Spring 2021 Course Descriptions
1110: Composition I
Many days, times, and online sections available
In this course, students will read, write, and think about a variety of issues and texts. They will develop reading and writing skills that will help with the writing required in their fields of study and other personal and professional contexts. Students will learn to analyze rhetorical situations in terms of audience, contexts, purpose, mediums, and technologies and apply this knowledge to their reading and writing. They will also gain an understanding of how writing and other modes of communication work together for rhetorical purposes. Students will learn to analyze the rhetorical context of any writing task and compose with purpose, audience, and genre in mind. Students will reflect on their own writing processes, learn to workshop drafts with other writers, and practice techniques for writing, revising, and editing. (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.
1110Y: Composition I (Stretch II)
Many days, times, and sections available
First and second semester of Composition I stretch sequence. Focuses on analyzing rhetorical situations and responding with appropriate genres and technologies. (EPW)
These are the first and second courses 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.
Prerequisite for 1110Y: 1110X.
1120: Composition II
Many days, times, and online sections available
In this course, students will explore argument in multiple genres. Research and writing practices emphasize summary, analysis, evaluation, and integration of secondary sources. Students will analyze rhetorical situations in terms of audience, contexts, purpose, mediums, and technologies and apply this knowledge to their reading, writing, and research. Students will sharpen their understanding of how writing and other modes of communication work together for rhetorical purposes. The emphasis of this course will be on research methods. (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
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1000-1050
Feroza Jussawalla, fjussawa@unm.edu
This is a course meant to introduce you, a non-English majors to the fun aspects of Literature and reading. In this class while we will talk about genres and the history of literature, we will mostly read fiction. We will read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and watch the various movie versions of the book, including the Indian Bride and Prejudice to see how classic literature reaches beyond cultures. We will read Jane Eyre and read and watch The Wide Sargasso Sea. We will talk a little about colonialism and Postcoloniality and make our way into contemporary novels, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. These will be texts additional to the second half of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. The papers for the course will be short reaction response papers, following certain important texts.
1410.002: Introduction to Literature: Refiguring Reading
Online
Sarah Worland, sworland@unm.edu
In order to read, what do you need? A plot? Characters? Words? Exploring language is crucial to the literary discipline, so we will investigate a variety of texts that often treat language in unconventional ways. Together, we will consider our approaches to reading, listening to, and experiencing numerous genres like poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, as well as visual art and film. While expanding our critical reading processes, research methods, and analytical writing techniques, we will engage one another thoughtfully in discussions of diverse topics and authors like Toni Morrison, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Assignments including informal written responses, formal research essays, and multimodal presentations will build on these skills as we seek to understand reading as an evolving practice.
2110.001: Traditional Grammar
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1000-1050
C. Tyler 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 grammatical information. This course will use that intuitive, unconscious knowledge of grammar to create an explicit, conscious roadmap of grammar so that you can be more confident of your communicative choices.
By the end of the semester, the following Student Learning Outcomes will have invaded your unconscious thoughts, and you will have the ability to:
- Identify sentence constituents and analyze sentence patterns,
- Recognize and understand structural relationships among verb phrases, noun phrases, and adjectival and adverbial 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,
- Distinguish differences of prescriptive and descriptive grammar.
2120.001: Intermediate Composition: Media and Identity
Remote Scheduled, MWF 0800-0850
Lily Intong, lintong@unm.edu
Media consumption and communicative technologies have become increasingly important in the shaping of individual identities. While exploring pop culture and current trends this course will dive into critical reflections of how students have formed their identity through various forms of media. By the means of research, as a class we will look into the different histories of popular trends/events and analyze how they have been remediated to what they are now. This writing course will help you reflect, analyze, and research the effects of media consumption and its role in shaping identities.
2120.002: Intermediate Composition: Writing for Social Justice
Remote Scheduled, TR 0930-1045
Jane Kalu, janekalu@unm.edu
Students will engage in the act of writing for social justice through creative, reflective and explorative writing. Students would learn the importance of word choices and representation in writing and would also work to answer these questions through the texts we would study and their own writing: Can my writing make an impact in our world today? Have I ever influenced others with my writing? Whose writing have I ever been influenced by? What is the place of writing in a call for social justice? In what genres is social justice usually explored? How do we explore rights, power, equality, justice effectively? By the end of the semester students should have a portfolio that documents creative, explorative and research-based writing that expresses a call to social justice for a cause(s) they are passionate about.
