Texas Tech University

Undergraduate Course Offerings, Fall 2023

If you have any questions, please contact the undergraduate advisor.

Courses from previous semesters are archived here.

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ENGL 2308, Introduction to non-fiction: Autobiography and the Vietnam War

Dr. Yuan Shu
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:30 - 1:50 PM
Onsite CRN: 41940

""

This course examines autobiography as a genre in relation to the Vietnam War. We begin by reading Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973) in juxtaposition with Lynda Devanter's Home before Morning as two different accounts of the war. Then we investigate Le Ly Hayslip's When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989) and Thi Bui's The Best We Could Do: an Illustrated Memoir (2018) in terms of Vietnamese immigrant and refugee perspectives. We conclude by scrutinizing George Takei's They Called Us Enemy (2018) and rethinking about empire and war in the era of terrorism, pandemic, and Cold War 2.0.

ENGL 2323, British Literature I: The Battle of the Sexes 700-1762

Dr. Brian Mcfadden
Mondays & Wednesdays, 9:00 - 10:20 AM
Onsite CRN: 39525
Online CRN: 40746

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This course will teach the basics of reading texts critically, writing examinations and essays, citation and research, and the examination of early English literature and culture. The question driving this course: while men often appear to dominate medieval and early modern culture, how have women asserted and reasserted themselves as authors and as human beings in that time? We will discuss such texts and authors as Beowulf, Judith, The Husband's Message and The Wife's Lament, Dream of the Rood, the lais of Marie de France, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, and Shakespeare, as well as various shorter lyric poems and prose pieces by both male and female authors through the 18th century; we will see that what is often depicted as a battle for control yields in fact reveals many cases where the feminine equals or overcomes the masculine, and that the need for some kind of balance and harmony is constantly demanded (if not always achieved).

ENGL 2326, American Literature II: Identity and Community in the American West

Dr. Cordelia Barrera
Mondays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM
Online CRN: 46292

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Identity & Community in the American West focuses on issues arising from the diverse groups of settlers who moved West during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Themes we discuss include: the American West as a landscape where Euro-American, Mexican, and Native American cultures meet, mix, and blur cultural and ideological boundaries; interactions, confrontations, and conflicts between homesteaders, ranchers, and indigenous peoples; and the idea of American ideologies such as the American Dream and Manifest Destiny which have helped shape a distinctly American identity. As we consider how the West functions as a symbol for the nation through fiction, non-fiction, and film in American literature from the Civil War period to the present, we will focus on landscape, social and environmental justice, shifting gender roles, race and ethnicity, and the development of the idea of the West in the American experience. ENGL 2326 aims to challenge students understanding of cultural and personal beliefs while examining cultural differences and developing meaningful relationships through communication with those from different cultures.

ENGL 2328, Introduction to Film Studies

Dr. Ben Rogerson
Mondays, Wednesdays, & Fridays, 11:00 - 11:50 AM
Lecture: Mondays & Wednesdays
Breakout Sessions: Fridays
Onsite CRN: 39529

""

As regular moviegoers and avid binge-watchers, we intuitively respond to the “grammar,” of film. Our pulse quickens when the monster nears its hapless victim; we get lumps in our throats when the hero finally wins the heart of the one s/he loves. But how exactly do films make us laugh, cry, and scream? The course draws on examples from U.S. and global cinema in order to explore the film techniques that produce such complex effects—we'll cover everything from mise-en-scene to cinematography, from editing to sound. Then we will build on those fundamentals to consider different modes of cinema such as narrative, documentary, and experimental. Ultimately, the course asks what distinguishes film from all the other arts, and what makes this “Seventh Art” at once so conceptually rich and so potentially deceptive. Popcorn not included.

ENGL 2370, Intro to Language

Elizabeth Hughes
Mondays, Wednesdays, & Fridays, 1:00 - 1:50 PM
Onsite CRN: 43932; Online CRN: 44133

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Language is something that we take for granted; just like breathing or walking, almost all of us have some form of language, and we use it every day without ever really thinking about how it actually works. But upon closer inspection, human language turns out to be exceedingly complex and systematic at the same time. So, the question is how and why? This course aims to provide a broad overview of language, focusing on its structure, its origins, and its role in society. Among the questions we'll address are: how do we humans acquire and use language so effortlessly?; what does it do for us?; do different cultures or societies use language differently?; and if so, does language reflect human society and culture as well?

