English Undergraduate Courses

Spring 2025 courses, listed in numerical order.

To see coursed listed by requirement, or to browse online or STEP courses, use the tabs above.

English 115 American Experience

(ALDU) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 11:30-12:45    Instructor: Timothy Ong 
US WARS IN ASIA AND THEIR AFTERLIVES: Since the turn of the 20th century, the United States has intensified its militarized presence in Asia: from its foray into imperialism in the Philippine-American War (1898), to the Pacific wars against Japan (1941), its involvement in the Korean War (1950s) and Vietnam War (1960s), the War on Terror in the Middle East (2001), and, more recently, the ongoing genocide in Palestine. How can the entrenched history of US warfare and militarization in Asia help us understand contemporary US culture and society? How have these wars shaped US foreign policy and domestic configurations of racial hierarchy? Finally, how can we critique US imperialism and militarization as intimately linked to the production of racialized discourses about Asian subjects? In this course, we will answer these questions by examining literary and cultural representations of US wars in Asia and their afterlives. Through our engagement with fiction, poetry, film, essays, historical texts, and other cultural artifacts, we will attend to the social, psychological, and environmental costs of warfare and the enduring legacies of US imperialism in Asia through its military bases. (Gen.Ed. AL, DU) 

English 115 American Experience  

(ALDU) 

Lecture 2    MWF 10:10-11:00    Instructor: Jon Hoel 
This English course will explore the cultural landscape of the American experience through the lens of work and labor throughout history. Readings will span from the 18th century to the present day and include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and theory, as well as some film and music. (Gen.Ed. AL, DU) 

English 117 Ethnic American Literature

(ALDU) 

Lecture 1    MWF 10:10-11:00    Instructor: Alejandro Beas Murillo 
We Must Learn to Sit Down Together and Talk About a Little Culture. This course, which borrows its title from Jamaican thinker Sylvia Wynter’s 1968 essay, will serve as an introduction to contemporary Caribbean literature and culture, paying special attention to the contributions of Afro-Caribbean authors. In our discussions, we will, in fact, sit down and talk about culture and its importance in the Caribbean and its diasporas in North America and Great Britain; together, we will approach culture both as an oppressive force and a form of resistance against colonialism, imperialism, and antiblackness, an exercise in demonstrating agency, a way for writers to explore feminist and queer embodiments of Black Caribbeanness, and as a world-making, nation-building project. 

In our conversations, we will ask: how does Caribbean culture at large and Afro-Caribbean culture more specifically shape the societies of the region and vice versa? What is the role of culture in these texts’ understanding of history, memory, trauma, and legacy? How do we write, read, and think about the horrors and afterlives of slavery? How are forms of Afro-Caribbean resistance, organizing, and community-building expressed differently in fiction, poetry, and cinema? In what ways are family, community, and kinship influenced by culture and vice versa? How do these texts explore and disrupt traditional constructions and portrayals of race, gender, sexuality, class, language, citizenship, and the nation-state? 

English 131 Society and Literature

(ALDG) 

Lecture 1    MWF 11:15-12:05    Instructor: Manasvini Rajan 
Introduction to the multifaceted ways literature both shapes and is shaped by its social and historical contexts. Analyses of plays, poems, and fictional and non-fictional narratives drawn from around the globe and in different eras.  (Gen.Ed. AL, DG).   

English 131 Society and Literature

(ALDG) 

Lecture 1    MWF 10:10-11:00    Instructor: Rowshan Chowdhury 
Where did the master narratives, the standard stories we tell ourselves or our culture tells us, come from and how do they operate in erasing our history? What function does literature serve in mediating our relationship to other cultures and histories? How have the ideals of liberty, equality, and human rights taken multiple and contradictory shapes within the social, political, cultural, and economic contexts of various eras? 

The course ENG 131: Society and Literature is designed to explore these questions, looking specifically at the transnational co-formations that shape American society. Through readings of novels, short stories, essays, poems, and films based on the entanglements of histories of the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Asia, we will address literature’s capacity to endorse, naturalize, dramatize, critique, subvert, or reimagine our relationship to the material world. In our reading and writing assignments, we will study the ways writers from various origins engaged with societal issues including but not limited to: race, ethnicity, gender, slavery,assimilation, capitalism, trade, imperialism, fetishization, colonization, and anti-colonial and  anti-slavery rebellions. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG)  

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture

(ALDG) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 10:00-11:15    Instructor: Nataliya Kostenko 
This course will center on the roles of gender and sexuality in horror. We will examine classic and modern horror books and films in order to pursue answers to some important questions surrounding our cultural fears and anxieties, and how they are tied to gender, bodies, and sexuality. What is the role of sexuality in depictions of the monstrous? What kinds of anxieties about masculine, feminine, and queer bodies does the horror genre portray? How do psychological and gothic horror stories reveal truths about imposed gender roles in society? How can horror be a tool for feminism and gender studies? Students will work on developing the critical thinking and writing skills necessary to analyze literary horror, gender, and film.  (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture

(ALDG) 

Lecture 2    MWF 10:10-11:00    Instructor: Janell Tryon 
Welcome to Inside Out: Queering the Home in Contemporary American Literature. English 132 is a general education course taught within the English Department. Together we will investigate the historical relationship between housing and gender/sexuality norms within the United States. In order to protect pathways to consumerism, capitalism has long perpetuated the insular single-family household as the ideal form of shelter. The notion of private property-as-private sphere insists upon the preservation of the nuclear family through the surveillance of gender, sexuality, and race. In this course, we will read fiction and theory, as well as engage other modes of media. Through these critical and literary texts, we will engage the histories of American imperialism, institutions, and homes, while paying equal attention to historical and fictive characters that invert and subvert American norms. By studying alternative modes of living and dwelling, this course will allow us to queer the public-private binary, challenge housing normativity, and imagine new ways of inhabiting shared space. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture

(ALDG) 

Lecture 3    MWF 11:15-12:05    Instructor: Tyler Clark 
If I were to ask you to think of all the classics you’ve read throughout your schooling, from any place in the world, how many would you be able to list any as having homosexual or otherwise “queer” characters? Or written by queer authors? Most of us would be able to name very few, if any! The goal of this course is to unearth the “Gay Canon” of literature from around the world, and to investigate where, why, and how homosexuality and gender deviance emerges in cultures from especially the past two centuries. We will be analyzing texts throughout history that explicitly concern themselves with homosexuality, the construction of gender and sexual identity, as well as the cultural and political definitions of queerness across the world. We will highlight various global perspectives on the diversity of gender presentation, what it means to be a “man” or “woman” or neither, and construct what we might refer to as a “Gay Canon” of literature, so that we might better understand our current social understandings of these nebulous terms. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture

(ALDG) 

Lecture 4    TuTh 11:30-12:45    Instructor: Mitia Nath 
In this course we will examine a diverse cluster of texts, ranging from short stories, to essays, to films, in order to explore how gender and sexuality are constructed and critiqued in literary and cultural works.We’ll also aim to understand the ways in which gender and sexuality function in different contexts, and how race, ethnicity, religion, and caste often contour the categories of sex and gender. The selected texts will draw our attention to gender and sexuality as complex constructs that operate alongside other social, political, and economic processes. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 141 Reading Poetry

(AL) 

Lecture 1    MWF 11:15-12:05    Instructor: Allison McKean 
Surreal and Visionary Poetics  What drives and pushes the boundaries of the poetic image? What is revealed in non-rational and non-linear tellings? How do we invite our imaginations into poetic texts to deepen our reality? In this course, we will read poetry of the surreal and visionary movements that not only interrogate the psychic interior, but explore political and social effects as they scaffold non-normative structures such as queerness, anti-capitalism, and non-whiteness. We will explore poetic schools of the 20th century such as The Objectivist, The New York School, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, all folding into the poetics of the contemporary avant-garde. Students will critically engage with reading collections and selections of poems, as well as essays on poetic craft, interviews, and other topical critical essays. Students will produce weekly response papers, lead presentations and discussions on texts and course ideas, and write poems of their own.

English 150 Writing and Society

(DUSB) 

Lecture 1    MWF 12:20-1:10    Instructor: Stacie Klinowski 
This course aims to heighten your awareness of writing as both practice and concept. “Writing Studies” is an interdisciplinary area of study at the intersection of literacy studies, communication, digital studies, education, and linguistics that is interested in how written texts, public documents, technical and professional communication, social media, etc. reflect and impact social organization and change. The course invites students to critically explore writing’s past, present, and future roles in society through a problem-posing approach, focusing attention on how writing is understood, used, and learned. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU) 

English 190N Environment, Climate Change & the Humanities

(ALDG) 

Lecture 1    M/W 2:30-3:45 + disc.    Instructor: Malcolm Sen 
This course introduces students to the exciting, interdisciplinary field of the Environmental Humanities, which engages with the relationship between humanistic study and environmental concerns, such as climate change. The course is anchored in literary studies (we will read novels and poetry from around the world). However, the course will also utilize other narratives such as those from visual culture. While questions of ecology, environment, landscape, and weather have always played a role in literary, historical, and philosophical inquiries, how might those critical lenses be utilized to think through urgent concerns such as anthropogenic climate change and unprecedented species extinctions around the world? Questions of climate and species extinctions are generally consigned to scientific enquiry; however, in this course we will learn how and why the humanities plays a crucial role in these debates. (Gen. Ed. AL, DG) 

• English 190N, Discussion D01AA: Fri 10:10-11:00, TA: S A M Raihanur Rahman
• English 190N, Discussion D01AB: Fri 11:15-12:05, TA: S A M Raihanur Rahman
• English 190N, Discussion D01AC: Fri: 1:25-2:15, TA: Jade Onn
• English 190N, Discussion D01AD: Fri: 12:20-1:10, TA: Jade Onn

English 200 Introduction Literary Studies

(Introduction to major) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 11:30-12:45        Instructor: Jimmy Worthy 
This course will introduce students to intense literary analysis, or the practice of reading literature critically and actively. Through the study of different literary genres—the short story, speech, novel, drama, poetry, and literary criticism—and literary devices and terms, you will hone your critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. As this is also an introduction to the major class, you will be asked to think seriously about what it means to read, discuss, and write about literature as an informed English major as well as complete assignments designed to help you maximize your experience as an important part of the English Department at UMass. (Gen. Ed. AL, DG) 

English 200 Introduction Literary Studies

(Introduction to major) 

Lecture 2    TuTh 10:00-11:15    Instructor: Rachel Mordecai 
Our focus in this course will be on developing the critical thinking, speaking and writing skills that are needed for success in the English major. Students will become familiar with key literary conventions, literary terms, and critical approaches as we read texts across multiple genres and from multiple traditions. Students will write a lot inside and outside of class, producing a variety of informal writing and three papers of varying lengths through a formal draft-and-revision process.   English majors only.  Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing. 

English 200 Introduction Literary Studies

(Introduction to major)(Environmental Humanities) (Social Justice)

Lecture 3    MonWed 4:00-5:15    Instructor: Malcolm Sen 
Topic: Environmental Justice, Race, Indigeneity, and Literature. This class will introduce students to the practice of critical reading of literary texts. It will focus on themes of nature, ecology, ecological imperialism, and the role of global capital in these areas. Students will read a range of exciting texts from around the world and develop a firm understanding of literary genres. Introduction to multiple theoretical schools, including feminist, race, and postcolonial studies, and the environmental studies will be through deliberations on the conjoined aspects of empire and ecology. The ultimate aim of this course is to introduce methodologies of close reading and foster critical writing skills. Writing assignments will include analytical précis of theoretical texts, reviews of literary texts, and a critical essay of 8-10 pages.  This course counts towards your Environmental Humanities Specialization. 

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies

(Introduction to major) 

Lecture 4:     TuTh 1:00-2:15    Instructor: Katherine O’Callaghan 
Topic: The Ghosts of Literature  Introduction to literary study, concentrating on close reading and analysis of texts, writing and revising critical essays, and discussion of the issues that underlie the study of literature. In this course we will explore short stories, novels, poetry and drama from various theoretical perspectives. Each text will be examined on its own terms, but some general themes will emerge as the course progresses. In particular, students of "The Ghosts of Literature" are asked to construct the myriad ways in which the idea of haunting might be applied to a literary text. Literary heritage, intertextual influence, remnants of lost languages, ghost stories, and themes of absence, loss, and returns will all recur throughout the semester. Reading will include works by James Joyce, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Bharati Mukherjee, Conor McPherson and Henry James. Prerequisite: ENGLWRIT 112 or equivalent.  This course is open to English majors only. 

English 201 Early British Literature and Culture

(British lit before 1700 or 200+ elective) (Literature as History) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 4:00-5:15         Instructor: Heidi Holder 
This class focuses on the growth of English literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century.  The emphasis is on major works as responses to cultural and political developments, especially the shift from manuscript to print culture.  Genres covered include poetry (epic and romance narrative, sonnet sequences, and metaphysical poetry) and drama (medieval mystery plays, revenge tragedy, and Restoration comedy).  Authors include Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Webster and Wycherley.  Two essays and regular short “discussion” papers and Moodle posts. 

English 203 Bible, Myth, Literature and Society

(200 elective) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 2:30-3:45        Instructor: David Toomey 
The course will explore several of the most studied and influential books of the Old and New Testaments -- from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) the books Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Ruth and Isaiah and (from the New Testament) the gospels Luke and John.  Most class meetings, following Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura (scripture alone) will involve collective efforts to derive coherent close readings of particularly provocative or problematic passages.  Where necessary, following the historical-critical type of exegesis called Higher Criticism, we will appeal to secondary sources.  Required text: Coogan, Michael D. (Editor) and Marc Zvi Brettler (Editor). The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press, 2018 (an electronic version is available through UMass Amherst Libraries). 

English 205 Intro to Post-Colonial Studies

(Anglophone/ethnic American or 200 elective)(Environmental Humanities) (Social Justice)

Lecture 1    TuTh 11:30-12:45        Instructor: Shakuntala Ray 
This course surveys literatures written in English from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.  In doing so it asks what unites the diverse literatures gathered under the rubric "postcolonial".  Is postcolonial simply a descriptive category, or does it suggest an oppositional or troubled stance towards colonialism and modernity?  To consider this question we will take up major issues and debates within postcolonial studies, namely: nationalism and nativism, subalternity, feminism, development, and globalization.  Throughout we will be concerned with questions of identity formation, representation, and literary form. 

