Fall 2026 Undergraduate Course Descriptions

  Group 1  
4060 Old English Evans
  The language and literature of England before the Norman Conquest, with reading of selected texts.  
4230W Medieval Literature Camp
  Masterpieces of medieval literature, exclusive of Chaucer. Some works will be read in Modern English translation.  
4240 Chaucer Mattison
  Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and minor poems.  
4300 Elizabeth Poetry Jacobson
  Poetry of the earlier English Renaissance, such as works by Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Marlowe, and the sonnets of Shakespeare.  
4320 Shakespeare I Iyengar
  A survey of literature written by Shakespeare throughout his career.  
4340 Renaissance Drama Jacobson
  English drama from 1576 to 1642, exclusive of Shakespeare, emphasizing dramatists such as Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, and Middleton.  
     
  Group 2  
4500 Romantic Literature LeGette
  In this course, we will read literature from the British Romantic Period (1780s-1830s). This period in British history was a time of immense upheaval. The poems, novels, and essays which we will read in this class engage directly with the overwhelming changes Britain was undergoing, thanks to the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, a twenty-year long war with France, and the slow struggle to abolish slavery. These cultural and political revolutions were matched by significant changes in literature. The Romantic Period saw a new kind of poetry, as well as the rise of the novel, a genre which emerged only a few decades before. We will read texts by Wollstonecraft, Wheatley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Shelleys, Hemans, Landon, Byron, Keats, and more. This course will introduce students to a range of genres, furthering their close reading skills in poetry, essays, and the novel.   
4530 Victorian Literature Steger
  "Never since the beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read of, so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole relations to the Universe and to our fellow-man have become an Inquiry, a Doubt."  ~ Thomas Carlisle from "Characteristics"
The tumultuous years of Victoria's reign in England are hard to pin down with one word, so here are two: expansion and self-scrutiny.  The empire expanded, women's roles expanded, technological innovations and industrialization expanded, and so did class divides.  All of this change ushered in doubt and introspection, which authors explored in the literature of the period.  In this course, we will thus explore the ways that Victorian writers expressed their shifting and often-contradictory ideas about British identity.  
We will read poetry, essays, and fiction from a variety of voices, including the Brontes, Oscar Wilde, Mary Seacole, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Bram Stoker, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Michael Field, and Robert Louis Stevenson.  Our topics will include: Britain as/and empire; class and gender; Victorian monsters; poetic identity; faith, doubt and death, and questioning identity. 		  
4660 20th c. British & Irish Poetry Wasley
  British and Irish poetry since the 1890s.  
4685 Postcolonial Literature Santesso
  Throughout the semester, we will study literature penned by writers from former colonies. Focusing specifically on Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, we will explore the cultural, historical, and political issues raised by these texts, and observe the way they participate in postcolonial resistance. We will investigate a range of issues, including post-imperial identity, global migration, refugee crisis, race and gender, and national belonging in the aftermath of colonialism.   
4690 Topics in 20th c British & Irish Literature McClung
     
  Group 3  
4723 Melville Marrs
  The evolution of Herman Melville’s career, from Typee through Billy Budd. Students will read his major works, as well as numerous letters and essays. Possible topics include: the relationship between Melville’s poetry and prose, his scientific and philosophical influences, and the connection between politics and aesthetics.  
4740 Southern Literature  
  The literature of the South from its roots through the modern renaissance. Writers may include Byrd, Cooke, Longstreet, Simms, Poe, Timrod, Lanier, Chopin, Twain, the Agrarians, Toomer, Roberts, Faulkner, Hurston, Welty, Porter, O'Connor, Wolfe, Percy, Crews, Berry, Kenan, Tyler, Dickey, Chappell, Alice Walker, and McCarthy.  
4790 Topics in American Literature McKnight
  A special topic not otherwise offered in the English curriculum. Topics and instructors vary from semester to semester.  
4790 Topics in American Literature Zurawski
  A special topic not otherwise offered in the English curriculum. Topics and instructors vary from semester to semester.  
4791 American Autobiography McCaskill
  Exploration of the rich tradition of autobiographical narrative in America in a wide variety of settings and historical periods. The reading may focus on work written in any era, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, or center on particular thematic interests across the centuries.  
4860 Multicultural Literature Wei
  Topics in multicultural studies, with primary focus on literature by members of one or more traditionally marginalized cultural groups within the United States and with attention to historical context and theoretical aspects.  
4882W Black Film Matters Pavlic
  With special attention to musical content, this course explores the roles played by “blackness” in U.S. and world cinema. Examination of the positioning of black people, black music, and black cultural content in films made from the World War II era to the present.  
     