Requirements Fulfilled: Social and Behavioral Sciences Core requirement.

ENGL 2388, Introduction to Film Studies: Don't Believe Your Eyes

Dr. Fareed Ben-Youssef
Asynchronous
Online CRN: 46300

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“Suddenly something somewhere scrapes loudly, the picture lurches and you don't believe your eyes.”

So wrote Maksim Gorky upon first experiencing the wonders of the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematograph in 1896. His stunned response to the motion picture grounds our investigation into the medium as we ask: how do movies draw us in, hypnotize us, and even deceive us? This interdisciplinary Introduction to Film Studies offers a salient overview of global film history and film theory. It considers television and video games to underline that Film Studies encompasses far more than just cinema. Guest filmmakers will reveal, step by step, how an idea is brought to the screen. Guest scholars will share insights into how they understand and interpret a film.

Our attentions will move from silent film to sound, from avant-garde cinema to Hollywood blockbusters. We will study influential film directors (like Alfred Hitchcock), foundational cinematic genres (like film noir, the Western, and the Superhero film) as well as different national cinemas. To sense how even the brightest films can touch on troubling histories, we will analyze Disney cartoons and the anime of Japan's Studio Ghibli. Finally, we will explore documentary and mockumentary to perceive the contradictions of a form that promises a glimpse of “real life” through highly conventionalized, artificial tropes.

Spirited dialogue and collaboration lie at the center of this asynchronous class. Students converse with each other on Blackboard discussion boards, and the course lectures are built upon student questions. Assignments include short creative and analytical work around the featured films and media. A final adaptation assignment—which can be either individual or with a group—will demonstrate students' understanding of the different genres we have studied. Moreover, students will experience what it is like to create in front of and behind the camera.

Following this class, students will be ready to pursue more advanced film and media courses, and, ultimately, they will see film with sharper, more critical eyes.

Note: Enrollment is now open to all online students. On-site students will only be able to enroll 30 days before classes start. If you are on-site and interested in enrolling, please email the instructor (fbenyous@ttu.edu). He will send you a reminder when enrollment opens up to the general student population.

ENGL 3303, Medieval Literature in England: Magic & Miracle; Heroes & Saints; Dreamers & Travelers

Dr. Julie Couch
Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:00 - 2:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 39926; Online CRN: 41942

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In this course, we will read and delight in early English literature from circa 1066 to 1400 AD, from King Arthur to Chaucer, from battle to love, from saints to lovers. We will read these literary works analytically, paying particular attention to the overlap between the features of history, romance, and saint's life. We will also explore the cultural contexts of early writings, including their, perhaps surprising, global view and their original placement in handwritten manuscripts.

ENGL 3307, Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature: Eighteenth-Century Identities

Dr. Marta Kvande
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:30 - 1:50 PM
Onsite CRN: 13449; Online CRN: 35480

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A lot changed in eighteenth-century Britain, and as a result, the ways people thought about their identity changed, too. In this class, we'll look at the ways literature wrestled with nation, race, gender, and identity. For one thing, Britain itself came into being as the union of England, Wales, Scotland, and eventually Ireland. This Britain also developed overseas colonies – and lost some of them – and turned itself into an empire trading all over the globe. This global trade, in turn, included the business of buying and selling people – the transatlantic slave trade – and as that trade grew, Britons developed beliefs about skin color to justify their acts. The economic changes brought about by increased trade also affected women's roles and proper behavior. We'll read literary texts in which writers think through what nation, race, and gender mean. What did it mean to be British as Britain came to see itself within a larger world? What did skin color mean when some people were enslaved and some were not? What did it mean to be a man or a woman when the understanding of what made the sexes different was changing?

ENGL 3308, British Romanticism

Dr. Marjean Purinton
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:00 - 3:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 13457

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The British Romantic Period (1780-1830) was a time of social upheaval, political change, religious uncertainty, familial disruptions, class destablizations, scientific and educational revolutions, explorations, commercialism, industrialization, and colonial activity. At the heart of all tensions was the question of human rights--for women, for slaves, for the working poor, for the disabled, for the elderly, for the colonized.

