Course Descriptions Fall 2022
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: The Way We Read Now
Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
Jesús Costantino, jcostantino@unm.edu
This course examines recent literature from authors writing in and from the United States. It also introduces core skills in literary analysis, library research, and critical writing. Across the semester, you will learn the fundamental skills and concepts of the study of literature, and you will apply them to very recently published literary works. Through discussion and written work, you will produce, distill, and refine meaning from these works and attempt to characterize some of the interests and features of American literature in the present.
This course also takes a unique approach to contemporary literature. While the ultimate goal for the course is to read and understand the concerns and styles of present-day writers, the course also recognizes that “literary production” happens in many varied forms beyond printed books, and even beyond digital e-books. The frequent opposition between print and digital reading disguises the important ways that each format has grown increasingly heterogeneous. There is no overt “theme” that unites these texts; instead, you will work to identify and describe the ways in which these books reflect, resist, and absorb present-day political and social environments. You will be tasked with making sense of the material objects (like books or libraries) and the virtual platforms (like digital libraries or podcast apps) that house what we continue to call "literature." By the end of the course, you will have developed an informed understanding of the unique authority and interventions of contemporary American literature.
1410.004: Introduction to Literature
Online
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 contemporary Caribbean literature to learn how to read literature. Since this is a class designed for non-English majors, our class will introduce us to different literary genres and themes; different strategies for reading literature; and effective practices for writing about literature that are appropriate for an introductory level course.
200-Level
100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level
2110.001: Traditional Grammar
Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950
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: Sketching Out the Narrative: Exploring Exposition in Graphic Novels
Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950
Ashley Bernardo, abernardo@unm.edu
Comic books, manga, and graphic novels have long captured the imagination of young and old readers alike. But what does it take to make a cohesive story out of drawn images? What imaginative leaps must occur between the "gutters" of the panels, and what tools must authors rely upon? What choices go into the art style of the piece? Why chose the medium of a graphic novel over a "traditional" novel? In this course, we will investigate the composition of graphic novels, discover the tools used in these pieces, and trace the evolution of graphic novels from pulp fiction to Pulitzer Prize winners.
2120.002: Intermediate Composition: Story Garden
Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Emily Graves, emgraves111@unm.edu
In Story Garden 2120, we center thoughtful community-engaged pedagogy—hands-on, research-based approaches to reading, writing, and creating—aimed at generating real positive change in communities. Intended for public libraries and schools, "real" Story Gardens are small, curated spaces with intentional choices of food and medicinal plants specific to the place, cultures, and needs of both the region and students who write, read, and learn in them. Plants, their significance to place, culture, and history, weave our class together. Ultimately, each student will create a site-specific curriculum for a hypothetical Story Garden, along with a proposal and funding appeal letter that can be used "IRL"!
2120.003: Intermediate Composition: In Search of Meaning: Existentialist, Pessimist, and Absurdist Literature
Face to Face, MWF 1200-1250
Alex Henkle, ahenkle1@unm.edu
From Job to Jaden Smith, the question of life’s meaning has plagued literature and philosophy. Will we ever know how to achieve that goal of "living the good life"? What is man’s essence? Students will read a variety of literature across times and cultures which aims to investigate these difficult questions. They will learn to write on these subjects, as well. Whether students will emerge with "the answer" is unclear, but the search itself will bring an aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual understanding of the questions keeping everyone up at night in spiteful angst and, perhaps, poetic contemplation.
