Fall 2021 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 or Lobo Course Placement English Placement Tool = 20 or WritePlacer = 6-8.

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  =<449 or ACCUPLACER Sentence Skills =<278 or Lobo Course Placement English Placement Tool = 10 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 or Lobo Course Placement English Placement Tool = 30

1410.001: Introduction to Literature

Face to Face WF, Remote Scheduled M, MWF 1300-1350
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu

The primary objective of this course is to develop a greater understanding of and increased enjoyment from literature. To this end, our class will use Afrofuturistic and Latinxfuturistic literature to learn how to read literature. Since this is a class designed for non-English majors, our class will introduce us to the genre of Afrofuturistic and Latinxfuturistic literature and then deploy this lit to explore different strategies for reading literature. We will also learn effective practices for writing about literature that are appropriate for an introductory level course.

1410.004: Introduction to Literature

Online
Sarah Worland, sworland@unm.edu

This course is an introduction to the study of literature through the American Literature canon. We will survey the development of U.S. literary history from the end of the Civil War (1865) to the present as we examine a diverse scope of authors and major literary movements, styles, and forms in the development of the nation.  We will be looking at the major literary movements and consider texts in the context of realism, naturalism, regionalism, modernism, the Harlem Renaissance postmodernism, and the contemporary novel. We will be asking: Why does literature matter? And more importantly, how does literature shape a nation? We will be looking closely at literary device, genre, literary movement, and technique as we span the late nineteenth-century into our contemporary moment.   

200-Level

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

2110.002: Traditional Grammar

Face to Face MF, Remote Scheduled W, 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: Say It Loud: Popular Music and Social Issues

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled Friday, MWF 900-950
Amanda Kooser, amandakooser@unm.edu

From The Boss to Beyoncé and Dylan to Public Enemy, popular music has spoken out on the social issues of our time. This writing-focused course will engage with those messages and their contexts through a multimodal exploration of music, history, and visual imagery. Major assignments will include a personal musical narrative and a genre analysis of a music video. Potential topics could range from BLM to war to women’s movements to mental health. The course will culminate in a research project that investigates a social issue, popular music’s response to it, and the cultural context surrounding it.

2120.002: Intermediate Composition: Damn the Man: Dystopian Societies in YA, Comics, and Film 

Face to Face WF, Remote Scheduled M, MWF 1100-1150
Alyssa Covarrubias-Powell, acovarrubias@unm.edu

This course will explore the dystopian genre through non-traditional mediums. The idea of dystopian societies is so often explored through works like Fahrenheit 451 and The Giver. However, as we continue to develop different mediums (new genres of literature, video games, comics, etc.), our idea of a dystopia must develop with them. This course aims to explore the ever-changing depiction of dystopian societies and their real-world basis through modern works such as Children of Blood and Bone, Vampirella, and Pacific Rim. This course hopes to discover the root of what it means to exist in a dystopia.

2120.003: Intermediate Composition: Monster and Monstrosity: The Rhetoric of the Monstrous

Face to Face MF, Remote Scheduled W, MWF 1200-1250
Aspyn Maes, amaes97@unm.edu

The word monster and all that it entails is both whimsical and sinister, but what does it mean to be a monster? This course is going to set out to find an answer; we will study the rhetoric of literary monsters and how it emerges in the most unexpected places. Monsters are not just things that go bump in the night, but literary weapons that are used and abused throughout history. Students will improve their critical writing and analysis skills through assignments such as a research essay, a literary analysis, and creative multimodal projects—all of which pertain to monsters!

2120.004: Intermediate Composition: Writing Magical Realism

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled Friday, MWF 1300-1350
Jennifer Tubbs, jtubbs@unm.edu

From its inception with the works of Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez, magical realism has tackled important cultural and political questions. Today, magical realism has metamorphosed into a genre-bending creature that blends both tradition and innovation. However, the end result remains the same: literature that challenges and explodes the status quo. In this course, we will examine contemporary magical realist texts that comment on such germane topics as immigration, climate change, and the quest for self-identity. Major writing assignments will include an author profile and a textual analysis. The course will culminate with students’ own creative work of magical realist fiction.