2120.003: Intermediate Composition: Read at Your Own Risk: Establishing the Canon of Young Adult Genre Fiction
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1100-1150
Rebekah Rendón, rrendon19@unm.edu
In the last 20 years, genre fiction for young people has become an increasingly popular and yet an increasingly disregarded form of literature. We will be reading books that are often overlooked as valid literature in the academic sphere. As we read books and watch films, we will be examining their stylistic validity as “literature” and uncovering why the bias against these works exists. This class will seek to better your understanding of young adult genre fiction, affirm the importance of people of color in modern writing, and begin the work of establishing the so-called “canon” of these genres.
2120.004: Intermediate Composition: "The Limen and the Realms Beyond" or "Journeys to the Other World"
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1300-1350
Stéfan Koekemoer, stefankoek@unm.edu
The 'Other World' refers not only to the realm of the dead but to any realm beyond the human world: worlds of spirit, worlds of ethereal or monstrous beings, dream worlds, and even the Unconscious. In this course we will be exploring liminal spaces and analyzing boundary-crossing journeys from different cultures the world over. The readings will consist primarily of ancient and medieval narratives describing journeys to the many realms that lie beyond; through these we will encounter and learn about a variety of beliefs and customs and explore the implications of the Unconscious mind. We will approach the material comparatively, with a focus on practicing and strengthening analysis. The semester will culminate in an analytical research paper on one or more of the texts.
2120.005: Intermediate Composition: Falling Stars, Talking Cats, Old Gods, and Neil Gaiman
Remote Scheduled, TR 1230-1345
Jasmine McSparren, jasmine97@unm.edu
This course will analyze modern fantasy and myth by reading and watching the works of Neil Gaiman. A profound storyteller, he has brought urban fantasy and gothic children’s stories to life by revamping old myths, folklore, and fairytales to speak to our fears and curiosities. Gaiman often places the magical or mythological parallel to— or sometimes hidden within–our world. In engaging with his work, students will learn how culture, imagination, and place come together to establish identity. In learning how to evaluate the legacy of stories, students will also learn how to be storytellers themselves.
2120.006: Intermediate Composition: Genre as Opportunity
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1000-1050
Emily Murphy, rwmurphy@unm.edu
As students we engage with any number of passed-down forms of writing—essays, cover letters, emails among others. Unfortunately, these forms arrive to us as constraints, rules to restrict us rather than sites of creative opportunity. As a class we will practice writing through appropriating forms that range from popular literature, e.g. listicles, to non-literary texts, e.g. product reviews. We will study these texts to interrogate their creative opportunities—always asking “How can I use this?” By learning to write these texts we will not only become better writers, but more critical and effective readers, understanding how a text communicates.
2120.007: Intermediate Composition: Past is Prologue: Modern Adaptations of Legendary Mythos
Remote Scheduled, TR 1100-1215
Aspyn Maes, amaes97@unm.edu
What makes an adaptation in comparison to an original? This is the driving question of my course, "Past is Prologue: Modern Adaptation of Legendary Mythos." Students will examine original works and the adaptations that followed through the centuries. Students will read Arthurian romances and Shakespearean plays and their modern adaptations, such as Merlin or 10 Things I Hate About You. Students will discover the influence and repetition of the past through storytelling, examine structures of power that create canon, and how adaptation and appreciation work together to create “timeless” tales; as well as develop their research capabilities, narrative and academic writing skills.
2120.008: Intermediate Composition: Dante's Commedia: A Survey of Dante's Journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise
Remote Scheduled, TR 1400-1515
Robert Esquibel, resquibel92@unm.edu
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is responsible for creating a magnificently detailed conception of the Christian afterlife that has haunted and delighted readers from the late Middle Ages until now. This course surveys Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso in order to examine how his Medieval (Christian) conception of the afterlife heavily influence modern conceptions of hell and heaven. With a special emphasis on examining the variety of historical and mythological figures who appear within the Commedia, students will gain an understanding of how and why certain figures are condemned to hell or exalted in paradise, while gaining valuable research and writing skills.
2120.015: Intermediate Composition: The Art of Memoir
Online
Michelle Gurule, migurule5@unm.edu
This course builds upon and refines the writing skills acquired in previous writing courses, with a focus on nonfiction prose through Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir. Students can expect to read from a diverse collection of nonfiction books including audiobook and illustrated memoirs. The main focus of this course will be working towards deeper understanding and techniques presented in memoir and how the authors effectively blend memory and research in their work. Research, composition, exposition and presentation abilities will be practiced and developed. Through analysis and revision, students will develop strategies to improve the versatility and impact of their writing.