English 221 Shakespeare

(British lit before 1700 or 200 elective) (Literature as History) (AL)

Lecture 1    MW 12:20-1:10 + discussion    Instructor: Jane Degenhardt 
This course offers an introduction to Shakespeare’s dramatic works, including a sampling of comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. Through careful reading and discussion, we will explore the language, themes, and performance dimensions of Shakespeare’s plays. We will seek to understand how they speak to a specific time and place in English history, as well as considering their present relevance and adaptation in recent films. By thinking critically about what it means to historicize, we will ask what Shakespeare’s plays can tell us about history and why this should matter. We will also seek to understand how his plays employ fiction to disrupt assumptions about history and to help shape the terms through which the present and future can be imagined. Attendance at lecture and robust participation in discussion sections required. 

• English 221, Discussion D01AA: Fri 9:05-9:55, TA: Jeremy Geragotelis
• English 221, Discussion D01AB: Fri 10:10-11:00, TA: Jeremy Geragotelis
• English 221, Discussion D01AC: Fri: 11:15-12:05, TA: Christina Muoio
• English 221, Discussion D01AD: Fri: 12:20-1:10, TA: Christina Muoio
• English 221, Discussion D01AE: Fri: 10:10-11:00, TA: Shwetha Chandrashekhar
• English 221, Discussion D01AF: Fri: Fri 11:15-12:05, TA: Shwetha Chandrashekhar

English 254H Intro to Creative Writing honors

(200 elective)(Creative Writing) (AL)

Lecture 1    TuTh 11:30-12:45    Instructor: Ell Davis 

Writing Childhood & Adolescence  Childhood is the subject of many of the most heart-warming-- and the most haunting-- classic and contemporary texts. In this class, we will consider why, exploring what writing childhood can teach us about literary form, technique, and writing to/from the heart. 

Throughout the semester, experimentation will be key. Our explorations will take us through a host of genres: the wacky, warm, and generous as well as the melancholy and existential. Expect girl detectives, gothic and folklore-inspired horror, digital memoir, lyric essay, novels in verse, surrealist poetry, and other modes of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Writing nuanced and inquisitive depictions of childhood will help us study character, line, genre, voice, creative research, and more. In the process, students will build creative and critical skills that will transfer to writing on other subjects. 

Meetings will blend workshop and literary/craft discussion. Creative readings of writing old and new (plus a couple of films) will provide us with rich inspiration for our work. Discussion will be paired with frequent, low-stakes opportunities to share writing with peers and respond creatively to assigned texts. Students will generate abundantly throughout the Spring, writing at least 5 poems, 2 essays, and 2 pieces of short fiction.  (Gen. Ed. AL) 

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing

(200 elective)(Creative Writing) (AL)

Lecture 1    MWF 11:15-12:05    Instructor: Lena Rubin 
Writing Place.  Eudora Welty wrote that “Place absorbs our earliest notice and attention, it bestows on us our original awareness; and our critical powers spring up from the study of it and the growth of experience inside it.” In this course we will ask what it means to write through, in, and about place. How does memory shift or activate our relationship to places we’ve visited, experienced, dwelled in? Drawing on a reading list of essay, criticism, fiction and poetry that takes us from Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s Alaska to George Perec’s street corner in Paris to Bernadette Mayer’s Poetry State Forest, we will examine the ways that place can shape narrative voice. We’ll ask the question of what differentiates a “space” from a “place,” and we will consider how a piece of writing can serve as a map or field guide. We will engage both the natural and built environment, and the imagined places of dream. Throughout the class, students will compose a body of work across genre: five poems, two stories, and two reflective essays. We will also venture to unique places on UMass’ campus such as the Sunwheel, the Morris Greenhouse, and the Renaissance Center, to generate further place-based inspiration. (Gen. Ed. AL) 

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing

(200 elective)(Creative Writing) (AL)

Lecture 2    TuTh 4:00-5:15        Instructor: Joseph Fritsch 
Dwell in Possibility. Of her poetry, Emily Dickinson declared, “I dwell in possibility.” Over 150 years later, poets, storytellers, and artists are still demonstrating new possibilities with language. In this course, we will ask our writing to travel with us as a companion exploring our ideas and emotions. We will practice genres, styles, and techniques for creative written expression. In the spirit of experimentation, we will challenge ourselves to move beyond the familiar and find out what is possible.  

In-class creative exercises will allow us to develop skills and techniques that will apply to writing across genres. Short readings serve as material for discussion and as possible inspiration for our own compositions. During workshops, we will provide one another with constructive feedback, ensuring that all writers hear a variety of reactions to their work. Over the course of the semester, you will be responsible for writing 5 poems, 2 prose narratives, and 2 reflective essays on craft and process. These assignments will result in a body of work of 25 pages. This course fulfills the General Education AL (literature) requirement. 

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing

(200 elective)(Creative Writing) (AL)

Lecture 3    MWF 10:10-11:00    Instructor: Jade Gaynor 
How to Not Stop.  “…almost all poets stop writing.” -CAConrad
Whether it’s a job that leaves you drained, concerns in your everyday life, or writer’s block; you probably know the feeling of not being able to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. We’re going to fix that. In this workshop we will confront the intrusions that keep us from writing, develop methods for bypassing writer’s block, and dive into the creative process.

This is a writing intensive class meant for students who are excited to create. Each week we will write, provide comments for each other’s work, and engage with small rituals like those developed by the poet CAConrad. We will read and discuss craft essays, short stories, and poems throughout the semester. By the end of our time together you will have everything you need to be a writer and to better understand your own creative project.

Over the course of the semester, you will be responsible for writing 5 poems, 2 prose narratives, and 2 reflective essays on craft and process. These assignments will result in a body of work of 25 pages. This course fulfills the General Education AL (literature) requirement.

English 268 American Literature and Culture before 1865

(American lit before 1865 or 200 elective)  

Lecture 1     TuTh 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Kari Daly 
In this course we will read narratives of individual and collective cultural transformations from the colonial era through the antebellum era in American literature. Specifically, we will explore various educational journeys and examine how they intersect with the notion of a “new” continent full of beauty and seemingly boundless natural resources. In our readings, discussions, and multimodal projects we will critically analyze literary and artistic representations of the American educational system prior to 1865. 

English 269 American Literature and Culture after 1865

(American lit after 1865 or 200 elective) 

Lecture 1    MW 4:00-5:15        Instructor: Brenna Casey 
This course explores the definitions, boundaries, and evolutions of national literary traditions in the United States from the U.S. Civil War to the present. We will examine a variety of issues arising from the historical and cultural contexts of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, the formalized study of literature, and the competing constructions of American identity. Students will consider canonical texts as well as those less frequently recognized as central to an American literary tradition. We will work to develop insights into the definitions, contents, and implications of literature in the United States. 

English 273 American Realism

(American lit before 1865 or Anglophone/Ethnic American or 200 English elective)(Literature as History)(Social Justice)

Lecture 1    TuTh 10:00-11:15        Instructor: Sarah Patterson 
The American Slave Narrative.  The American slave narrative tradition is substantiated by former slaves who documented their journey from bondage to freedom in memoirs and autobiographies. From Mary Prince’s 1831 lament, that, “[s]ick or well, it was work—work—work!” to the “shocking tales of slaveholding cruelty” that appear in the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, this course focuses on styles of narration connected to African Americans’ life writing about enslavement. Our program of study will be divided into sections on terminology, print technologies and historical representations that were produced for mass consumption. We will study the term “slave” and its legal, political and economic functions as part of the American institution of slavery with attention to differences between systems of indentured servitude and slavery in the American North and South and the nature of hemispheric relations between West Indian and American slavery. Students will also interrogate literary terms to establish a relationship between fictional and nonfictional accounts of slavery that are evident in readings by major authors and lesser-known authors. 

English 279 Intro to American Studies

(American lit after 1865 or Anglophone/Ethnic American or 200 English elective)(American Studies)(ALDU) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 1:00-2:15        Instructor: Laura Furlan 
In this version of English 279, we will be thinking about the history of resistance and protest in the United States, looking specifically at two recent moments as case studies: Ferguson and Standing Rock. We will investigate what led to these two particular protest movements (Black Lives Matter and #NoDAPL), what was at stake in each, how they were portrayed in the news media, the role social media played, and the related and relevant cultural productions (books, films, art, music) that have appeared in their wake. As we take an American Studies approach to these moments of protest, we will also be thinking critically about larger issues of American identity and citizenship. This course is required for the Letter of Specialization in American Studies and satisfies the AL and DU General Education Requirements. (Gen. Ed. AL, DU) (Gen. Ed. AL, DU) 

English 298H Practicum: Teaching in the Writing Center

(200+ English elective)(WRLS) 

Lecture 1    Thurs 4:00-5:15        Instructor: Robert Murray 
Practicum consists of four hours per week tutoring in the Writing Center and one-hour weekly meetings to discuss tutorials and supplementary readings, to write, and to work on committee projects. Students who have successfully completed English 329H Tutoring Writing: Theory & Practice are eligible to enroll in this course.  This is a two-course series.  Open only to students who registered in 329H Fall 2023. 

English 300 Junior Year Writing

(Junior Year Writing) (WRLS)

Lecture 1    TuTh 1:00-2:15    Instructor: Kari Daly 
Topic: Writing for Nonprofits This course will introduce you to how professional writing is inextricably bound to issues of social justice and democracy by focusing on nonprofits. In this course we will leverage your literary training to analyze (and in many cases produce our own) mission statements, grant applications, press releases and social media posts, as well as informational materials associated with nonprofits such as brochures, pamphlets, and signage. 

English 300 Junior Year Writing

(Junior Year Writing) 

Lecture 2    TuTh 11:30-12:45        Instructor: Adam Zucker 
Topic: Renaissance Fictions & Modern Fantasy  This course places early modern works by Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and the anonymous “Pearl Poet” alongside contemporary novels by Jeff VanderMeer, Ursula Le Guin, and others in order to explore the literary histories and formal engagements of Renaissance and contemporary speculative fiction. Our study of the political and social logic of older works not normally described as “fantasy” (such as The Faerie Queene, The Tempest, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) will inform our analysis of the ways popular literature fits into our own moment in time. What do imaginary worlds help us see? What do they help us to ignore? Can the analysis and/or enjoyment of unreal things change ideas about citizenship, or identity, or political affiliation? Is another world ever possible? Students will write two shorter response essays (one on an earlier, one on a later literary work) in addition to pursuing a longer researched project in which they choose a contemporary novel, film, or other text to analyze with our work over the course of the semester in mind. Experience with (or, at least, interest in) early British literature is advised. 

English 300 Junior Year Writing

(Junior Year Writing or Anglophone/ethnic Amer lit)(Social Justice)(American Studies) 

Lecture 2    MW 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Brenna Casey 
Topic: Intro to Latinx Literature. This course offers an introduction to Latinx Literature which encompasses poetry, fiction, and nonfiction produced by members of the Latin American diaspora within the United States. We will survey works from the late nineteenth century through our contemporary moment to examine how Latinx Literature pertains to, influences, and underwrites blurry-bordered “American Literature.” With a special emphasis on the historical entanglements of evolving concepts of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class, our discussions and writing projects will consider themes of migration, dispossession, multilingualism, assimilation, and cultural preservation. Texts will include works by Jose Martí, Arthur Schomburg, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Julia de Burgos, Gloria Anzaldúa, Achy Obejas, Karla Cornjeo Villavicencio, and more. While we will consider some Spanish language texts—at times beside and English-language counterpart—Spanish is not necessary to participate in this course. 

English 302 Studies: Textuality & New Media

(400 elective)(WRLS) 

Lecture 1    MW 4:00-5:15        Instructor: Amy Diehl 
This course examines digital culture through the lens of textuality, exploring how texts shape meaning and engage audiences. Emphasis is placed on the interaction between text and medium, audience interpretation, and cultural impact on digital meaning.

English 315 Speculative Fiction

(300 elective) 

Lecture 1    MW 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Kari Daly 
This class will give an overview of the genre of speculative fiction, with an emphasis on juxtaposing different texts with similar themes. How do writers from different periods and socioeconomic backgrounds differ when they envision potential futures and alternate realities? What can these different perspectives, and the act of comparing them, teach us about our political and social structures? We will attempt to answer these questions through reading work by Mary Shelley, Octavia Butler, and Ursula Le Guin, among others. 

English 343 English Epic Tradition

(early British lit. or 300 English elective) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 1:00-2:15        Instructor: Stephen Harris 
Topic: Beowulf. This course introduces you to the magnificent epic poem Beowulf in its original language. Written anonymously between c. 750 and c.1000 AD, Beowulf is a poem of stunning artistry, complex structure, and profound wisdom. Beowulf inspired J. R. R. Tolkien and Seamus Heaney. It continues to inspire artists today. We will learn some Old English and read the poem extremely closely. As we do, we will put it into its historical and literary contexts, imagining medieval readers as well as modern ones. We will discuss Norse myths, Irish myths, charms, omens, and portents. And there be dragons. Recommended for students who have completed ENGL 313, Old English. If you have not taken Old English, you can read the poem in translation. English majors only. Course prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of "C" or better and 201, 202 or 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better. 

English 355 Creative Writing Fiction

(300 elective)(Creative Writing) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 2:30-3:45        Instructor: John Hennessy 
In this course students will write and workshop short stories. They will also read widely in modern and contemporary fiction and complete a series of assignments intended to address specific aspects of fiction writing.  Course prerequisite: English 254.

English 355 Creative Writing Fiction

(300 elective)(Creative Writing) 

Lecture 2        MWF 11:15-12:05    Instructor: Nasira Watts 

Writing Beyond Spectacle.  When I first began to study AfroFuturism as both genre and theoretic, I was struck by what scholar Mark Dery pointed out: what does it say that even in people's most grandiose imaginings, they actively exclude certain peoples. Though Dery was referencing the work of predominantly white science fiction and fantasy writers, the same sentiment can be held for writing as a whole: if all writing requires elements of the imagination, what does it say when communities, experiences, and histories are actively ignored, unaddressed, or excluded? 

This multi-genre writing lab, Writing Beyond Spectacle, seeks to remedy this current truth of literature by molding conscious writers and creatives. It builds upon scholar and activist Saidiya Hartman’s ideas of racial enjoyment and spectacle to guide students on a journey of ethically centering the bottoms of the stories they wish to share. Focusing on auto fiction, critical fabulation, and short stories–from writers like Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Toni Morrisson to name a few–we will work to determine the following: (1) How do you ethically center yourself in your own work, avoiding concepts like trauma porn, for instance; (2) How do you center the bottom of the communities you choose to depict, especially when venturing beyond what you know; and (3) What stories do you want to tell, and why?  Course prerequisite: English 254.