2120.004: Intermediate Composition:Disposability and Throwaway Bodies in African American, Native American, and Chicana/o Texts
Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Brandy Reeves, breeves2@unm.edu
Judith Butler states that "women and minorities, including sexual minorities, are, as a community, subjected to violence, exposed to its possibility, if not its realization. This means that each of us is constituted politically in part by virtue of the social vulnerability, as a site of publicity at once assertive and exposed" (20). The concept of disposability and throwaway of "other" bodies in American culture is a biproduct of social vulnerability and determines what bodies are disposable and throwaway. Building on this theory, this course will examine how American texts show "otherness" that seek to dismantle popular images of American life, society, and culture. We will utilize an historical framework to investigate the production of racial identities and the creation of the "other" in American culture. We will start by first defining "otherness" in an American socio-historical context before examining the contemporary works of African American, Chicana/o, and Native American to examine the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class as it relates to what makes an individual "other" in American culture and society. We will answer the question: how do these texts shows a version of American life that did not fit the traditional view of the American experience? How do they challenge the dominant ideological view of what it means to be the other in the United States? How do these dominant views create the circumstance for these other bodies to be disposable?
2120.005: Intermediate Composition: Of Monsters and Men: A Rhetorical Debunk of Human Nature
Face to Face, TR 1400-1515Laura Anderson, lauraanders@unm.edu
Hollywood’s depiction of the monster rarely reflects real monsters of society. Who are these societal monsters and how does their role expose the flaws of human nature? This class will work to unpack these questions and examine the trials of humanity. Students will survey classical monster-based literature and complete an analysis of film adaptations to deconstruct and examine flawed practices of human nature. This course aims to cultivate and improve students’ analytical and critical writing skills through an expository mode of writing. Major writing assignments will culminate in a final research project consisting of research, composition, and developing content for a multimodal audience.
2120.007: Intermediate Composition: Foundations of Greek Mythology
Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Averie Basch, abasch@unm.edu
This English 2120 course will cover the basics of Greek mythology, starting with the pantheon of Greek gods and continuing into classical stories of gods, heroes, "monsters," and mortals. Students will learn the characteristics of each of the Olympians (including their Roman counterparts) and be able to identify the natural and social powers that these immortals represent. Alongside classical sources, we will read versions of the myths that take on nontraditional perspectives. We will cover the origin stories and how themes presented there compare and contrast to other mythologies, and additionally, how those themes still resonate in today’s society.
2120.008: Intermediate Composition: From Emerson to Katrina: Nature Writing and Ecological Crisis
Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Kimberly Blake, kimblake1@unm.edu
This course will offer an exploration of the significance of nature writing and environmental issues specifically through ecological crises in the U.S. Canonical authors such as Emerson have charted the historical realms of nature writing before morphing into contemporary nature writing—which focuses on social concerns and environmental disasters that affect us—like Hurricane Katrina or increased plastic pollution. We will apply interdisciplinary practices to ecological issues as it is centered around rhetorical approaches and understanding of environmental issues reflected in our writings and readings. This course will consist of a personal narrative, a pamphlet collection, and ending with a research report and an oral presentation.
2120.009: Intermediate Composition: What Does Genre Reveal?: Genre, Identity, and (Metaphorical) Place in Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House
Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
Rae Stringfield, stringfield@unm.edu
This course looks at genre through Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House and other media (essays, short stories, music, etc.) that bends genre in unique ways. Dream House tells the story of a queer relationship, which begins as a romance but turns abusive, through multiple genres—Romance, American Gothic, Choose Your Own Adventure, Sci-Fi Thriller, Murder Mystery, and more. Together we will investigate questions like: Who is present and who is absent in various genres? Who decides the boundaries of a genre? What does genre hide or reveal? How does genre influence our perceptions of the world and expectations of real-life situations?
2120.021: Intermediate Composition: Women, Identity, & Symbolism: Literature & Film Between the Centuries
Online
Haley Bonner, bonnerh@unm.edu
This course engages women authors of the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries, and films focused on women from the 21st Century. It aims to introduce several genres and styles, and the historical markers of these texts/films. 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 for your audience.
2210: Professional & Technical Communication
Many days, times, and online sections available
Professional and Technical Communication will introduce students to the different types of documents and correspondence that they will create in their professional careers. This course emphasizes the importance of audience, document design, and the use of technology in designing, developing, and delivering documents. This course will provide students with experience in professional correspondence and communicating technical information to a non-technical audience. (EPW)
Meets New Mexico Lower-Division General Education Common Core Curriculum Area I: Communications.
