Major,
Minor
English
Programs
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Creative Writing, -
English, 3+1 Program,Major,Minor -
Shakespeare Studies Applied Minor, Applied Minor
Courses
ENG 118: First Year English Composition
Credits 3In this first-year writing course, you will develop your capacity for academic analysis through an original research project. You will identify an area of interest and you will find materials to analyze, develop research questions, explore secondary texts, and make claims connected to the evidence you have found. As many researchers do at this stage in their work, you will then reframe what you have discovered for a public audience. During the research process, you will also be preparing for the English 118 Symposium by working on your own Symposium Presentation. The creation of your Symposium Presentation will provide significant opportunities for considering the nature of your research, the relationship between visual and written and issues of writing craft.
ENG 182: Work Smarter, Not Harder!
Credits 3Want to really shine in your next class presentation? Interested in learning how to complete research assignments with less stress and more success? Join this hands-on workshop course to explore a variety of research and presentation tools that will support success throughout your Earlham career. Projects in this course will be based on topics that represent your interests and passions.
ENG 200: Foundations of the Study of Literature
Credits 4This course lays the groundwork for English majors and minors by addressing the question “Why study Literature?” in relation to a wide range of literary texts and theoretical approaches. The class will study a variety of works and genres from American, British and World literary traditions, including attention to literary history, influence and periodization. Students will develop the fundamental skills of literary interpretation, including interpretive writing and research, while also learning about future professional opportunities for English majors. Appropriate for first-year students with a strong writing background and significant interest in majoring in English.
ENG 203: Women & Literature
Credits 4An introduction to the study of literature by and about the lives of women, written in a variety of genres and periods, from a number of cultural traditions. Explores ways in which a study of a writer's ideas and techniques and a text's background (e.g., biography of the author, political climate, religious tradition) can lead to greater appreciation and understanding of a work, a writer, a reader and a time. A variety of critical points of view with particular attention to Feminist and Womanist theories.
ENG 205: American Literature & Ecology
Credits 3A study of American environmental literature and its imaginative forms in relation to environmental concepts, movements and philosophy, including changing ideas of nature and wilderness; representations of space and place; the deep ecology, ecofeminism, bioregionalism and environmental justice movements; urban nature; the impact of climate change and the Anthropocene; and the relation between human ideas and language and the more-than-human world. Includes attention to cultural issues of ecology, such as how ecological imagination affects sense of identity and social and economic practices. May include writers such as Thoreau, Muir, Aldo Leopold, Margaret Atwood, Linda Hogan and Helena Viramontes.
ENG 206: Literature and identity
Credits 3This course focuses on the way literature can be used as a vehicle to explore issues of identity. Topics may include but are not limited to: Irish Literature, Literature of Immigration, Coming-of-Age Narratives, Early Modern Literature. Appropriate for first-year students.
ENG 207: Film and Literature
Credits 4Introduces film analysis skills that focus on technical details of the cinematic medium, and how they influence narration, character and theme. Highlights important topics in film and literary theory and analyzes the functions and forms of film as a medium in comparison to other forms of media that use words. Appropriate for first-year students. Also listed as FILM 207.
ENG 208: Contemporary Literature
Credits 4This course covers the contemporary literary scene with particular attention paid to bestsellers and prizewinners in multiple genres such as the novel, short story collections, poetry and non-fiction. Appropriate for first-year students.
ENG 209: Religion & Popular Literature in US
Credits 4This course will examine popular religious literature published in the United States — such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Left Behind series — and ask how it embraces or pushes against established religious traditions and literary norms. Students will investigate how authors use different literary genres to explore religious belief, practice and community. Appropriate for first-year students. Also listed as REL 209.
ENG 211: Religion & Spirit in African American Literature
Credits 3This course looks at religious and spiritual elements in African American literature. How do literary texts embrace or push back against religious beliefs and communities? And, how have black American writers used religion and spirituality to think through race and inequality in the United States?