English 355 Creative Writing Fiction

(300 elective)(Creative Writing) 

Lecture 3        MWF 12:20-1:10    Instructor: Montanna Harling 

Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Tales
“Fantastic literature, like all the verbal arts, must satisfy the intellectual as well as the aesthetic faculty. Fantasy, odd as it sounds to say so, is a perfectly rational undertaking” –Ursula K. Le Guin

In this creative writing workshop, we will venture into the realm of the weird, the fantastical, and the irreal as we explore speculative fiction. Encompassing modes such as science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, fairy tales, and horror, speculative fiction blurs the boundary between traditional “literary” fiction and “genre” stories. In this course, we will utilize speculative fiction as a lens through which to view humanity—a way of more clearly seeing ourselves, our societies, our cultures, the environment, and our past, present, and future(s). By reading and writing speculative fiction, we will develop our own ability to write strange, compelling, and meaningful tales.

We will read approximately 2-3 assigned short stories per week and will prepare for craft discussions by posing thoughtful questions about the readings. We will generate 3 original speculative fiction short stories, participate in group workshops, and submit 1 revised story alongside an artist’s statement for a final portfolio.

English 355 counts towards the Creative Writing Concentration, the Letter of Specialization in Creative Writing, and is a prerequisite for the 400-level creative writing courses.  Course prerequisite: English 254.

English 356 Creative Writing Poetry

(300 elective)(Creative Writing)

 Lecture 1    TuTh 1:00-2:15        Instructor: John Hennessy 
English 356 is a poetry workshop. In addition to writing their own poems, students will read widely in contemporary poetry.    Course prerequisite: English 254.

English 356 Creative Writing Poetry

(300 elective)(Creative Writing) 

Lecture 2    MWF 12:20-1:10    Instructor: Hunter Larson 
MWF 12:20-1:10
Radical Lyric Poetics Alice Notley writes in her long poem “At the Foot at the Belt of the Raincoat” ‘I / write to make / the world exist’, a statement that will guide us throughout this course, and help us to interrogate how we can use our writing to invent/reinvent the world every time we sit down to write. This course is a workshop-based, reading-intensive survey of poetry from the edge, from the ‘experimental’ to the ‘conventional’--we will explore what it means to make radical gestures in our poems and to write from the periphery of experience and perception. We will think critically about what it means to use poetry as a lens through which to see the world and to understand our position within it, exploring the ways in which our art is invariably affected by the political. The history of the lyric is an ancient and haunted tradition, and we will spend time thinking about our influences and where we fit in the longer lineage of the lyric. Students will write one poem a week, in addition to reading poetry and critical writings on poetics by thinkers like Federico Garcia Lorca, Charles Olson, Lyn Hejinian, Fred Moten, Barbara Guest, and Nathaniel Mackey.  Course prerequisite: English 254.

English 362 Modern Novel 1945-Present

(Anglophone or 300 elective)(Social Justice)

 Lecture 1    MW 2:30-3:45         Instructor: Mazen Naous 
Of Immigrants and Migration.  People from countries previously colonized by Great Britain find their way to British shores; people from countries affected by U.S. interventions find their way to the U.S. Some arrive as immigrants and some as migrants (we will consider the implications of these two terms). Both groups, however, endure forms of jingoism, racism, xenophobia, and violence at the social, cultural, economic, and political levels. Among other things, immigrants and migrants find that they are perceived as traitors, terrorists, criminals, and job snatchers. In relating the experiences of immigrants and migrants, our selected works employ a range of literary techniques. We will engage the relationship between aesthetics and politics in these textual interventions and consider the effect of this relationship on the representations and receptions of immigrants and migrants. This course examines works dealing with movement from South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Northern Ireland to Britain, and from East Asia, the Arab countries, and Mexico to the U.S. The course includes works by Ana Castillo, Omar El Akkad, John Okada, Caryl Phillips, and Zadie Smith. We will also watch and discuss two films. Critical essays and some theory will guide our readings and film viewings.  
This four-credit course fulfills the General Education curricular designation of Literature (AL). It demonstrates that novels do more than imitate life; they interpret and explain it. Furthermore, this course considers the function and aesthetic evaluation of novels in relation to the societies that produce them. 

English 365 The Literature of Ireland

(Anglophone or 300 elective) (Environmental Humanities)(Social Justice)

Lecture 1    TuTh 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Katherine O’Callaghan 
Irish literature (poetry, drama, novels, short stories) from the Irish Literary Revival to the present. Topics include colonialism, gender, race, language, nationhood, and intermediality; a particular focus on the importance of the environment and climate in Irish literary texts. Will include works by James Joyce, J.M. Synge, Augusta Gregory, Claire Keegan, Kevin Barry, Caoilinn Hughes, and more  (Gen.Ed. AL. Env.Hum.)

English 371 African American literature

(Anglophone/ethnic Amer lit or Amer lit after 1865 or 300 elective) (Literature as History) (Social Justice)

Lecture 1    TuTh 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Jimmy Worthy 
This course will offer students an overview of the important literary works produced by African American authors throughout the twentieth-century. We will examine the ideas, concerns, and preoccupations of African American authors as expressed in various literary pronouncements. ENG 371 will also allow students to assess the values and aesthetics that are not only representative of African American literature of the twentieth-century, but that define the particular genre and historical context from which the literature emerges. Using this critical orientation and throughout this course, students will discuss and write about texts with respect to how these works address challenges to gender, racial, economic, and national identity in the United States and throughout the African Diaspora. Furthermore, by focusing on African American literature since 1900, ENG 371 offers students the ability to chart the development of African American authors’ literary sensibilities across the twentieth-century and within multiple genres. Such endeavors will enable students to figure the literature produced by African Americans as indictive of a collective artistic imagination and representative of a process by which African Americans employed the written word in their demand for recognition and personhood. In essays and discussions, students are to consider the development of twentieth- century African American letters within the four specific literary areas we will encounter: Early Twentieth-Century and the Harlem Renaissance, The Realist/Modernist Movement, The Black Arts Era, and Literature Since 1975. In your writing, and discussion, make sure to engage these questions: What claims does African American literature make for itself given its political and aesthetic contexts? How ultimately does literary art function for the disenfranchised?  

English 372 Caribbean Literature: Sea is History

(Anglophone or 300+ English elective)(Literature as History)(Environmental Humanities)

Lecture 1    TuTh 1:00-2:15    Instructor: Rachel Mordecai 
In this course we will read contemporary works from the English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking literatures of the Caribbean (all texts will be read in English), comprising a mixture of "canonical" and emerging authors. Lectures (rare) and discussions (regular) will address central themes in Caribbean writing, as well as issues of form and style (including the interplay between creole and European languages).  

Some of the themes that will preoccupy us are history and its marks upon the Caribbean present; racial identity and ambiguity; colonial and neo-colonial relationships among countries; gender and sexuality. Assignments will include an informal reading journal and three major papers of varying lengths; there may also be student presentations, small-group work, and in-class writing activities. Authors may include Maryse Condé, Tiphanie Yanique, Kei Miller, René Depestre, Dionne Brand and Mayra Santos-Febres. 

English 373 American Indian Literature

(Anglophone/ethnic Amer lit or 300 elective) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 10:00-11:15    Instructor: Laura Furlan 
In this course we will read contemporary work by Native American authors, thinking deeply about the category of Indigenous literature and surveying significant trends in the field. We will especially pay attention to representations of the past in the present in these texts—of the importance of telling historical stories. Authors will include Louise Erdrich, Susan Power, LeAnne Howe, Deborah Miranda, Stephen Graham Jones, and Abigail Chabitnoy, among others.

English 378 American Women Writers

(later American or 300 elective) Literature as History)

Lecture 1    TuTh 11:30-12:45        Instructor: Sarah Patterson 
Representations of American Womanhood. In this class, we will review American writers' concepts of womanhood with women's advocacy literature as a point of orientation. Primarily drawing from nineteenth-century literature, we will draw from a rich selection of genres including novels, poetry, supplicant appeals, and autobiographical narratives that relate to perceptions of women's societal successes and shortcomings. This class is especially suited for students who are interested in tracing a history of reformers' and missionaries' contributions to women's access to educational and religious institutions and to charitable industries. The primary goal of the course is for students to study representations in historical literature about women's place in society including in domestic, work-related, political and avant-garde spheres of identify formation. A secondary goal is for students to identify the ways writing and activism provided pathways for women's artistic expression, visibility and empowerment. Primary readings in association with the fundamentals of literary analysis will uncover major junctures in evolving notions of woman-centered and feminist thought in American culture. Students will pay special attention to writers Margaret Fuller, Frances E. W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins and Zitkala-sa, among others. 

English 381 Professional Writing and Technical Communication II

(300 elective)(PWTC certificate)

Lecture 1    TuTh  2:30-3:45    Instructor: Janine Solberg 
Extends the work of ENGL 380. Students will learn and apply principles of technical writing, information/page design, and web accessibility. The objectives of this course are to increase students' organizational and graphical sophistication as writers and information designers. Students can expect to produce portfolio-quality content using industry-standard software such as MadCap Flare or Adobe Illustrator. Prerequisite: English 380. Junior or senior status and a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. 

English 382 Professional Writing and Technical Communication III

(300 elective)(PWTC certificate) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 11:30-12:45    Instructor: David Toomey 
The course serves as the capstone to the Professional Writing and Technical Communication specialization.  It also fulfills the Integrative Experience (IE) requirement for English majors.  With a view towards specialization, the course will provide directed opportunities to study in depth an issue related to technology and culture or to explore the theory and practice of particular kinds of writing and technology. With a view towards professionalization, the course will offer an opportunity to workshop professional portfolios, to learn about careers from working professionals.  With a view to lifelong learning, the course will ask students to reflect and record the manner in which they (personally) study a subject and/or develop a skill, and so come to a better understanding of their own learning strategies.  These three aims will be framed by our collective exploration of connections between technology, communication and culture through assigned reading. 

English 388 Rhetoric, Writing and Society

(300 elective)(WRLS)(TELA) 

Lecture 1    MW 4:00-5:15        Instructor: David Fleming 
This course is an introduction to the history, theory, and practice of rhetoric, defined here as the art of persuasion. For nearly 2,500 years, rhetoric has been the central academic discipline for thinking about the adaptation of discourse to purpose, audience, occasion, medium, and subject matter. The earliest rhetorical arts were focused on public speaking in direct democracies; later rhetorics treated eloquence more broadly, including written discourse and its role in religion, science, commerce, art, and education. Contemporary rhetorical theories have expanded the purview of rhetoric to include visual media, digital culture, and nonverbal performance and to see rhetorical motivations lurking even in artifacts produced without conscious persuasive design. Rhetoric is useful as a critical tool for analyzing others’ discourse; as a practical art for inventing one’s own discourse; and as a theoretical discipline for interrogating the languages of social and political life. In this course, we’ll learn about and practice these various rhetorics. The course is also meant to help students meet relevant objectives of the English section of the Massachusetts Test for Educator Licensure (MTEL). 

English 391C Advanced Software for Professional Writers

(300 elective)(PWTC certificate)(WRLS) 

Lecture 1    MW 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Janine Solberg 
Lecture 2    MW 4:00-5:15        Instructor: Jaclyn Ordway 
This course offers a beginner-level introduction to web design. It is aimed at English and humanities majors, though students from any major are welcome in the course. This is a hands-on course that meets in a computer classroom. Students will learn to create a website using HTML (hypertext markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets). You will come away from the course having created a professional web portfolio that you can use when applying for jobs or internships. 

No prior experience with web design or coding is required. Students should be comfortable managing files (naming, uploading, downloading, creating folders) and using a web browser. (Note: This course appears in Spire as "Advanced Software," but that really just means that we're advancing beyond Microsoft Word.) 

Prereq: Minimum 3.0 GPA and junior or senior standing. Non-majors or students who have not yet taken Engl 379 should contact the instructor to be added into the course. 
This course counts toward the following specializations: PWTC, WRLS, DH as well as the IT Minor. 

Prerequisite: English 379. Junior or senior status and a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. The Engl 380 pre-req may be waived with instructor permission, space permitting. 

English 421 Advanced Shakespeare

(course in early British literature or 400+ English elective)(Literature as History) 

Lecture 1    MW 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Jane Degenhardt 
Shakespeare's Speculative Worldmaking.  What would it mean to approach Shakespeare as a speculative fiction writer? How do his plays offer models for speculative methods of thinking, reading, and writing? In what ways do they demonstrate fiction’s capacity to expand the limits of possibility to reimagine what could have been, what could still be, and what might yet come? This course pairs a rich sampling of Shakespeare’s plays (including some of his less canonical plays) with historical and theoretical readings on fiction and speculative worldmaking.

Together, we will consider how the imaginative and performative elements of Shakespeare’s plays offer unique models of speculation and serve as guides for incorporating speculation into our creative and critical practices. We will also give special consideration to the politics of speculation and how it can be mobilized for decolonial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and other justice-oriented work. 

English 455 Advanced Creative Writing Fiction

(400 elective)(creative writing)

Lecture 1    MW 2:30-3:45        Instructor: Jordy Rosenberg 
A seminar in writing short stories and other fiction for advanced creative writing students. Students read in contemporary fiction and in craft topics; write regularly and discuss one another's writing. Prerequisite: ENGLISH 350, 355, or 356. 

English 469 Victorian Monstrosity

(400 elective or later British lit) (Literature as History) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 10:00-11:15    Instructor: Suzanne Daly 
Although the term “monstrosity” connotes fear and repulsion, many nineteenth-century writers were compelled by the idea of attraction between humans and not-quite human creatures such as demons, vampires, goblins, and ghosts. In exploring the aesthetic, political, economic, historical, and racial(ized) dimensions of these enchanted literary liaisons, we will consider their relationship to literary/cultural movements including medievalism, realism, and the gothic revival as well as to contemporary political debates over science, empire, immigration, masculinity, and the status of women. Primary texts may include poetry by Gottfried Bürger, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Mary Robinson, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, and William Wordsworth, and prose by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Sheridan Le Fanu, Richard Marsh, Mary Shelley, and Robert Louis Stevenson. 

