ENGL 2310.001 Introduction to Literature, Social Justice, and the Environment

Dr. Mike Lemon(TR 11:00 – 12:20 PM) CRN 57450

As these images from Lake Powell – a manmade reservoir across the Arizona-Utah border – depict, "nature" is never too far away from human intervention. In this course, students will investigate how definitions of nature intersect with race, socioeconomic class, and gender. They will interrogate these two questions: "What is nature?" and "What is humanity's responsibility to the natural world and to each other?" Course materials will include essays, novels, and Instagram accounts. Some texts may include selections from The Colors of Nature (2011), selections from City Wilds (2002), Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977), and Ana Castillo's So Far From God (1993).

ENGL 2326.001 American Literature II

Dr. Cordelia Barrera

(TR 8:00-9:20am) CRN 60683

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 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 2383.160 Bible as Literature

Dr. David Roach

(TR 9:30-10:50 am) CRN: 56403

 

"Till heaven and earth pass," Jesus declared, "not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law," and two thousand years later, the Bible continues to be read, studied, and taught in cultures across the world. Yet the Bible is in fact composed of many different books, and our objective over the course of the semester is to learn about the genres and styles of scriptural writing. We will explore such genres as Jewish epic, history, Paul's letters, and wisdom literature, and we will discuss topics like covenant, grace, sacrifice, redemption, mercy, justice, and service. Examining the Bible's beautiful language, brilliant imagery, and fascinating symbolism offers us an exciting, new way of understanding the most popular book in human history.

English 2391.004 Introduction to Literary Studies

Dr. Marjean D. Purinton

(TR 12:30-1:50pm) CRN 31520

In this course, we will identify and practice foundational skills essential to writing textual criticism and literary analysis. We will conduct close readings across literary periods and genres. We will employ the language of literary analysis, terms specific out our field. We will learn the citation style standard for our field—Modern Language Association (MLA). We will engage in class discussions and in group work. Our learning activities will include short essays and peer-reviewing workshops. In this class, you will encounter a process-driven, feminist pedagogy that invites you to participate in your own discovery experience. Among our readings, you will find Louise Erdrich's novel The Round House, William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun, Susan Glaspell's play Trifles, Virginia Woolf's nonfiction A Room of One's Own, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," and various poems by Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, Robert Browning, Robinson Jeffers, Tracy K. Smith, Joy Harjo, and others.

English 3305 British Renaissance Literature: Introduction to Shakespeare

Dr. Matthew Hunter

(TR 2:00-3:20pm) CRN 49622

Shakespeare's career begins with a story of frustrated love, and since the publication of the Venus and Adonis in 1593, there has perhaps been no subject more central to Shakespeare's works than love. This course will introduce students to Shakespeare's dramaturgy by examining Shakespeare's shifting depictions of love--love before marriage, love within families, love between friends, and love between enemies. Is loving another the same as knowing another? What is the difference between love and desire? Is there a right way to love? What is the dividing line between amour fou and a bad romance? These questions will preoccupy us throughout the term Major texts will include Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra.

ENGL 3313 Film Studies: The Truth is Out There? – UFOs in Lubbock and Global Sci-fi Cinema

Dr. Ben-Youssef

(TR 12:30-1:50pm) CRN 57536

In September 2019, the US Navy confirmed that blurred footage taken by military pilots featured UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects). These unprecedented confirmations recall Lubbock's own under-explored history with mysterious figures flying in the sky. In the 1951, floating lights appeared over the city. Dubbed "The Lubbock Lights," they were chronicled by Texas Tech scientists and investigated by the government. The lights disturbed all who claimed to see them. One old Larissa farmer told an investigator that "despite the range wars, Indians and stagecoaches [he had experienced], he had been scared."