2120.005: Intermediate Composition: Women Writing Women: A Study of Literature & Film the 19th Century & Beyond

Face to Face T, Remote Scheduled R, TR 1400-1515

Haley Bonner, bonnerh@unm.edu

This course engages a variety of American women authors and film directors. It aims to introduce several genres and styles, and treat the historical markers of these texts/films in American women’s history. A primary focus of the course will be themes identified through the lens of gender. We will explore and discuss the binaries, images, and symbols these authors/directors use to create female narratives, agencies, and mobility.

Among other things, this course will help you to advance your knowledge of and practice in expository writing, by asking you to employ rhetorical analysis, to conduct research, and to compose documents that meet the needs of your audience.

2120.007: Intermediate Composition: Intersectional Fear and Horror

Face to Face R, Remote Scheduled T, TR 1100-1215
Anja Sanchez, anjasanc@unm.edu

Representing fear in pop culture does more than entertain, because the fears we form and how we do so makes a comment on the contemporary culture and context. Popular American ideas of fear or horror/thriller genres have perpetuated representations that exclude people of color, which reveals something about America within itself. This class will study film and literature including fear in horror/thriller genres within other countries to understand cultural fears, as well as within minority groups in the Americas, to understand how we form our fears and the factors, like race or gender, that influence them.

2120.008: Intermediate Composition: All the World on a Page: Representations of Nature in Literature and Media

Face to Face T, Remote Scheduled R, TR 1230-1345
Carly Heindenfeld, cheidenfeld@unm.edu

In this class we will explore the evolution and importance of nature writing as an interdisciplinary genre with real world implications. Students will be asked to analyze nature writing from Thoreau to present day digital magazines in terms of the pieces’ purposes, audiences, etc. Students will also be expected to create their own pieces of “nature writing” in the form of blogs, journalistic essays, or other creative avenues of writing based on rhetorical situations specific to their own academic and career interests. By gathering and analyzing others’ content while inventing their own content, students will develop writing skills to transcend the composition classroom.

2120.009: Intermediate Composition: Expository Writing: More than a Game, You Can’t Just Stick to Sports

Face to Face R, Remote Scheduled T, TR 0930-1045
Ruben Miranda-Juarez, rmirand6@unm.edu

In this course we will see examine football (soccer) to observe how the sport gives us insight into who we are as global community, and how our identities travel with us to stadiums across the world. We will examine the works of Natalie Diaz, Kiese Laymon, Juan Villoro, and Eduardo Galeano in order to see the way sports impacts lives, spaces, politics, and identity. We will use a film, stories, and guide our understanding and our research into sports and their contributions to our social fabric. Students’ in this class will model research, compose, and present through the methods observed in the primary and secondary texts in the class.

2120.021: Intermediate Composition: Shouting into the Void: Confronting Archival Silence with Creative Writing

Online
Mikaela Osler, mosler@unm.edu

Archival research is thrilling; the researcher plumbs the dusty depths of long-forgotten documents to find and create new truths. But decisions about what gets stored in an archive are far from apolitical, and in many archives the histories of marginalized communities are often obscured or absent. In this course, students will try out traditional archival research through a research paper, and then will explore how creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and multimodal artwork can fill in the archive’s gaps. The course culminates with a hybrid-genre, multimodal and/or multilingual project in which students create their own archive.

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.

Course description video

2220.002: Intro to Professional Writing

Online, 2H
Julie Newmark, newmark@unm.edu

This is an online, Second-Half, 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 expository writing 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, emails, presentations, and white paper reports. In addition, this class will serve as an introduction to the field of professional communication, and will educate you about the history of Scientific and Technical Communication (S&TC), about career options in TC 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. A key component of this online course will be engagement with and observation of professionals working as technical communicators in workplace settings. 

2240.001: Intro to Studies in English

Face to Face, 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.

2240.002: Intro to Studies in English

Remote Scheduled, W 1300-1350, 2H
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: Intro to Creative Writing

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 1300-1350
Tyler Mortensen-Hayes, tmortensenhayes@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.