  Group 4  
4640 Film as Literature Romero
  Special Topic: :  Global Indigenous Film and Media

This class will interrogate the ways that global Indigenous writers, filmmakers, and artists use film and digital media to articulate Indigenous stories, and to respond to and attempt to correct false cinematic stereotypes.  We will critically explore a variety of different media formats (films, documentaries, animation, multimedia art installations, etc.) from tribal peoples throughout the world, especially from North America, the Arctic, New Zealand, and Australia.  We will examine the diverse ways that contemporary Native, First Nations, and Aboriginal artists assert existing Indigenous presence and connections to tribal homelands, in the face of mainstream media traditions that historically render them absent.  Topics for discussion will include (among others) the relationship between cinema and tribal traditions, especially storytelling traditions;  visual sovereignty; spectatorship; cinema and language preservation; and the ethics of film production.		  
4800W Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction Kashyap
  Writers enrolled in this class will learn the technical aspects of writing fiction and leave the class convinced that vast reading, regular writing, and rewriting are the secrets of good writing. As we discuss how to create believable characters that jump off the page, vivid settings that are deep, unique, memorable, narratives that keep the readers hooked, and dialogues that are realistic and punchy, we will read a wide variety of short stories written by some of the best canonical and contemporary writers in the world: Gabriel Garcia Marquez from Colombia, Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, Indira Goswami from India, Chinua Achebe from Nigeria, Alice Munro from Canada, Haruki Murakami from Japan. We will also read several American literary giants, such as Flanery O' Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates, and Louise Erdrich, to study the technical and imaginative choices writers make to make a story riveting and invigorating. Alongside, we will read remarks on the craft of storytelling, aesthetics, the writing process, etc. Students will be guided with regular writing prompts and receive feedback on their work-in-progress drafts during the workshop from peers as well as the instructor.   
4803W Creative Writing: Advanced Poetry Zawacki
  In this course, students already experienced in writing original poetry will not only create and revise individual poems but also learn strategies for developing and revising a poetry manuscript. Student assignments include sharing and critiquing one another’s drafts, completing short writing exercises, reading the work of established poets, attending campus poetry events, and completing a collection of original poetry.  
4810 Literary Magazine Editing Maa/Bonnaffons
  Students will engage in all aspects of editing and producing a literary magazine or scholarly journal while learning about literary and academic culture through theoretical, aesthetic, critical, and practical components.  
4815 History & Future of the Book Sargan
  Discover the long cultural history and rich future of books and publishing, from illuminated manuscripts to hand-set letterpress codices to algorithmic digital printing.  
4820 Literary Theory Martini Paula
  Representative texts from Aristotle to Derrida and beyond, exemplifying a range of contemporary critical approaches and providing a historical context for current theoretical debates.  
4825 Topics in Literary Theory Woodhouse
  A special topic in literary theory not otherwise offered in the English curriculum.  
4833W Composition Theory & Pedagogy King
  What happens when we write? Are we momentarily possessed by a muse who animates our hands and produces symbolic language through us? Do we open a mental sluice and pour our thoughts into sentence-shaped pitchers? Do we channel the legions of linguistic ghosts that trick us into thinking we have a self? Do we run linguistic programs through layers of organized bio-circuitry? And, even assuming we know how writing works, how do we manage to teach others to do it?

In short, this is a course about how we write and how we teach others to write. 

In this course, we’ll study historical and critical perspectives on writing, from classical rhetoricians like Aristotle and Plato (though, as we’ll find out, Plato would protest being called a rhetorician) through generations of more contemporary rhetoricians who thought writing was, at various times, a way of learning deep truths about yourself (the Expressivists), compressing your ideas into easy packets of meaning (the Current Traditionalists), operating within discourse communities (the Social Epistemic Rhetoricians), and even becoming a kind of word-computer (a particular generation of cognitive theorists).

Each week, you’ll read scholarship from the fields of composition and rhetorical theory and engage in deep and challenging discussions about the nature of writing, communication, and learning. Alongside your reading and class work, you’ll create models of the composition process, you’ll learn productive approaches to real-world academic research, and you’ll create and analyze writing instructional tools of your own.

Whether you plan to work in an English or writing classroom, you’re curious about the social and psychological frameworks around human creativity, or you just want to improve your writing, research, and design abilities, this course has something to offer you.

Required Course Text:

Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, A Reader, Third Edition. Ed. Victor Villanueva and Kristin Arola.		  
4837W Digital Storytelling Davis
  An introduction to the study and practice of narrative within digital environments. Students will work independently and collaboratively to analyze and create digital stories. At the end of the semester, students will participate in a Digital Story Showcase to share their work with a public audience.  
4864 History & Theory of the Novel Menke
  The theory, history, and development of the novel as a literary form.  
4876 Fantasy Literature Bray
  Fantasy Literature is a deep critical dive into the fantasy genre, during which students will engage in the process of completing a proposal, bibliography, and conference-length paper. Students are encouraged to submit their proposals (with time to revise based on instructor feedback) to the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts which takes place in March each year and has its proposal submission deadline in late October. This semester, we will focus on mythopoeism, or myth-making, in contemporary fantasy, reading works including Circe by Madeline Miller and The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo.  
4899 Topics in Science Fiction McKnight
  A special topic in science fiction not otherwise offered in the English curriculum. Topics and instructors vary from semester to semester.  
4912S Writing Center Theory & Practice Hallman Martini
  A survey of important topics in writing center theory, with regular seminar-style discussion of how these theories work in our writing center tutoring practice.  
     