Prerequisite: 1120 or ACT English =>29 or SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing =>700.
2220.002: Intro to Professional Writing
Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
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: Intro to Studies in English
Face to Face, T 1230-1345, 1H
Stephen Benz, sbenz@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
Face to Face, W 1300-1350, 2H
Stephen Benz, sbenz@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, MWF 1300-1350
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, TR 1100-1215
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
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, TR 1230-1345
Sarah Hernandez, hernands@unm.edu
English 2510 is the gateway course to the English major. Focusing on Southwest literature, this course will provide an introduction to literary studies by exploring major genres, research methods, and critical and theoretical approaches, In this course, 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.
This course emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose. This semester we will focus on authors and poets who have lived in New Mexico or who have strong ties to the Land of Enchantment such as Rudolfo Anaya, Sherwin Bitsui, Richarad Bradford, Ana Castillo, Willa Cather, Joy Harjo, Jake Skeets, and Luci Tapahonson to name a few.
2510.002: Analysis of Literature
Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950
Andrea Borunda, apborunda@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
Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu
In this class we will read key texts tracing the emergence of early ideas about American personal and community identity. Beginning in the 1600s, we will focus on the divergent expectations and experiences of Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Oral accounts and speeches 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 later American revisionist accounts of the life of Pocahontas, tell us of the ideological and personal violence at the foundation of our nation. The narratives of Jean de Léry and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca remind us that the history we know was anything but inevitable. Mary Prince’s and Olaudah Equiano’s narratives of their enslavement and escape concretize the hierarchies of race and gender that were central to the period. These works reveal the assumptions upon which concepts of individual freedom are based in early Anglo-American culture, as outlined by Thomas Paine and other Revolutionary-era writers. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving, writing in the early nineteenth century, sketch the creepy ways that U.S. society both revises and is deeply haunted by its own past. An emphasis on non-literary writing and historical context reveals the stakes involved in the literary works we discuss, and helps us to understand how this tumultuous time inaugurates the struggles of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
2630.001: British Literature I
Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu
This course description will be updated when the information is available.
2640.001: British Literature II: Haunted Places, Monstrous Things: British and Irish Literature, Romanticism to the Present
Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Jason Benkly, jbenkly@unm.edu
In the summer of 1816, a group of individuals—amongst them the famous British Romantic writers Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron—warmed themselves around a log fire and amused themselves by reading each other German ghost stories. Soon after, Lord Byron issued a challenge to each of his guests: "write a ghost story." From this challenge, one participant, Lord Byron himself, was able to write a small amount on Eastern European folklore, which would eventually act as the inspiration for the first documented piece of vampire fiction, John Polidori’s The Vampyr. More famously, and perhaps of more consequence, this challenge resulted in Mary Shelley beginning work on what would eventually become Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.
In this class we will explore an often-overlooked side of British Romanticism, a group of writers or works classified as Dark Romanticism, and their connection to later British and Irish writers of horror literature. By analyzing individual scenes and texts both in the context of their relevant era and compared to the values and expectations of other eras, students will not only gain an understanding of individual literary eras, but they will also understand the ways in which these eras sometimes overlap and interact. Furthermore, by studying a specific genre, Gothic Horror, over the course of multiple centuries, students will be able to identify, analyze, and discuss generic conventions, both within individual eras and across multiple eras, and what these conventions may say about the social values influencing each work.
2650.001: World Literature I
Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
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, 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.
2670.001: African American Literature
Face to Face, MW 1400-1515
Finnie Coleman, coleman@unm.edu
This course description will be updated when the information is available.
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 explores 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 class discussions, two exams, and one short presentation.
