Course Listings

English

ENGL 116 (IT; W) Topics in American Literature (1)

A study of topics in American Literature ranging over the history of American letters. Topics may be organized around a major author, an idea, a genre, a major work, a literary movement, or a critical approach. Topics, texts and emphases will vary according to the instructor. Intended primarily for non-majors.

Mode of Inquiry: Interpreting Texts

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

• Offering: Every semester
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 117 (IT; W) Topics in British Literature (1)

A study of topics in significant texts from British literature. Topics may be organized around a major author, an idea, a genre, a major work, a literary movement or a critical approach. Topics, texts and emphases will vary according to the instructor. Intended primarily for non-majors.

Mode of Inquiry: Interpreting Texts

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

• Offering: Every semester
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 118 (IT; W) Topics in World Literature (1)

In this course students examine the principle literary genres and authors in world literature from various time periods (for example, Medieval, Renaissance, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries). We analyze these texts, on the one hand to understand their genre and stylistic attributes and literary value, and on the other hand to reach an understanding of cultural and historical values. While the focus is literary, discussions will include cultural material of relevance to the literature: influence of one national literature on another, cultural interaction in matters of the formal beauties of literature, cross-national influences of literary theories and the dynamic processes of literary aesthetics-literary ideologies and movements. Intended primarily for non-majors.

Mode of Inquiry: Interpreting Texts

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

• Offering: Every semester
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 119 (IT; W)) The Forms of Literature: The Art of Reading Poetry, Drama, Fiction (1)

An introduction to the art of reading imaginative literature: poetry, drama and prose fiction. Emphasis on understanding and enjoyment of literature as a rich part of our cultural heritage. Intended primarily for non-majors.

Mode of Inquiry: Interpreting Texts

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

• Offering: Annually
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 135 (CA) Introduction to Creative Writing (1)

This course introduces students to the practice of writing as an artistic medium. Combines analysis, study of form, and hands-on experience. May be single genre, or multiple genres, covering poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or dramatic writing.

Mode of Inquiry: Creating in the Arts

• Offering: Fall/Spring
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 137 (W) Writing Workshop (1)

A course in expository writing. We begin writing brief critical responses to single texts and move on to papers which engage several texts. We will focus on classical and recurring problems: how does one find a topic? articulate a thesis? find support? organize the material effectively? express one's ideas clearly?

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

• Offering: Spring
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 201 Close Reading (1)

This course is intended to serve as the first course in the department for English majors and minors, providing training in the disciplinary conventions of close reading and academic writing. Focus on attention to form and structure. Definitions of genre and examples of a variety of genres (poetry, fiction, drama, possibly film), with particular emphasis on poetry.

• Offering: Every semester
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 202 (IT; W) Introduction to Literary Theory (1)

Continued study of literary conventions and practice, including periodization and theory as modes of approaching literary study. Examples of historical periods and movements, canonical and non-canonical works, conceptual and applied study of various literary theories.

Mode of Inquiry: Interpreting Texts

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

Prerequisite: ENGL 201

• Offering: Every semester
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 203 (W) Fundamentals of Creative Writing (1)

A focused study of the major issues in the craft and practice of creative writing, covering both poetry and pose narrative. Combines close analysis with creative experimentation and investigates genre and form through process. This course serves as the foundation course for English majors concentrating in creative writing.

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

Prerequisite: ENGL 201, may be taken concurrently

• Offering: Annual
• Instructor: Strelow

ENGL 254 (W) Literature of the American West (1)

This course will examine the connections between literature and the specific culture of the American West as reflected in a variety of works of prose, poetry, and drama.

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Strelow

ENGL 311 The Avant Garde as a Critical Tradition (1)

A study of the development of critical alternatives to the traditional narrative cinema. The course will consider experimental films beginning in the 1920's and stretching to the present, focusing on ways in which the avant garde cinema has set about to reveal and question mainstream practice. The course will include early experimenters like Dziga Vertov, the American independent cinema, the French New Wave, and the work of directors such as Bunuel, Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman and others.

Prerequisite: ARTS 216, ENGL 135, RHET 125, or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Nolley

ENGL 319 (IT) Literary Genre and Literary Interpretation (1)

This course examines the concept of genre: for example, epic, tragedy and novel; and explores the difference that genre makes in the representational possibilities and limitations of literary works. It also considers how genres embody and convey cultural values.

