Fall 2020 Course Descriptions

100-Level

1110: Composition I

Many days, times, and online sections available

Covers Composition I: Stretch I and II in one semester, focusing on analyzing rhetorical situations and responding with appropriate genres and technologies. (EPW)

Credit for both this course and ENGL 1110X may not be applied toward a degree program.

Meets New Mexico Lower-Division General Education Common Core Curriculum Area I: Communications.

Prerequisite: ACT English =16-25 or SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing =450-659 or Next Generation ACCUPLACER Writing =>279.

1110X: Composition I (Stretch I)

Many days, times, and sections available

First semester of Composition I stretch sequence. Focuses on analyzing rhetorical situations and responding with appropriate genres and technologies. (EPW)

This is the first course in a two-part sequence. In order to receive transfer credit for ENGL 1110, all courses in this sequence (ENGL 1110X, ENGL 1110Y) must be taken and passed.

Credit for both ENGL 1110X and ENGL 1110 may not be applied toward a degree program.

Students with ACT English <15 or SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing <430 or ACCUPLACER Sentence Skills <109 will begin their English Composition Sequence with ENGL 1110X. 

1120: Composition II

Many days, times, and online sections available

Focuses on academic writing, research, and argumentation using appropriate genres and technologies. (EPW)

Meets New Mexico Lower-Division General Education Common Core Curriculum Area I: Communications.

Prerequisite: 1110 or 1110Y or 1110Z or ACT English =26-28 or SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing =660-690.

1410.001: Introduction to Literature (Previously ENGL 150)

TR 1100-1215
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu

As an introduction to the study of literature, English 1410 will examine two questions: Why does literature matter? And what conventions are used by authors, poets and playwrights to make their literature impactful? Most importantly, we will learn how to appreciate and find meaning in literature as we study its themes from humanity’s earliest texts through the 21st Century.

We will explore a representative variety of texts from major genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama), as well as movements and subgenres pertaining to each. 

1410.002: Introduction to Literature (Previously ENGL 150)

MWF 1300-1350
Sarah Worland,sworland@unm.edu

“Social Noise”: Literature, Politics, and the Public Voice

In “Comedy and the Poetics of Political Form,” Charles Bernstein states, “When convention and authority clash you can hear the noise for miles. This social noise is a sound that poetry can not only make but echo and resound.” This semester, we will explore literature that engages the public voice on issues like war, historical narratives, racism, and censorship. Through numerous genres of literature like poetry, nonfiction essays, and novels, along with explorations of visual art and film, we will learn critical reading approaches, research methods, and analytical writing techniques while we engage one another thoughtfully in discussions of diverse topics and authors. Assignments will build on these skills as we compose informal written responses, formal research essays, and multimodal presentations. Texts include Kurt Vonnegut’sSlaughterhouse-Five, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, among others. As we approach the 2020 general election, let’s consider together the ways in which literature influences political thought in order to create “social noise”: how might literature act as a catalyst for change?

200-Level

100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level

2110.002: Traditional Grammar (Previously ENGL 240)

MWF 1100-1150
C. Tyer Johnson, ctylerjohnson@unm.edu

In this course, I hope to convince you that grammar is not something to fear; grammar is your friend. You rely on grammar every day, regardless of whether you realize it.

As a speaker of English, you have an enormous repository of grammar information. This course will use your intuitive, unconscious knowledge of grammar to create an explicit, conscious roadmap of English grammar so that you can be more confident of your communicative choices.

By the end of the semester, the following Student Learning Outcomes will be invading your thoughts and dreams and you will have an involuntary ability to:

• Identify sentence constituents and analyze sentence patterns.
• Recognize and understand structural relationships involving verb phrases, noun phrases, and adverbial and adjectival modifying phrases and clauses.
• Recognize word forms and explain their functions in phrases and sentences.
• Demonstrate flexibility of composition through phrase modification, nominalization, and other writing strategies that employ knowledge of grammatical forms and functions.
• Identify differences of spoken and written use of language.
• Distinguish differences of prescriptive and descriptive grammar.

2120.001: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

MWF 900-950
Robert Esquibel, resquibel92@unm.edu

Cosmos of the Weird and Horrible: Literature of Madness, Horror, and the Weird

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century horror literature and the rise of “Weird” tales began to expand and blossom. Carrying on the tradition of horror and weird literature begun by Horace Walpole (1717-1797) and his novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, R.W Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith would expand and shape a genre of literature that would inspire and horrify generations of readers. This course will examine selected works of the aforementioned authors, paying close attention to the time period in which they wrote, beliefs that they expressed through writing, and the various factors that produced literature of (terrestrial and cosmic) horror and the weird.