It was a revolutionary time when literature challenged and championed the prevailing attitudes, customs, laws, and lifestyles. This era reflects remarkable transformations that underpin both modern and postmodern thought, and you will be amazed at the connections between Romanticism and contemporary culture and writing.

We will survey representative and diverse literary selections from British Romanticism that address the period's historical and cultural issues. Our learning activities will include secondary-source discovery activities, short reflection essays, a take-home final essay, and discussion generated by an engaged learning community informed by feminist pedagogy.

ENGL 3309, Modern and Contemporary British Literature: British Modernism

Dr. Jen Shelton
Mondays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM
Online CRN: 46299

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Modernism made the world we live in — from the rapid rate of technological change to the speed with which we travel. Modern people felt strongly that the world they lived in was radically different from the world of their parents. They lived in a connected world in which the sinking of the Titanic could be known the next morning in New York and London, where movies brought images of far-off places into their neighborhoods, and where the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo could lead to a worldwide conflagration. This course will consider the connections between modernity and modern literature, with emphasis on understanding how the conditions of modernity are connected to our lives today. We will read major modernist authors including James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and think about issues of globalization, women's changing rights and stature, the impact of the Great War on politics and medicine, among others.

ENGL 3323, Early American Literature: From Narrative to Novel

Dr. John Samson
Mondays & Wednesdays, 3:00 - 4:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 33010; Online CRN: 46298

In the narratives and novels of early American literature a governor chronicles the foundation and growth of one of the first colonies, a pious woman is captured by Indians, a prominent minister confronts alleged witches, a hero of the Revolution survives imprisonment, and a medical doctor is enslaved by a foreign power. We will read and discuss these and other adventures of men and women who exemplify the development of America from a collection of scattered settlements to a more-or-less unified nation, one attempting to embody Jefferson's ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These ideals, we will see, are expressed in a variety of prose forms: histories, journals, autobiography, and novels.

ENGL 3328, Introduction to American Studies

Dr. Yuan Shu
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:30 - 4:50 PM
Onsite CRN: 41940

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What is American Studies? How has it evolved in recent decades? Why does it matter today? This course not only approaches American Studies as a discipline with its own theory and methodology but also explores its themes in its recent development. We begin by examining the genealogy and the changing definitions of American Studies since its formation in the 1950s. We then focus on major issues, trends, and themes in the field, which involve race, gender, sexuality, and nation-building in theoretical terms on the one hand, and which also engage wars, Hollywood, and popular culture as its subject matter on the other hand. As American Studies has recently witnessed a paradigm shift from the transatlantic to the transpacific, we both read cyberpunk fiction and graphic novel that have transnational connections and study popular culture that have global implications for Hong Kong Kung Fu Cinema, Japanese manga and anime, and K-pop.

ENGL 3335, Classical and Medieval World Literature: Augustine, Boethius, and Medieval English Literature

Dr. Brian Mcfadden
Mondays & Wednesdays, 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 46290; Online CRN: 43980

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It is no exaggeration to say that two of the most influential thinkers in the Middle Ages were St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Severinus Boethius; their use of philosophy to illuminate faith was certainly important in theological and philosophical circles, but their ideas also found their way into the literature of the age. In this course, we will examine their ideas as they appear in several medieval English texts. Our philosophical sources will be Augustine's Confessions, On Christian Doctrine, and City of God (selections) and Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy; our Old English texts will include selections from the Exeter Book; homilies and sermons from Ælfric and Wulfstan, as well as the anonymous collections in Bodley 343 and the Vercelli Book; Beowulf; Wonders of the East; and the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and the translation of the Consolation by Alfred the Great. We will also look at Chaucer's Boece, Troilus and Criseyde, and selections from The Canterbury Tales.

ENGL 3339, Sexuality and Literature: Narrating Sexual Liberation

Dr. Kanika Batra
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:30 - 4:50 PM
Online CRN: 41979

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Michel Foucault's claim about the proliferation of discourse on sexuality in Victorian England is equally applicable to globalized world we inhabit at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The increased acceptability of representations of diverse sexualities in literature, culture, and society have led to a conservative backlash including charges of glamorizing ‘sinful' and ‘unnatural' desires. Such reactions attempt to diminish the long, arduous decades of social and cultural activism supported by literature that created the conditions for public discussions of sexuality.