305.001: Mythology
Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu
There are no more important texts for understanding the world of the past and of today than cultures’ earliest: myths. The texts covered in this course—some thousands and others hundreds of years old—provide a lens through which one can glimpse the development of ideas, cultural mores, and traditions which continue to exert great influence in the Western world today. While these stories are often remembered and retold because they include accounts of perseverance, the miraculous, superhuman accomplishment, love, devotion, success, justice, and other fodder for inspiration, many of those same texts betray darker motifs like heteropatriarchal dominance, cultural chauvinism, misogyny, intolerance, and the victimization of the young, the powerless, the poor, and the other, amongst other themes. This course invites students to grapple with this duality present in so much of mythology. It encourages critical examination of these texts that have been so fundamental, for better and for worse, to the development of what has traditionally been called “Western Civilization.” No previous knowledge of mythology is required, and all are welcome to sign up for this course.
315.001: Afrofuturism
Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 1300-1350
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu
This course will introduce us to the genre of science fiction, specifically black science fiction—which is commonly called Afrofuturism. Through an examination of short fiction and film we will explore how science fiction can be used as a lens through which to view and understand contemporary Black culture and experiences. The stories we will examine offer intriguing narratives that allow for complex analysis on the ways in which futurity collides with race, gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality.
320.001: T: Identities and Social Worlds
Face to Face MW, Remote Scheduled F, MWF 0900-0950
Bethany Davila, bdavila@unm.edu
Language is a common tool for making sense of the world around us, including figuring out where we fit in relation to others. The language we use signals and creates our identity; from slang and word choice to accents and pronunciations, we are sending out signals about how we identify, what we do with our time, and where we are from. And we use all of these cues to place others in (or out) of various groupings.
In this course students will explore the ways that language shapes social worlds and identities through reading, writing, and informal research. Course assignments include weekly readings and informal writing and three major assignments: an exploration of the language practices of a particular identity category or group; a rhetorical analysis of a text (or song or video game or meme, etc.); and a multimodal project on the relationship between language and identity. Students will be able to choose areas of interest to them for the writing projects.
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, MWF 1000-1050
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@unm.edu
We will write, critique, and discuss contemporary poetry. Students will be required to present their work, as well as responding to other students' poetry.
323.001: Intermediate Creative Writing – Nonfiction
Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@unm.edu
We will focus on the creative nonfiction in this course. Students will be required to write creative nonfiction, as well as responding to the work of other students. We will also read creative nonfiction from a variety of writers.
330.001: Arab Women: Conflict & Resistance
Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Doaa Omran, domran@unm.edu
At the heart of the strenuous political and societal conflicts taking place in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Arab women have been noticeably present on the scene–whether as agents or as victims, Arab women have been struggling with their post-colonial and neocolonial realities on the one hand and with oppressive patriarchies on the other. This course takes a long view at the literature produced by Arab women writers from the mid- Twentieth Century up to contemporary times. It explores the written experiences of women who dwell and migrate from conflict-ridden countries such as the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and the resultant diaspora. Students will be introduced to Arab women’s issues through their literary works focusing on the politics of gender, religion, sexuality, identity and narrative. Other objectives of this course are, 1) practice the implications of feminist thought in the Arab world, 2) enhance cultural awareness through lectures, readings and supplementary material, 3) enhance students’ abilities in analyzing literary works to discover the fundamental assumptions underlying literary products, 4) acquire a preliminary knowledge of the history of the modern Arab world and its major literary movements through the works of Arab women writers. The final grade is determined by participation, class presentations, a research paper and final collaborative project. No Arabic required; many of the assigned texts are written originally in English and the rest are translated. This class is appropriate to all students including third- and fourth-year students interested in women’s and gender studies, political science, Arab women’s literature, Arabic literature, Asian studies and Middle East studies or Anglophone writings.