2210.001: Professional & Technical Communication
Many days, times, and online sections available
Course description video
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.
2220.001: Intro to Professional Writing
Online
Stephen Benz, sbenz@unm.edu
The main purpose of ENGL 2220 is to give you a basic understanding of what professional writers and editors do. Toward this end, the course introduces you to the practices and procedures of professional writing and editing. It also covers career opportunities available in professional writing. You will learn about expository writing style, persuasion, and document design. You will also learn how to deal with ethical situations that often arise in corporate, professional, private, and public workplaces. Projects in this course will guide you through the process of document development and introduce you to the most common genres of workplace writing. These projects 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.
2240.001: Introduction to Studies in English
Face-to-face and Remoted Arranged, T 1230-1345
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: Introduction to Studies in English
Face-to-Face and Remote Arranged, 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.
2310.001: Introduction to Creative Writing
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1300-1350
Mikaela Osler, mosler@unm.edu
A beginning course in the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Emphasis on process over product. Introduces issues of craft, workshop vocabulary, strategies for revision, and the habit of reading as a writer.
2310.002: Introduction to Creative Writing
Remote Scheduled, TR 1100-1215
Jane Kalu, janekalu@unm.edu
A beginning course in the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Emphasis on process over product. Introduces issues of craft, workshop vocabulary, strategies for revision, and the habit of reading as a writer.
2310.003: Introduction to Creative Writing
Remote Scheduled, TR 0930-1045
Jennifer Tubbs, jtubbs@unm.edu
Always wanted to try your hand at creative writing, but never had the opportunity? Already have a completed novel manuscript? Either way, this course is the place to be! We'll delve into the foundations of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. You'll have the chance to dabble in any and all genres you find compelling.
Because reading is integral to writing, we'll look at published short stories, essays, and poems as models. However, the focus of this workshop-style course is giving and integrating peer feedback into our writing.
Throughout this course, students will be expected to read poetry, fiction, and non-fiction closely, and analyze the craft features employed. Students will also write frequently in each of these genres. Prerequisite: 1110 or 1110Y or 1110Z.
2310.005: Introduction to Creative Writing
Online
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.
2510.001: Analysis of Literature
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1100-1150
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu
In our quest to develop a greater understanding of and increased enjoyment from literature, our class will use contemporary Afrofuturistic literature to learn how to read literature as well as how to write about the literature we have read. Since this course is a required course for the major, we will explore select Afrofuturistic literature in a very intimate manner with the aim to practice different strategies for reading literature and effective practices for writing about literature appropriate for English majors. Our emphasis will be on producing literary analysis or what is often called “close-reading.” In pursuing this goal, along with developing the necessary skills to write literary analysis, we will also explore different writing styles, voices, and ways to approach literary critique.
2510.002: Analysis of Literature
Remote Scheduled, TR 0930-1045
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, mviz@unm.edu
This course is the gateway to the English major. You will learn the fundamental skills needed for literary textual analysis. These skills include critical reading practices, the construction of an argument, the use of textual evidence to support an argument, and the best practices for bringing these skills together in a research essay. Students become familiar with the genres of poetry, fiction, and drama, and they learn how to use theory and criticism to engage in literary textual analysis. Students will also learn valuable research skills and the ability to think critically about literary genres. They will come away from the class with the ability to engage in oral and written forms of literary textual analysis.
2610.001: American Literature I
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1300-1350
Chrysta Wilson, camcw@unm.edu
In this class we will look beyond the cultural mythologies that present the origins of the United States as cooperative, historically inevitable, and bounded by borders we recognize today. Beginning in the 1500s, we will focus on the divergent expectations and experiences of Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Jean de Léry’s account of his time with Tupinamba in Brazil, Mary Rowlandson’s narrative of her captivity by the Narragansett, and the contradictions between Mattaponi oral history and later revisionist accounts of the life of Pocahontas tell us of the ideological violence at the foundation of the U.S. Mary Prince, Olaudah Equiano, and a series of known and unknown writers of the Revolutionary War period describe the internationalism of early Black America, and the extraordinary cultural productivity of a people living in a time and place that espoused ideals of freedom that didn’t include them. As the nineteenth century begins, Hannah Foster and Charles Brockden Brown examine the contradictions inherent to the humanism that informed Revolutionary fervor, and Washington Irving brutally satirizes American self-regard. An emphasis on primary documents and historical context reveals the stakes involved in the literary works we discuss, and helps us to understand how this tumultuous time inaugurates struggles that continue into our own era. Evaluation will be based on regular short response papers, participation in our discussions, and midterm and final essay exams.