Our focus in this course will be on queer discourse through a selection of texts –theoretical, literary, filmic -- to examine LGBTQIA studies from the late 1970s since the publication of Foucault's seminal History of Sexuality, Volume 1 to the present moment. One of the central concerns governing our inquiry will be the relationship between the literary and the social. We will read gay and lesbian literature from the US, U.K. and Africa to discuss the emergence of the category ‘queer' as inclusive of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender concerns. The final section of the course will focus on modes of analysis that point to the exclusions in queer activism and theory and call for coalitions across race, class, sexual and geographical differences.

This course satisfies three hours of the Language, Philosophy, and Culture category of the Multicultural requirement.

ENGL 3351, Creative Writing: Poetry

Dr. William Wenthe
Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:00 - 2:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 13647

To take this class, you must have completed two sophomore English courses or, if English is not your major, the English requirements as specified in your major. It is not necessary to have studied poetry. It is necessary that you want to study poetry seriously: successful poetry writing means successful reading of other poets. We will do both in this course.

The classroom work will consist of intensive discussion of our own and others' poetry. As a whole, this course will require a steady commitment; for in addition to preparing for each class, you will also be writing your own poems, on your own time. The bulk of your grade will depend on how well you apply the skills learned in class to your own writing outside of class. Of course I will be available to guide you in all phases. You will be required to complete a series of poetry exercises and short (one-page) informal essays that I call “response papers,” to write original poems, and discuss poems—including your own—in class. Each student will create a final portfolio, which will include seven original poems, and a 4-5 page statement describing what you learned this semester, and how. The process of writing and revision must be carried on at your own initiative, outside of class; the writing process must be consistent through the semester. The attendance policy is very strict. It begins from the first day of registration.

ENGL 3351, Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction

Dr. Jacqueline Kolosov
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 34004

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The psychiatrist Victor Frankl believed that human beings primarily search not for happiness or pleasure but for meaning: “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” Writing fiction is a portal into the creation of new meaning—or better yet, new understandings—both for the writer and for the reader and often the larger community, regardless how large or how small (intimate). The writing workshop brings with it the creation of community of writers who are also invested readers. In this reading and writing-intensive course, students will partner with each other and with the professor to explore, develop, and refine fundamental craft components of stories emphasizing characters and relationships regardless of genre. Readings, writing exercises, and larger assignments will enable the practice and evolving understanding of point of view, setting, scene alongside summary (including Ursula LeGuin's marvelous “crowding and leaping”), alongside tone and style in a range of modern and contemporary stories and a few novel excerpts. Central questions include How much does the story reveal, and when? & What makes a story feel necessary and alive? Participants will be required to provide written feedback to workshop submissions alongside self-reflections on their work across the semester. A story of some 2500-3500 words will be due at midterm, with the final portfolio of 15 pages of revised and new writing of the writer's choosing due at the semester's end. The creative work in the final portfolio will be accompanied by an Aesthetic Statement that speaks to revision strategies for each story submitted along with the rationale for inclusion of these stories and not other(s).

ENGL 3360, Issues in Composition: Ecocomposition: The Power of Words and Action in Efforts to Save the World

Dr. Lisa L. Phillips
Time: TBD
CRN: TBD

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"World Forum on Enterprise & the Environment, Oxford 2010, Plenary Scribing" by The Value Web Photo Gallery is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Ecocomposition joins environmental literacy to multimodal composing, writing, and rhetoric in persuasive and productive ways—both as a topic of study (how science and complex environmental issues such as global heating are examined and communicated for a variety of non-specialist audiences) and as a practice (how we write about and grapple with environmental topics and movements). This course explores, through composition, rhetoric, and writing studies, cross-disciplinary topics and inquiries, including sensory rhetorics, ecologies of place, translation across disciplines and genres, circulation and distribution of complex information to broad populations, scientific controversy, the challenges of representing the global scope of environmental change, post-truth polemics, ecotourism, and rampant consumerism, consumption, and capitalism. A central course goal is to foreground the rhetorical dimension of environmental discourse and feature writing and multimodal composing as components of environmental literacy. You will be invited to evaluate how language shapes our sense of the environment and how we can use it to advocate for the natural world and webs of relation that impact life on Earth.