English 486 Writing and Schooling

(400 English elective)(TELA)(WRLS) 

Lecture 1    MWF 10:10-11:00    Instructor: Rebecca Lorimer Leonard 
This course explores two phenomena—writing and schooling—and examines how they interact. Designed both for those who may want to teach K-16 and those who simply think writing and schooling are interesting, this course offers an upper-level engagement with the field of writing studies, placed in the contexts of teaching and learning. The course explores how sociocultural contexts shape writing practices, the ways that writing reflects diverse ways of knowing, and the ways that writers navigate social, linguistic, and technological changes. 

English 491AC The Major and Beyond

(WRLS) 

Lecture 1    W 11:30-12:45    Instructor: TBA 
Why wait any longer? This course helps you pave the way to a valuable post-graduate experience--be it a program, internship, or job. You will practice important job search skills, learn to articulate the worth of your major, and leave the class with a better sense of your vocational direction. In addition to receiving individualized guidance in creating a cover letter and résumé of immediate use, other assignments are likely to include attendance at career events, interviews with professionals from fields of interest, a professional presentation, a short paper researching professions, and participation in a mock interview. Note: for an additional credit and some extra work, students can opt to have the course count toward an English elective. Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors. (2 credits) 

English 491DS Data Science and the Humanities

(400+ elective in English)(WRLS)(Digital Humanities) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 10:00-11:15    Instructor: Stephen Harris 
This course introduces you to data science and how to apply it to the humanities. You will learn the python programming language, how to design simple algorithms, and the challenges of computing with humanistic content. The skill set you learn in this course is portable to business, law, journalism, teaching, and public service. UMass offers several introductions to data science, but this course focuses on practical applications in literature, language, history, art, film, music, and media. We start from scratch, so you don't need to know how to program, and high-school-level math is sufficient. You will design and implement a final project on your own or with a team. Grades are based on basic proficiency in python, a good grasp of simple algorithms, and the success of your final project. Please feel free to contact the professor beforehand if you have any questions or concerns about this course. 

English 494EI Writing, Identity & English Studies

(Integrative Experience) 

Lecture 1    MW 2:30-3:45        Instructor: David Fleming 
Writing, Identity, and English Studies is a nonfiction writing course designed to satisfy the University’s Integrative Experience (IE) requirement. Like all IE courses, it asks students 1) “to reflect on and to integrate” their learning in college, from their major to their General Education courses, their electives, and their extracurricular experiences; 2) to practice key “Gen Ed” objectives, such as oral communication, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary perspective-taking; and 3) to apply what they’ve learned to “new situations, challenging questions, and real-world problems.” This course is a writing-intensive version of the IE, designed for senior primary English majors. We’ll approach the IE goals through the genre of the personal essay. Across five writing projects, you’ll look back at your college education, identifying key moments and themes; you’ll review your work in English and assess where you are in that discipline: what projects you have found meaningful and what you’d like to do more of in the future; and you’ll imagine how you might apply the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired in college to problems, communities, and opportunities beyond. We’ll use an anthology of personal essays as prompt and model. At the end of the semester, you’ll collect your work in an e-portfolio, showcasing your knowledge, skills, accomplishments, and aspirations. 

English 494JI Going to Jail: Incarceration in US literature and culture

(Integrative Experience)(Anglophone/ethnic American)(Social Justice) 

Lecture 1        TuTh 1:00-2:15    Instructor: Suzanne Daly 
Why do we put people in cages? In what ways does the caging of humans impact those outside as well as inside? Writers have long used the prison as a space from which to ask questions about the nature and meaning of criminality and the rule of law, about human minds, bodies, and behavior, about economics, politics, race, and social class, and about how language makes and unmakes us as human beings. In this class, we will study US fiction, poetry, film, and nonfiction prose (print and digital) by prisoners, journalists, scholars, lawyers, and activists in order to consider these issues for ourselves. We will draw on the knowledge and critical skills you have gained from your gen ed coursework throughout. Assignments will include five short papers and two drafts of a longer final paper. Authors may include: Michelle Alexander, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Martin Luther King, CeCe McDonald, David Oshinsky, Danielle Sered, Bryan Stevenson, Jerome Washington, and Malcolm X. Open only to senior English majors. 

English 499D Foundations and Departures in Creative Writing: Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Non-fiction – 2nd semester

(400 elective)(Creative Writing) 

Lecture 1    Wed 4:00-6:30    Instructor: John Hennessy 
499D is the second semester of Foundations and Departures in Creative Writing: Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Non-Fiction, a multi-genre, two-semester course in creative writing designed to help students complete a Capstone project within the genre of their choice. Both a class in contemporary literature and a writing workshop, Foundations and Departures will offer students a wide variety of reading assignments and writing exercises from across all three genres. At the end of the first semester students will submit a portfolio of original work; in the second semester students will finish drafting and revising their Capstone projects. Textbooks will include _The Art of the Story_, a fiction anthology, novels by a variety of writers, including Mona Awad, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, and Teju Cole, memoir by Helene Cooper, non-fiction by Joan Didion, poetry collections by Nathan McClain, Denise Duhamel, and other contemporary poets (including the anthology The BreakBeat Poets). 

English 591N Topics in Indigenous Literature

(400+ or Anglophone/ethnic American)(Social Justice)  

Lecture 1    Mon 10:45-1:15  Instructor: Abigail Chabitnoy 
What attributes mark Indigenous women’s poetry today? How do contemporary Indigenous women poets engage in trends shared across feminist poetics as well as topics of specific concern to an Indigenous experience, both historical and contemporary? How do these concerns differ and shape the work at the level of subject and craft? As the population statistically most likely to experience violence, how do contemporary Indigenous women poets write under and against such violence. This seminar will focus on contemporary female poets from shared and various Indigenous nations, such for example Joan Naviyuk Kane, dg nanouk okpik, m.s. redcherries, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Selina Boan, No’u Revilla, and Layli Long Soldier, in the context of these and other questions posed together throughout the semester.

The University Without Walls (UWW) at UMass Amherst offers online courses and degree programs. For students taking classes on campus, you will need to request an enrollment appointment on Spire before you can enroll in UWW courses. To learn more about UWW and the online degree programs they offer, visit their website.

Winter 2025 English Online Courses

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature and Culture

(ALDG)
Instructor: Rowshan Chowdhury

This course, ENGL 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture, is designed to introduce students to basic concepts of gender, sexuality, and identity through the lens of literary studies. We'll explore literary examples from diverse cultures and identities, and critically engage with various issues such as gender inequalities, sexuality, families, media images, queer issues, masculinity, reproductive rights, and history. Throughout the course, we'll analyze how experiences of gender and sexuality intersect with other social constructs of difference, such as race/ethnicity, class, and age. In addition to literary analysis, we'll pay attention to different historical, cultural, socio-economic, and political constructs and how they have impacted our lives, as well as some of the social movements at local, national, and transnational levels. Through various creative and critical assignments, we'll grapple with some of the challenging themes that drive the field. Our goal is to better understand the imposition and importance of difference and become more competent thinkers, writers, and activists, able to work as purveyors of an ever-evolving conversation.

English 202 Later British Literature

(British literature after 1700 or 200 elective)
Instructor: Shwetha Chandrashekhar

This course presents a survey of the development of British literature from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It will introduce students to a range of historical and sociocultural contexts and enhance their understanding of themes such as colonialism, slavery, racism, nationalism, and migration. We will interpret the terms “British” and “English” broadly and pay attention to how they have functioned to exclude cultures, languages, people, and places. Beginning with Swift’s imaginings of colonial dystopia and Wordsworth’s mourning for a vanishing culture and ending with Rushdie’s magical realist depictions of colonialism and its afterlives, this course seeks to reimagine these periods and writings from the vantage point of the twenty-first century.

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing

(creative writing core course or 200 English elective)
Instructor: Vika Mujumdar

Writing Transit: In Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, Edwidge Danticat writes: “The nomad or immigrant who learns something rightly must always ponder travel and movement, just as the grief-stricken must inevitably ponder death.” In the twenty-first century, how do we write mobility, exchange, and transit, as we move into and exist in a world where all of these ideas and conceptions of space are central to our experience in this time of rapid globalization and development? With a definition that is anchored in both expansiveness and limitation, in both abundance and economy, we will examine the ways in which we might write the ways we understand transit and mobility—how do we understand place, geography, and home through the lens of transit? Using theory and literature as our starting points, we will examine our unique relationships to transit, defined expansively and consider how we might write movement. Writers we read will include, among others: Dur e Aziz Amna, Aria Aber, Malvika Jolly, Raven Leilani, ‘Pemi Aguda, Sally Wen Mao, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Through this thematic focus, we will examine setting, character, perspective, voice, and more, and students will leave with five poems, two short stories, and two essays.

English 339 Film and Literature

(300 English elective)
Instructor: Sam Davis

This course will survey the art and political nature of translating a book into a film in American culture. With a particular focus on works written by marginalized authors, we will read novels that were later turned into movies, whether in Hollywood or the Indie scene. We will read the novel Push by Sapphire (1996) and the 2009 filmic adaptation Precious, Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman (2007), later turned into the 2017 film, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s infamous The Great Gatsby (1925). Some questions that we will ask: how are these characters asked to represent themselves similarly or differently across mediums? How does the political moment of the novel or film publication influence this representation? We will read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000), and James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and watch their matching films that followed. Later in the course, we will expand the definition of “literature,” taking sensationalist newspaper articles and literature written about Brandon Tena and watch Boys Don’t Cry (1999). We will take a transitive look across genre and medium in order to unpack the different ways identity is represented in film and literature. For example, many interpret the character Nick in The Great Gatsby as a queer one, yet, almost a century later in 2013, the character and his storyline are stripped of their hints of queerness.

Since this class will be taught asynchronously, all materials will be stored online and easily accessible to students at all times. Because there will be films presented each week, I will hold a remote screening for students to watch the film all together to both encourage community building and to unburden students of potential costs associated with watching the films. Students will read critical social theory and film theory alongside the novels in order to better understand how representation works, both on screen and on the page. Students will write a midterm paper about one novel and film pairing, as well as a final paper comparing two different novels and their filmic adaptations, making an argument about the representations of gender and/or race in the texts. 

English 355 Creative Writing Fiction

(300 creative writing elective)
Instructor: Lawrence Flynn

Writing Fiction of Environmental Concern and Consciousness  “The success of all environmentalist efforts finally hinges not on some ‘highly developed technology, or some arcane new science’ but on ‘a state of mind’: on attitudes, feelings, images, narratives.” -Lawrence Buell, Writing for an Endangered World

Fiction can change hearts and minds. What are we to do with this awesome tool? This class applies a central belief in the power of fiction to a colossal dilemma of our era: the global climate crisis. How can fiction writers guided by ecological concern, consciousness, and knowledges illuminate the environmental catastrophe governing our collective moment? What role can fiction play in charting just habits of being and epistemological humility in relationship to non-human ecological processes? 

In this course, we will explore these big questions through the craft of fiction. We will draft either two environmentally conscious short stories or one novel excerpt, sharing our work in generous workshop collaborations with attunement to non-human characters, ethical concern, and scientific accuracy. We will learn to write guided by forms of nature—to craft syntax that spirals like whirlpools and explodes like flower buds. We will read classical and modern stories, novellas, and essays to guide our authorial intentions, inform our ecological knowledge, and bring purpose to our work.

English 391AJ Writing for a Living

(300 creative writing elective)
Instructor: Stefan Petrucha

Learn strategies and skills for presenting your book, your articles, your ideas, and yourself in a compelling and competitive manner to potential readers and buyers. Focusing on the rapidly changing world of publishing, will explore creative writing concepts that apply equally in creating job applications and business proposals.

Fall 2024 English Online Courses

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature and Culture
Instructor: Tyler Clark
Camp Culture and Literature: A Herstory of Who She Is and What She Wants! In the 1960s, Susan Sontag famously defined “Camp” as a mode of being and viewing the world through stylization, artifice, and hyper-exaggeration. This nebulous term has also been described as failed seriousness, the tragically ludicrous, and the ludicrously tragic. Throughout history, epochs of time have been dedicated to a Camp sensibility, producing literature and media that accentuates and emphasizes the artificiality of society, cults of glamorous personality, and how the absurd has a way of revealing hypocrisy. Oftentimes, Camp sensibility intersects with marginalized identity as well, and this course will provide a basis for understanding its roots in gay culture. Camp literature takes the form of horror, comedy, tragedy, decadence, and drama, and this course will provide a survey of its most iconic iterations in a global context. Too often Camp is sublimated as unserious or undeserving of critical attention, but with the resurgence of Camp media—such as the popularity of drag or the 2019 Met Gala— this course seeks to broaden our understanding of what Camp is and why it exists. We will discuss how Camp is primarily a viewpoint with which to see the world through its artificiality, tracing its roots in nineteenth-century gay culture, and its varied representations in the modern age. So, zhoosh your riah, slap your drag, and se camper! (Gen.Ed. AL, DG).

English 339 Film and Literature (300 English elective)
Instructor: Nataliya Kostenko
What scares us? What do these fears say about who we are? How are our fears represented in both film and literature? What is the relationship between horror on the screen and horror in the written word? This course will center around these questions, as well as an exploration of horror in both film and literature. Horror as a genre features many iconic tropes, motifs, and supernatural creatures that have been redone and reformatted in countless ways across mediums, cultures, writers, and directors. Consequently, this genre lends itself uniquely well to studying cultural and artistic traditions and aesthetic relationships between film and literature. We will read classic horror texts by Bram Stoker and Edgar Allen Poe, as well as modern work by Ling Ma and Helen Oyeyemi. We’ll also watch a wide selection of horror films. Through these texts and films, we’ll explore the figures of the vampire and the zombie and the ways in which they represent and explore gothic aesthetics, xenophobia, colonialism, anxieties about the Other, out-of-control consumption, and racialized bodies.

English 391AJ Writing for a Living
Instructor: Stefan Petrucha
Learn strategies and skills for presenting your book, your articles, your ideas, and yourself in a compelling and competitive manner to potential readers and buyers. Focusing on the rapidly changing world of publishing, will explore creative writing concepts that apply equally in creating job applications and business proposals.

Summer Session 2 (July 8 - August 16th) English Courses: 
 

ENGL 391AJ Writing for a Living
(300 English or Creative Writing elective)(Creative Writing Concentration or Specialization)
Instructor Sefan Petrucha
Learn strategies and skills for presenting your book, your articles, your ideas, and yourself in a compelling and competitive manner to potential readers and buyers. Focusing on the rapidly changing world of publishing, will explore creative writing concepts that apply equally in creating job applications and business proposals.