2310.002: Intro to Creative Writing

Face to Face T, Remote Scheduled R, TR 1100-1215
Cyrus Stuvland, cstuvland@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

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

Face to Face T, Remote Scheduled R, TR 1230-1345
Bernadine Hernández, berna18@unm.edu

How might literature and other types of texts contribute to our understanding of the issues and discourses around us? How do we read, write, and think in a “literary” way? In other words, what does a major in literature do? We’ll address questions like these in this course that introduces English majors to literary techniques and conventions in order to deepen our understanding of literary thinking and literary writing. Through class discussions, question-forming and question-asking, written assignments, research projects, and writing workshops, we’ll work together to first identify the key components of the literary analysis and then assemble these pieces to compose our own literary analyses of a variety of texts (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc.) from authors like Toni Morrison, Gertrude Stein, Charles Bernstein, and James Baldwin, among others.

2510.002: Analysis of Literature

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 1000-1050
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, mviz@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. 

2560.001: Introduction to Native American Literature

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 1400-1450

Sarah Hernandez, hernands@unm.edu

This course is designed to introduce students to early and contemporary Native American literatures. In the United States, there are currently 574 federally-recognized tribes, each with their own unique cultures, languages, histories, and literary traditions. Obviously, we cannot cover the creative works of all of these different tribal groups and indigenous communities in one class. Special emphasis is placed on Southwest literatures. This semester we will read books, short stories and poetry by Diné writers Esther Belin, Sherwin Bitsui, Luci Tapahonso, Laura Tohe, Jack Skeets, and many more. Students will also have the exciting opportunity this semester to attend a poetry reading and discuss the work of U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Creek).

2610.001: American Literature I

Face to Face T, Remote Scheduled R, TR 1100-1215
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

In this class we will read key texts 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 social structures and notions of individual purpose. Mary Rowlandson’s narrative of her captivity by the Narragansett, and the contradictions between Mattaponi oral history and long-standing American mythologies of the life of Pocahontas, remind us of the ideological and personal violence at the foundation of our nation. Hannah Foster’s The Coquette, a bestseller when it was first published in 1797, suggests that ideals of personal self-determination reflected in Revolutionary rhetoric depend upon assumptions about gender and class. African American author-activists of the period call out the profound hypocrisies represented by the continuation of the slave trade. 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 cultural norms. An emphasis on historical and political context will enable us to explore the extraordinary differences among these textual representations, and will allow us better to understand the ways that this tumultuous time inaugurates the struggles of the nineteenth century.

2620.002: American Literature II

Face to Face T, Remote Scheduled R, TR 0930-1045
Bernadine Hernández, berna18@unm.edu

In this course, we will survey the development of U.S. literary history from the end of the Civil War (1865) to the present as we examine a diverse scope of authors and major literary movements, styles, and forms in the development of the nation. We will be looking at the major literary movements and consider texts in the context of new poetics, realism, naturalism, modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, postmodernism, creative non-fiction and the contemporary and neo-slave novel. We will also link historical moments, such as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the World Wars, and the Civil Rights Movement to literary styles, genres, and movements. Simultaneously, as we attempt to understand the characteristic and importance of each movement, we will also examine that many authors and texts resist easy categorization and what literary innovations they use to comment and respond to a changing nation. Additionally, we will look at how processes of differentiation, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality manifest throughout American history.  Over the course of the semester, we will be supplementing and complementing our readings and discussions of later American literature in two ways: first, to think about this literature within a larger cultural context, we will look at it alongside other media from the period, including film, music, and art. Additionally, we will incorporate digital tools for literary and cultural study as a way of interpreting American literature of this period.

2630.001: British Literature I

Face to Face MF, Remote Scheduled W, MWF 1200-1250
Jessie Bonafede, jkbonafede@unm.edu

Welcome to English 2630 and get ready to embark on a journey through a survey of British literature from the early Middle Ages to the close of the 18th century. In this course we will explore intersections of literary expression, authorship, and audience by focusing on thematic trends such as heroism and monstrosity, power and authority, as well as gender and ethnic/racial identity. From warrior kings to murderous queens, the Round Table, witches, werewolves, and devilish deals, just to list a few, the readings for this class are packed with intrigue. In addition to analyzing key textual features, this class will also examine the importance of the historical and cultural milieus from which these texts spawn. Furthermore, this class will provide you with important skills to hone your literary analysis and arguments, as well as your comfortability engaging with the earliest parts of British literary history. Class assignments will range from weekly readings, class activities, essays, and multi-media projects. I believe that learning works best with careful reflection, and both your peers and I are a valuable resource, so participation is key. In my class, the goal is to practice and grow, not to get it perfect, so try your best and take some risks as together we delve into a rich trove of fantastic tales. 

