Literature Undergraduate Course Descriptions

ENGL 2150: Introduction to Science Fiction: Contact, Conflict, Cooperation (Graham)

When humanity encounters creatures from another world, do we meet them with aggression and hostility, or with communication and hospitality? Do we try to conquer them, or they us? Is peaceful co-existence with an irreducibly different Other even possible? Does the human history of conquest and colonialism provide an inescapable blueprint for our interactions with other species, or does contact with an alien other provide an opportunity for humanity to chart a new course? This course will focus on these questions, which are some of the oldest and most frequently explored questions in science fiction, and also some of the most profound. Possible readings include H.G Wells's War of the Worlds, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Samuel Delany's Babel-17, Octavia Butler's Dawn, N.K. Jemisin's Far Sector, Karen Lord's The Best of All Possible Worlds, and Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem. We might also view some classic science fiction movies, including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and Arrival (2016). Hybrid. Logan.

ENGL 2600: Literary Analysis (Ricketts)

Throughout this course, we'll delve into literary techniques, revealing how writers wield tools such as point of view, imagery, and style to craft nuanced works of poetry, drama, and short fiction. Become a literary detective as we dissect these masterpieces, developing our analytical skills to uncover layers of meaning and themes that transcend time and culture. Discover the transformative power of words as we explore how literature sheds light on the complexities of life, offering insights that reverberate throughout our personal and professional journeys. Together, we'll peel back the layers of meaning, revealing universal truths that resonate deeply within the human experience. Get ready to engage in spirited discussions that will enrich your understanding of the world around you. Connect.

ENGL 2600: Literary Analysis (Rivera-Dundas)

Designed for aspiring English majors and minors, this course will help students develop their analytical toolkit to become stronger writers and deeper critical thinkers. This course will start with the analysis of a collection of poetry—Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey—to learn close reading, the foundations of poetic forms, and how to read poems as singular entities and in a full collection. We’ll move to drama and read two plays, a realist play about family and class—Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry—and an experimental “choreopoem”—For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. With these plays, we’ll discuss performance and how to read something designed to be experienced aloud. Finally, we’ll dive into the challenging, beautiful, and important novelBeloved by Toni Morrison to talk about long-form prose, characterization, and novel structures. As we learn formal literary analytical techniques, we’ll also ask what it means to tell an American story and how we as scholars fit into the developing story of American literature. In person. Logan.

ENGL 2600: Literary Analysis (Martinez-Abbud)

This course encourages aspiring English majors, as well as the everyday cultural critic (a.k.a. you, dear reader), to develop a methodology and critical vocabulary for analyzing literature and other forms of story-telling. We’ll engage with different narrative forms (prose, drama, poetry), genres (horror, speculative fiction, memoir), and media (text, film, music) to learn about the nuances of interpretation. In other words, you’ll learn to identify the strategies that storytellers use to create meaning and the way or style in which they use these strategies. Learning how stories work helps us understand the relationship between the story, the author, the reader, and the world—and it makes talking about books and movies with your friends much more fun. Readings include Mexican Gothic (Moreno-Garcia, 2020), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Albee, 1962; Nichols, 1966), We Are Owed (Brown, 2021), and Crying in H-Mart (Zauner, 2021). In person. Logan.

ENGL 2600: Literary Analysis (Mann)

Becoming an English major means mastering your powers of interpretation, and literary analysis is at the heart of every English major’s interpretive practice. This course will introduce you to methods of literary analysis, or “close reading.” Specifically, we will focus on analyzing three main forms of literature—poetry, drama, and prose fiction—and course readings will include poems, short stories, a novel, and a play. As we explore these different genres, we’ll also consider what it means for a text to be considered “literary.” You will learn to notice the nuanced construction of a text, become familiar with literary concepts and terms, and understand the relationship between form and meaning. Writing assignments will develop your powers of analysis and synthesis. You will form compelling arguments, support your ideas with evidence, integrate the ideas of others into your writing, and contribute to a scholarly conversation. In person. Logan.