Summer 2024 Session 1 English Course listings

ENGL 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature and Culture
(ALDG)|
Instructor: Chandler Steckbeck
Introduction to literature through a lens of gender identity and sexuality.  Texts include fiction, plays, poems that deal with and inspire conversations about the public politics and personal experience of gender and sexuality, both in the past and present. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG)

English 269 American literature and culture after 1865
(American literature after 1865 or 200 English elective)
Instructor: Timothy Ong
This course is a survey of American Literature, broadly conceived, from the end of the Civil War to the present. Special focus is given to its many forms and concerns, its major writers, its minority voices, its relationship to American society and politics, and its significance to the contemporary reader. Specifically, the course encourages students to reassess the definition of “American Literature” in relation to major historical events that continue to shape the social and cultural life in the US such as imperial expansion, immigration, and industrialization. We will examine and analyze how literary texts that reflect such changes gave rise to new ways of thinking about race, gender, and class and how these categories challenge the idea of a singular American identity.

Over the course of the semester, we will be attending to major movements within the American literary tradition and their historical, political, and cultural contexts. Such movements include realist fiction in the late 19th CE to early 20th CE, modernist aesthetics in American poetry, post-WWII fiction and US imperialism, and contemporary articulations of the American experience. Drawing from both canonical and marginal texts, the course seeks to critically examine social and cultural forces that nominate such designations to fully appreciate and understand the diverse and complex nature of American literature and society. 

ENGL 254: Introduction to Creative Writing 
(GenEd: AL)(200 English or Creative Writing elective)(Creative Writing Concentration or Specialization)
Instructor: Rudendo Chidzodzo (on spire as Charleen Chidzodzo)

Title: The Craft Behind Worldbuilding: Fantasy, Sci-Fri & Afrofuturism  Have you ever read a story that transported you out of this world? Have you ever imagined living in a completely made-up world? How do we create such worlds? What craft techniques make for great worldbuilding? Whether you’re a fan of Game of Thrones, Black Panther, or Star Wars, in this course, we will explore the art of writing speculative fiction & poetry, we will create works that split open the world as we know it. This course will address two genres: Black speculative literature and sci-fi. We will study the masters of speculative literature and sci-fi before attempting to create our own unique worlds. In order for us to break the rules of reality, we must know them first. We will study short stories, poems, essays, comics, etc. By the end of our course, you will have a completed work of prose or poetry that breaks the boundaries of reality.

English 356 Creative Writing Poetry
(300 creative writing elective)
Instructor: Cleo Abramian
This course seeks to engage the body as the poem itself. We will investigate our corporeal being and that which extends from/beyond/toward it, exploring different practices to tap into where we are writing from. We will also look at how the ways we move through the world dictate our experience both individually and collectively. By interacting with the body as poem, the poem as body, we will write in different realms of somatic experimentation. Together, we will approach poetry with an expansive interpretation of the term, while attuning ourselves to a variety of forms and poetic constraints. Classes will be made up of weekly writing exercises, readings, workshopping and class discussions. We will be looking at work and examining the poetry and artistic practices of writers such as CA Conrad, Bernadette Mayer, Audre Lorde, Etel Adnan and Jen Bervin. Students will leave this course with a collection of poems that they develop into a small chapbook or performance. This course is open to all writers, at any stage in their process.

Summer Session 2 English Courses:

ENGL 391AJ Writing for a Living (200 English or Creative Writing elective)(Creative Writing Concentration or Specialization)
Instructor: Sefan Petrucha
Learn strategies and skills for presenting your book, your articles, your ideas, and yourself in a compelling and competitive manner to potential readers and buyers. Focusing on the rapidly changing world of publishing, will explore creative writing concepts that apply equally in creating job applications and business proposals.
 

Spring 2024 Semester English Course listings

ENGL 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture (GenEd: AL, DG)
Instructor: Sarah Luken
This course satisfies the university's Gen.Ed. AL, DG requirements and is worth 4 credit hours. Its purpose is to continue improving the critical reading and writing skills you already have while attending to themes of gender, sexuality, and culture in literature.

ENGL 254: Introduction to Creative Writing  (GenEd: AL)
(200 English or Creative Writing elective)(Creative Writing Concentration or Specialization)
Instructor: Sara Hetherington
All creative writing presents readers with particular realities. In this course, we will analyze published works to determine the logic, rules, and textures of their presented realities, and then practice creating our own. Our goals are to identify the “weirdness” found in any piece of creative writing, no matter how seemingly “normal” the subject matter; and to gain an appreciation for what makes our own writing unique. We will read creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry by both modern and contemporary authors, including Donald Antrim, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Anton Chekhov, Franny Choi, Alice Munro, Mary Oliver, George Saunders, David Sedaris, and Michelle Zauner, among others. Students will give short presentations on authors and texts; complete exercises to practice elements of creative writing; share their writing with their classmates in guided workshop sessions; and offer feedback on each other’s work. By the end of the course, students will have completed a portfolio of 5 poems, 2 stories, and 2 essays.

ENGL 391AJ Writing for a Living
(200 English or Creative Writing elective)(Creative Writing Concentration or Specialization)
Instructor Sefan Petrucha
Learn strategies and skills for presenting your book, your articles, your ideas, and yourself in a compelling and competitive manner to potential readers and buyers. Focusing on the rapidly changing world of publishing, will explore creative writing concepts that apply equally in creating job applications and business proposals.

Spring 2025 courses organized by requirements in the major that they meet.

English 200 Intro to Literary Studies

English 200, Section 1
English 200, Section 2
English 200, Section 3
English 200, Section 4 

One course in British Literature and Culture before 1700

English 201 Early British Literature
English 221 Shakespeare
English 343 English Epic Tradition (Topic Beowulf)
English 421 Advanced Shakespeare

Survey Requirements (total 2 courses)

Two courses total: One course each in two of the following categories:

• Category 1: British Literature and Culture after 1700

• Category 2: American Literature and Culture before 1865

• Category 3: American Literature and Culture after 1865

English 268 American Literature and Culture before 1865 (category 2)
English 269 American Literature and Culture after 1865 (category 3)
English 273 American Realism (category 2)
English 279 Introduction to American Studies (category 3)
English 371 African American literature (category 3)
English 373 American Indian Literature (category 3)
English 378 American Women Writers (category 3)
English 469 Victorian Monstrosity (category 1)

One course in global Anglophone or ethnic American literature, culture, or rhetorics 200+ level:

English 205 Intro to Post-Colonial Literature
English 362 Modern Novel: 1945-Present
English 273 American Realism
English 279 Introduction to American Studies
English 365 Literature of Ireland
English 371 African American literature
English 372 Caribbean Literature
English 373 American Indian Literature
English 591N Topics in Indigenous Literature (note: this is a undergrad/grad flex enrollment course

200-400+ English electives:

English 201 Early British Literature
English 203 Bible/Myth/Literature
English 205 Intro to Post-Colonial Literature
English 221 Shakespeare
English 254H Writing and Reading Imaginative Literature Honors
English 254 Writing and Reading Imaginative Literature (Sections 1-3)
English 268 American Literature and Culture before 1865
English 269 American Literature and Culture after 1865
English 273 American Realism
English 279 Introduction to American Studies
English 298H Writing/Teaching at the Writing Center
English 300 Junior Year Writing, Section 1: Writing for Non Profits
English 300 Junior Year Writing: Section 2: Renaissance Fictions and Modern Fantasy
English 300 Junior Year Writing: Section 3: Intro to Latinx Literature
English 302 Studies/Textuality & New Media
English 343 English Epic Tradition (Topic Beowulf)
English 315 Speculative Fiction
English 355 Creative Writing Fiction (Sections 1-3)
English 356 Creative Writing Poetry (Sections 1-2)
English 362 Modern Novel: 1945-Present
English 365 Literature of Ireland
English 371 African American literature
English 372 Caribbean Literature
English 373 American Indian Literature
English 378 American Women Writers 
English 381 Professional Writing and Technical Communication II
English 382 Professional Writing and Technical Communication III
English 388 Rhetoric, Writing and Society
English 391C Advanced Software for Professional Writers (Sections 1-2)
English 421 Advanced Shakespeare
English 455 Advanced Creative Writing Fiction
English 469 Victorian Monstrosity
English 486 Writing and Schooling
English 491DS Data Science/Humanities
English 499D Honors Thesis: Foundations and Departures in Creative Writing: Fiction, Poetry and Literary Non-fiction..
English 591N Topics in Indigenous Literature (note: this is a undergrad/grad flex enrollment course)

Students may count English 398 (a graded, 3-credit internship) towards this requirement.

Junior Year Writing:

English 300 Junior Year Writing, Section 1: Writing for Non Profits
English 300 Junior Year Writing: Section 2: Renaissance Fictions and Modern Fantasy
English 300 Junior Year Writing: Section 3: Intro to Latinx Literature

Second majors in English are not required to fulfill their junior year writing or integrative experience requirements in English as they will fulfill them in their primary major.

Integrative Experience:

English 494EI Writing, Identity & English Studies
English 494JI Going to Jail: Incarceration in US literature and culture

Second majors in English are not required to fulfill their junior year writing or integrative experience requirements in English as they will fulfill them in their primary major.

Important Notes:

If you wish to apply 1 course toward 2 approved requirements, you must pick up 1 extra 300+ English elective and notify the English Undergraduate Office so that we can make the exception on your ARR. For instance, if you would like to count English 300 Junior Year Writing, Section 5 US Literature in a Global Context toward both the American literature before 1865 requirement and also toward Junior Year Writing, you must take one extra 300+ English elective. It can be a writing or literature course.

Dual degree 2nd majors must take junior year writing with us (but are still waived from the Integrative Experience)

We accept no more than three pre-approved transfer, exchange and/or five college courses toward our major requirements.

Contact:

Please contact Celeste (cstoddard@umass.edu) at the English Undergraduate office if you have any questions about the requirements or to get elective credit for an internship and/or transfer courses pre-approved.

Fall 2024 courses, listed in numerical order.

English 115 American Experience 

(ALDU) 

Lecture 1 MWF 9:05-9:55 Instructor: Helin Park
Introduction to literature, history, and images from and about diverse American cultures across historical eras. Readings include fiction, prose, and poetry, often supplemented by painting, photography, film, and material culture.  (Gen.Ed. AL, DU)  

English 115 American Experience 

(ALDU) 

Lecture 2 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Jon Hoel 
This English course will explore the cultural landscape of the American experience through the lens of work and labor throughout history. Readings will span from the 18th century to the present day and include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and theory, as well as some film and music. (Gen.Ed. AL, DU)  

English 115H American Experience Honors

(ALDU) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 11:30-12:45 Instructor: Kari Daly
Introduction to literature, history, and images from and about diverse American cultures across historical eras. Readings include fiction, prose, and poetry, often supplemented by painting, photography, film, and material culture.  (Gen.Ed. AL, DU) 

English 117 Ethnic American Literature

(ALDU) 

Lecture 1 MWF 1:25-2:15 Instructor: Alejandro Beas Murillo 
We Must Learn to Sit Down Together and Talk About a Little Culture. This course, which borrows its title from Jamaican thinker Sylvia Wynter’s 1968 essay, will serve as an introduction to contemporary Afro-Caribbean art and activism. In our discussions, we will, in fact, sit down and talk about culture and its importance in the Afro-Caribbean and its diasporas as a form of resistance and world-making in the afterlife/aftermath/aftershock of slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and environmental catastrophes. 

Although we will pay closer attention to texts produced in the Caribbean, the US, and Canada between 1965 and today, the culture and forms of resilience central to them are part of a genealogy of resistance started by the enslaved and the maroons during European colonialism in the Caribbean. By understanding that the present and the future of the Caribbean and its diasporas are influenced by the past, our engagement with the region and its peoples will be expansive, transhistorical, and multidisciplinary. 

Assigned authors might include but are not limited to Erna Brodber, Esmeralda Santiago, M. NourbeSe Philip, Soleida Ríos, and Aimé Césaire. In our conversations, we will ask: how does Afro-Caribbean culture shape the society of the region and vice versa? What is the role of culture in our understanding of history and memory? How are forms of Afro-Caribbean resistance and survival expressed differently in music, literature, and cinema? In what ways are family, community, and kinship influenced by culture and vice versa? How do these texts explore Blackness, Latinidad, gender, sexuality, class, language, and citizenship? 

English 131 Society and Literature

(ALDG) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 10:00-11:30 am Instructor: Rowshan Chowdhury
Where did the master narratives, the standard stories we tell ourselves or our culture tells us, come from and how do they operate in erasing our history? What function does literature serve in mediating our relationship to other cultures and histories? How have the ideals of liberty, equality, and human rights taken multiple and contradictory shapes within the social, political, cultural, and economic contexts of various eras? 

The course ENG 131: Society and Literature is designed to explore these questions, looking specifically at the transnational co-formations that shape American society. Through readings of novels, short stories, essays, poems, and films based on the entanglements of histories of the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Asia, we will address literature’s capacity to endorse, naturalize, dramatize, critique, subvert, or reimagine our relationship to the material world. In our reading and writing assignments, we will study the ways writers from various origins engaged with societal issues including but not limited to: race, ethnicity, gender, slavery, assimilation, capitalism, trade, imperialism, fetishization, colonization, and anti-colonial and anti-slavery rebellions. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 131 Society and Literature

(ALDG) 

Lecture 2 MWF 11:15-12:05 Instructor: Mitia Nath
Fictions of Filth. This course looks at constructions of filth in literary and cultural texts, and aims to examine how these constructions interact with our social orders. We delve into essays, stories, and films to explore how our imaginations of filth are often steeped as much in our political and economic processes, as in our bodily sensations. Focusing on the entanglements between imaginations of filth on the one hand, and its material dimensions on the other, we inquire into the ways literary and cultural texts draw attention to the formations and circulations of filth in society. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG)  

English 131 Society and Literature

(ALDG) 

Lecture 3 MWF 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Jade Onn 
Introduction to the multifaceted ways literature both shapes and is shaped by its social and historical contexts. Analyses of plays, poems, and fictional and non-fictional narratives drawn from around the globe and in different eras. Alongside texts such as Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, this course will also investigate the multimodal forms of Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel, American Born Chinese, and read Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians against its 2018 watershed Hollywood adaptation. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG)  

English 131 Society and Literature

(ALDG) 

Lecture 4 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Tyler Clark
Camp Culture and Literature: A Herstory of Who She Is and What She Wants! In the 1960s, Susan Sontag famously defined “Camp” as a mode of being and viewing the world through stylization, artifice, and hyper-exaggeration. This nebulous term has also been described as failed seriousness, the tragically ludicrous, and the ludicrously tragic. Throughout history, epochs of time have been dedicated to a Camp sensibility, producing literature and media that accentuates and emphasizes the artificiality of society, cults of glamorous personality, and how the absurd has a way of revealing hypocrisy. Oftentimes, Camp sensibility intersects with marginalized identity as well, and this course will provide a basis for understanding its roots in gay culture. Camp literature takes the form of horror, comedy, tragedy, decadence, and drama, and this course will provide a survey of its most iconic iterations in a global context. Too often Camp is sublimated as unserious or undeserving of critical attention, but with the resurgence of Camp media—such as the popularity of drag or the 2019 Met Gala— this course seeks to broaden our understanding of what Camp is and why it exists. We will discuss how Camp is primarily a viewpoint with which to see the world through its artificiality, tracing its roots in nineteenth-century gay culture, and its varied representations in the modern age. So, zhoosh your riah, slap your drag, and se camper! (Gen.Ed. AL, DG).