2640.001: British Literature II

Online
Katherine Alexander, kalex@unm.edu

2650.001: World Literature I: On Hate, Race, and Restorative Justice 

Face to Face MF, Remote Scheduled W, MWF 1100-1150
Nahir Otaño Gracia, nahir@unm.edu

In this course, students will read representative world masterpieces from ancient, medieval, and Renaissance literature. Students will broaden their understanding of literature and their knowledge of other cultures through exploration of how literature represents individuals, ideas and customs of world cultures. The course focuses strongly on examining the ways literature and culture intersect and define each other. Meets New Mexico Lower-Division General Education Common Core Curriculum Area V: Humanities and Fine Arts.

A general overview of early world literature and culture with a focus on the themes of Hate and Restorative Justice. Readings will include all or parts of such works as the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Ramayana, The Tale of Genji; selections from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Bhagavad Gita, and Qur’an; plays by Aeschylus and Kalidasa; poetry by Sappho, Li Bai, Ono no Komachi, Ibn Hazm, and Farid ud-dun Attar, among others. Our ambitious goal is to investigate texts from China, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Japan, Persia, Arabia, India, and the Americas by exploring how and if the texts move away from ideologies that produce hate to a system of restorative Justice. Through this mode of study, we will gain a sense of the differences and similarities that shape the varieties of human experience across time and cultures. We will also explore how the globalization of colonization affects our understanding of early world literature and how to decenter a Western gaze in the study of the past.

2660.001: World Literature II

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 1300-1350
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.

300-Level

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

304.002: 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

Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
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.

306.001: Arthurian Legend and Romance

Face to Face, TR 1530-1645
Anita Obermeier, aobermei@unm.edu

Course Flyer

The Arthurian Legend has been the single most prolific literary motif in Western literature. This course will investigate this enduring strength and attraction of Arthurian legends from their pan-European beginnings in the medieval period to contemporary literature, popular culture, and film. We will read masterpieces from the Celtic tradition, Chrétien de Troyes, the French Lancelot-Grail Cycle, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Naomi Mitchison, and others. This way, we can observe how each version serves a new authorial, political, or cultural agenda—whether it is to establish a national foundation myth, to endorse specific religious values, to revive medieval values in an industrial age, or to challenge gender stereotypes in modern times. We will also focus on the evolution of other important Arthurian characters, such as Gawain, Tristan, Perceval, Morgan le Fay, Galahad, Merlin, Lancelot, and Guinevere.

The class will be taught in the classroom, but students can also be Zoomed if need be.

320.001: Advanced Expository Writing

Face to Face WF, Remote Scheduled M, MWF 1100-1150
Bethany Davila, bdavila@unm.edu

Course Flyer

How can the phrase “I’m sorry” function as an apology and a refusal to accept responsibility? How do we communicate “no” without ever saying the word? When does the word family work to deny human rights? In this course students will explore the relationship between language and meaning, focusing on the ways that language shapes social worlds and identities.

Course assignments include weekly readings and informal writing and three major assignments: an exploration of a particular value through language; a rhetorical analysis or discourse analysis of a text; and a multimodal project on the relationship between language and meaning. Students will be able to choose areas of interest to them for the writing projects.

Because this is a writing course, we will spend a lot of time discussing writing, examining writing, and producing writing. You will draft and revise and workshop all of your writing. As such, writing and reading workshop drafts will be a significant portion of the work of the class.

321.002: Intermediate Creative Writing – Fiction

Online
Julie Shigekuni, jshig@unm.edu

This online course will focus on the close reading of and experimentation in the writing of short fiction with an emphasis on voice: How it is created by published authors, and how does it emerge in your work? 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. 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. You will read stories along with notes on craft by well-known authors with the intention of better understanding how stories are made; you will then turn what you know into a fully-developed story. The point of the course is play--to imagine and explore what is possible in your writing. 