2120.002: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

MWF 1100-1150
 Laurie Lowrance, llowrance@unm.edu

Topic: The (Short) Stories of America

2120.003: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

MWF 1200-1250
Anne Turner, annetturner@unm.edu

To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Digital Media Literacy in the Age of Misinformation, Cyberbullying, and Othering

Digital media exists all around us—from Twitter to TikTok—and we consume and comment on media every day, without understanding the impact we have. This intermediate writing course helps you research and analyze the content of the digital media that you consume and create, and the impact digital media has on humanity. You will read and apply digital media ethics, principles of visual rhetoric, and social media literacy while studying the effects of human and artificial intelligence interaction in online spaces--specifically digital ethics, fake media, cyberbullying, and othering in digital text, images, videos, and more.

2120.004: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

MWF 1300-1350
Emily Reiff, ereiff01@unm.edu

Braiding Sweetgrass: Seeding Hope for Ecological Restoration through Environmental Rhetoric

In 2018, the IPCC released a special report detailing the dire need for humans to address climate change “to avoid irreversible and catastrophic impacts” on the planet. Despite efforts at scientific 1 communication, many people continue to deny negative human impacts on the environment. What can individuals and communities do to improve communication and increase engagement with scientific information? How can we reconnect to the earth in ways that will be restorative and mutually beneficial? This course will attempt to answer some of those questions, with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 2014 book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants as the central text

2120.005: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

TR 1400-1515

Misty Thomas, mthomas08@unm.edu

What is Normative?: Rhetorical Meaning of the Body in Western Culture

Our class will investigate the way the body is presented within popular culture, including books, film, and television. We will study and investigate how the body is rhetorically situated within ideologies of gender and sex. The course will introduce body studies as a lens to look at eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, diet culture, and notions of normativity. Assignments will include response journals, two major writing assignments, and an 8-10 page research paper. Students will read articles and selections from texts such as Judith Butler and Susan Bordo along with the required text Body Studies: An Introduction.

2120.007: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

TR 1100-1215
Jasmine McSparren, jasmine97@unm.edu

Unable to Go Home: Searching for Identity in Diaspora

In our contemporary moment, the terms “asylum seeker” and “refugee” have become strong markers of identification for people marked as outsiders or others in a given society. Seldom effort is made to try and understand the cultural political moments that lead large bodies of people to be expelled either forcefully through persecution or capture, or involuntarily by inopportune social conditions from their native land. This class will seek not only to better understand these conditions of diaspora, but also how they manifest in literature and film through themes of trauma, unstable/hybrid identities, race/ethnicity, and coming of age as a stranger in a strange land.

2120.008: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

TR 1230-1345
Mikaela Osler, mosler@unm.edu

Under the Skin: Autotheory and Personal Narrative as Research

Arianne Zwartjes defines autotheory as “work that engages in thinking about the self, the body, and the particularities and peculiarities of one’s lived experiences, as processed through or juxtaposed against theory—or as the basis for theoretical thinking.” Autotheory combines genres—often memoir and criticism—in an effort to more deeply explore the axiom that “the personal is political.” In this course, students will read and analyze several works of autotheory, including The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, and will produce their own hybrid-genre works of criticism, culminating in an 8-10 page multimodal work of autotheory in a subject of their choice.

2120.009: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

TR 0930-1045
Lily Intong, lintong@unm.edu

Animation and Literacy in a Digital Age

2120.021: Intermediate Composition (Previously ENGL 220)

Online
Sarah Worland, sworland@unm.edu

"To Whom It May Concern" - Letters as Literature

The first known postal document dates from 255 B.C.E. in Egypt, but history suggests letters were exchanged long before then. The letter-writing (what we will come to know as the “epistolary”) tradition in literature is rich and extends into multiple genres (novels, poetry, historical documents, etc.) and across continents. In this course we will read letters in various forms but primarily from American literature, and we will consider these texts as they pertain to themes such as nation, politics, gender, race, censorship, and experimentalism. Throughout the semester, we’ll ask and write about questions like: what are the defining features of a letter? What is the form of a letter able to do? How important is the audience – or recipient – of a letter? How does the rhetorical situation and genre of a letter determine meaning? How has social media influenced the art of the letter? In this process, we will write our own letters, work together to learn more about different writing forms and research techniques, and read texts by James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Bishop, and Tom Raworth among others.