2630.001: British Literature I
Remote Scheduled, TR 1100-1215
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. Thematically, the course will explore issues of race and gender, literacy and power, and changing conceptions of writing and literature.
2640.003: British Literature II
Remote Scheduled, MWF 0900-0950
Feroza Jussawalla, fjussawa@unm.edu
This course is a survey of the second half of British Literature from Wordsworth to the present. We will start from Wordsworth and the Romantic poets and make our way up the present postcolonial writers. We will read the five romantic poets, make our way up to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Passage to India. We will talk about colonialism and Postcoloniality. But we will just use the texts included in the Norton anthology. There will be two short reaction/response papers. And one longer research paper. The course will be a fun introduction to the periods that constitute the second half of British literature through videos and movies. My aim is to make you love the literature.
2650.001: World Literature I
Face-to-Face and Remote Scheduled, MWF 1200-1250
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu
World Literature I introduces students to a representative sample of influential works from a variety of the world’s traditions—from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, to Greece and Rome, China, India, Japan, Europe and the Americas. Readings range from The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Ramayana to The Tale of Genji, and Shakespeare’s Tempest. In addition to such key literary works, the course will also include some philosophical, historical, and cultural texts in order to place these works in their unique time and place. The aim is not only to gain a greater understanding of the development of literary forms and cultural traditions of the world, but also to put these diverse texts into conversation with each other in order to gain a sense of history and the varieties of human experience. Students will consider the ways in which literary works from these various cultures and historical periods relate to readers and the world today.
2660.001: World Literature II
Remote Scheduled, TR 1400-1515
Sarah Townsend, sltownse@unm.edu
If shady political deals are a sign of our time, they are also a well-traveled phenomenon. English 2660 will explore narratives about “deals with the devil” in world literature from the 17th century to the present. Why do devils, demons, goblins, and trickster figures appear so often in literature as emblems of modern compromise and corruption? What kinds of deals with the devil do characters strike in order to survive, and which kinds of deals destroy them in the end? Our readings will traverse the world: we will encounter fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction from Africa, Asia, the Arab world, Europe, and the Americas. Throughout the course we will ask the following questions: Why do the same kinds of stories appear in many different literary traditions across time and space? Do narratives travel from one site to another, or do similar forms and plots emerge independently in societies that find themselves on the brink of modernity?
Class assignments will invite students to think about how literature is produced, funded, sold, circulated, and adapted. We will read about early editions of books, and we will explore digital archives for historical items that will offer us a sense of the time and place in which our literary works were created. We will also try our hand at theatrical set design, publicity, and community reading projects. The course will culminate in a final adaptation project that will invite groups to adapt any course text into a play staged and set in contemporary New Mexico. By adopting roles including director, publicist, set designer, research historian, and business manager, students will consider the artistic, financial, and institutional forces that bring literature into the world.
304.001: Bible as Literature
Online
Kelly Van Andel, kvanande@unm.edu
This course 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
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1300-1350
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu
This course is designed to introduce students to a variety of mythological traditions from around the world. 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.
319.001: User-Centered Design & Usability
Online
Julianne Newmark Engberg, newmark@unm.edu
Study and practice high- and low-tech methods for testing usability of documents and products for safely and ethically serving audience needs. Students will create, analyze, and test, and will come to understand the foundational role that user-oriented design plays in the broader realm of technical and professional communication.
321.001: Intermediary Creative Writing Fiction
Remote Scheduled, TR 1400-1515
Daniel Mueller, dmueller@unm.edu
In ENGL 321/Intermediate Fiction Workshop, we’ll study published fiction and essays about writing fiction for a better understanding of narrative craft and strategy, write stories from a series of prompts and free writing exercises, and respond constructively to one another’s manuscripts through three important critical lenses: Structure, Character, and Style. By the end of the semester, students will have produced a portfolio of revised fiction suitable for submission to publishers. If you're serious about writing stories that readers will enjoy and recommend to others, this course is for you, and I look forward to working with you.
322.001: Intermediate Poetry Writing
Remote Scheduled, TR 1100-1215
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu
Caesura, enjambment, villanelle, pantoum, volta, ekphrasis, synecdoche, haibun. Poetic terminology is itself poem-worthy!