322.001: Intermediate Creative Writing – Poetry

Face to Face WF, Remote Scheduled M, MWF 1400-1450
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@unm.edu

We will discuss contemporary poetry as well as write it. In addition to writing poetry and reading it, we will critique student work and discuss issues related to publication. 

323.001: Intermediate Creative Writing – Nonfiction

Face to Face T, Remote Scheduled R, TR 0900-1045
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu

This intermediate creative nonfiction course will introduce you to the many possibilities of the genre, with emphasis on memoir and the personal essay. Your writing assignments will encourage you to draw from past experiences and passions, as well as current interests and observations. You will read published pieces that model the subgenres and do short exercises to practice various craft elements and generate material for full-length works. You also will draft, workshop, and revise your own literary-quality essays. Class discussions will cover elements of craft, naturally, but also the special kinds of responsibility that fall on writers of nonfiction.

Ours will be a hybrid class, so we'll meet on campus on Tuesdays and over Zoom on Thursdays. We'll use the anthology Contemporary Creative Nonfiction by Debra Monroe. Please feel free to email me with questions.

348.001: T: Medieval Evil

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 0900-0950
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

Evil encapsulates the most fundamental problems any culture faces: suffering, injustice, and the meaning of human life. The medieval conceptions and depictions of evil and transgression remain quiet assumptions in modern life, and this class will explore those conceptions and depictions as expressed in medieval literature, art, and thought. We will read of demons fighting saints, explore medieval heresies, examine illuminated manuscripts, unpack views of magic and witchcraft, immerse ourselves in Dante’s Inferno, and end with the the fantastic paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and the transformative, post-medieval depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost.

352.010: Early Shakespeare

TR 1230-1345
Carmen Nocentelli, nocent@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

Online
Marissa Greenberg, marissag@unm.edu

Why read Shakespeare in 21st-century America? What could the plays of a white, English playwright whose been dead for over 400 years possibly say to us, here and now? In this fully asynchronous online course, you will formulate your own answers to these questions. You will read, analyze, and discuss a selection of Shakespeare’s later plays, including Othello, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and Measure for Measure. These plays reflect on issues—racism, misogyny, settler colonialism, and sexual harassment, to name a few—still relevant to modern-day audiences. Unique course content and activities will promote your understanding of the contexts of Shakespearean theatrical composition, performance, and reception and invite your critical and personal responses to the plays. Special attention will be paid to Shakespeare’s sensorial language, and students who have experienced trauma should be aware that the plays include potentially triggering content.

366.001: African-American Literature II

Face to Face R, Remote Scheduled T, TR 1100-1215
Finnie Coleman, coleman@unm.edu

In this course, we explore literature produced during three “middle” periods or epochs in African American cultural history; the 40-year period from the end of the Harlem Renaissance through the end of the Black Arts and Black Power movements. The four decades between 1935 and 1975, are easily some of the most tumultuous decades in world history. The economic ravages of the Great Depression, the rise of Naziism, World War II, the Korean War, desegregation of public schools in America, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, Blaxploitation, and the Vietnam War, punctuate this period. We will begin this course with Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). From Hurston we will move on to short stories by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison’s iconic novel Invisible Man (1952), and the later poetry and short stories of Langston Hughes. We will visit James Baldwin and his works of fiction before delving into the work of Black Arts icons Haki Madhabuti, Yusef Komunyaka, nikki giovanni, the Last Poets, and Gil Scott Heron. Throughout the course, we will read literature that helps us to understand world and national events with a bit more clarity. At every opportunity, we will discuss ways in which we might recruit the metanarratives of yesterday to help us to make sense of mutations and permutations in racism and privilege in our own “tumultuous” historical moment. We will explore African American religious traditions, Jim Crow laws, segregation, Black nationalism, lynching, American racial irredentism and the ethnogenesis of White Supremacy, and the struggle for civil rights all while teasing out the complex cultural politics of Black communities, the nuances of Black identity development, and the many intriguing themes that circulated in African American literature during this turbulent but fecund period in American and World history.