2210: Professional & Technical Communication

Many days, times, and online sections available

Professional and Technical Communication will introduce students to the different types of documents and correspondence that they will create in their professional careers. This course emphasizes the importance of audience, document design, and the use of technology in designing, developing, and delivering documents. This course will provide students with experience in professional correspondence and communicating technical information to a non-technical audience. (EPW)

Meets New Mexico Lower-Division General Education Common Core Curriculum Area I: Communications.

Prerequisite: 1120 or ACT English =>29 or SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing =>700.

2220.002: Intro to Professional Writing (Previously ENGL 290)

MWF 1300-1350
Julie Newmark, newmark@unm.edu

This is an Intro to Professional Writing course. This class will introduce you to methods of effectively communicating technical, professional, and business information to multiple audiences, in multiple modes. You will develop an understanding of theories of technical communication and will practice technical communication in many forms. With an eye constantly focused on audience needs and expectations, we will plan, organize, draft, revise, and edit documents and multimedia texts. We will learn that the content and appearance of each written document must be appropriate to the intended audience. This course introduces strategies of Intermediate Composition style, persuasive communication, and multimodal document design. You will also learn about ethical considerations in the workplace that impact technical and business communicators and the public. Assignments in this course will represent the most common genres of workplace writing, including resumes, informational graphics and data visualization, usability studies, memoranda, business letters, technical reports, white papers, and instructions. In addition, this class will serve as an introduction to the field of professional communication, and will educate you about the history of Technical and Professional Communication (TPC), about career options in TPC and related fields, and about workplace issues in these fields (including analysis of audience, significance of user-centered design and usability, expectations for collaborative work, and the standards of web writing). All projects in this course are designed to help you create some initial materials for a portfolio you can use when looking for an internship or employment in the field.  Key components of this course are group collaboration and the engagement (virtually and in-person) with working professionals in the field.

2240.001: Intro to Studies in English (Previously ENGL 249)

W 1300-1350
Diane Thiel, dthiel@unm.edu

English 2240 is a one-credit, eight-week class that brings together students majoring in English. It is a required course and must be taken before embarking on the major coursework. Students are introduced to the subfields of rhetoric and professional writing; creative writing; literary studies; and critical theory and cultural studies. Students will be introduced to the life of the department through class visits with faculty members, attendance at departmental events, and a variety of readings and discussions. Some class sessions will include conversations about employment or opportunities for graduate school. The final task will be to craft a letter of intent documenting an intended course of study and future goals.

2240.002: Intro to Studies in English (Previously ENGL 249)

T 1100-1215
Diane Thiel, dthiel@unm.edu

English 2240 is a one-credit, eight-week class that brings together students majoring in English. It is a required course and must be taken before embarking on the major coursework. Students are introduced to the subfields of rhetoric and professional writing; creative writing; literary studies; and critical theory and cultural studies. Students will be introduced to the life of the department through class visits with faculty members, attendance at departmental events, and a variety of readings and discussions. Some class sessions will include conversations about employment or opportunities for graduate school. The final task will be to craft a letter of intent documenting an intended course of study and future goals.

 

2310.002: Intro to Creative Writing (Previously ENGL 224)

TR 1400-1515
Amanda Kooser, amandakooser@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students will read and study published works as models, but the focus of this "workshop" course is on students revising and reflecting on their own writing. Throughout this course, students will be expected to read poetry, fiction, and non-fiction closely, and analyze the craft features employed. They will be expected to write frequently in each of these genres. Prerequisite: 1110 or 1110Y or 1110Z.

2310.003: Intro to Creative Writing (Previously ENGL 224)

TR 1100-1215
Rhea Ramakrishnan, rramakrishnan@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students will read and study published works as models, but the focus of this "workshop" course is on students revising and reflecting on their own writing. Throughout this course, students will be expected to read poetry, fiction, and non-fiction closely, and analyze the craft features employed. They will be expected to write frequently in each of these genres. Prerequisite: 1110 or 1110Y or 1110Z.

2310.004: Intro to Creative Writing (Previously ENGL 224)

MWF 1300-1350
Jennifer Tubbs, jtubbs@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students will read and study published works as models, but the focus of this "workshop" course is on students revising and reflecting on their own writing. Throughout this course, students will be expected to read poetry, fiction, and non-fiction closely, and analyze the craft features employed. They will be expected to write frequently in each of these genres. Prerequisite: 1110 or 1110Y or 1110Z.