English 131 Society and Literature

(ALDG) 

Lecture 5 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Matthew Walsh 
Introduction to the multifaceted ways literature both shapes and is shaped by its social and historical contexts. Analyses of plays, poems, and fictional and non-fictional narratives drawn from around the globe and in different eras.  (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 131 Society and Literature Honors

(ALDG) 

Lecture 6 TuTh 11:30-12:45 Instructor: Manasvini Rajan 
Introduction to the multifaceted ways literature both shapes and is shaped by its social and historical contexts. Analyses of plays, poems, and fictional and non-fictional narratives drawn from around the globe and in different eras.  (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture

(ALDG) 

Lecture 1 MWF 11:15-12:05 Instructor: Janell Tryon 
Introduction to literature through a lens of gender identity and sexuality.  Texts include fiction, plays, poems that deal with and inspire conversations about the public politics and personal experience of gender and sexuality, both in the past and present. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture

(ALDG) 

Lecture 2 MWF 12:20-1:10 Instructor: Sarah Ahmad 
Thinking architexturally: gender and space in literature. In this course, we will study a broad range of texts and media to explore connections between feminist-queer engagements with architecture and text. How can both architecture and text be thought of as systems of representation, and how then, do each of them craft a relationship to any embodied subject (a reader/inhabitant)? This question arises from thinking of imagining a book as a lived space in the tradition of feminist and queer utopias, asking us to think about how racial, gendered, and colonial projects are enacted and countered in literary representations of space. How do differently-minoritized subjects write – and read – places that are ‘useless’ (such as a text) as places of subsistence and meaning-making?  We will work together to floor-plan the textual fields we encounter, thinking critically about the tools these texts use and how and who can live in them. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG)   

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture

(ALDG) 

Lecture 3 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Jeremy Geragotelis 
In this class, we will gather and examine the lyrics of popular music from the 20th and 21st centuries to create a genealogy of song-texts that disrupt and destabilize normative conceptions of gender and sexuality. We will read song lyrics as cultural objects that signal self and subjectivity, attending to the frequent, but often disregarded, ruptures of these identities that occur on lyrical, musical, and performative fronts. How do we think about Beyoncé’s conditional reality when she sings “If I Were a Boy”? How might we read Alicia Bridges’ scoff when she sings about “making a man” out of her girlfriend in “I Love the Nightlife (Disco ‘Round)”?  How do Bahamian folk artist Exuma’s lyrics, which gesture towards a Trans future, behave in the mouth of Nina Simone in her cover of the song “22nd Century”?

To widen our scope, we will also dip into the prose of Baldwin, Lethem, Proulx, and Ellison to examine the queer way sound behaves in writing. However, our primary focus will be on reading the song lyrics of various musical artists as literature, drawing from the work of David Bowie, Beyoncé, Kate Bush, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Orville Peck, Frank Ocean, and others. We will supplement these readings with short excerpts from theorists who will give us language to explore these textual and performance-based phenomena: Nina Sun Eidsheim, Daphne A. Brooks, Saidiya Hartman, José Estaban Muñoz, Kara Keeling, and Francesca T. Royster. It will be vital for us as a class to consider how and why these moments appear as they do in an artist’s oeuvre, the queer effect that these moments have beyond the artist’s intention, and the overarching behavior of gender and sexuality as critical rubrics for our conception of the rock/pop/folk star.  (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 140 Reading Fiction

(AL) 

Lecture 1 MWF 1:25-2:15 Instructor: Vika Mujumdar 
Asian American Women Writing War: In an essay published in the Massachusetts Review, Viet Thanh Nguyen reframes the war story in the context of Vietnamese and Vietnamese American literature, writing: “But what if we understood immigrant stories to be war stories? And what if we understood that war stories disturb even more when they are not about soldiers, when they show us how normal war is, how war touches and transforms everything and everybody, including, most of all, civilians?” Through this framing, we will read Asian American women’s war literature to create a taxonomy of writing war. We will consider how fiction, through its imagined lives and contexts, bears witness to war and its aftermath, and examine the legacies of colonialism, war, and imperialism in the work of Asian diasporic women writers in the United States. Through regular reading responses and a final essay, you will learn to critically evaluate both primary and secondary readings, draw connections across texts, and consider the boundaries between literature and life. Writers we read will include Susan Choi, Lan Cao, Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi, and Gina Apostol; critical work will include selections from Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jane Alison, Susan Sontag, Lisa Lowe, and Benedict Anderson, among others. (Gen.Ed. AL) 

English 144 World Literature in History

(ALDG) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 10:00-11:15 am Instructor: Shwetha Chandrashekhar 
This course surveys major theories and debates within postcolonial literary studies with an aim to unpack the economic, social, and psychological effects of colonization on the erstwhile colonies. We will examine the link between colonialism and racial capitalism by engaging with questions concerning slavery, migration, labor, and globalization. 

We will focus on works of fiction from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) 

English 146 Living Writers

(ALDU)(creative writing) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 4:00-5:15 Instructor: Richie Wills 
This is an introductory course in the work of acclaimed contemporary writers who visit the class to interact with students. (Gen. Ed. AL, DU) 

English 146 Living Writers

(ALDU)(creative writing) 

Lecture 2 TuTh 4:00-5:15 Instructor: Joan Tate 
This is an introductory course in the work of acclaimed contemporary writers who visit the class to interact with students. (Gen. Ed. AL, DU) 

English 150 Writing and Society

(DUSB) 

Lecture 1 MWF 12:20-1:10 Instructor: Stacie Klinowski
This course aims to heighten your awareness of writing as both practice and concept. “Writing Studies” is an interdisciplinary area of study at the intersection of literacy studies, communication, digital studies, education, and linguistics that is interested in how written texts, public documents, technical and professional communication, social media, etc. reflect and impact social organization and change. The course invites students to explore writing in society through a problem-posing approach, focusing attention on how writing is understood, used, and learned. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU) 

English 200 Introduction Literary Studies

(Introduction to major) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 4:00-5:15 pm  Instructor: Heidi Holder
Our focus in this course will be on developing the critical thinking, speaking and writing skills that are needed for success in the English major. Students will become familiar with key literary conventions, literary terms, and critical approaches as we read texts across multiple genres and from multiple traditions. Students will write a lot inside and outside of class, producing a variety of informal writing and three papers of varying lengths through a formal draft-and-revision process.   English majors only.  Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing. 

English 200 Introduction Literary Studies

(Introduction to major) 

Lecture 2 MW 2:30-3:45 pm Instructor: Ruth Jennison 
This course will focus on developing skills in close reading and mastering the fundamental categories of literary analysis. Most class sessions will center on discussion-based, in-depth textual analysis. We will explore the core terms of literary study, such as: form and content, narrative and narrative structure, poetry and prose, author, voice, context, discourse, and ideology. Students will have the opportunity to work across a variety of 20th and 21st century literary genres and forms. Our syllabus will include works by Claude McKay, Richard Wright, Frank O'Hara, Adrienne Rich, Amiri Baraka, and Sean Bonney. Prerequisite: ENGLWRIT 112 or equivalent.  This course is open to English majors only. This course satisfies the DU and AL General Education Requirements. 

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies for the Major

(Introduction to major)(Environmental Humanities) 

Lecture 3 TuTh 1:00-2:15 Instructor: Malcolm Sen 
Topic: Environmental Justice, Race, Indigeneity, and Literature This class will introduce students to the practice of critical reading of literary texts. It will focus on themes of nature, ecology, ecological imperialism, and the role of global capital in these areas. Students will read a range of exciting texts from around the world and develop a firm understanding of literary genres. Introduction to multiple theoretical schools, including feminist, race, and postcolonial studies, and the environmental studies will be through deliberations on the conjoined aspects of empire and ecology. The ultimate aim of this course is to introduce methodologies of close reading and foster critical writing skills. Writing assignments will include analytical précis of theoretical texts, reviews of literary texts, and a critical essay of 8-10 pages. 

 This course counts towards your Environmental Humanities Specialization. 

English 200 Introduction Literary Studies

(Introduction to major) 

Lecture 4 TuTh 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Jimmy Worthy 
Lecture 5 TuTh 11:30-12:45 Instructor: Jimmy Worthy 
This course will introduce students to intense literary analysis, or the practice of reading literature critically and actively. Through the study of different literary genres—the short story, speech, novel, drama, poetry, and literary criticism—and literary devices and terms, you will hone your critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. As this is also an introduction to the major class, you will be asked to think seriously about what it means to read, discuss, and write about literature as an informed English major as well as complete assignments designed to help you maximize your experience as an important part of the English Department at UMass. 

English 202 Later British Literature and Culture 

(British lit after 1700 or 200 elective)(Literature as History) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 11:30-12:45 Instructor: Jordy Rosenberg 
This course will give students a broad overview of how the novel in the Anglophone and British world came to exist in the forms that we recognize today.  Beginning in the 18th century and continuing into the present, authors may include Olaudah Equiano, Mary Shelley, William Godwin, Laurence Sterne, Edwidge Danticat, China Mieville, Zadie Smith, Arundhati Roy, Shola von Reinhold, and Isabel Waidner. Theorists of the novel form will include likely Sianne Ngai, Annie McClanahan, Mark McGurl, Srinivas Aravamudan, Sarah Brouillette, Anna Kornbluh, Ludovico Silva, and Roberto Schwarz. 

English 204 Intro to Asian American Literature

(DU)(Anglophone/ethnic American or American literature after 1865 or 200 elective)

Lecture 1  TuTh 11:30-12:45  Instructor: Timothy Ong
Introduction to Asian American Literature as an evolving field and to the history, politics, and cultural production of Asian American communities. Themes may include citizenship, borders, space, youth culture, labor, and the body, using texts by and about Asian Americans, including theoretical works, fiction, ethnographic studies, and documentary film. (Gen. Ed. I, DU)

English 221 Shakespeare

(AL)(British lit before 1700 or 200 elective)(Literature as History)(TELA) 

Lecture 1 MW 12:20-1:10 + discussion Instructor: Adam Zucker 
A survey that covers Shakespeare's entire career, from early, sensationally bloody works like Titus Andronicus to the meditative late plays like The Winters Tale and The Tempest. Along the way, we'll investigate the language, the structure, and the elaborate plotting of some of the most famous (and infamous) works ever written in English. Special focus given to Shakespeare's revealing explorations of the interplay between family, political hierarchies, and desire; his interest in distant settings and peoples; and, perhaps most importantly, his attempts to dramatize the struggle of individuals to make sense of the worlds in which they live. Through careful reading and discussion, we will work towards an understanding of why plays that seem so removed from our day-to-day concerns have remained powerfully relevant for four hundred years. Three essays, a mid-term and a final exam. Attendance at lecture and consistent participation in discussion sections required.  (GenEd: AL) 

• English 221, Discussion D01AA. Fri 10:10-11:00, TA: Grayson Chong
• English 221, Discussion D01AB. Fri: 11:15-12:05, TA: Grayson Chong
• English 221, Discussion D01AC. Fri: 1:25-2:15, TA: Christine Muoio
• English 221, Discussion D01AD. Fri: 1:25-2:15, TA: Christine Muoio
• English 221, Discussion D01AE. Fri: 10:10-11:00, TA: Dina Al Qassar 
• English 221, Discussion D01AF. Fri: Fri 11:15-12:05, TA: Dina Al Qassar 

English 250 Intro to Writing, Rhetoric, Literacy Studies

(200 elective)(WRLS)(SPOW) 

Lecture 1 Tuth 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Christina Santana 
This course introduces students to the broad field of writing, rhetoric, and literacy studies and serves as an entryway to the many courses and programs in the department focused on those disciplines. Using writing studies as a lens, the course will both investigate and invite participation in the diverse writing practices of contemporary life, including digital and multi-media writing, multi- and translingual writing, and writing for social justice. Rhetorical theory will be used to analyze and engage public discourse. And literacy studies will help us explore the language practices of school and community. From this multidisciplinary perspective, students will not only gain critical awareness of the role of writing, rhetoric, and literacy in everyday life; they will develop versatility as writers across a range of contexts; and they will learn about the many paths opened to them by such study and practice. 

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing

(AL)(200 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 1 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Bec Bell-Gurwitz 
Writing into Empathy and Voice  How can writing be an empathic act? Who are our literary inspirations? How can we distinguish our voices as writers while in community and conversation with others? This course will explore how creative writing opens our world to multiple perspectives and experiences, tapping into the individual and collective unconscious. Together we will build tools to silence the perfectionist that may otherwise block creative practice, finding generative and playful pathways into writing through ritual including associative webs, writing from the perspective of the body, building an “exquisite corpse”, and other experiments. We will also develop an active writing community, celebrating each other's work, and learning craft from literary forebears, focusing on voice, story, and practices across genres from writers like Layli Long Soldier, Ocean Vuong, Renee Gladman, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Carmen Maria Machado, Mariana Enriquez and many others. By the end of the course, you will produce five poems, two short stories, and a creative nonfiction piece, as well as develop a sustainable writing practice to discover your themes, style, and voice in conversation within a larger community of writers. 