368.001: T: New Wave Sci Fi

Online, 2H
Matthew Hofer, mrh@unm.edu

***This 2H course in New Wave SciFi is scheduled for the SECOND eight weeks of Fall 2021***

The dates for this interdisciplinary analysis of the fantasy and reality of space travel — 1955 to 1980 — effectively span the period from the planning of the satellite Sputnik I to the first successful flight of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia. Grounded in literature, film, music, history, and philosophy, the course is based on widespread notions of science “fiction” (which is, of course, not limited to prose) becoming thinkable possibility, even “fact.” Beginning after the so-called Golden Age of science fiction and stopping before the rise of Cyberpunk, it adopts the New Wave focus on the person holding the “gizmo” rather than the oddness of the “gizmo” itself. In terms of critical thinking, its overarching objective is to address in critical, historical, and conceptual contexts the extension of modernist aesthetic innovation into a multi-generic proto-postmodernism that asks meaningful questions about forms of human discovery. Our key themes turn on ideas of normativity and difference, including representation, reality, freedom, authority, and, especially, the self & the other.

There are no prerequisites for this course, and no formal knowledge of literary criticism, history, or theory is required in order to be successful in it.

400-Level

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

410.001: Criticism and Theory

Face to Face W, Remote Scheduled M, MW 1600-1715
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu

This theory course, titled “Bad Feminist,” focuses exclusively on intersectionality and other intersectional feminist manifestations. In this course, we’ll work toward understanding a variety of feminist criticisms and theories that are in conversation with or developed out of intersectionality. We will consider how intersectionality offers innovative ways  to view, theorize, and understand contemporary women’s lives, culture(s), politics, and experiences. Our course will introduce us to some of the major intersectional thinkers and scholars, such as Roxanne Gay, Brittany Cooper, Maya Bailey, and, of course, Kimberelé Crenshaw.

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.

418.001: Proposal and Grant Writing

Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
Chuck Paine, cpaine@unm.edu

In this course, you will learn how to write persuasive grant proposals. Drawing off the principles of rhetorical analysis, you will learn how to develop a clear statement of need, offer achievable objectives, design logical step-by-step plans, create specific and accurate budgets, and present your organization powerfully. We will explore how to locate appropriate funding opportunities and how to evaluate requests for proposals. We will also discuss methods of writing persuasively that are both ethical and effective, and study how to use document design to create a professional proposal package.

Because proposal writing is not a solitary task, but rather a process of working with others to identify needs, locate opportunities, and develop persuasive solutions, it is helpful to understand how the process works in the real world. To accomplish this need for real world experience, the major project for the course will be to write a real proposal by working with a local organization in a service learning experience.

 

420.002: T: Writing with Classical Tropes

Face to Face, TR 1200-1345
Chuck Paine, cpaine@unm.edu

The Ancient Greeks developed a vast set of tools for investigating how words work, how language succeeds or fails to inform, delight, and persuade. This course focuses on one set of communication strategies—rhetorical tropes and schemes, what they are and what they can do for and to us. You’ll learn and practice strategies that will allow you to write more clearly and with grace and even pizzazz. Before long, you’ll be seeing tropes and schemes everywhere, you’ll be consciously using in your own writing. Some low-stakes quizzes, and five or six short papers.

421.002: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Fiction

Face to Face WF, Remote Scheduled M, MWF 1300-1350
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@unm.edu

We will learn techniques of fiction writing, as well as workshopping student work. Students will read contemporary fiction, as well as discussing publication.

423.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Nonfiction

Face to Face R, Remote Scheduled T, TR 1100-1215
Greg Martin, gmartin@unm.edu

The Blurred Boundaries workshop is a course for creative writers about “unclassifiable” literature, works that intentionally challenge genre conventions and that bookstores and libraries don’t quite know where to shelve. What kind of book is this? Is this memoir or fiction? Is this an essay or a prose poem? This is a workshop and craft seminar which explores the space between genres, investigating the boundaries between “truth” and “invention”, the space between journalism and memoir, between nonfiction and fiction, between the lyric and associative construction of poetry and the personal essay. Course readings will include novels, memoirs, short stories, personal essays, and prose poems as well as essays and interviews on craft. We will look at how writers, implicitly and explicitly, manipulate the reader’s desire for "literal” truth and the relative safety of the categories and conventions of genre. The course is also practical. Each week we ask the questions: How was this made? How does this work? What is its design? What are its organizing principles? How does an understanding of its construction shape my own work? We will come to understand the “moving parts” of stories and essays in much the same way a mechanic understands the parts of an engine. Along with discussion of published work, throughout the semester, we will be doing our own low-stakes, improvisatory creative writing exercises, which over the course of the semester will lead to the construction of the student’s own blurred boundary piece, which we will workshop together and will then be revised once more for the final project.