2310.007: Intro to Creative Writing (Previously ENGL 224)

Online
Mario Montoya, sol1@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students will read and study published works as models, but the focus of this "workshop" course is on students revising and reflecting on their own writing. Throughout this course, students will be expected to read poetry, fiction, and non-fiction closely, and analyze the craft features employed. They will be expected to write frequently in each of these genres. Prerequisite: 1110 or 1110Y or 1110Z.

2510.002: Analysis of Literature (Previously ENGL 250)

TR 1230-1345
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu

This course is an introduction to the study, appreciation, and critique of literature for English majors. In our quest to develop greater understanding(s) of and increased enjoyment from literature, this class will teach students how to read literature as well as how to critique the literature they have read. Through a series of oral and written assignments, workshops, group work, and online exercises, students will learn a variety of literary techniques, conventions, and analytical skills that will allow them to write focused, developed, and well-articulated literary analysis.

2510.003: Analysis of Literature (Previously ENGL 250)

MWF 1000-1050

Scarlett Higgins, shiggins@unm.edu

English 2510 is the gateway course to the English major. In it you will learn the fundamental skills needed for literary textual analysis, including critical reading practices, the construction of an argument, the use of textual evidence to support an argument, and the best practices for bringing all of these skills together in a research essay.

To do so, you will study a variety of texts in the major genres (literary fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as film and graphic novels), many of which have then been adapted, transformed, or created as an homage to a text in a different genre. Close analysis of these texts will allow us to see clearly the ways that concepts of genre, inherently involving reader/viewer expectations, affect our reading practices. 

2540.001: Introduction to Chicano/a Literature

MWF 900-950

Chrysta Wilson, camcw@unm.edu

As an introductory survey, this course emphasizes the formal, thematic, and cultural diversity of Chicana/o literature. We will read novels, poetry, short stories, and comics, among other media, by authors from a range of identities. Our literary analyses will account for cultural movements and concepts—e.g. border thinking, gender and sexuality, mestizaje, migration—that shape the work of Chicana/o authors. Students will work collectively and individually to undertake writing projects that explore Chicana/o letters in terms of literary techniques and geographical, political, and social themes.

2610.001: American Literature I (Previously ENGL 296)

MWF 1100-1150
Vicki Vanbrocklin, vvanbrocklin@unm.edu

This course surveys American literature from the colonial period to the mid-nineteenth century; it provides students with the contexts and documents necessary to understand the origins of American literature and the cultural ideological debates central to early American culture.  This course will engage directly with debates surrounding gender and race that have become a direct part of American culture. To make sure this approach is well-rounded, this course will purposefully examine voices that previously have not been included in the early American literature cannon.

2620.001: American Literature II (Previously ENGL 297)

TR 930-1045
Laurie Lowrance, llowrance@unm.edu

To quote the Heath Anthology of American Literature, "the reality of America has always been, to a significant degree, its extraordinary diversity of regions, and of ethnic and racial groups; and a truly `national' literature, in the final analysis, must be one that comprehends such diversity" (192). So, too of an American literature survey course. This course surveys American literary history from the American Civil War to the twenty-first century. Drawing on multicultural and multi-regional works of poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, and film, we’ll chart diverse rhetorical traditions and stylistic innovations for American literature in relation to national and transnational networks of meaning while paying careful attention to the shifting historical and cultural contexts for literary movements including realism, regionalism, naturalism, and modernism. By the end of the course, students will map the ways in which America and “national” literature becomes imagined and reimagined in terms of contested territories, wild and domesticated spaces, overlapping cultural traditions, and various forms of social and political experimentation.

2630.001: British Literature I (Previously ENGL 294)

TR 1400-1515
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

Monsters, drunken louts, cross-dressing saints, and Satan will feature prominently in this survey of English literature. This course will follow the development of literature in English from its beginning with Beowulf and continue through works by authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, and Phyliss Wheatley. The course will also introduce modern responses to and reimaginings of these “canonical” works, such as Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife and Nicole Galland’s I, Iago. Thematically, the course will explore issues of race and gender, literacy and power, and changing conceptions of writing and literature.

2640.001: British Literature II (Previously ENGL 295)

Online
Gail Houston, ghouston@unm.edu

2650.001: World Literature I (Previously ENGL 292)

TR 1100-1215
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu

Humans tell stories. We learn who we are and what we ought to do by listening to them. And the art of storytelling may be among our oldest, most diverse, and most developed forms of expression. Stories and poems have formed the cornerstone of every human culture, and in this course, we will encounter some of the stories that built civilizations, from Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt, to India, China, and Japan. We will read from the great works of medieval Europe, the Arab world, and indigenous American traditions, including the Mahabharata, the Tale of Genji, the Popul Vuh, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and The Thousand and One Nights. From love songs to creation myths, from bawdy tales to epic poems, this course will explore what makes each culture unique, and what we all share.

