All of these courses carry the pre-requisite of first-year writing (ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011).

ENGL 2405-001: Drama

[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Sarah Winter

This course will provide an introduction to the history, theory, and performance of drama. We will study major plays, dramatic genres, and changing theatrical conventions from classical Greek drama to the present. Assignments will include: a presentation on the staging and performance of a play, with a short paper; a longer comparative paper on tragedy or comedy; take-home midterm; final exam; class discussion participation; and a review of a performance at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre.

CA 1.

ENGL 2413-001: The Graphic Novel

[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Katherine Capshaw

This course explores the history and theory of the graphic novel. We will explore a variety of approaches to the genre, from superhero narratives to graphic memoir, from manga to contemporary experimental texts. While no single course can offer a comprehensive summation of such a vast and various body of work, our class will address the field’s major generic threads. We will also develop an understanding of the ‘grammar’ involved in reading a panel, page, and entire comics sequence. Alongside the narratives we will read secondary sources that explore aesthetic and theoretical debates within the field. One of our objectives is to support each other as we engage the critical discourse around comics and graphic novels: we will share sources and insights and offer constructive feedback as we work together to produce informed and incisive term papers.

CA 1.

ENGL 2701-004: Creative Writing I

[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Sean Forbes

Finding Your Artistic Voice Through Creative Writing Prompts

In this introduction to creative writing class, we will examine the different approaches that a writer can take when trying to establish a speaker in a poem or short story. We will look at exemplary works of poetry and fiction from writers like David Dominguez, Allison Joseph, Richard Blanco, and Justin Torres. Students will produce a final portfolio of their original work. Class participation is an essential component to this largely workshop-based course along with weekly writing prompts such as writing in iambic pentameter and challenging prose sketches.

[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Etan Markus

Prerequisites: (1) ENGL 107, 1010, 1011, or 2011; (2) PSYC 1100; (3) PSYC 2100; (4) PSYC 2200 or 2500 or 3201 or 3552; (5) a good knowledge of statistics

Permission number required. Request a permission number using this form.

Remember how you got to class today? a bad experience? learning to ride a bike? What parts of the brain are involved in these different types of behaviors? How can one examine these questions in the laboratory rat? This hands-on laboratory will provide students with an opportunity to conduct experiments using modern behavioral techniques. The ability of rats to carry out different types of tasks will be related to different brain structures.

This is a serious lab designed for students interested in continuing to graduate or medical school.

• This is a hands-on lab, most of the time we will only have a brief classroom session. Instead, on about half the weeks students will be training animals for about 1-2 hours/day for 3-4 days a week.
• On occasion you will have to come in on the weekend to care for your animals.
• This is also a “W” class, and I’ll be working with you on your writing (& re-writing).

W.

[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Blair T. Johnson

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011 and instructor consent. The catalog-level prerequisite of PSYC 2700 is recommended but will not be required.

Psychology of the arts is far more vast than any individual course can possibly cover, ranging from the written word, to song, to music, to visual arts, performance art, and more. Thus, this course is an introduction to the subject. As a psychological topic, a strong focus of the course is emotions and judgments and their underlying experiential and functional bases; a related focus revolves around the functional purposes of consuming and making art (e.g., self-expression, social justice activity, therapy), along with understanding the motives of people who make art and what might make their art more powerful—or even fail. As a writing seminar, this course will focus on contemporary and classic scholarship as well as the students’ own essays on these subjects.

W.

[UConn Stamford]

Instructor: Richard Watnick

Honors students are able to enroll without a permission number. Non-Honors students will need to request a permission number by emailing Professor Watnick

This seminar has multiple faculty session leaders from different departments. There will be a guest session leader for approximately 10 of the weekly meetings, and the other meetings are for open discussion. The topic of the course for Fall 2021 was Ideas and Actions and for fall 2020 it was Resilience. Resilience (fall 2020 topic) may be repeated in fall 2022. Students can repeat this course with change of topic. See sample session guests and topics below. Professor Watnick organizes the course and attends all meetings. Each session leader, still to be identified for fall 2022, assigns reading material ahead of time and then presents before opening up discussion.

Fall 2020 Sample sessions (Topic: Resilience): 

• Jerome Sehulster, Professor of Psychology, The concept of Resilience in the field of psychology
• Susan Herbst, President Emeritus and Professor of Political Science, American Political Institutions:  How Resilient Are They in 2020?
• Shanelle Jones, Honors Student, University Scholar, Day of Pride Scholar, POLS & Human Rights, Untold Stories of the African Diaspora: The Lived Experiences of Black Caribbean Immigrants in the U.S
• Mark Boyer, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Geography, Adapting to Climate Change 
• Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, Resilience in litigation and negotiation
• Jeff Schlosser, National Supply Chain Lead Partner, Strategy and Transactions, Ernst & Young LLP and Kelly Stals, Senior Manager, Operating Model Effectiveness, in Ernst & Young’s International Tax and Transaction Services Group “Supply Chain Resilience – Responses to Disrupted Supply Chains in the COVID-19 Era”
• Joel Blatt, Professor of History, Fred Roden, Professor of English and special guest Roland Tec, On the work of Nechama Tec, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, The Resilience of Polish partisans during the Holocaust
• Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Professor of History, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity 
• Vicki Knoblauch, Professor of Economics, Analyzing responses to the pandemic through game theory
• Gregory Pierrot, Associate Professor of English, The Haitian Revolution: a global, artistic, and cultural legacy 
• Fred Roden, Professor of English, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

Fall 2021 Sample Sessions (Topic: Ideas and Actions): 

• Jerome Sehulster, Professor of Psychology, Autobiographical memory 
• Spencer Ross, Assistant Professor of Marketing UMass-Lowell, Sustainable Marketing 
• Mark Strauss, UConn Digital Data Initiative, TIP Digital and from Wave Aerospace
• Joel Blatt, Associate Professor of History, Thoughts and Actions of Carlo and Nello Rosselli and the Relevance to Us 
• Mark Boyer, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, Executive Director, International Studies Association, The Climate Adaptation Imperative
• Charles Robins, Managing Director of Fairmont Partners, Start-ups/emerging technology, Building a unicorn: How to reverse the rainbow 
• Mark Rolfe, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Transportation
• Fred Roden, Professor of English, Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss 
• Annamaria Csizmadia, Associate Professor of Human Development & Family Sciences, Racial Microaggressions 

50% of your grade is based on the open discussion in class and on HuskyCT. The other 50% of your grade consists of a term paper or project on a topic in your major or a topic covered in class.