The ultimate aim of English 322 is to help you discover ways to shape your most meaningful content into well-constructed poems. Our writing assignments will promote creative discovery and output and will lead you to revise for clarity, brevity, and precision. Close readings of published poems will teach you to recognize basic techniques and poetic forms and, I hope, will inspire fresh, inventive work from you. This class will also introduce you to workshopping, in which you share your original poems with the entire class and offer constructive evaluations to help your classmates improve their work. To guide our discussions, we’ll be reading Kim Addonizio’s Ordinary Genius, as well as a diverse selection of contemporary poems from writers like Kaveh Akbar, Jericho Brown, Chen Chen, Franny Choi, Mark Doty, Stephen Dunn, Benjamin Garcia, Jennifer Givhan, Terrance Hayes, Jane Hirshfield, Ilya Kaminsky, Dana Levin, Ada Limon, Mary Oliver, Danez Smith, and many others. From the outset, you will be viewed as poets and readers who are here to learn through both work and play. You’ll do a lot of writing in this class (exercises, drafts, and revisions), as well as a lot of reading. At semester’s end, you will put together a portfolio showcasing your a thoughtfully revised body of original work that demonstrates your understanding of the content and craft of successful poems. An equally important goal is that you end the semester with a strong desire to keep writing and reading poetry.
Ours will be a remote scheduled class, which means we’ll have class over Zoom. I do not use Zoom meetings to lecture, but rather to supplement and clarify the learning you do in advance of our scheduled classes. Our class will thrive and prosper if you show up prepared to share your insights and questions and, of course, your writing
323.001: Intermediary Creative Writing Nonfiction: The Memoir
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1400-1450
Gregory Martin, gmartin@unm.edu
In this course, we will focus on one of the many forms of creative nonfiction – the memoir. We will read and study memoir both in its essay-length form and in its book-length form. In doing so, we will ask the questions: How is the memoir different from, and similar to, the novel? The short story? What makes the author of the memoir credible? What are the boundaries between truth and invention? What ethical obligations does the memoirist have to the real people who populate their stories, who in one sense will never become “characters.” Are these obligations different from the author’s obligations to the audience? All the while, we will be writing our own personal narratives—memoirs of our own, experimenting each week with low-stakes freewrites, exercises, and improvisations, and later choosing two of these pieces to expand upon and workshop together. The class will help you to build upon your understanding of prose craft and technique, and we will focus on the development of the "habit" of art, emphasizing process more than product, emphasizing exploration, risk taking, and pushing yourself to write in ways that you could not write before. In the beginning weeks of class, we will focus on generating material, experimenting with different craft techniques, creating the messy “stuff” out of which all good writing comes. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the ways that good writing is collaborative and that responding constructively to another’s work is an equally important skill, and as much an act of the imagination. One primary goal is to encourage you to write what is urgent and essential to who you are—to help you develop your writing persona, the character who is you, telling a story. Finally, I hope to debunk the myth of the artist. We all can participate in the making of art.
347.001: Viking Mythology
Remote Scheduled, TR 0930-1045
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu
This course is designed to comprehensively introduce students to Viking Mythology. It will cover Norse ideas about the creation of the world, the end of the world, and pretty much everything in between. Students should expect to read about Odin, Thor, Loki, and a host of other characters not so well-known today in addition to accounts of important events like the conversion to Christianity. Texts include, but are not limited to, The Elder/Poetic Edda, Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, and The Saga of the Volsungs. Moreover, students will learn about the culture(s) that produced these wonderful stories and their literary conventions. This course will foster a valuable familiarity with this important mythological tradition and expose students to a variety of methods of reading them. Assignments include a midterm, final, written assignments, and quizzes.
352.001: Early Shakespeare
Face-to-Face and Remote Scheduled, MWF 1000-1050
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu
This course covers the Elizabethan-era works of William Shakespeare, including drama and poetry. The course will focus on the various conventions of the sub-genres of comedy, tragedy and history as well as the epyllion. The student will gain familiarity with the early works of Shakespeare and an understanding of the Elizabethan theater as well as the importance of Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic innovations. Texts include: The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet and Venus and Adonis.
353.002: Later Shakespeare
Online
Marissa Greenberg, marissag@unm.edu
The Tempest, King Lear, Othello, Twelfth Night – Shakespeare wrote some of his most powerful and enduring works in the second half of his career. In this fully online course you will read, analyze, recite, and discuss a selection of Shakespeare’s later plays. You will use a variety of strategies to develop your knowledge and comprehension of the plays and the contexts of their composition, performance, and reception. Special attention will be paid to Shakespeare’s language on page and on stage.