2650.002: World Literature I (Previously ENGL 292)

MWF 1400-1450
Kevin Jackson, kj273@unm.edu

English 2650, World Literature I, is a survey of representative works of world literature from Antiquity through the Sixteenth Century. The course will examine the literary, cultural, and human significance of texts from literary traditions spanning the world, including Mesopotamia, Europe, China, Japan, and the Americas. Through the literature of peoples from a wide range of times and places, we will study the timeless human values which unite the different literary traditions under a common humanity, drawing from the world’s wealth of cultural diversity.

2660.001: World Literature II (Previously ENGL 293)

MWF 1300-1350
Feroza Jussawalla, fjussawa@unm.edu

This semester, I will be teaching the second half of World Literature, entirely differently to reflect more diversity in the course and to introduce you to contemporary literature from the third world. We will begin with some Japanese Haiku which you are largely familiar with and after brief surveys of the development of world and English/American Literature, we will move onto what is called Postcolonial Literatures. We will use Postcolonial Literary Criticism: an Introductory Handbook by Yonge Eglinton, An Anthology of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction ed. Dean Baldwin, Colonial Discourse and Postcolononial Theory ed. Chrisman and Williams. Then we will go on to some seminal novels like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things, Chimamanda Ngozi’s Americanaha, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa. The aim of the course is to introduce you to contemporary writing from around the world and its contexts. Assignments will mostly focus on  reaction response papers and one longer research paper. Feel free to contact me at fjussawa@unm.edu.

300-Level

100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level

304.002: Bible As Literature

Online
Kelly Van Andel, kvanande@unm.edu

ENGL 304, the Bible as Literature, studies biblical texts within their historical and literary contexts, and it examines how the authors of the Bible utilize literary forms and tools such as the parable, proverb, allegory, and so on, to convey particular messages. It additionally stresses the importance of the Bible as a source of English and American literature. Units of study include Narrative, Poetry, the Gospels, the Letter, Apocalyptic Literature, and the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament in English and American Literature. There are weekly quizzes and discussions, two exams, and one short presentation. 

305.001: Mythology

TR 930-1045
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu

This course is designed to introduce students to a variety of mythological traditions that are most necessary to learn and recognize for the study of American and British literature and culture. As such, our focus will be primarily—but not only—on the Western mythologies which most often exerted a major influence on these literatures and cultures. This does not mean, however, that we will spend all of our time reading those myths which feature prominently in Ancient Greek and Roman Literatures. The scope of this course is broad, both geographically and temporally speaking. We will start with myths from ancient Mesopotamia, like Gilgamesh, and also touch base with the Judeo-Christian Bible, Ancient Greece and Rome, and Medieval Iceland, amongst others. Students will not only develop a valuable familiarity with these various mythological traditions, but they will also be exposed to a number of different ways of reading and analyzing them.

 

320.001: Writing About Animals & Nature

MWF 1400-1450
Michelle Kells, mkells@unm.edu

The life cycle of food production (and the pleasure of eating) provides an apt metaphor for the creative process (and the pleasure of writing). Food as a cultural, social, and rhetorical trope speaks to us across communities, place, and time. Good food feeds the body and the soul. The purpose of this class is to create a community of environmental thinkers and to cultivate opportunities for considering our roles as citizens, activists, scholars (of place) through the study of local and global food cultures. The rich literary and rhetorical legacy of food culture and environmental discourse will be examined through diverse textual artifacts (and genres) including the everyday rhetoric of menus and recipes, film, poetry, speeches, essays, letters, creative nonfiction (memoir), food reviews, and the multiple forms of food rhetoric in public culture.

This course will also focus on literary and rhetorical texts representing the ecology of place with special emphasis on New Mexico food cultures, human-animal relationships, and food justice movements in relation to land and water rights, food cultivation, natural resource loss, and biodiversity depletion. Participation in field exercises, guest lectures, and out-of-class learning environments will be integral to this course. Our reading list will include environmental texts within and beyond the Southwest region.

321.001: Intermediate Creative Writing – Fiction

MWF 1100-1150
Andrew Bourelle, abourelle@unm.edu

In English 321, we will build upon what you have already learned in English 224 and focus specifically on fiction.  You will read, analyze, and discuss published examples of fiction, examining elements of craft. You will also write short stories and share your work with classmates, giving and receiving feedback as a way to improve your writing and the writing of their classmates.