447.001: Introduction to Old English

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 1000-1050
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

Hwæt! In this class, we will return to the earliest recorded form of English and read some of the oldest literature ever composed in the language. We will begin the semester learning the grammar of Old English while working through introductory passages in their original form. We will then move on to reading Beowulf! No prior knowledge of Old English required.

459.001: Irish Literature

Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 1400-1450
Sarah Townsend, sltownse@unm.edu

This course will explore race and whiteness in 20th- and 21st-century Irish literature. Since the 1990s, Ireland has seen a significant number of immigrants and asylum seekers arrive to the country. Today a sizeable population of racial and ethnic minorities live in Ireland. These changes have given rise to two very interesting but incorrect claims: 1) that until recently, the Irish could not have been racist because there were no people of color living there, and 2) that the Irish are naturally anti-racist because they were also treated poorly by British colonizers at home and by Americans when they first arrived as immigrants to the U.S. This class will explore both of those ideas through readings and discussions of Irish fiction, drama, and literary criticism, as well as through historical and archival research. We will see how the Irish were portrayed as an inferior race by the British prior to Ireland’s independence, and we will see those same people “become white” (or more precisely, use and abuse the advantages of their whiteness) upon arrival to the United States. We will also see how Irish nationalists perpetuated narrow definitions of Irishness in their nation-building efforts, and we will examine how the Irish have imagined and treated various “Others” like the itinerant ethnic group called Travellers, Jews, Muslims, and the more recent wave of immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe (often called the “New Irish”). Most excitingly, we will read a number of literary works by young contemporary Irish writers of color who are changing the conversation about race and belonging. You’ll be guided throughout the semester by a Korean-American Irish literature professor and recently naturalized Irish citizen who is trying to make sense of what that means.

461.001: American Romanticism

Face to Face R, Remote Scheduled T, TR 1230-1345
Jesse Alemán, jman@unm.edu

This course situates American Romanticism as one of many literary and social movements that took place during the American renaissance, a period spanning the 1830s to the end of the US Civil War. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville tend to dominate our understanding of this period, but we’ll situate their romanticism alongside concurrent movements, such as abolitionism, expansionism, feminism, and capitalism, to understand the era as a true burgeoning of competing literary and cultural shifts that gave rise to different genres and alternative visions of the nation’s development. We’ll approach American Romanticism, in other words, through the problems of slavery and race, contact and coloniality, gender and separate spheres, and the uneven industrial economies that form the backdrop of canonical writings of the time. Students will gain a general understanding of the most foundational moment of American literary production, and students will also encounter a diversity of readings that include canonical and non-canonical writers, selected for specialists and generalists interested in the emergence of essays, short stories, and novel as genres of American literary culture. 

[This is a Face-to-Face Plus class: it meets remotely on Tuesdays, from 12:30-1:45, and face-to-face on Thursdays, 12:30-1:45. Please understand that the face-to-face mode of the class might change if conditions warrant. ]

499.001: Professional Writing Internship Seminar

Online
Andrew Bourelle, abourelle@unm.edu

Ever wonder what you're going to do with your English degree?

This course will prepare you for a career in professional writing and/or editing outside the academy by allowing you to gain hands-on, real-world experience in an internship while receiving course credit. Students are responsible for securing their own internships. However, the instructor will help by providing names and contact information for various businesses and organizations that have offered internships in the past. What this means is that you can come to the class with an internship already lined up or you can go ahead and enroll and the instructor will help you find an internship that is right for you.

English 499 fulfills a requirement for the English Department's Professional and Technical Writing Certificate. However, the class is open to all English majors and minors, as well as any UNM student interested in gaining experience writing or editing.