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing

(AL)(200 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 2 MWF 11:15-12:05 Instructor: Katia Bakhtiyarova 
Facing the Mirror: Intro to Creative Writing. What to write about? It’s a torture that no writer, seasoned or amateur, is exempt from. In this course, we will seek to answer this question by learning to tune into our five senses. We will conduct this tuning by keeping obsessive lists of all that catches our attention: a song in the CVS, a barrette in a woman’s hair, a crack in a bathroom tile floor, a cologne from a passing stranger. We will identify patterns in the observations that excite and inspire us, and learn to associate between these images without judgment. We will examine each observation as a mirror into our deeper unconscious – and, in doing so, hope to answer the questions: what do I remember? What do I imagine? What do I write about? Our path will be guided by some of the most singular seers of our time: Akwaeke Emezi, Richard Siken, Ottessa Moshfegh, Ocean Vuong, Morgan Parker, and so many more. Writers will emerge from this journey with two short stories, two non-fiction essays, and five poems. 

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing

(AL)(200 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 3 MWF 12:20-1:10 Instructor: Jen Valdies 
Why are we drawn to writing? Language, out of all artistic material, is the most limited, but it is also the oldest, and the most unique in its reception — in order to be understood, it has to be remade in the mind of a reader. Storytelling and poetry are very old practices of expression, but much of the same language that formed those stories and poems is the language we use in our own. The craft of writing, or of capturing a story, a moment, a feeling in detail, is an ancient practice we continuously embody as a living mythology. In this course, we will explore how memory, your own as well as collective and generational, functions as the live material writers use to construct poems, short stories, and works of nonfiction, and how we might capture and wield that material in our own work. Students will investigate and develop their own practice of writing by reading classic and contemporary authors, generating work in multiple or hybrid genres, and by sharing that work in weekly workshops. By the end of the course, writers will have completed a portfolio of five poems, two nonfiction or hybrid essays, and one short story. 

English 254 Intro to Creative Writing: (AL)

(200 English elective)(creative writing)

Lecture 1     MWF 1:25-2:15     Instructor: Porter Lunceford
The Time is Now: Writing with Contemporary Writers. How can we make writing a community based practice? Communities of writers exist here and now, writing about your worlds– and you can join them in this space! In this course we will read contemporary writers across the genres of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction whose work makes gestures towards relationships, family, kin, country, and home. In turn, you will create your own pieces in these genres and join a community of writers both in the classroom and in the lineage of poets and writers who inspire and drive you to create. In addition to reading and discussing the work of contemporary writers, we will share and workshop our own creative pieces across the three genres, with classroom community members offering their reactions, praise, and questions for further exploration. Writers we will examine include Hanif Abdurraqib, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Kaveh Akbar, Agustina Bazterrica, Eula Biss, Franny Choi, Danielle Evans, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limón, Kelly Link, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Sam Sax, Layli Long Soldier, Elissa Washuta, and YOU.

English 258H All the World’s A Stage: An Introduction to Performance Studies

(200 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 1    Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45     Instructor: Daniel Sack 
This course looks at performance in theatrical and non-theatrical settings, asking how we express ourselves, how we take action, and how we watch others doing the same. Students will develop critical tools for analyzing live and televised events, practice close readings of texts and performance objects, and rehearse their own verbal presentation performances. We will look at a variety of objects for study from around the globe, including playscripts, recordings of speeches and performances, political rallies, and performances in the theater and in everyday life. (Gen. Ed. AT) 

English 268 American Literature and Culture before 1865

(Amer lit before 1865 or 200 elective) 

Lecture 1 MW 4:00-5:15 Instructor: Kari Daly
In this course we will read narratives of individual and collective cultural transformations from the colonial era through the antebellum era in American literature. Specifically, we will explore various educational journeys and examine how they intersect with the notion of a “new” continent full of beauty and seemingly boundless natural resources. In our readings, discussions, and multimodal projects we will critically analyze literary and artistic representations of the American educational system prior to 1865. 

English 269 American Literature and Culture after 1865

(Amer lit after 1865 or 200 elective) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 10:00-11:15 Instructor: Brenna Casey 
This course explores the definitions and evolutions of a national literary tradition in the United States from the conclusion of U.S. Civil War to the present. We will examine a variety of issues arising from the historical and cultural contexts of the 19th and 20th centuries, the formal study of literature, and the competing constructions of American identity. Students will consider canonical texts, as well as those less frequently recognized as central to the American literary tradition, in an effort to foster insights into the definition and content of literature in the United States. 

English 272 American Romanticism

(Amer lit before 1865 or 200 elective) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 Instructor: Brenna Casey 
This course will serve as an introduction to American Romanticism, the U.S.-based literary period spanning from roughly 1820 until the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Through the study of essays, novels, short stories, and poetry, we will track aesthetic characteristics, philosophical developments, and historical events through this retrospectively consolidated literary movement. Members of this class can expect to read canonical American Romantic figures such as Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau, as well as other lesser known authors contiguous to this period. 

The course will probe sources in literature, art, religion, philosophy, and reform as we investigate movements including transcendentalism, abolitionism, women’s rights, utopianism, and temperance. Readings will include works from Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and others. Credits: 3.000 

English 300 Junior Year Writing

(Junior Year Writing) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 Instructor: Kari Daly
Topic: Writing for Nonprofits This course will introduce you to how professional writing is inextricably bound to issues of social justice and democracy by focusing on nonprofits. In this course we will leverage your literary training to analyze (and in many cases produce our own) mission statements, grant applications, press releases and social media posts, as well as informational materials associated with nonprofits such as brochures, pamphlets, and signage.

English 300 Junior Year Writing

(Junior Year Writing or anglophone/ethnic Amer) 

Lecture 2 TuTh 11:30-12:45 Instructor: Mazen Naous 
Topic: Colonial Texts, Postcolonial Responses. The experiences of colonization and the challenges, both residual and emerging, of the postcolonial world have produced innovative ways of writing in English, including the possibility of writing back. These postcolonial responses to canonical British texts critique, challenge, and reinvent Anglocentric notions of literature and language. In effect, these rewritings are cultural translations that offer us much-needed new versions of familiar narratives. We will read Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe with J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with both “The Story of the Three Calenders, Sons of Kings; And of the Five Ladies of Bagdad” from The Arabian Nights (Trans. M. Galland) and Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad. Some questions that we will consider are: Why do these writers respond to the colonial texts in question? How do their novels rework dominant perceptions of race, gender, and culture? How can we re-read the earlier works in light of these postcolonial responses? Literary and cultural theories will guide our readings and film viewings.  

English 300 Junior Year Writing

(Junior Year Writing or anglophone/ethnic Amer)(SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 3 TuTh 10:00-11:15 Instructor: Haivan Hoang 
Topic: Race and Rhetoric. This course explores how legacies of racism have impacted reading and writing practices in the United States. Literacy has been withheld from racially minoritized people through legislation, school-based exclusion or segregation, and culturally-biased assessment. Still, people of color have also read and written texts to combat racism and critically imagine a more just world. Our readings will explore this wider racialized history and then center Asian American texts. To deepen our analyses, you’ll learn about and apply a few key concepts from critical race theory (CRT) to help us understand how race and racism persist systemically or through institutional policies and practices.  

In this junior-year writing seminar for English majors, you’ll practice applying critical theory to textual analysis and also practice crafting and revising genres that are foundational to English studies: literary, personal creative nonfiction, and rhetorical. Each genre enables us to express critical perspectives about race and its impact on the human condition. More broadly, we’ll reflect on why analytical and imaginative writing in English studies matters in this world, and you’ll curate a digital portfolio that showcases your writing in this course and introduces who you are as a writer. 

English 313 Intro to Old English Poetry

(British lit before 1700 or 300 elective) 

Lecture 1 MWF 12:20-1:10 Instructor: Stephen Harris 
Old English is a language spoken in Britain from the early 400s to the 1100s. In this course, you will learn to read it. It will give you a good grounding in English grammar as well as a solid sense of the origin of English vocabulary. Once you can read Old English, you are only steps away from reading Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, as well as Old Saxon and Old Frisian. As well as learning the Old English language, we will read Old English poetry, including "Caedmon's Hymn," "The Seafarer," "The Wanderer," "Dream of the Rood," "The Battle of Maldon," and the epic Judith, about a warrior maiden who leads her army to heroic conquest ("Sloh tha wundenlocc thone feondsceathan fagum mece ..."). It is like no other poetry in English. Reading it in the original language allows you to practice intense close reading, an essential component of a literary education. You will also be introduced to Norse and Celtic myths. Old English inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It inspired Seamus Heaney's North as well as his Beowulf. And it was a profound influence on Jorge Luis Borges. We will examine runes and learn to make manuscripts. A working knowledge of English grammar is recommended. 

English 317 (Dis)ability and Literature

(300 elective)(social justice) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 Instructor: Janis Greve 
This course will delve into the thriving field of disability studies as it engages with literary texts and the arts. Reading and viewing from a range of genres, we will explore how texts portray disabilities across the human spectrum.  A primary goal will be to investigate how writers with disabilities communicate physical experiences that depart from the idealized human form of Western culture.  Paradoxically, an equally important goal will be to become less sure of what disability is, questioning our received notions. We will hope to develop insight into human physical variation and our accountability to one another, while cultivating the empathy and self-reflection we may need as potential caregivers and responsive, informed human beings.  This is a service-learning course, where students will partner with adults with cognitive differences to create a project.  The service-learning will be integrated into regular class hours.     

English 319 Representing the Holocaust

(300 elective) 

Lecture 1 Tu 2:30-3:45 + disc Instructor: Jonathan Skolnik 
Major themes and critical issues concerning Holocaust representation and memory in a global context. The course examines literature, film, memoirs, music, visual arts, memorials, museums, and video archives of survivor testimonies to explore narrative responses to racism and the destruction of European Jewry and others during World War II. There are no prerequisites. 4 Credits. (Gen.Ed. DG AL). 

• 319 Disc 01AA. Th 1:00-2:15, Instructor: Nataliya Kostenko
• 319 Disc 01AB. Th 10:00-11:15, Instructor: Nataliya Kostenko
• 319 Disc 01AC. Th 2:30-3:45, Instructor: TBA
• 319 Disc 01AD. Th 10:00-11:15, Instructor: Thakshala Tissera
• 319 Disc 01AE. Th 11:30-12:45, Instructor: TBA

English 329H Tutoring Writing: Theory and Practice

(300 elective) (SPoW/WRLS)(TELA) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 Instructor: Anna Rita Napoleon 
Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing 112 or 113 with a grade of "B" or better.  Students interested in the course should submit an application to writingcenter@acad.umass.edu by March 19: (1) a formal letter explaining why the student is interested and has potential to become a writing tutor; (2) an academic writing sample (attached as a word or pdf file) and (3) the name and email address of the student’s 112 instructor or another instructor who can speak to the student's qualifications.  While the preferred deadline was set for March 19, additional applicants may be considered if seats are available.  The strongest applications will be invited to an interview. 

English 350H Expository Writing Honors

(300 elective)(creative writing) (SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1 MW 2:30-3:45 Instructor: John Hennessy 
This course is designed for students who have a special interest in personal narratives, documentary forms, travel writing, and/or innovative approaches to feature writing. Students will read and write a variety of literary non-fiction forms, including memoir, documentary essays, and profiles, and the course will have a workshop component.  Texts will include works by Joan Didion, Helene Cooper, Cathy Park Hong, and others. Students will also be encouraged to try other forms of non-fiction, including travel writing, interviews, editorials, reviews, etc.) 

English 355 Creative Writing Fiction

(300 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 1 MWF 11:15-12:05 Instructor: Ella Hormel 
Writing Small: Flash + Micro Fiction. In short fiction, every word counts. If a novel is a house, short fiction is a bedroom—intimate and carefully decorated with only the essentials. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore the ways in which even the most pint-sized stories can pack a punch and how the limitations of space can open up creative possibility. Through authors such as Lydia Davis, Hiromi Kawakami, George Saunders, and K-Ming Chang we’ll explore fiction’s shortest forms—flash and micro—to build a deeper understanding of the craft of very short fiction. The workshop setting will allow us not only to engage with the works of our peers, but also write our own short stories, developing and experimenting with our writerly voices. Each student will have the opportunity to workshop at least two stories during the course, and by the end of the semester, students will have written and developed a small collection of flash and micro fiction. 

English 355 Creative Writing Fiction

(300 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 2 MW 5:30-6:45 pm Instructor: Okey Ndibe
A seminar in writing short stories and other fiction for students who demonstrate familiarity with the basis of scene and story. Students write regularly, read and criticize one another's writing, read in contemporary fiction.
 

English 356 Creative Writing Poetry

(300 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 1 MWF 12:20-1:10 Instructor: Allison McKean 
Poetry of The New Surreal- Non-Linearity, Reality, & Imagination  How do you depict your (perhaps) intensely felt consciousness? What is revealed in non-rational and non-linear tellings? What happens to our poems when we do not follow all the rules of space and time? How do we invite our imagination to deepen our reality? In this course, we will use the ideas of the surrealist avant-garde movement from the twentieth century and recontextualize it in the contemporary. In addition to surrealism’s interrogation of the interior, we will explore surrealism’s political and social efficacy as it scaffolds nonnormative structures such as  queerness, communism, and non-whiteness. Through generative writing and in-class workshops, we will utilize the power of surrealist techniques in our own work to illustrate our consciousness, scrape our dreamscapes, and utilize memories as architecture. Students will write at least one poem a week, experiment with imitations of style, and engage in critical responses to course texts. Our readings will range from surrealism’s multi-cultural origins in 20th century French, Spanish, Japanese, American, and Afro-surrealism to contemporary surrealist works including Emily Hunt, Amanda Nadelberg, Wendy Xu, Heather Christle, CAConrad, Rosmarie Waldrop, Dorothea Lasky, Magdalena Zurawski, Tongo Eisen-Martin, and Bhanu Kapil. 

English 358 The Romantic Poets

(British lit after 1700 or 300 elective) 

Lecture 1 MW 4:00-5:15 Instructor: Suzanne Daly 
Poetry of the Romantic period (1789-1832) including works by Anna L. Barbauld, Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Felicia Hemens, John Keats, Mary Robinson, Percy B. Shelley, Charlotte Smith, and William Wordsworth. Political, religious, and historical frames of critical reference will be brought to bear on our reading. 

English 359 Victorian Imagination

(British lit after 1700 or 300 elective) 

Lecture 1 MW 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Suzanne Daly 
Legal definitions and popular conceptions of crime and criminal behavior underwent significant revision in nineteenth-century England, and the literature of the period registers major points of contention. We will read works of fiction and poetry that address the following questions: What kind of crimes did the Victorians like to imagine, to read about, and to punish vicariously through imaginative literature? What did criminality mean to them? What is narrative justice, and what formal and/or ideological functions does it serve? We will read fiction by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde, and Sarah Waters. Poets may include Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Swinburne, and Tennyson. 