321.003: Intermediate Creative Writing – Fiction

TR 1400-1515
Julie Shigekuni, jshig@unm.edu

The focus of this intermediate level course is the close reading of and experimentation with the writing of short fiction. Of primary interest to me is narrative voice. How is it created by published authors, and how does it emerge in your writing? During the first half of the semester, you will create story fragments, each week isolating and treating an element of story (e.g., character, setting, plot, point of view, theme) that contributes to an engaging narrative voice. Once you are familiar with the elements of craft, you will choose a story fragment to develop. This story will form the basis for your workshop critique. As well, you will critique stories written by your classmates with an eye toward revision. The goal of this semester-long exploration will be to see what's possible in your own work.

322.001: Intermediate Creative Writing – Poetry

TR 1230-1345
Diane Thiel, dthiel@unm.edu

In this intermediate workshop course, the readings and class sessions will focus on particular techniques or elements of poetry (i.e.: perspective, diction, rhythm, forms of poetry, etc.).  Creative exercises and assignments will accompany these discussions. Students will also be workshopping several poems throughout the course. Because students arrive in such courses with a variety of backgrounds, styles, and interests in poetry, conversations about lineage and the different schools of thought in poetry will be a vital element of the class. Some of this discussion will arise from the workshop of student poems.

 

349.001: Beowolf to Arthur

MWF 0900-0950
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu

This course is designed as an introductory survey to the literary works produced in England in the Middle Ages, c. 700-1500. While most texts will be read in Modern English translations, class lectures will provide some background on the development of the English language. The class will focus on both the specialized terminology and literary devices particular to medieval English texts as well as the cultural, social and political factors that influenced the development of English literature. Readings will introduce students to a wide variety of medieval genres and will include epic, lyric poetry, romance, mystical revelation and outlaw tale.

352.010: Early Shakespeare

Online
Marissa Greenberg, marissag@unm.edu

Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice – you may think that you know these plays, but think again! In this fully online course you will revisit these plays as well as encounter new works, such as the Quentin Tarantino-like revenge plays Titus Andronicus and the Machiavellian history of Richard III. Using a variety of online resources and active-learning strategies, you will develop knowledge of Shakespeare’s earlier writings and the contexts of their creation and reception. Special attention will be paid to Shakespeare’s language on page and on stage. Organizing our study of these texts and contexts will be, on the one hand, early modern notions of race and intersecting identity positions, such as gender and disability, and on the other hand, your self-identification and affinities with classmates.

353.001: Later Shakespeare

MWF 1200-1250
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu

This course covers the Jacobean-era works of William Shakespeare. In examining his drama and poetry, the course will focus on the various conventions of the sub-genres of comedy, tragedy and romance as well as the sonnet. The student will gain familiarity with the later works of Shakespeare and an understanding of the Early Modern theater as well as the importance of Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic innovations. Texts include: Twelfth Night, All’s Well That Ends Well, Coriolanus, Othello, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and selected sonnets.

356.001: 19th Century British & Irish Literature

Online
Gail Houston, 

This course examines the role of feelings in nineteenth-century British literature, from how Charlotte Bronte defined her passion against Jane Austen's lack of feeling, to the Romantic expression of passion and feeling against the Age of Reason, to writers' uses of feeling to respond to the Crisis of Faith, to how the ability to have feelings acts as one of the arguments for the rights of women, slaves, the lower-classes, and animals. We also read George Eliot, Tennyson, and Black Beauty, amongst other writers and texts.

397.001: Regional Literature

MWF 1000-1050
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, mviz@unm.edu

Regional literature has shaped and responded to American history and culture from the very beginning, and we will explore the topic through three major themes: the newcomer, modern change, and the folk. These three themes structure the class and its exploration of regional literature, from New England, New Orleans, the South, the Midwest, Far West, Plains West and Southwest. We’ll come to understand the aesthetic diversity of regional writing as it encounters romanticism, realism, naturalism, local color writing, and modernism, and we’ll also examine how the emergence of regionalism occurs as a response to national and global pressures bearing down on a specific geographical locale. We’ll enjoy regional writing in its most comfortable genre—short fiction—and in the end come away with a critical definition of regionalism that encompasses writings from the diverse places that characterize the US. 