ENG 212: Literature and Medicine
Credits 4This course offers students the chance to engage with texts that raise some of the largest existential questions of human life, including the nature of health and disease, the doctor-patient relationship, the social aspects of illness, and the dimensions of a well-lived life. Through the works of authors like Mary Shelley, Lev Tolstoy, Michael Ondaatje, Atul Gawande, Eula Biss, and Anne Boyer, we will explore questions of sickness and health beyond the biomedical paradigm to consider these questions through a humanistic lens. Fulfills the humanities elective requirement for the applied minor in Medical Humanities.
ENG 221: Intro to Creative Writing
Credits 4An introduction to creative writing and the writing workshop process, focusing on the genres of poetry and short fiction but also occasionally exploring other genres (such as playwriting or creative non-fiction). Includes intensive writing and discussion of the craft and process of writing. Appropriate for first-year students.
ENG 222: Creative Writing Projects
Credits 2In Creative Writing Projects, a working professional writer will guide you through the planning, creation, revision and (in some cases) submission and publication of a specific type of Creative Writing project: a manuscript for National Novel Writing Month, a short story, a poetry chapbook, a one-act play, or a book proposal, for example. This course welcomes experienced writers as well as beginners, and may be taken more that one time for credit when types of projects are different.
ENG 309: Prophetic Black Women
Credits 3This course is a study of Black religious women in the U.S., and how they wrote about their religious beliefs and experiences. Students will encounter leaders who changed or led established movements such as Zilpha Elaw and Jarena Lee, women who had religious visions such as Shaker Rebecca Cox Jackson, and literary writers who interrogated religious groups and practices such as Nella Larsen. Students will be asked to consider how religious belief and practice might shape the way people conceptualize what it means to be a Black woman in the U.S.
ENG 310: Contemporary Japanese Literature
Credits 3This is a companion course to JPNS 343 that will examine a selection of short stories and novels spanning the Shôwa and Heisei periods. The class will address questions of genre, legitimacy, canon, translation, the social role of the writer, and the place of female authors.
ENG 343: Modern Japanese Literature
Credits 3Introduces representative literary texts from modern Japan, mostly from 1900 to present. Develops more advanced skills for literary analysis. Some topics include: I-novel autobiographical fiction, women's writing and modern poetry.
ENG 350: Contesting America
Credits 4This course features mostly U.S. literary texts that represent cross-century encounters with what DuBois named “the color line.” We will explore texts’ and readerships’ relationships to raced, sexed and gendered hierarchies, considered Immigration as "Whiteness of a Different Color," and make use of interdisciplinary contexts and methods. This class will require additional meetings to be scheduled during the semester for group work, writing instruction, and other activities. These times will be flexible, but the class does require that students have some time available for such meetings, as well as time for extensive reading.
ENG 351: Class and Ideology in Literature
Credits 4An analysis of the topic of class and ideology in literature in English from different periods.
ENG 354: Topics in Peace and Justice
Credits 4Selected topics determined by the instructor that address issues of peace and justice in relationship to literature. Readings may be interdisciplinary and will focus on literature written in English. This course may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different.
Cross-listed as ENSU 354 when on an environmental topic.
ENG 358: Gender & Sexuality in Literature
Credits 4Using key concepts from feminist, womanist and queer theorists, this course looks at how literature can be the site to document the intersections between issues of class, gender and sexuality. This course may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different.
ENG 359: Shakespeare
Credits 4This course focuses on Shakespeare's plays, and on the ways they represent an exacting storytelling craft filled with precise techniques: character webs and conflicts, symbols and scene weaves. Along the way, we'll team up to explore how Shakespeare pioneered some kinds stories we still read and see today, and discover what Shakespeare's stories have to say about the how and why of human experience.
ENG 364: Post-Colonial Literature
Credits 4An examination of the widely-debated term "post-colonialism" and its relation to other intersecting terms and critical concepts, such as the "Commonwealth," "Third World," "imperialism," "Orientalism" and "neocolonialism." Uses literatures from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia to explore questions such as: How have writers from the previously colonized world used literature to respond to the economic, political and cultural realities of (de)colonization? What does it mean to "write back" to the Empire? Authors include Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thiong'O, Jean Rhys, Mahasweta Devi and critical essays by Frantz Fanon, Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, among others. Includes attention to issues of empire, nation, class, gender and sexuality.