354.001: Milton
Online
Marissa Greenberg, marissag@unm.edu
John Milton’s Paradise Lost holds a unique place in literary history. This epic retelling of Genesis, focusing on the falls of Satan, Adam, and Eve, brings together ancient tradition, Christian theology, and political ideology. Since its publication in 1667, Paradise Lost has influenced generations of artists, most recently Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman, and Ursula Le Guin. Not surprisingly, then, it remains a highly impactful and controversial poem. In this course, you will study Paradise Lost alongside Milton's other poetry and in the context of your own identity positions. Activities will include guided reading, independent and collaborative analysis, and caucus-based group discussions.
363.001: Nineteenth-Century Inter-American Literature: US, Latin America, Caribbean
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1000-1050
Bernadine Hernandez, berna18@unm.edu
From Walt Whitman’s influence on Latin American revolutionary poetics to the influence and affinities between Edgar Allan Poe and several writers of the Río de la Plata region—Argentina and Uruguay—of South America, this class will examine, interrogate, and analyze Nineteenth Century Inter-American Literatures between the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean, We will examine and interrogate how texts form, circulate, and mitigate by focusing on several zones of contact and discussing the ways in which major and minor genres - the novel, travel narratives, short stories, the captivity narrative, political essays, and poetry– knit the extended Americas together in complex narratives of interdependence. Focusing on how literature produces meaning through the interconnected relations of different sites in the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean. First, we will examine and interrogate the field of Inter-American literature and what is at stake in de-centering the U.S. Secondly, we will examine how the complexities of multilingualism, competing nationalisms/colonial powers, ethnic, and racial differentiations, migrations, and U.S. expansion and imperialism inform robust literary readings that take into consideration a literary history of culture, politics, production, and form. Author we will examine are Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Emily Dickenson, as well as political essays, poetry, periodicals, short stories in translation from Spanish authors. Students will produce weekly group meetings, reflections, a midterm and a final paper.
365.001: Chicano/a Cultural Studies
Remote Scheduled, TR 1230-1345
Jesse Alemán, jman@unm.edu
This course will focus on the emergence of X in Chicanx and Latinx literary and cultural studies. We’ll read blog posts, media pieces, and scholarly essays that call for, explain, or trouble the adoption of the X as it’s currently in circulation. However, we’ll also look at earlier appearances of the X to understand how it has traveled in our discursive histories, from its nineteenth-century use to signify anonymously authored texts by US Latinos to its adoption as the first rather than last letter of the words “Xicano” and “xicanisma,” in ostensible homage to our indigenous linguistic roots and routes. Spanning translation to transgender studies, the X has stood in for, resisted, or expressed through X-ing the intersectionality of gender, race, sexualities, languages, borders, bodies, and belongings that Chicanx and Latinx communities have crossed or crossed out for quite some time. This course will study these Stories of X to understand its long history in our cultural production and its resilience as a marker of presence in the face of absence.
Readings will include selected posts, media pieces, book chapters, and critical essays that engage the current use of “Chicanx” and “Latinx” as terms and concepts, as well as selections from creative pieces, including Loreta Janeta Velazquez’s The Woman in Battle, Ana Castillo’s Massacre of the Dreamers, Cherríe Moraga’s A Xicana Codex, Rigoberto González’s Butterfly Boy, Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, and poetry by Raquel Salas Rivera (to name only a few). Assignments include low-stakes discussion posts on Learn; brief (2pp) essays; and a longer final piece of our design.
387.001: T: Dreaming Different Worlds
Remote Scheduled, TR 1100-1330, 2H
March 23-May 6, 2021
Lisa D. Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for types of fiction that speculate on what might be. This kind of writing is based in speculation about the future: (science fiction) or the past (alternate history) to dreams of other worlds and times: (fantasy), or works that fall somewhere in between: magical realism and slipstream. In this 8-week class, we’ll read a variety of examples of short fiction being published now, and we’ll also examine the differences and similarities between the disparate works that fall into the category of speculative fiction.
387.002: T: Comics and Graphic Novels
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1100-1150
Jesus Costantino, jcostantino@unm.edu
From early twentieth-century strips to contemporary graphic novels, we will attempt in this course to identify what makes comics unique as a literary-visual medium. Comics appear in many national and cultural variations, across many languages and visual arts traditions, including American superhero comics, underground comix, Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées, midcentury pulp comics, and Japanese manga. As the course progresses, we will attempt—through a combination of historical study, textual analysis, and comics creation—to articulate what distinct social and political work comics might do.