400-Level

100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level

410.001: Criticism and Theory

TR 1400-1515
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

In this course, we will engage in an intensive overview of significant movements in literary theory and criticism, with a focus on twentieth-century and contemporary thought. We begin with a review of foundational texts from earlier eras, representing some of the intellectual history that informs later developments: specifically, we will trace the ongoing influences of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Du Bois, and de Beauvoir. These discursive origins remain central to contemporary examinations of language, aesthetics, race and racialization, sex and gender, and the role of literature in producing cultural meaning. We then will explore together the necessary ways that these first examinations are complicated over the course of the 20th Century. A whirlwind mid-semester tour through clusters of ideas representative of Marxist literary analysis, psychoanalytic criticism, feminist theory, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and queer theory will enable us to begin recognizing the dimensions of our own contemporary period in our recent predecessors. Their inquiries establish frameworks that continue to shift in our time; more recent approaches to reading literature gain dimension and clarity when we understand their long histories.

 

415.001: Publishing

W 1730-2000
David Dunaway, dunaway@unm.edu

Have you wanted to publish a book or scholarly article? Find a job in publishing? This course is for you.

This course introduces students to the publishing industry, in the U.S. and internationally, from the multiple perspectives of the author, the editor, the agent, and the publisher. Our primary goal is to provide a successful strategy for later publishing your work in journals, magazines, books, and on the internet. Our secondary goal is to prepare an informed community of writers: able to understand contracts, industry procedures, and publishing’s cultural significance.

416.001: Autobiography & Biography

M 1600-1830
Michelle Kells, mkells@unm.edu

ENGL 416/516 Biography offers critical examination of the genre of biography (autobiography and memoir) across the subfields of English Studies (Rhetoric, Creative Writing, and Literary Studies). This course will provide models, practice, and feedback through writing workshops and the theoretical study of biography as craft. In addition to practicing the rhetorical art of narrative (and story-telling), students will cultivate a meta-discourse about biography as genre (form and function).

The course will include exploration of: Rhetorical Biography; Political Biography; Literary Biography; Personal Biography (autobiography and memoir/creative non-fiction). Students will analyze examples of each form toward discovering frameworks for their own original manuscript as well as examine various public and academic venues as platforms for publication of their scholarly and creative work.

417.001: Editing

Online
Steve Benz, sbenz@unm.edu

This course focuses on editing as a professional practice. Along with improving advanced copyediting skills, we will learn about "information design": the development and production of documents that are complete, accurate, correct, comprehensible, usable, and appropriate for readers. Because editors often must be responsible for a document from its inception to its presentation as a finished product, we will also learn about layout and document design, as well as contemporary production processes. Successful completion of this course will provide you with the foundation necessary for a future career in the field, whether as an editor in the publishing industry or as an editor of documents for organizations, businesses, and institutions.

420.001: Blue Mesa Review

TR 1400-1515
Lisa Chavez, lchavez@unm.edu

This class introduces you to the production of UNM’s national literary magazine, Blue Mesa Review. We receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of submissions each year from authors hoping to see their stories, essays, or poems published in our journal. Your primary responsibility in this course is to assess these submissions—collectively called “slush”—for possible publication in BMR. In addition, you will keep an informal journal about your participation in slush, attend discussion meetings, and write a few short papers. This class requires you to be self-motivating; in some respects, it is very much like an independent study. You must be able to keep up with the workload on your own—and often on your own time.

421.002: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Fiction

MWF 1400-1450
Daniel Mueller, dmueller@unm.edu

In this upper division creative writing workshop, students will draft the stories and novel excerpts we'll examine in class with the intention of helping manuscripts-in-process find their larger audience through revision and, ultimately, publication.  Augmenting our critical, constructive analysis of student-generated fiction will be short fiction exercises and assigned readings in narrative craft and contemporary short fiction, all designed to enlarge the student's understanding of how fiction imparts meaning.  By the end of the course students will have completed a final portfolio of original fiction.  

423.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Nonfiction

TR 1100-1215
Greg Martin, gmartin@unm.edu

This is an advanced creative nonfiction writing workshop focused on emulation and revision. The first goal of the course is to help you find models for the kind of writing you want to do—to emulate other essayists and their essays, not only in voice and sensibility, but also in genre and craft.  The second goal of the course is to push you to invest and re-invest in the same piece over sixteen weeks, so that it becomes increasingly complex, resonant, and satisfying.  Yet another goal of the course is to break down what Jane Smiley calls “evasion strategies.” Many undergraduate creative writers are highly skilled at turning out flawed, inspiration-driven first drafts. Your task is to eventually produce a draft so compelling that your peers (or anyone) would read your essay even if they didn't have to for a class. Your task is to make them forget that they're reading for a class; your task is to immerse them so deeply that they forget they're reading. Most often in a creative writing workshop, craft (plot, characterization, persona, etc) receives primary emphasis, and there are good reasons for this.  But less often is discipline, itself, emphasized. The problem with too much emphasis on craft is that it may lead the apprentice writer to believe that their most important writing problems are craft problems. They aren't.  Craft knowledge has nothing to do with tenacity or stubbornness or resolve. One might argue that the inner discipline it takes to endure and produce as an artist is itself a kind of craft knowledge. This class is designed to help cultivate your inner discipline.