Mode of Inquiry: Interpreting Texts

• Offering: Annually
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 326 Literature of Diaspora (1)

Students in this course will examine literature from various geographic locations comprising a particular culture's (South Asian or Latin) dispersal of people, language, and culture-and study how various contexts influence and shape cultural production and representations of identity. Within these myriad sites, we will investigate the double consciousness necessary to maintain a sense of 'self' outside one's place of cultural origin, and the impact of colonization on definitions of 'home.' Our primary focus will be textual analysis, including questions of genre, language, narration and perspective. We will also study the sociopolitical and cultural conflicts and causes for emigration that provide the fiction's contexts (in the case of South Asian diaspora: caste and religious divisions; India's partition; civil war in Sri Lanka; tensions within England, North America, and the Caribbean), and discuss how national divisions play out in the microcosm of each text. Discussions and readings of primary literature will be aided by (post) colonial discourse and contemporary multimedia.

• Offering: Alternating years
• Instructor: Makau, Perez

ENGL 329 (W) Creative Non-fiction (1)

Through a combination of reading and writing, students will explore the treatment of various kinds of subject matter in various modes of creative nonfiction; investigate the use in creative nonfiction of techniques from various genres, including poetry and narrative fiction; and develop their ability to construct a range of written voices, from colloquial to formal, while also achieving an individual voice in their writing.

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

Prerequisite: A 200-level writing or writing-centered course or consent of instructor

• Offering: Annual
• Instructor: Nadelson

ENGL 331 (CA) Intermediate Fiction Writing I (1)

Second-level course in fiction writing. Practice and analysis of short- or long-form fiction. Combines writing workshop with discussion of narrative craft. Students will produce a significant portfolio of fiction, through drafting and revision, as well as complete critical analysis of published work.

Mode of Inquiry: Creating in the Arts

Prerequisite: ENGL 135 or consent of instructor

• Offering: Fall
• Instructor: Chasar, Nadelson

ENGL 332 (CA) Intermediate Poetry Writing (1)

Second-level course in poetry writing. Practice and analysis of traditional or contemporary poetics and poetic form. Combines writing workshop with discussion of poetics and assigned readings. Students will produce a significant portfolio of poetry, through drafting and revision, as well as complete critical analyses of published or personal work.

Mode of Inquiry: Creating in the Arts

Prerequisite: ENGL 135 or consent of instructor

• Offering: Spring
• Instructor: Chasar, Nadelson, visiting writers

ENGL 336 (AR) Visible Evidence: The History and Theory of Documentary Film (1)

This course examines the tradition of the documentary film, considering its historical development, changing presentational strategies and the ways in which it inevitably intertwines evidence and argument.

Mode of Inquiry: Analyzing Arguments, Reasons and Values

• Offering: Fall
• Instructor: Nolley

ENGL 337 African American Literature I: Slave Narrative & Early African American Literary Tradition (1)

This course is a study of origins of African American literary and vernacular tradition. Formal and Thematic analysis of this tradition in 18th century and Antebellum America (with some examination of Britain). A goal is to understand the influence of this tradition on form and focus on contemporary African American Writers.

Prerequisite: Previous 100- or 200- level English course.

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Makau

ENGL 338 African-American Literature II: Modern African-American Literature (1)

A study of modern/contemporary literature written by African-Americans. Formal and thematic analysis of the novel with secondary examples from folktale, lyric and drama.

Prerequisite: A 100- or 200-level English course in literature

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Makau

ENGL 339 Special Topics in Creative Writing (1)

Practice and analysis of fiction, poetry, or dramatic writing, depending on the interests of the instructor. Taught by visiting writers or prominent writers in the community, this course will focus on a single genre or a particular issue of the writing craft that crosses genres. Topics may include playwriting, the novella, the novel, the prose poem, the poetic sequence, college, multiple voices, non-linear narrative strategies, hybrid forms.

Prerequisite: ENGL 135(W),  ENGL 203(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Guest artists

ENGL 341 Shakespeare (1)

A study of plays by Shakespeare, representing development through his dramatic career as well as across genres of comedy, tragedy, and history.  Attention to questions of form, genre, sources, and theatrical practice; to the role of the theatre in early modern English culture and politics; to recurring cultural, historical, and political issues the plays engage; to the history of Shakespeare as a cultural artifact.

