ENGL 2011 Sections: Spring 2019

ENGL 2011 (Honors I: Literary Study through Reading and Research) is a four-credit Honors introduction to writing across the curriculum, and it fulfills the freshman English requirement for Honors students. Study of literature—and the development of important critical reading, writing, and information literacy skills—in the university setting is essential preparation for further study in a wide variety of fields.

Students entering in Fall 2017: If you have not satisfied the first-year writing requirement through AP, ECE, or transfer credit for ENGL 1010/1011, you must take ENGL 2011 (instead of 1010 or 1011) in order to earn Sophomore Honors.

Students entering in Fall 2018: ENGL 2011 is no longer required, but it is still encouraged as an Honors replacement for ENGL 1010/1011. It will fulfill the A&H distribution category for University Honors Laureate, as well as count as 4 Honors credits at the 2000-level or higher.

There are two themed “pods” of ENGL 2011 for this semester, each of which consists of multiple sections supervised by an English faculty member.

Narratives of Migration

This course gives students the opportunity to reflect on the current dynamics and discourses on migration by exploring a wide range of texts. Through novels, stories, films, news, theories, testimonies, and poetry, we will arrive at a rich understanding of the diversity and range of narratives about migrant and refugee lives. We will ask questions about belonging, citizenship, and home while also interrogating movement and flight. The class will probe the relationship between migration and the formation of race, gender, and diasporic and transnational identities. Additionally, we will ask: how is the migrant represented in popular culture? How can we articulate anxieties around accents, hair, skin color or microaggressions? The course will showcase a variety of narratives of migration — those fleeing war or climate catastrophes, economic and educational migration as well the more cosmopolitan jetset stories. Readings include works by Chimamanda Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, Yaa Gyasi, and Laila Lalami as well as films, music videos and news articles.

Apocalyptica

For some cultural and historical reason, there has been a proliferation of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, film, plastic arts, and music in the past five decades, and in the current moment it is a hugely popular genre. Writers around the world, from Laguna Pueblo lands to Shanxi, have appropriated this genre to explore alternate futures for the planet. Some of it is dismal (dystopian). Some of it is hopeful (utopian). All of it is a prophetic offering to our most creative impulses to change the world for the better before it’s too late or to embrace the “revelation” (which is what an apocalypse is) because the new world order (or galactic in some cases) will be better than the old one.

This course explores all manner of apocalyptica and post-apocalyptica. Students will read, view, and listen to some of the most compelling and popular titles in this genre and develop a research agenda revolving around one of these texts (literary, cinematic, visual, or musical). With the instructor’s consent, the research project may also involve a relevant text or texts not assigned in the course. By mid-semester drafts of the research findings will be due and discussed in class, seminar style.

Developing a viable research prospectus, a solid bibliography, and a final research paper will, in part, determine the grade in the course. Class participation (preparedness, attentiveness, respectfulness, and engagement in class discussions) will also determine it. Step by step, the instructor will guide students through the research process and review multiple drafts of the final paper before it is submitted in lieu of the final exam.

The texts we will study this term are: Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Marrow Thieves by Cherrie Dimaline, and The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Together in class we will also develop a short filmography and discography for discussion in class.