By the end of the course, we will have developed a genealogy of the medium, a history of its contested legitimacy, and a sense for its close, often-tense relationship to other visual and literary mediums.
417.001: Editing
Online
Stephen 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.
418.001: Proposal and Grant Writing
Remote Scheduled, MWF 0900-0950
Andrew Bourelle, abourelle@unm.edu
In this course, students will learn about writing grant applications, business proposals, and other fundraising materials for nonprofit organizations or businesses. Topics covered will include how to find grants to go after, how to prepare a grant budget, how to write a convincing description or narrative of a problem that needs to be addressed, and how to present your proposal in the most rhetorically effective manner.
419.001: Visual Rhetoric
Online
Cristyn Elder, celder@unm.edu
Rhetoric refers to the strategic use of oral or written language to persuade people to believe or act in a particular way. Visual rhetoric, then, refers to the strategic use of the things we see around us in our everyday lives– whether at home, work, play, on campus, or in the community– to persuade people to believe or act in a particular way. Visual rhetoric can be a photo, a font style, the layout of a document, the design of a building, or a fashion choice, among other things, all with the intent to persuade. A lot of different aspects can influence how one person might interpret meaning from a single image. This means that different people may not be equally persuaded by or come to the same conclusion when viewing the same visual. In this course, we will explore the ways visuals around us are designed to persuade us so that we may be more aware of their effect. We will also spend time developing our own skills of persuasion through document design.
Our emphasis in this class will be on the ways visual rhetoric is used (by us and others) to advocate or “speak or write in favor of” others. The advocacy issue you choose to research and analyze should speak in favor of a historically vulnerable group.
This course will introduce you to the fundamentals of visual argumentation and will cover various aspects of document design, including layout, use of headings, typography, photos, illustrations, charts, tables, and graphs for both personal and professional contexts. The assignments for this course involve analyses of these aspects in real-world examples, the revision of a real-world text related to your chosen issue of advocacy, and the final creation of an advocacy document.
420.001: T: Blue Mesa Review
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1400-1450
Lisa Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu
Hey writers, if you want to learn more about literary publishing and how literary magazines work, this is the class for you! This class introduces you to the production of UNM’s national literary magazine, Blue Mesa Review. Your primary responsibility in this course is to assess submissions for possible publication in BMR. In addition, you’ll keep an informal journal about your reading, attend group discussion meetings, and write a few short papers. This class requires you to be self-motivating as the reading load is heavy, but you'll learn a lot about literary publishing in the process.
422.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1100-1150
Lisa Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu
Take your poetry to the next level! This advanced creative writing workshop in poetry will help you make your words shine. This class presupposes a certain understanding of the genre: ie. at least a basic understanding of the use of image, line, and form, but our goals will be to hone craft skills, try new styles and forms of poetry, and practice revision skills. We will read the work of published authors, including local poets, and focus on workshopping student poems.
424.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Script Writing
Online
Sharon Warner, swarner@unm.edu
Human beings are addicted to stories. Most of us recognize a good one when we hear it because we are literally wired to listen and learn. Writing a good story does not come nearly as naturally. Like all skills, it is acquired through engagement and energy. In this course, we will begin with an overview of traditional three-act structure. Over the course of the semester, we will address all the important issues of screenwriting: idea, structure, character, scene, dialogue and action. Students will learn about film and television screenplay structure and complete both a beat sheet and a short script. Those enrolled should expect to view clips from feature films, read at least one screenplay, and participate in small-group workshops.
444.001: Practicum: Tutoring Writing
Remote Scheduled, TR 1100-1215
Rachael Reynolds, reynoldsr@unm.edu
Discuss and analyze theories in the field of composition and pedagogy. Learn to develop a broad theoretical basis for helping others develop their writing skills, purpose, and voice, while also including practice in the field. Apply theory to real-life situations: students will be paired with online English students and will serve as tutors for these students.