Prerequisite: A 100- or 200-level English course in literature

• Offering: Spring
• Instructor: Hobgood, Moon

ENGL 344 Major Author (1)

Study of the works of a major author (such as Milton, Faulkner, Joyce). Consideration of significant influences, development of literary style and vision through consideration of the author's primary texts; critical appraisal of influence on later authors; survey of major criticism to the present. May be repeated for credit with focus on a different author.

Prerequisite: A 100- or 200-level English course in literature

• Offering: Fall
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 345 Chaucer (1)

A study of Chaucer in Middle English, including the entire Canterbury Tales and a selection from the short poems and dream visions. Extensive secondary reading establishes Chaucer's context in the 14th century; examines the Classical, French, Italian, and English literary influences on his work; and proposes various theoretical approaches to interpretation in the 21st century.

Prerequisite: 100- or 200-level English course in literature

• Offering: Alternate odd years in fall
• Instructor: Hobgood, Moon

ENGL 347 Medieval Literature (1)

This course is a study of British literature from roughly A.D. 800-1500, the early and middle English periods. The survey will cover a range of authors and their works, including the Beowulf and Gawain poets, Chaucer, Marie de France, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and William Langland. Among other topics, we will examine form and genre; the recurring cultural, historical, and political issues the literature engages; how medieval literature anticipates and shapes modern and early modern literatures.

Prerequisite: 100- or 200-level literature course.

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Hobgood, Moon

ENGL 348 Early Modern English Poetry (1)

This course introduces students to English poetry written in the 16th and 17th centuries. Exploration of this literary period and genre will attend to topics like the development of the sonnet cycle in English; the growth of English courtier culture and the rise of poetry as a profession; the role of women poets in responding to and complicating a traditionally male-dominated poetic canon; poetry as expression of religious devotion and in ecclesiastical politics; the employment of poetry to negotiate private, erotic desire and public, political authority.

Prerequisite: 100- or 200-level literature course.

• Offering: Alternate falls
• Instructor: Hobgood, Moon

ENGL 353 The Early Novel (1)

Study of the development of the novel in Britain, from Restoration-era spiritual autobiography, fable, and romance to Jane Austen's psychological realism. Attention to questions of form, genre, and canon-formation, as well as the novel's intervention in debates about courtship, domesticity, and female authorship, middle-class individualism and national community, reason and feeling, empiricism and enchantment, and the social value of reading.

Prerequisite: A 100- or 200-level English course in literature

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 354 The Modern Novel (1)

A study of the continuing development of the novel in English from the nineteenth century to the present. Attention to formal characteristics of the genre, including narrative structure and characterization, and to literary movements such as sentimentalism, realism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism. Consideration of the novel as an expression or cultural, political, and economic contexts.

Prerequisite: A 100- or 200-level course in literature

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Michel, Nolley, Strelow

ENGL 355 (W) Feminist Criticism (1)

Writing-centered study of approaches to literature from a variety of feminist perspectives. Consideration of the impact of feminist thought on literary study, and analysis of feminist innovations, revisions and critiques of critical methods and literary theories. Conventions of feminist critical discourse. Applications of feminist theories to works of literature.

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

Prerequisite: ENGL 202, or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Michel

ENGL 359 Early Modern Drama(1)

A study of works by early modern playwrights, representing the diverse range and scope of drama, other than Shakespeare, written and performed in 16th and 17th century England. Attention to questions of form, genre, and the theatrical practice; to the role of the theatre in early modern English culture and politics; to recurring cultural, historical, and political issues the plays engage; to the unique relationships between playgoers and London's states.

Prerequisite: A 100- or 200-level English course in literature

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Hobgood, Moon

ENGL 361 Modern Poetry & Poetics (1)

This course is a study of innovation and change in English-language poetry from 1800 to the present including but not limited to Romanticism, Modernism, and Post-modernism. Texts and emphases will vary depending on instructor.

Prerequisite: A 100 or 200 level Literature course.

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Chasar

ENGL 373 Contemporary Literature (1)

A study of contemporary works (works from the last two decades) which students and faculty will read together in order to evaluate and interpret new forms in light of a variety of critical theories.