ENGL 2640: Race & Ethnicity in the United States (Ricketts)

Race and ethnicity have been central issues in American life since its inception. This course will examine the historical and ongoing complexities, misconceptions, and intersecting dynamics of race and ethnicity in the United States. Through a comprehensive exploration of the cultural contexts, social interactions, and lived realities of diverse communities, you’ll develop the skills to critically analyze the historical and ongoing struggles for racial justice in American society. Additionally, by centering marginalized voices, we will explore the multifaceted experiences of underrepresented groups, challenge dominant narratives, and foster empathy and understanding across diverse perspectives. Connect.

ENGL 3305: Medieval Literary History (Cooper-Rompato)

This course will focus on the oral and written literature of England, circa 700-1500. We will read about war, romance, religion, and the supernatural as we explore the changing languages and cultures of medieval Britain. No previous experience with medieval literature necessary. Expect to be amazed by the range of interests and knowledge of medieval people—readings will include spells, riddles, and somewhat ribald stories, as well as spiritual literature. Assignments will include short papers and cultural projects. In person. Logan.

ENGL 3335: Nineteenth Century British Literary History (Mann)

Bookended by political upheaval and war, the long nineteenth century represents a period of massive social, political, scientific, and philosophical change. From the French Revolution to the First World War, the events of the nineteenth century represent repeated challenges to the status quo. The period also lends us some of our most beloved writers: William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, and others. The poets, novelists, and creative thinkers of the nineteenth century imagined and reimagined the human experience in times of revolution and radical reform, experimenting with their art forms and developing new modes of expression. In this course, we will explore the period in British literary history from 1789 to 1914 across a variety of genres: poetry, the novel, drama, essays, political documents, and autobiography. Students’ reading, writing, and research will engage several different themes: art and aesthetics, race and abolition, gender and sexuality, politics and imperialism, industrialization and science, etc. We will ask: What is the relationship between literature and society? What kinds of knowledge does the literary imagination possess and create? What can the histories of the past tell us about our own present moment? In person. Logan.

ENGL 3365: 19th Century American Literary History (Nelson)

“Nevermore”. “I heard a fly buzz when I died”. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately”. “I sound my barbaric yawp”. These lines are from some of America’s most foundational literary texts. In the nineteenth century, America’s literary and artistic traditions came to fruition as writers answered the call to create a uniquely American canon separate from their European counterparts. They found inspiration in America’s landscapes and social institutions. We’ll look at some of the influences on literary production, and how writers played an important part in questioning these social institutions. Like our own time, this was a time of great political polarization, which led to the Civil War. We’ll look at how literary voices navigated this schism in society, and perhaps learn some lessons that we can take away to apply to our own time. This course will include voices from the discourse that led up to the Civil War and those that found strength in freedom and Reconstruction. We will read Hawthorne, Thoreau, Poe, Dickinson, Whitman, Douglass, Stowe, Twain, Chopin, and many others. Connect.

ENGL 3395: World Literature in Translation: Revolutionary Women’s Writing in Central America (Martinez-Abbud)

This course approaches contemporary literatures of Central American countries through a woman-coded perspective. Students will engage with a broad geopolitical region and long histories through a variety of literary genres—including memoirs, novels, poetry, essays, and short stories—written by rebellious women, such as Rigoberta Menchú, Berta Cáceres, Gioconda Belli, and Cristina Rivera Garza. Not only do we read their texts to uncover this particular experience of womanhood (which is often harsh and violent), but we also gain knowledge about the region known as Central America, and we learn how to analyze the interactions between fiction, history, and lived experience. The texts chosen for this class were all written in Spanish and have been translated into English; knowledge of Spanish is not required to take this class. In person. Logan.

ENGL 4300: Shakespeare (Blackstock)

As poet and playwright Ben Jonson wrote of his friend and rival William Shakespeare, “He was not of an age, but for all time!” This course provides an overview of Shakespeare’s drama and poetry--tragedies, comedies, histories, romances, and sonnets--and examines his work in the historical contexts that produced it, along with the philosophical, political, and social questions it continues to raise. Connect.