This course on global science fiction cinema aims to understand the role of conspiracy and paranoia. We ask: what comfort do conspiracy theories offer in troubling times saturated with fake news? How do they provide a way of looking that allows citizens to see beyond the state's "official" stories? Combining theories on conspiracy with those related to cultural trauma, this course investigates the unspoken histories of both Lubbock and different cultures. Our gaze will move from stories of alien invasion in Japan (Before We Vanish by Kiyoshi Kurosawa) to metaphors for the discrimination of Apartheid in South Africa (District 9 by Neill Blomkamp). We will watch a story about a Syrian refugee as a Superman (Jupiter's Moon by Kornél Mundruczó) and read tales where the madness of China's bloody Cultural Revolution echoes the madness of discovering extraterrestrial life (Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin). These films and novels provide a thorough introduction to the global science fiction genre. Moreover, they will equip us to better engage with Lubbock's past when we plunge into the Texas Tech University Library's archives to understand a key moment of UFO mass sighting (or mass delusion?). Ultimately, students will learn the tools to write persuasive research papers about conspiracy—the estranging and powerful sight that looks up to the sky and believes that somewhere 'the truth is out there.'

ENGL 3350: Topics in Book History and Digital Humanities

Dr. Kvande

(TR 11:00-12:20 PM) CRN 60692

Have you ever judged a book by its cover? It's okay – we all do it! In this course, we will actively learn why and how it might be valuable and interesting to judge books by their covers, pages, and typefaces – as well as how these material facts fit into the larger history of how humans make and use texts. We'll begin with an overview of material text production across history and cultures, examining early writing and publishing technologies. We'll move through the transition from scribal to print cultures and the hand press period, through the nineteenth-century industrialization of print, and end with digital texts and the internet. Students learn about the relationships between texts and their material embodiments, from stone to screen, papyrus to paper, codex to Kindle. A primary principle of this course will also be learning by doing in a hands-on way. Students will produce prints in the English department Letterpress Studio, as well as bind a book—learning about some of the stages of textual production. The course is the foundational course in the undergraduate minor in Book History and Digital Humanities.

ENGL 3391 Vietnam War Literature

Dr. Yuan Shu

(TR 9:30-10:50am) CRN 60704

In American popular culture, Vietnam has usually been represented as a war rather than a country with history and culture. Now forty-four years after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, how should we move beyond the Hollywood representation and cultivate new understandings of the conflict, the country, and the people?

This course aims to offer a balanced view of the war from the diverse perspectives of former American soldiers and nurses, of former North and South Vietnamese soldiers, as well as of Vietnamese immigrants and refugees. We begin by investigating how American veterans with different political views reflect upon their own experiences in Vietnam and the meanings of the war. Moreover, in reading various accounts of the war from the North and South Vietnamese perspectives, we reconsider how the war has impacted the Vietnamese culture and society. We conclude by examining the experiences of Vietnamese immigrants in North America and their negotiation with Western concepts such as democracy, freedom, and individualism. We explore different genres that encompass fiction, drama, poetry, film, song lyric, and oral history, and discuss different authors with diverse racial, gender, class, sexual, and cultural backgrounds.

English 4312 Studies in Drama: Cinderella Stories

Dr. Matthew Hunter

(TR 3:30-4:50pm) CRN 60693

How do we fit into the world? Although the myth of the self-made man might suggest otherwise, every Cinderella has a fairy godmother who imparts upon them everything she needs to become the shining light of the ball. Ranging from the Renaissance to the present day, this course looks at stories of transformation—call them "Cinderella stories"—in which outsiders turn themselves into insiders thanks to the guidance of a companion who is already in the know. Usually through some sort of makeover, these well-meaning friends teach the heroines and heroes of the Cinderella story how to master the unspoken codes and conventions of their particular society: how to speak, how to dress, how to comport themselves, how to play the part of a man or a woman, even how to love. As their insiders teach outsiders how to fit in, Cinderella stories lift the veil on social relations, showing us how they are built up out of commodified goods and ingrained practices. Their happy endings accordingly bear within them the lesson that Madonna made into a song: that we are all living in a material world.

Our readings in this course will focus on the Renaissance, where Cinderella stories flourish in no small part because the Renaissance was a period of radical "self-fashioning." Books on good manners, good speech, and good style flourished during this time, fostering the believe that any nobody could become a somebody if they just learned how to talk the right talk. But our discussions will also require us to consider how Cinderella stories get picked up in later moments, including, especially, our own. Venturing out of the Renaissance, we will consider plays from the Victorian era, novels from the twentieth century, and films from the last two decades, in order to ask why we can never seem to let go of a fantasy that only rarely is fulfilled.