Prerequisite: A 100- or 200-level English course in literature

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Strelow

ENGL 381 Latin @ Countercultures Digital Research Project (1)

This course examines instances of countercultural expression in post-War Latin@ literature, performance, and popular media. Counterculture in this context refers to a variable set of subject positions and aesthetic forms that include feminist and queer art and criticism, political movements, punk, the avant-garde, sexual cultures, the paraliterary (such as comic books, zines, and speculative fiction) and DIY (do-it-yourself) culture and publishing. Written and archival work for this course will contribute to a class blog housed at the Latin@ Countercultures Digital Research Project website (latincountercultures.com). Texts will include novels, plays, poems, graphic novels, scholarly monographs, art, film and performance footage.  We will draw insights from the fields of queer studies, performance studies, and literary theory and history.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 or AES 150.

• Offering: Annually
• Instructor: Perez

ENGL 390 and 391 Reading and Conference (.5 or 1)

To enable a student to acquire the necessary knowledge and experience of literary periods which are not covered by courses offered at Willamette University.

Prerequisite: Consent of instructor

• Offering: On demand
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 394 Major Internship I (1)

See the internships section for more information.

• Offering: On demand
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 438 Literature and Sexuality (1)

Study of literary representations of sexuality, gender, the body, desire. Analysis of normative literary constructions of sexuality and subversions of norms. Texts will vary, but will be drawn primarily from British and American literature.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Michel

ENGL 441 Tradition and Influence in Literature (1)

The role of tradition, authorial influence and literary history in a broad range of works chosen from English, American and world literatures.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 450 Advanced Studies in Authorship (1)

An intensive study of specific topics arising from close study of an author's works. Topics will vary, but may include historical development of the idea of authorship, theoretical debates about the nature of authorship, and opportunities for upper-level students to apply their skills in analytical thinking and critical writing to problems arising from an author's texts.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 453 Advanced Studies in Literature 1300-1800 (1)

The advanced studies in literature courses are designed specifically for the English major who is contemplating graduate study in English or Comparative Literature. Both courses are in-depth studies of British and American canonical texts. Not open to freshmen.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 454 Advanced Studies in Literature 1800-Present (1)

The advanced studies in literature courses are designed specifically for the English major who is contemplating graduate study in English or Comparative Literature. Both courses are in-depth studies of British and American canonical texts. Not open to freshmen.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 456 Advanced Studies in Genre (1)

Examination of generic conventions through study of exemplary literary texts and critical works. Emphasis will vary. (Possibilities include Lyric, Epic, Novel, Autobiography) Not open to freshmen.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 458 Advanced Studies in Literary Theory (1)

This course will offer students intensive readings in major theoretical texts from Formalism to the present. We will also examine the mutually influential relationships between recent literary theory and such disciplines as philosophy, anthropology, linguistics and psychoanalysis. Possible theories might include: Formalism, Structuralism, Deconstructionism, Reception Theory, New Historicism, Psychoanalytical Theory, Post-Colonialist Theory. Not open to first year students.

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Alternate years
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 490 Independent Study (1)

Intensive study of a selected area.

Prerequisite: Permission of the department; 3.5 g.p.a. in major

• Offering: On demand
• Instructor: Staff

ENGL 498 (W) Senior Seminar in Creative Writing (1)

A capstone course for students concentrating in creative writing in the English major. Students will participate in an intensive semester-long workshop and produce a significant body of creative work, in poetry or prose. In consultation with faculty, students will generate individual reading lists and develop a critical study of craft or process. Seminar participants will write and revise, ready and critique the writing of others, and present their finished work in a public forum. Student who elect this senior experience must submit a proposal to the English faculty a semester in advance.

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

Prerequisite: ENGL 203(W), 300-level creative writing course, and consent of instructor

• Offering: Annually
• Instructor: Nadelson, Chasar

ENGL 499 (W) Senior Seminar in English (1)

The Senior Seminar is a capstone experience for English majors who wish to undertake intensive independent research and writing on a literary text or topic of their own choosing, with the approval of the English faculty. The Seminar will provide instruction in framing a research question, developing a theoretical approach, conducting library research, evaluating criticism, and structuring a substantial essay. Seminar participants will write and revise their papers in stages, read and critique the papers of others, and present their papers aloud. Students who elect this senior experience must submit a proposal to the English faculty a semester ahead.

General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Writing centered

Prerequisite: ENGL 201 and ENGL 202(W) or consent of instructor

• Offering: Annually
• Instructor: Staff