilson’s Fences); and works concerning immigrant experiences: a collection of short stories by Anzia Yezierska, Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, some short stories by Junot Diaz, and Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Grades will be based on: 1) active participation in daily discussion which usually includes in-class writing assignments based on the day’s assigned reading; 2) 2 short (2-3 pp.) response papers and their revision; 3) an 8-10-page research paper and its revision.

CA 4, W.

ENGL 3218W-001: Ethnic Literatures of the United States

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Instructor: Veronica Makowsky

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher, or others with permission of the instructor.

What is an American? How does ethnicity affect one’s sense of identity? How do class, race, sexuality, gender, generation, and location(s) interact with ethnicity to form or challenge identity or to suggest identities contingent upon context? In addition to these broad questions about ethnicity and identity, this course also considers how movement over time and space (within the US, to the US, from the US, and globally) may lead to unstable or fluid senses of identity. We will read a play, short stories, novels, and autobiographies. The texts encompass Native American works (Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories (excerpts) and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House); African American works (Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Stories and August Wilson’s Fences); and works concerning immigrant experiences: a collection of short stories by Anzia Yezierska, Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine, and Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Grades will be based on: 1) active participation in daily discussion which usually includes in-class writing assignments based on the day’s assigned reading; 2) 2 short (2-3 pp.) response papers and their revision; 3) an 8-10-page research paper and its revision.

CA 4, W.

ENGL 2401-001: Poetry

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Instructor: Sean Forbes

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011.

This course is an introduction to poetry in English, designed to familiarize you with a range of poetic forms and modes from the 16th through the 21st centuries. We’ll read, discuss, and write about many different kinds of poems as ways of enjoying their wealth of rhythms, figures, and rhetorical effects. We’ll pay attention to the way poems sound, you’ll hear poems aloud in class, and at visiting writer events. You’ll also memorize and recite poems yourself, since memorization allows you inside a poem in a rather magical way. By the end of the course, you’ll have a good understanding of how content and sound work together in poetry, and you’ll know a selection of important poems and poetic forms.

CA 1.

ENGL 1103W-002: Renaissance and Modern Western Literature

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Instructor: Clare King’oo

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011.

In this Honors course, we will encounter several works from the British and North American traditions judged to be literary masterpieces. Our aim will be to explore the art of imaginative story-telling over time, with particular reference to the Renaissance (ca. 1485-1660) and the modern period (ca. 1850 to today). We will consider questions of narration, representation, genre, authority, intertextuality, and canonicity. Our discoveries will be the focus of our own rigorous writing practices, as we work on improving our argumentative and stylistic skills through a range of reports, essays (with revisions), and timed exams. Lively participation in class discussion will be expected and warmly encouraged. Please note that ENGL 1103W is designed primarily with non-English-majors in mind.

CA 1, W.

SPAN 1007-001: CANCELLED

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This class has been cancelled for Spring 2018.

Instructor: Osvaldo Pardo

This course, which is taught in English, will introduce students to Latin American modern literature by exploring a wide variety of works by twentieth-century and contemporary male and female writers who expanded, renewed and questioned the possibilities of narrative forms and genres in an effort to redefine inherited notions of “realism.” Some of the topics to be discussed include the modernization and internationalization of Latin American literature; the changing relation between authors and the market; the politics of translation of Latin American literature; the place of literature in a global age, among others. The authors to be read and discussed include Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernández, Silvina Ocampo, Clarice Lispector, Mario Bellatin, and Samanta Schweblin, among others.

The course will be conducted as a seminar, which means that active and regular participation in class discussions is essential and expected.

CA 1, CA 4-Int.

ENGL 3207W-001: American Literature Since the Mid-Twentieth Century

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Instructor: Clare Eby

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011; open to sophomores or higher

Concentrating on fiction that breaks new ground (particularly in terms of narrative form and structure), this class begins with two classics from shortly after the middle of the 20th century: Sylvia Plath’s vivid and disturbing The Bell Jar, an acid-sharp examination of the position of women in midcentury America; and Thomas Pynchon’s wacky, conspiratorial, postmodern quest narrative, The Crying of Lot 49. We then move on to Art Spiegelman’s holocaust narrative and autobiography Maus (the text that, more than any other, established the graphic novel as a serious art form). Next, we sample texts from the 21st century. We will read at least one book of stunningly interlocking short stories, such as Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, which experiments with narrative form to pose questions about how technology changes social interactions, and/or Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, brilliant tales about immigrant families that attend closely to generational differences. We will probably read Gary Shteyngart’s satirical dystopia, Super Sad True Love Story, and definitely read the heartbreaking, multigenerational saga of exile, Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. There will be seven or so books total, plus some secondary readings. Because this is an honors course, requirements will be equivalent to what I assign in advanced studies (the 4000-level capstones for English majors): one short paper (5-6 pp.); one research paper (10-12 pp), which will be broken down into several preliminary stages, including an annotated bibliography; and a twenty-minute presentation on a scholarly text. The class will be discussion-based (with discussion a significant portion of the final grade); there will also be frequent quizzes.

W.

ENGL 3207W-001: American Literature Since the Mid-Twentieth Century

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Instructor: Jerry Phillips

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011; open to sophomores or higher

The twentieth century has been described as “the American century.” How did that description come about? Was it still operative as the twentieth century came to a close? If not, why not? What will the twenty first century hold for American society, particularly in its relationship to the rest of the world? American literature is a vital cultural terrain on which these questions might be considered, as writers and artists are heavily involved in the work of national self-conception. In this course, we will read a range of writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Leslie Marmon Silko, Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks and Toni Morrison. Course requirements: three papers and a final examination.

W.

ENGL 2407-007: The Short Story

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Topic: Train Reading: Short Fiction Since 1945

Instructor: Kathy Knapp

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011

This course will examine short fiction that originally appeared in The New Yorker and its role in reflecting, shaping, and educating the burgeoning middle class of the postwar years and resituating them in the contemporary era. By reading the stories of John Cheever, John Updike, Philip Roth, and J.D. Salinger among others, as well as that of contemporary writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Sherman Alexi, George Saunders, and Junot Diaz among others alongside cultural, historical, and literary criticism and essays, we will see how this fiction has helped readers of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) form their identity as they came to “arrive” in the suburbs or transform the city by way of gentrification. Indeed, many of these stories wrestle with the ephemeral anxieties peculiar to their readers’ station in life: numbing conformity, debilitated manhood, marital woes, and perceived professional slights. Still others challenge readers to imaginatively engage in a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized world in ways both productive and problematic. These stories have alternately offered the middle class a glamorized version of themselves, exposed their weaknesses, preyed upon their fears, and both challenged and confirmed their assumptions concerning race, gender, class, and privilege. We will supplement our reading by sampling and discussing representations of the PMC in films, television, and advertising. This course should fulfill the objectives of a General Education course and an Honors course, which is to say it is designed to help you write and think more critically and deeply about the way that fiction interacts with our perceptions of ourselves and the larger world.

CA 1.