English 362 Modern Novel 1945-Present

(anglophone/ethnic Amer or Amer lit after 1865 or 300 elective) (social justice) 

Lecture 1    TuTh 2:30-3:45     Instructor: Mazen Naous 
Topic: Contemporary Arab American Fiction. This course examines the significance of contemporary Arab American fiction within a transnational American setting. We will begin by positioning Arab American fiction in relation to sociopolitical and cultural preoccupations in the US. We will investigate Arab American literature as a burgeoning literary tradition in its own right, and as a critical lens through which we can better gauge US cultures and politics. The selected novels will allow us to see the ways in which Arab Americans both contribute to and are influenced by the sociocultural and political landscapes of the US. Our novels employ a range of literary techniques, including playing with form, interpolating transliterated Arabic words into the texts, disrupting time, and complicating narrative point of view. We will engage the relationship between aesthetics and politics in these textual interventions and consider the effect of this relationship on the representations and receptions of Arab Americans. The course includes works by Zaina Arafat, Anissa M. Bouziane, Omar El Akkad, Laila Lalami, and Sahar Mustafah. Critical essays and cultural theory will guide our readings.  

This course fulfills the General Education curricular designation of Literature (AL). It demonstrates that novels do more than imitate life; they interpret and explain it. Furthermore, this course considers the function and aesthetic evaluation of novels in relation to the societies that produce them. 

English 366 Modern Poetry

(300 elective or Amer lit after 1865)(Literature as History)(Social Justice) 

Lecture 1 MW 4:00-5:15 pm Instructor: Ruth Jennison 
This course is a survey of modern American poetry. Our guiding question will be: What is the relationship between modern poetry and the ascendance of modern capitalism? Focusing on the period between 1890 and 1950, we will explore how various poets interpreted their shared historical context through different poetic forms and experiments. In addition to a broad overview of modernism's canonical authors (e.g. Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, W.C. Williams, Ezra Pound), we will spend significant time on the trajectories of African-American poetics (e.g. Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes), feminist poetics (e.g. H.D., Gertrude Stein) and Depression-era anti-capitalist poetics (e.g. Muriel Rukeyser, Kenneth Fearing). Throughout our readings and discussions, we will look at the ways in which our poets are a part of the shifting cultures, politics, and histories of the first half of the 20th century; their works address American imperialism, world wars, rapid industrialization, racism and anti-racism, working-class resistance, and the transformation of gender regimes. 

English 378 American Women Writers

(American literature after 1865 or 300 elective)

Lecture 1   TuTh 1:00-2:15 PM    Instructor: Sarah Patterson
The Rise and the Fall of Woman. In this class, we will review American writers' concepts of womanhood with women's advocacy literature as a point of orientation. Students will pay special attention to nineteenth-and early twentieth-century writers Margerett Fuller, Frances E. W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, and Zitkala-sa, among others. We will draw from a rich selection of genres including novels, poetry, supplicant appeals, and autobiographical narratives that relate to perceptions of women's societal successes and shortcomings. This class is especially suited for students who are interested in tracing a history of reformers' and missionaries' contributions to women's access to educational institutions, to charitable public works, and to a range of gender identities, including traditional, political, and fluid gender identities. Primary readings in association with the fundamentals of literary analysis will uncover major junctures in evolving notions of woman-centered and feminist thought in American culture. 

English 379 Intro to Professional Writing

(300 elective)(PWTC) (SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1: TuTh 1:00-2:15 Instructor: David Toomey 
Lecture 2: MW 4:00-5:15 Instructor: Jaclyn Ordway
This course offers an overview of commonly encountered professional genres such as memos, reports, job materials, and grant proposals. Students gain practice writing in these genres, with an emphasis on clarity and concision. They develop more sophisticated research skills and gain experience in communicating specialized information to non-specialist readers. Finally, they are exposed to the range of professional writing careers as they explore writing on both theoretical and practical planes through consideration of audience, as well as wider professional, social, and cultural contexts. Prereq.: ENGLWP 112 or equivalent; junior or senior status with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. (3 credits). 

English 380 Professional Writing and Technical Communication I

(300 elective) (PWTC) (SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 11:30-12:45 Instructor: Janine Solberg 
Introduces principles of technical writing, page design, and UX/usability. Students write and design a 20-25 page manual documenting a software program, usually Microsoft Word, suitable for use as a professional writing sample. Prereq.: ENGLWP 112 or equivalent; ENGL 379, which may be taken concurrently, with instructor approval (email jlsolber@umass.edu); Junior or Senior status with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. (3 credits) 

English 389 The Major and Beyond

(SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1 W 11:30-12:45 Instructor: Janis Greve 
Why wait any longer? This course helps you pave the way to a valuable post-graduate experience--be it a program, internship, or job. You will practice important job search skills, learn to articulate the worth of your major, and leave the class with a better sense of your vocational direction. In addition to receiving individualized guidance in creating a cover letter and résumé of immediate use, other assignments are likely to include attendance at career events, interviews with professionals from fields of interest, a professional presentation, a short paper researching professions, and participation in a mock interview. Note: for an additional credit and some extra work, students can opt to have the course count toward an English elective. Please contact Prof. Greve if you are interested. Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors.   

English 391NM Narrative Medicine: How Writing Can Heal

(300 elective)(creative writing) (SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1 Th 4:00-6:30 Instructor: Marian MacCurdy 
This interdisciplinary writing course investigates the cognitive and emotional benefits of writing for diverse populations including trauma survivors, patients, caregivers, teachers or those who hope to teach—anyone who is interested in the power of personal writing to effect change. Training in reflective writing supports clinical and/or pedagogical effectiveness among medical and educational professionals by enabling them to both listen to and respond to stories of conflict, illness, trauma, and transformation and to express their own histories in writing as well. Students will read, write, and discuss personal essays as well as texts that address the relationship between writing and resilience. We will focus on process—how to produce narratives that are both artistically and therapeutically effective. No prior experience with the medical humanities required. 

English 398P Literary Programming, Editing and Publishing

(creative writing) (SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 10:00-11:15 Instructor: Syki Barbee 
In this practicum, students will learn skills related to literary programming, editing, and publishing. Topics will include strategies for and approaches to running a successful reading series, managing, and producing a literary journal, book publishing, and others. Students will have the opportunity to study and learn about the English Dept. journal Jabberwocky and to intern for the MFA's Visiting Writers Series. Students may also take the practicum to support their work on professional literary internships they have secured themselves. (pass/fail grading) 

English 412 History of the English Language

(400 elective or British lit before 1700) (SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Stephen Harris 
Why do people in MA sound different than people in NY?  Have people always spoken like this?  HEL is a thrilling ride through the major changes in English phonology, morphology, syntax, spelling, and vocabulary from the 5th century to the 21st century. Among the topics we will consider are historical change and dialectic difference, literacy and morality, the emergence of vernaculars and the decline of Latin, and the current state of English. No previous knowledge of linguistics, Anglo Saxon, or Middle English is required.  

English 450 Advanced Expository Writing

(400 elective)(creative writing) (SPoW/WRLS) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 11:30-12:45 Instructor: David Fleming 
Topic: Family and Community History.  This section of English 450, Advanced Expository Writing, focuses on reading and writing about family, community, and history. It uses the form of the personal essay and the methods of oral, archival, and local history research to open space for writing projects that preserve, interrogate, and articulate the people, places, memories, stories, and absences that constitute our lives and our communities. The central activity of the course will be reading and writing about the people and places that have made us who we are. We’ll read histories, memoirs, and archaeologies of family, community, and place for inspiration and example. Possible texts include Sarah Broom’s The Yellow House, Hisham Matar’s The Return, Theo Richmond’s Konin, and Jeremy Jones’ Bearwallow. We’ll do short exercises in writing about the people and places around us and learn some tools and techniques for answering historical questions about them, all leading up to a semester project of your own design involving writing about family or community history. The course should be useful for students interested in creative nonfiction, local history, archival research, and multi-media writing, as well as careers in teaching, library and museum work, community activism, public history, etc. Ideally, students will have taken at least one intermediate expository or nonfiction writing course, like English 350; but the only official prerequisite is College Writing. 

English 455 Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction

(400 elective)(creative writing)

Lecture 1 Tues 10:00-12:30 pm  Instructor: Edie Meidav
A seminar in writing short stories and other fiction for advanced creative writing students. Students read in contemporary fiction and in craft topics; write regularly and discuss one another's writing.

English 456 Creative Writing: Advanced Poetry

(400 elective)(creative writing)

Lecture 1 Tues 4:00-6:30 Instructor: Claudia Wilson
A seminar in writing poetry for advanced creative writing students. Students read in contemporary poetry and in craft topics; write poems regularly and discuss one another's poetry.

English 492N Nature, Climate Change and Literature

(400 elective)(Environmental Humanities) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 10:00-11:15 Instructor: Malcolm Sen 
The Guardian describes climate change as “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” It is not surprising that the newspaper should cast the unfolding threat of climate change through the lens of a “story.” Climate change has been cast as an environmental problem with economic, political and scientific solutions. However, as the geographer Mike Hulme pointed out: “Science may be solving the mysteries of climate, but it is not helping us discover the meaning of climate change.” In this seminar we will read groundbreaking novels, short stories, critical essays, and creative non-fiction that engage with the big questions of environment, weather and climate. 

 The aim of the seminar is to show the importance of literary and humanistic study in this period of interminable catastrophes, and also to demonstrate the crucial ways in which culture, capital and climate are imbricated within each other. We will read several exciting texts and have the opportunity to analyze documentaries and artworks. Climate Change raises multi-disciplinary problems and presents multi-generational effects; stories are as crucial as ice core data to prepare for a habitable future.  

This course is the capstone course for the Environmental Humanities Specialization. 

English 494EI Writing, Identity & English Studies (IE) 

(Integrative Experience) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 2:30-3:45 Instructor: David Fleming 
Writing, Identity, and English Studies is a nonfiction writing course designed to satisfy the University’s Integrative Experience (IE) requirement. Like all IE courses, it asks students 1) “to reflect on and to integrate” their learning in college, from their major to their General Education courses to their electives and extracurricular experiences; 2) to practice key “Gen Ed” objectives, such as oral communication, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary perspective-taking, at a more advanced level; and 3) to apply what they’ve learned to “new situations, challenging questions, and real-world problems.” This course is a writing-intensive version of the IE, designed for senior primary English majors. We’ll approach the University’s IE goals through the genre of the personal essay. Across five different writing projects, you’ll look back at your college education, identifying key moments and themes; you’ll review your work in English and assess where you are in that discipline: what projects you have found meaningful and what you’d like to do more of in the future; and you’ll imagine how you might apply the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired in college to problems, communities, and opportunities beyond. We’ll use an anthology of personal essays as prompt and model. At the end of the semester, you’ll collect your work in an e-portfolio, showcasing your knowledge, skills, accomplishments, and aspirations. 

English 494MI Virtual Medieval: Fictions and Fantasies of the Middle Ages (IE)

(Integrative Experience) 

Lecture 1 MWF 1:25-2:15 Instructor: Jenny Adams 
Most people learn very little about the foggy period from 500 - 1500 that lies between the end of the Classical era and the start of the Renaissance.  The little we do learn usually consists of stereotypes.  Such stereotypes include (in no particular order): jousting, chivalry, repression of women, religious fervor, medical ignorance, lice, Crusades, economic injustice, knights, ladies, and plague.  How are these stereotypes produced and reinforced?  What is their relationship to historical “fact”?  In each module we will take up texts, objects and concepts that challenge our ideas about the Middle Ages, and also think about the ways medieval people mapped their own worlds.  In doing so, we aim to produce alternate (and often competing) views of medieval history.  In short, this course is designed to get you to come away with new ideas about about the Middle Ages. 

At the same time, this course is also designed to get you to think new ideas about yourself.  Specifically, the IE is capstone course that invites you to 1) reflect on and integrate all your learning in college, from your major and General Education courses to your electives and extracurricular experiences; 2) further practice college-level oral communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary perspective-taking; and 3) think about ways you will apply your skills to real world problems. 

To meet these two seemingly disparate goals, we will blend our study of the Middle Ages with material that you have studied in your other classes and with lessons you have learned during your time in college.  We will also think about ways how you might apply the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired in college to problems, communities, and/or organizations beyond campus. Workload is not onerous and will include several shorter essays as well as the creation of an on-line portfolio. 

English 494SI Literature and Social Justice (IE)

(Integrative Experience)(Social Justice) 

Lecture 1 TuTh 10:00-11:15   Instructor: Rachel Mordecai
"What is social justice?" might be the most pressing question of our contemporary moment, as humans confront multiple and overlapping ecological, political, economic and public-health crises, and come to very different ideas of what should be done. How do we know when we are pursuing social justice, and who is the "we" that knows? This class will explore that question through a particular focus on movements for environmental justice: literary representations of people acting to protect their homelands, texts that have prompted or furthered such action, and reflections on and by people who have thought deeply and acted courageously in pursuit of environmental justice. This course fulfils the University’s Integrative Experience requirement, the goals of which are to allow students to draw upon the breadth of their college learning and apply research, communication, and critical-thinking skills to pressing contemporary questions. Together we will read, think, talk and write about how the literature of environmental justice might inform our approach to living justly alongside other beings. 

English 499C Honors Thesis: Foundations and Departures in Creative Writing

(400 elective)(creative writing) 

Lecture 1 MW 4:00-5:15 pm   Instructor: John Hennessy 
Foundations and Departures in Creative Writing: Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Non-Fiction is  a multi-genre, two-semester course in creative writing designed to help students complete a Capstone project within the genre of their choice. Both a class in contemporary literature and a writing workshop, Foundations and Departures will offer students a wide variety of reading assignments and writing exercises from across all three genres. At the end of the first semester students will submit a portfolio of original work; in the second semester students will finish drafting and revising their Capstone projects. Textbooks will include The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, collections of poetry by Nathan McClain and Denise Duhamel, an anthology of contemporary short stories, and non-fiction by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Studs Terkel, Joan Didion, and others.    

Interested students should submit a personal statement: 1-2 pages, list and briefly discuss your reading: your favorite books, writers, poems, poets, etc.; also, tell me if you are a student in Commonwealth College—some priority will be given to ComColl students, but some of the most successful students in 499 in past years have come from outside Commonwealth College. Also include a writing sample—one complete story or essay, or 5-10 poems. Some combination of poetry and prose is also permitted. SEND TO: jjhennes@english.umass.edu by APRIL 26.