351.001: Chaucer
Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Anita Obermeier, aobermei@unm.edu
In this course, we will explore Geoffrey Chaucer’s most famous work, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s collection of competitive pilgrimage tales is one of the greatest, most imaginative, and varied pieces of all English literature: poetry and prose, romances, sermons, and bawdy stories. Chaucer is credited with writing the first viable women characters in the English language. Consider also the fascinating historical backdrop in late fourteenth-century England: a generation prior, the plague had swept through Europe decimating the population; a child king had taken the throne; peasants rose up in rebellion; and the Bible was translated into English—a world of both decay and dazzling possibility. Through the voices of colorful storytellers, Chaucer’s last great poem tests the boundaries of social possibility in his age, weighing the competing claims of allegory and realism, chivalry and commerce, men and women, traditional authority and individual experience. And it does so in our ancestor language of Middle English, simultaneously a colorful, earthy, funny, and lofty idiom. We will, in essence, ride along with the pilgrims on our own journey to Canterbury and through the Middle Ages.
352.001: Early Shakespeare
Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Carmen Nocentelli, nocent@unm.edu
353.002: Later Shakespeare
Face to Face, MWF 1200-1250
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu
This course covers the Jacobean-era works of William Shakespeare. In examining his drama and poetry, the course will focus on the various conventions of the sub-genres of comedy, tragedy, romance and sonnet. Student will gain familiarity with the later works of Shakespeare and an understanding of the Renaissance theater as well as the importance of Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic innovations. Texts include: Twelfth Night, All’s Well that Ends Well, Macbeth, Othello, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and selected sonnets.
365.001: Chicanx Cultural Studies
Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, mviz@unm.edu
This course tracks the formation of contemporary Chicanx identity politics and aesthetics through a historical and critical consideration of language, power, displacement, regionalism, and transnational movements. The class will chart the emergence of Chicana/o cultural production and the paradigmatic shifts in identity, with attention to how the Spanish colonial, Mexican national, and the post-colonial US inform Chicana/o/x identity. We will pay special attention to the evolution of the "x" in intellectual discussions of the field and as an expression of non-normative gender and sexuality. In order to achieve this critical and historical trajectory, we will read both primary and secondary texts that range from testimonios, folklore, ethnography, literature, short fiction, history, and criticism. The class will also become familiar with the politics of Chicana/o film, art, and landscape architecture, as well as critical essays and the key terms of cultural studies. We will hone our critical reading and thinking skills, and apply these skills to written assignments that engage in the art, aesthetics and politics of identity in Chicanx cultural studies.
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 2022***
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.
387.001: T: Comics and Graphic Novels
Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Jesús Costantino, jcostantino@unm.edu
This course examines the broad history and varied forms of comics. From early-twentieth-century strips to contemporary graphic novels, we will 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 US superhero comics, underground and alternative comix, Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées, midcentury pulp comics, and Japanese manga. While the origins of the medium continue to be hotly contested, our focus in the course will be on comics produced since the adoption of the Comics Code of 1954. 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.
400-Level
100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level
410.001: Criticism & Theory
Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu
In this course, we will engage in an intensive overview of significant movements in literary theory and criticism, with a focus on twentieth-century and contemporary thought. We begin with a review of foundational texts from earlier eras, representing some of the intellectual history that informs later developments: specifically, we will trace the ongoing influences of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Du Bois. These discursive origins remain central to contemporary examinations of language, aesthetics, race and racialization, sex and gender, and the role of literature in producing cultural meaning. We then will explore together the necessary ways that these first examinations are complicated over the course of the twentieth century. A whirlwind mid-semester tour through clusters of ideas representative of Marxist literary analysis, psychoanalytic criticism, feminist theory, postcolonial studies, queer theory, and critical race theory will enable us to begin recognizing the intellectual conflicts of own period in our recent predecessors. Their inquiries frame constellations of ideas that continue to shift in our time; seemingly novel ways of reading literature gain dimension and clarity when we understand their long histories.