  3000-level courses  
3007 Spy Fiction Parkes
  Studying authors from Conrad and Buchan to Fleming and Le Carre, this class will trace the emergence of a modern fictional genre in its literary and historical contexts from late-Victorian imperialism to the 21st-century surveillance state.  
3300 Women in Literature Romero
  Special Topic:  Women Writers of Color

This class explores contemporary African American, American Indian, Latina, and Asian American women’s writing. We will analyze literary aesthetics and forms, and learn to think critically about the relationships between literature and cultures. Throughout the course we’ll discuss how women writers of color experiment with language, narrative voice, structure, temporality, and genre to better represent their experiences.   		  
3335 Literature and Law Santesso
  This course aims to connect legal theory and concepts (personhood, ownership, justice, human rights, immigration) to literary texts and ideas. How does literature embody law, both as a principle of literary construction and as an examination of justice? By analyzing works of literature (novels, memoirs, short stories, essays) alongside legal texts and thought, the course will investigate the mutual influence between literature and law. We will pay particular attention to questions such as gender, race, and religion in their relation to law and its depictions on an international platform. By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with key scholarship concerning the intersection of law and the humanities and will be able to skillfully analyze legal themes in literature, film, and other media.  
3340 Literature and Crime Camp
  Examining authors from Poe and Dostoevsky to Christie, Hammett, and beyond, the course studies literature centered on crime, detection, and mystery within its literary and historical contexts. It considers developments from the 19th century through the “golden age” and hardboiled novels to contemporary procedurals and thrillers, reading them as literary endeavors.  
3410 Literature and Media Martini Paula
  Literature in English in relation to forms of media, past or present, to media environments, and to media change. Depending on the instructor, the course may concentrate on literature in the changing media ecology of the twenty-first century, or on historical interactions between literature and other media.  
3450 Literature and War Wei
  An introduction to the literature and literary representation of war. Novels, poetry, memoirs, and film will be read closely for technique and in order to analyze the capacity of stories and different genres to convey the lived reality and effects of war on bodies, psyches, political culture, and national identity.  
3530 Victorian Studies Reeves
  An introduction to the literature and culture of the British Victorian period, from the first Reform Bill (1832) to the death of Queen Victoria (1901).  
3540 Introduction to Publishing Shermyen
  Examination of the major processes that typically take place when publishing a book or periodical in the U.S. and some of the contexts that drive decision-making by editors, publishers, marketers, designers, and other professionals. We will explore the past, present, and future of the U.S. publishing industry.  
3570 Games and Culture Woodhouse
  An interdisciplinary survey of games through the lenses of literature, culture, and media. Topics and inquiries include games and media theory; history of games; issues of identity, race, gender, class, and ability in games; and worldbuilding concepts. Students have the opportunity to design games in capstone course projects.
 		  
3590W Technical and Professional Communication Howard
  Writing in the professional domains, with an emphasis on research methods, clear and accurate presentation of ideas and data, and computer-mediated communication.  
3800H Introduction to Creative Writing (Honors) Kashyap
  Good writing is the result of extensive reading that helps us learn the techniques of good prose and poetry effectively. In fact, most published writing, and popular, successful writing, is the result of successful and efficient application of storytelling techniques backed by vast reading. The more you read as a writer and practice regularly, the better you become. This class is your writing lab to grow and experience this. Focusing on poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, this class is specially designed for beginning writers who are serious about kick-starting their writing life or honing their existing skills. We will begin the semester with craft lessons on poetry, followed by a series of classes on the form and technique in fiction and creative nonfiction. The last four to five weeks of the semester will have two rounds of workshops: the short story workshop and the creative nonfiction workshop; students will receive feedback from the instructor separately on their poetry. Until mid-term, there will be regular writing prompts to initiate the writers into the habit of frequent writing. Readings will include poetry, short stories, novel excerpts, and essays. We will look at these texts as practitioners of the craft, as budding literary artists, to understand the technical and imaginative choices writers make to create impactful and enjoyable stories, essays, and poems. Students will bring a chunk of their writing to class for the workshops and receive feedback on it. Will submit a polished portfolio as the final exam.  
3800W Introduction to Creative Writing  
  Elements of writing poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction through selected readings and discussion of student writing.  
3850S Writing and Community Davis
  Study of how writing functions in the formation and maintenance of communities and the role of written communication in addressing community needs and concerns.  
4001 Careers for English Majors Lasek-White
  Careers for English Majors is a class that can be taken at any point during an English student’s academic career. In this course, you will: begin to build a professional network; take advantage of professionalization resources available to you on campus; utilize the tactics in Designing Your Life: How To Build A Well-Lived, Joyful Life in order to identify potentially-fulfilling careers; and gain the skills necessary to research positions and apply for them using rhetorically-targeted documents.

The course is taught by Professor Lasek-White, faculty in English and the Internship and Career Coordinator for Humanities Students. Prior to getting an MFA in Creative Writing, Professor Lasek-White worked in web journalism and public relations for various companies in Detroit.