ENGL 3371, How Language Works

Dr. Min Joo Kim
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 9:30 - 10:50 AM
Onsite CRN: 33013; Online CRN: 35024

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Have you ever thought about why you cannot start an English word with an “n” and a “t” sound co-occurring side by side even though you can end one with them (e.g., tent)? Also, have you ever thought about why English adjectives almost always occur before the noun they modify as in a big house, but their Spanish counterparts almost always occur after the noun as in una casa grande? Additionally, have you ever wondered why when someone says “It's getting late” to you, they usually mean ‘You need to leave now'? If you're curious about any of these things, then this course is for you! In this course, we'll make an introduction to the fascinating subject of linguistics. Our primary goal will be to learn about what language is and how language systems work. This course requires no prior knowledge of linguistics, and students of any major or minor are welcome to enroll.

*Fulfills Linguistics Minor.

ENGL 3388, Film Genres: American Independent Cinema

Dr. Wyatt Phillips
Mondays & Wednesdays, 9:00 - 10:20 AM
Onsite CRN: 13998

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American movies come in many varieties. While Hollywood cinema is certainly the best-known form of our national film culture, it is by no means the only one. This course will investigate the range of American films made outside the industrial and ideological confines of Hollywood, from the initial formation of Hollywood to the present day. What differentiates these films from their Hollywood neighbors? How do issues of creative control, aesthetic style, personal expression, the representation of underrepresented voices, budgets and financing, and target audience play into our definition of “independent cinema”? Final research papers will be required but students are allowed to choose the American independent film/s or filmmaker/s that they will address.

ENGL 3389, Global Short Story

Dr. Nesrine Chahine
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 33096; Online CRN: 38640

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In this course we will read short stories by international authors from Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, the UK, the US, and other nations. We will focus on the idea of “global” as it relates to notions of universality, economic and political inequality, gender dynamics, cultural exchange, and a long history of trade as well as imperial conquest among nations. Possible readings may include short stories by Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi, Laila Lalami, Youssef al-Sharouny, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, China Miéville, and Hassan Blasim among others. Prerequisites: 6 hours of 2000-level English courses. Short stories around the world. Writing required. Fulfills Multicultural requirement. (CL)

ENGL 3390, Literatures of the American Southwest

Dr. Sara Spurgeon
Tuesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM
Online CRN: 46295

This course introduces students to a variety of twentieth and twenty-first century texts from the region currently referred to as the American Southwest. We will explore the Southwest through Award-winning western novels and films, Native American speculative fiction, a Mexican-American coming-of-age novel, and a Mexican Borderlands sci-fi film. Some questions we will consider as we read include: What common threads run through these works? How do different cultures describe the landscape of the Southwest? The relationship they feel exists between themselves and this region's history? Between themselves and the other cultures of this region?

ENGL 3393, US Latina/o Literature: US Latina/o Literature and Film

Dr. Cordelia Barrera
Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM
Online CRN: 46293

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US Latina/o Literature and Film is an undergraduate survey course that fulfills the Writing Intensive requirement at TTU. 3387 introduces students to 20th century U.S. Latina/o literatures and focuses on topics and trends relevant to Latino/a culture and identity from the late 19th – 21st centuries. Readings will focus primarily on the experience of Chicana/os and Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, and we will also discuss the historical representation of Latina/os in film, as well as competing definitions of the relationship between Latino/a populations and the U.S. cultural sphere. We will approach our discussions of the literature, history, identity, and culture of Latinas/os through various theoretical lenses including: ecocriticism, feminism and postmodern, speculative forms. Some broad topics we will discuss include the construction of identity in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and class; faith and spirituality; the experiences of the exile, the immigrant, the refugee and the colonial subject; and the marketing of the Latino/a identity.

ENGL 4312, Studies in Drama: August Wilson's Twentieth Century: Ten Plays

Dr. Michael Borshuk
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:00 - 3:20 PM
Onsite CRN: 33018; Online CRN: 46291

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With the staging of the 2005 drama Radio Golf, just months before his death, playwright August Wilson completed a monumental creative project more than two decades in the making: to compose a ten-play cycle narrating African American history and experience through each decade of the twentieth century. Through ten critically acclaimed dramas, Wilson had revisited one hundred years of Black American life. This class will study August Wilson's twentieth century by revisiting all ten plays in this cycle and examining the various components of the collective African American experience Wilson documents across that work.