451.002: T: Uppity Medieval Women
Face-to-Face and Remote Scheduled, R 1600-1830
Anita Obermeier, aobermei@unm.edu
This course examines medieval discourses about women and by women. Even though many dichotomous labels exist for women in the Middle Ages—such as saint and sinner, virgin and whore—these belie the variety of subcategories within the spheres of medieval women: handmaidens to God, virgin saints, mystics, anchoresses, trobairitz, courtly ladies, ethereal dolce stil nuovo women, bourgeois merchants, lovers, witches, writers, and fighters. The course explores female characters penned by male authors and works written by medieval women. Women in the Middle Ages can be “uppity” in a number of ways but especially through sword, pen, and sex. For instance, female authorship is a transgressive act. We examine the ways the writings of medieval women differ from works by men, both in British and continental literary texts. For the theoretical framework, we apply medieval authorship theories, ancient and medieval gender theories, and modern feminist approaches. Authors and texts may include, but are not limited to, Sappho, Ovid’s Heroides, trobaritz poetry, Lais of Marie de France, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, Julian of Norwich, Celtic Women, the Virgin Mary, Christina of Markyate, Margery Kempe, Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Silence, Chaucer, Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, The Condemnation Trial of Joan of Arc, and the Malleus Maleficarum. The class will be taught in the classroom and on Zoom simultaneously to accommodate all students’ needs.
457.001: Victorian Studies
Online
Gail Houston, ghouston@unm.edu
This course is an undergraduate senior level survey of British literature and culture of the Victorian period (1832-1901). We will read poetry, fiction, and drama, analyzing how writers responded to the dramatic social changes of their time. Guided by the preoccupations of Victorian writers, the course will focus on these themes:
- the Condition of England question (including issues of industrialization, capitalism, and class society more generally)
- the Woman Question
- the Crisis of Faith (faith and science)
- and Empire
462.001: American Realism and Naturalism
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1400-1450
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu
The cultural shocks of the late-nineteenth-century period initiated a series of divergent revolutions in writing and literary production. Authors of this era describe unprecedented economic inequality, urbanization and overcrowding; federal withdrawal from the South and the rise of Jim Crow; continued Westward expansionism and the development of American imperialism; the emerging visibility of women workers; and scientific and pseudoscientific discourses arising in the wake of Darwin. Each of the works we will read together examines the influences of environment, race, heredity, and gender on individual development. Gertrude Bonnin, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, and Helen Hunt Jackson protest U.S. expansion and its depredations upon indigenous and non-Anglo cultures. Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and Theodore Dreiser explore the conflicts of their own society through depictions of characters who most embody its values. W.E.B. DuBois, Jacob Riis, Louisa May Alcott, and Charles W. Chesnutt present writing as a form of activism; Abraham Cahan and Sui Sin Far describe the cultural erasure involved in “Americanization” as they help develop the genre known as the immigrant novel. This period is strangely resonant with our own, and while we’ll explore those parallels, we’ll also emphasize the ways that these writers need to be understood on their own terms. Students will be evaluated on a 12-14 page researched final paper and a series of shorter informal responses.
472.001: Contemporary Literature: Undocumented Authors
Remote Scheduled, MWF 1300-1350
Bernadine Hernandez, berna18@unm.edu
What does the word “undocumented” mean to the lives of 10.7 million people in the United States? What does it mean to be undocumented in the United States but simultaneously documented through genre, form, and other devices? In other words, what does it mean to document the undocumented? This class examines the multifaceted narratives by undocumented authors. We are living in a time where the asylum laws are changing by the day and immigration discourse is included in every political discussion we have. According to the World Migration Report, the United States was the top recipient of asylum claims, with 254,300 new asylum applications in 2020. Meanwhile, the asylum laws have shifted, where credible fear interviews are harder to pass, the US is denying asylum without a hearing, and the US is penalizing applicants for “frivolous” claims. With the literal law against undocumented people, this class aims to interrogate the documentation process by migrants that takes seriously poetics, form, genre, and how methods of documentation are utilized in narratives to form subjectivity. Students are to take the “authors” portion of the class loosely, as we will be examining mainly written narrative, but will also be looking at artistic authored expression (visual art, film, performance art). Some novels, memoirs, and poetry we will be examining are Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans (Ecuador), Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers: A Memoir (Filipino), Alan Pelaez Lopez’s To Love and Mourn in the Age of Displacement (Mexico), Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Children of the Land (Mexico), Javier Zamora Unaccomapnied (El Salvador), Melissa Rivero’s The Affiairs of the Falcons: A Novel (Peru), Yosimar Reyes’ For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly (Mexico), and Porochista Khakpour’s The Last Illusion (Iran). We will be looking at Culture Strikes Undocuwriting (Online Writing), Flowers on the Inside (Visual Project), Guadalupe Maravilla (Performance Art), and Lecciones para Zafirah (film). You will have weekly group meetings, reflections, a midterm and a final paper.