414.001: Documentation
Online
Julianne Newmark, newmark@unm.edu
This course in advanced technical communication will serve as preparation for understanding theories and practices of the production of documentation. As the UNM catalogue states, this course focuses on the "theory and practice [of] developing, editing and producing technical documentation for paper-based and online media." First, this course will expose you to (and remind you of!) the kinds of documentation you’ve long been encountering, from trouble-shooting guides, to product manuals, to online and print instructions, to user-guides, to tutorial videos, to illustrated diagrams. Next, we will attend to the practices of producing documentation in our digital age and we will examine how these practices inherit from older conventions. Finally, you will demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of best practices for producing usable documentation, for products both "technical" and "non-technical," and you will produce documentation using desktop and online publishing tools. You will reflect on your practices, you will grapple with using technology to best serve a user’s needs for performing a task or using a product, and you will collaborate with peers on constructing documentation materials as part of a team.
416.001: Biography and Autobiography
Face to Face R, 1600-1830
Michelle Hall Kells, mkells@unm.edu
ENGL 416/516 Biography/Memoir offers critical examination of the genre of biography (autobiography and memoir) across the subfields of English Studies (Rhetoric, Creative Writing, and Literary Studies). This course will provide models, practice, and feedback through writing workshops and the theoretical study of biography as craft. In addition to practicing the rhetorical art of narrative (and story-telling), students will cultivate a meta-discourse about biography as genre (form and function). I see teaching as the opportunity to curate an experience and to cultivate the imagination of my students. We will explore together how the efficacy of a narrative rests in how we embody the story in our writing.
417.001: Editing
Online
Cristyn Elder, celder@unm.edu
This course description will be updated when the information is available.
418.001: Proposal and Grant Writing
Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
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 rarely 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 community-engagement experience.
420.001: T: Blue Mesa Review I
Face to Face, MWF 1400-1450
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu
Calling all creative 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 (BMR). Your primary responsibility in this course is to read and assess submissions for possible publication in BMR. In addition, you’ll keep an informal journal about your reading, attend discussion meetings, and write a few short papers. This class requires you to be self-motivating; in some respects, it is very much like an independent study. And if you’re interested in being part of BMR’s editorial board in the future, you should take this class!
Have a look at the BMR website if you’d like to know more about the magazine: https://bmr.unm.edu/.
By the way, you can take the BMR class more than once and continue to develop your expertise in the realm of publishing a literary magazine.
421.002: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Fiction
Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Andrew Bourelle, abourelle@unm.edu
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”—Stephen King
In this class, we’re going to do as Stephen King suggests—we’re going to read a lot and write a lot. And we’re going to talk about what we read and what we write because discussing writing is also an important part of growing as a writer.
At this point in your undergraduate career, everyone in the class should have taken at least a couple creative writing classes. So you’ve been exposed to the genres of literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. In this class, we will build upon what you have already learned and focus specifically on fiction. You will read, analyze, and discuss published examples of fiction, examining elements of craft. You will also write short stories and share your work with classmates, giving and receiving feedback as a way to improve your writing and the writing of your classmates.
423.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Nonfiction
Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
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.
442.001: Major Rhetorical Texts
Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Chuck Paine, cpaine@unm.edu
If we want to understand rhetoric in theory and practice, we need to go back to its historical sources, to the Greeks (who literally invented rhetoric) and to the Romans. This course will focus primarily on the works of the ancients, though we’ll continually cycle back to contemporary practice and theory, to contemporary issues. We’ll begin with selections from Homer’s Iliad and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Then we’ll exploring the ideas of the Sophists, including Protagoras, Gorgias, Isocrates, and Lysias. From here we move to Plato’s attack on rhetoric and on the Sophists, and we’ll spend a great deal of time with Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric as a true technē (or “art”). We’ll finish the semester examining the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, some modernist poets, and the American rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke. Throughout this odyssey, we’ll examine these ideas not merely as historical curiosities, but as ideas that help us understand and critique our current arts of discourse, how they work and how we (ought to) teach, study, and use them. Throughout the course, we’ll discover and forge connections between the rhetorical tradition and contemporary writing and speaking, often exploring contemporary and ancient texts as a way to ground our theories and do some rhetorical inquiry. These texts will come in a variety of mediums (visual, electronic, mixed modes, etc.)