ENGL 4300: Shakespeare (Jensen)

The purpose of this course is to help students begin or continue a life-long process of enjoying Shakespeare. Focusing particularly on the plays as scripts that come alive in performance, students will be asked see Shakespeare’s plays as living texts that have continued to speak to modern audiences on contemporary issues, including the environment, colonialism, race, political power, class struggles, and gender identity. Students will see films of the plays, participate in classroom readings and performances, and visit the Merrill-Cazier Library’s Special Collections to be introduced to early printed versions of Shakespeare and the material culture of Shakespeare’s world. The class will benefit from the visit of a design historian, Ella Hawkins, a specialist in Shakespearean costuming, who herself transforms books—including early modern books—into biscuit art. In person. Logan.

ENGL 4310: American Writers: Toni Morrison (Rivera-Dundas)

This upper-level class will engage with one of the most important American writers of the 20th century: Toni Morrison. A Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Toni Morrison revolutionized American literature through her delicate and gorgeous explorations of American identity through the lens of race, gender, class, and religion. In this class, we will read three of her novels: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. To help us with these novels, we will read an assortment of critical essays, slave narratives, and poems, watch a documentary and film adaptations of her work, and write critical analyses that position her work in historical and literary contexts. The themes of this class will be challenging: Morrison writes searingly about the legacy of slavery and of gender and racial violence. These books are moving, gorgeous, painful, and important, and best read in a group! In person. Logan.

ENGL 4320: British Writers: Charles Dickens (Blackstock)

Charles Dickens has often been compared to Shakespeare in the range and depth of his literary creations. As Daniel Pollack-Pelzner has written, “We are familiar with the qualities they share: a remarkable range of memorable characterization, flights of verbal invention, the ability to mix tragedy and comedy, reinvigorating traditional genres and plots, and a highly performative, even meta-theatrical, sensibility” (“Dickens and Shakespeare’s Household Words”). This course will examine these remarkable qualities (and more) as they appear in four of Dickens’s most memorable and influential novels: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend. Connect.

ENGL 4350: Studies in Poetry: Romanticism and the Health Humanities (Mann)

At the turn of the end of the eighteenth century, the objectives of poetry and medicine seemed to converge. As doctors and scientists sought to accurately describe the structures and functions of the human body, so, too, did poetry turn inward, taking an interest in the “inner life” of the self. In this class, we will endeavor to see the body in Romantic poetry. Romantic poets concerned themselves with the material, the visceral, the sensory, the bawdy, and the anatomical; they exalted and celebrated these physical aspects of the human condition; and they resisted them. Throughout the semester, we’ll explore the intersections of poetry and health in the Romantic period, and we’ll consider the body as a salient feature of the Romantic lyric. As we read selections of poetry by canonical and non-canonical British and Anglophone Romantic writers, we’ll discuss a variety of themes, including illness, disability, race, gender, war, and the environment. We will also explore the field of health humanities and learn how Romanticist scholars unite their skills in poetry analysis with research on the history of health, medicine, and disability. In person. Logan.

ENGL 4360: Studies in Drama: Irish Drama (Graham)

The push for Ireland's independence from England at the turn of the twentieth century was accompanied by efforts to found a national culture, with the National Literary Theatre project and the establishment of the Abbey Theatre at the center of these efforts. Out of its beginnings with the plays of Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats, Irish drama grew into one of the most important and influential bodies of theatre in the twentieth century. This course will give a brief introduction to this rich dramatic tradition, including plays by Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Teresa Deevy, Brian Friel, Samuel Beckett, and Marina Carr. Hybrid. Logan.

ENGL 4360: Studies in Drama: Irish Drama (Graham)

ENGL 5300: Special Topics in Literature: Library Archives (Cooper-Rompato)

What does archival work in English Studies look like? This course will introduce students to library special collections and archival research by taking advantage of our own Merrill-Cazier library holdings. Each week we will examine at a different strength of USU’s collections, including our holdings on the literary figures Jack London and May Swenson, the folklore collection on Little Red Riding Hood, some of our amazing outdoor recreation catalogs, our eye-opening stash of Utah board games, as well as other treasures! Students will then work in small groups to develop their own projects on a collection of their choice with the aim of creating posters for display in the library; students may also want to consider revising these posters to present their research the following semester’s USU Research Symposium. We will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-2:45 in the Library Map Room in the basement of the library (next door to special collections). No previous library experience required, just an interest in poking around old papers and books! In person. Logan.