 

445.001: History of the English Language

TR 0930-1045
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

The English language can be traced back many centuries to a form nearly unrecognizable to most modern speakers. Nonetheless, Present-day English still contains many significant features of its previous incarnations. This course will examine the history of English from its Indo-European roots through its medieval developments to its modern, international forms. In the process, students will learn methods of linguistic analysis and description along with the historical contexts of the developments. Special attention will be given to the role of colonialism in making English internationally dominant and to the validity of dialectal variation.

451.001: T: Medieval Lyrics

R 1600-1830
Anita Obermeier, aobermei@unm.edu

This course provides a comparative overview of the medieval lyric as a genre in diverse historical contexts. We will embark on a tour of lyrical Europe, examining medieval Latin lyrics—such as the Goliardic Carmina Burana—songs of the Provençal troubadours and their female counterparts the trobairitz, Italian sonnets and Dante’s dolce stil nuovo, German Minnesang poems, Northern French aubades, Spanish and Mozarabic lyrics. The course will culminate in examining lyrics of the British Isles, primarily Old and Middle English, but also some Scottish and Irish poems, to demonstrate how continental European traditions influenced both medieval and post-medieval English poetic production. Most of the non-English lyrics will be read in translations with occasional facing-page originals to achieve a more diverse representation. The course also emphasizes the musical quality of lyrics and whenever available, we will engage performed lyrics. Further focus will be on subgenres and thematic groups, such as the love lyric, the political lyric, the nature poem, the penitential lyric, the crusade song, to name a few.  

460.001: Early American Literature

TR 1230-1345
Kathern Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

In this class we will read key works tracing the emergence of early ideas about American personal and national identity. Beginning with accounts from the seventeenth century, we will focus on ideas about class, race, sexuality and gender as articulated primarily through the divergent expectations and experiences of Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. These accounts suggest the critical challenge that Native America presented to European ideas and social structures. Mary Rowlandson’s narrative of her captivity by the Narragansett, and the contradictions between Mattaponi oral history and the many varying American mythologies of the life of Pocahontas, remind us of the ideological and personal violence at the foundation of our nation. Harriet Jacobs’s story of her enslavement concretizes the hierarchies of race and gender that are central to the period. Hannah Foster’s The Coquette, a bestseller when it was first published in 1797, suggests that the ideals of personal and national freedom articulated during the Revolutionary period depend upon assumptions about gender, race, and class. Washington Irving’s Sketchbook (published 1819-1820) and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) respond with both satire and nostalgia to shifting mores. An emphasis on historical and political context will allow us better to understand this tumultuous time, and the ways that many of its conflicts remain unresolved in later eras.

463.001: Modern American Literature

MWF 1300-1350
Jesús Costantino, jcostantino@unm.edu

479.001: Postcolonial Literatures

MWF 1100-1150
Feroza Jussawalla, fjussawa@unm.edu

This course focuses on what we call "Postcolonial Literatures," or literatures written by people from countries in Africa, and from India, Pakistan, written by people recently liberated from colonialism in English. We will use Postcolonial Literary Criticism: an Introductory Handbook by Yonge Eglinton, An Anthology of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction ed. Dean Baldwin, Colonial Discourse and Postcolononial Theory ed. Chrisman and Williams. Then we will go on to some seminal novels like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things, Chimamanda Ngozi’s Americanaha, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa. The aim of the course is to introduce you to contemporary writing from around the world and its contexts. Assignments will mostly focus on  reaction response papers and one longer research paper. Feel free to contact me at fjussawa@unm.edu.

499.001: Professional Writing Internship Seminar

Online
Andrew Bourelle, abourelle@unm.edu

English 499 is designed to help students prepare for careers in Technical and Professional Writing. Each student will be responsible for obtaining a professional writing internship with a local business or organization. This on-the-job experience will be coupled with in-class discussions about careers in professional writing. Students will develop electronic and/or print portfolios, résumés, application documents, and other related materials. English 499 fulfills requirements for the English Department’s professional writing certificate and minor.