For a typical class session, you’ll watch an online lecture (usually given by me), which will free up our in-class time for discussion, problem posing, and exploring your ideas and projects. You’ll be reading mostly primary texts, but we’ll also learn to do rhetorical analyses—taking texts apart to see what makes them effective or not. You’ll also complete several shorter assignments and a semester project that explores a question that is especially important to you.
This course would be of interest to those who are fascinated by the nature of human communication. It will be of practical use for those whose futures will require them to communicate effectively, to interpret communications with greater sophistication, and to persuade others (i.e., pretty much everyone nowadays). Some key theoretical questions include: Can rhetoric help us induce the truth or only belief? How do language and other symbolic systems (images, sounds, spaces, etc.) function? What’s the relationship between logic (or dialectic) and rhetoric? What good is rhetorical training and why teach or study rhetoric, writing, literature, or communication generally—does it make us better speakers, better thinkers, more savvy consumers of rhetoric
451.001: T: Old Norse
Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu
Immerse yourself in the rugged, arctic beauty of medieval Scandinavia by learning Old Norse. Read the sagas of Iceland, with its geysers and lava flows. Explore the global trade network of the Vikings and the magical power of runes. This course will introduce the grammar and literature of Old Norse and the history and culture of the people who spoke and wrote it.
464.001: Advanced Studies in Native American and Indigenous Literature
Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Sarah Hernandez, hernands@unm.edu
This course is an advanced study of Native American and Indigenous literature, with special emphasis on the Oceti Sakowin (Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota) literary tradition and the Northern Great Plains Region. The Oceti Sakowin literary tradition is a rich and complex tradition composed of oral stories that have been translated and re-translated into written form by many different writers and scholars to serve various, and at times opposing, political agendas. Early missionaries and ethnologists translated traditional Dakota, Nakota, and, Lakota oral stories to document and record the tribal past before it faded from living memory. However, neither the Oceti Sakowin nor their stories ever truly faded away. On the contrary, Oceti Sakowin language, literature, and life have continued to survive and even thrive into the 21st century, with many modern Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota writers and scholars re-translating traditional oral stories in new and creative ways. In this course, we will use the tools of literary analysis and tribal theory to analyze the works of Oceti Sakowin authors and poets such as Charles Eastman, Ella Cara, Deloria, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Joseph Marshall III, Diane Wilson, and Gwen Westerman to name a few.
486.001: British Fiction
Face to Face, W 1600-1830
Sarah Townsend, sltownse@unm.edu
This course will focus on fiction published since 2000 by authors who hail from and/or live in the UK and Ireland. We will focus in particular on the upstarts – predominantly women, minority, and working-class writers – who have challenged traditional structures of literary prestige and gatekeeping over the past quarter century. Part of our investigations will be sociopolitical and economic, as we track how major historical transformations have shaped literary form and style, like the spread of multiculturalism, the global financial crash of 2007-08, the reemergence of far right ethno-nationalism, Brexit, and setbacks to the Northern Irish peace process. The other portion of our investigations will focus on how the practices of writing, publishing, and reading have changed during this period with the success of small independent presses, the elevation of genre fiction, and new forms of publicity that have transformed the status of the celebrity writer. Potential authors include Bernardine Evaristo, Anna Burns, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, Melatu Uche Okorie, Sally Rooney, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jojo Moyes, Douglas Stuart, Paul Mendez, Tana French, and Emma Donoghue. Course assignments will include written and audio/video book reviews, class presentations, and analytical essays.
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.