Required Texts:

  • August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, Radio Golf
  • August Wilson, The Ground on Which I Stand
  • Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig, eds., Conversations with August Wilson

ENGL 4315, Studies in Film: On Pages & Screens: Film, Literature & the “Status of Adaptation”

Dr. Scott Baugh
Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM
Online CRN: 46294

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This senior seminar (ENGL 4315: Studies in Film) will examine adaptation—exemplary adaptations themselves as well as theories and modes of adaptation across English studies. With special emphasis on cinematic adaptations, we will include a ‘crash course' introduction to film & media critical studies (‘reading movies') in the first few weeks and continue practicing all term: students with no previous experience—but vigorous interest—in cinema studies are fully welcome!

Far beyond traditional notions of ‘fidelity to the source,' or simplistic comparisons of stories we find playing out among the pages and screens of our favorite texts, we will practice multiple literacies across a number of contexts, ‘reading' across intertextual, multi-discursive, and media-distinct relationships.

Seminar readings likely: draw from a wide range of adaptation materials, often in multiple iterations, like: Adaptation, Sin City, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, The Age of Innocence, Emma, Little Women, A Clockwork Orange, Evita, 300, Beowulf, To Kill a Mockingbird, True Grit, Gone Girl, The Wizard of Oz, Snowpiercer, The Lathe of Heaven, The Handmaid's Tale, Black Panther, Nomadland, The Shining, Stand by Me, Road to Perdition, O' Brother, No Country, Scott Pilgrim, Kick-Ass, Lara Croft, Purple Rain, Tommy, The Wall, The Godfather franchise, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies, a Batman or two, and more;

include one textbook/primer: likely Margo Kasdan, Christine Saxton, and Susan Tavernetti's The Critical Eye (3/e, Kendall-Hunt, 2002 or newer); and,

survey scholarly books & articles (on electronic reserve) by: Robert Stam, Marie-Laure Ryan, Linda Hutcheon, Kamilla Elliott, Thomas Leitch, Shohini Chaudhuri, Costa Constandinides, Deborah Cartwell, Jack Boozer, Sarah Cardwell, Imelda Whelehan, Michael Prince, Roland Barthes, André Bazin, Sergei Eisenstein, Seymour Chatman, Edward Brannigan, David Bordwell, and more.

ENGL 4321, Shakespeare and Philosophy

Dr. Matthew Hunter
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:30 - 1:50 PM
Onsite CRN: 14762

This course considers some of Shakespeare's foundational works--King Lear, Hamlet, and others--alongside major questions and debates raised by philosophy. How does one know how to act ethically in an unjust world? What constitutes a self? How do we know what we know? Shakespeare's plays, we will find out, have surprising answers to all of these questions, and more.

ENGL 4351, Advanced Creative Writing: Creative Nonfiction

Dr. Jacqueline Kolosov
Tuesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM
Onsite CRN: 14773; Online CRN: 45443

Creative nonfiction is a dynamic genre that includes the personal essay, the meditative essay, speculative nonfiction, the lyric essay, the micro essay, memoir, and travel writing, among others. Although there are few rules, the freedom and flexibility of the genre is simultaneously governed by legal, ethical and moral issues. In this reading and writing intensive workshop course, writers will try their hands at several short and long form pieces while exploring central craft components such as scene, chronology, dialectical movement, character, and setting. Ongoing discussion will center on the multi-faceted relationship of truth, fact, and memory alongside the role of writer as narrator and/or character; and the role of reflection, introspection, and speculation. Throughout, writers will analyze craft techniques and larger principles in a range of published narratives, in the process learning to apply them to their own work. Development and revision will play essential roles with students turning in some 25 pages of creative nonfiction that has been workshopped and revised. Reading will include craft essays alongside essay-length creative nonfiction and excerpts from modern and contemporary writers such as Mary Roach, M. F. K. Fisher, Maxine Hong Kingston, Brenda Miller, Joan Didion, and Elissa Washuta. To apply for the course, please submit a statement of experience working in creative nonfiction, fiction, and / or poetry along with a 10 page writing sample to Dr. Jacqueline Kolosov at jacqueline.kolosov@ttu.edu.