ENG 369: Contemporary Literary Theory
Credits 4An introduction to some of the major trends in contemporary literary theory, such as Marxism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Reception Theory and a variety of Feminist approaches. All theories applied to works of literature. Sample theorists are Saussure, Bakhtin, Freud, Gates, Jameson, Showalter, Spivak, Barthes, Derrida, Kristeva and Butler.
ENG 373: Topics in Literary Theory
Credits 4This course focuses on specific kinds of literary theory, critical techniques, and/or interpretive approaches. It may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different.
ENG 378: Romances, Epics and Quests
Credits 4A study of how romances, epics, and quest narratives reflect on the social, political and cultural conflicts of the time. May focus primarily on one of these three areas or may compare all three. This course may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different.
ENG 379: The Novel
Credits 4An examination of the genesis and development of the novel, with particular emphasis on its role in literatures written in English. This course may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different. Prerequisite: 200-level English course or consent of instructor.
ENG 380: Drama: Multicultural Theater
Credits 4Studies in the nature, techniques and appreciation of plays approached through the reading of selected plays written in English across various time periods. This course may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different.
ENG 382: Topics in Genre
Credits 4This class will examine some aspect of how genres (types of literature) and/ or narratives work, including narrative forms, structures and other characteristics. The class may focus on a specific genre (e.g. detective novels, fantasy, Southern Gothic) and/ or a type of narrative (e.g. folklore, postmodern, narratives addressed to children). The course may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different.
ENG 383: Understanding Poetry
Credits 4Studies in the nature, techniques and appreciation of poetry approached through the reading of selected poems written in English across various time periods.
ENG 386: Reading & Writing Short Fiction
Credits 4Combines the analysis of short fiction with the creation of short fiction. Students will produce both analytical writing and short stories.
ENG 387: Reading & Writing Poetry
Credits 4This class analyzes the craft of writing poetry by combining analysis of published poems with workshops of students' own poetic writing. Students will produce both analytical writing and poems.
ENG 401: Junior Research Seminar
Credits 4This course offers an intensive experience in scholarly research and writing. Students will learn advanced techniques in finding and using research sources; figuring out which sources are most important or relevant to specific research questions; establishing one's own position in dialogue with existing scholarship; writing and revising research-based essays; and making public presentations. The class will culminate in each student writing a 15-20 page seminar paper, with the goal to create a potential graduate school writing sample and/or publishable scholarly article. English majors should aim to take this course if possible in their junior year.
ENG 463: Topics in African American Literature
Credits 4Topics include particular writers or literary movements as well as interdisciplinary or thematic concerns. For example: an exploration of the Slave Narrative and its influence on contemporary Black fiction; a close study of the Harlem Renaissance. May include the nonfiction prose of DuBois, Morrison, Lorde and Baldwin. This course may be taken more than one time for credit when the topics are different.
ENG 470: Adv. Writing Workshop
Credits 4In this workshop-based class, students will explore the genre of creative nonfiction, which uses literary techniques to create factually accurate narratives about real people and events. In addition to drawing on their lived experience, students will consider how research can enrich the personal narrative by revealing connections between wider social forces and our day-to-day lives. Students will write three short essays, choosing one of these to revise and expand at the end of the semester, and conduct a project on an essayist of their choosing.
ENG 481: Internships, Field Studies and Other Field Experiences
Credits 0 3ENG 481 INTERNSHIPS, FIELD STUDIES AND OTHER FIELD EXPERIENCES
ENG 488: Seminar
Credits 4An exploration of a literary theme or subject matter with cross-disciplinary dimensions, and at a level which requires the student to bring an accumulation of literary and analytical skills and value judgments to bear. Subject determined by the instructor in consultation with the Department.
WGSS 212: Literature and Medicine
Credits 4This course offers students the chance to engage with texts that raise some of the largest existential questions of human life, including the nature of health and disease, the doctor-patient relationship, the social aspects of illness, and the dimensions of a well-lived life. Through the works of authors like Mary Shelley, Lev Tolstoy, Michael Ondaatje, Atul Gawande, Eula Biss, and Anne Boyer, we will explore questions of sickness and health beyond the biomedical paradigm to consider these questions through a humanistic lens. Fulfills the humanities elective requirement for the applied minor in Medical Humanities.