Fall 2023 Course Descriptions

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, TR 0930-1045
Haley Bonner, bonnerh@unm.edu

In this course, students will examine a variety of literary genres, including fiction, poetry, and drama. Students will identify common literary elements in each genre, understanding how specific elements influence meaning.

1410.004: Introduction to Literature

Online
Chrysta Wilson, camcw@unm.edu

In this course, students will examine a variety of literary genres, including fiction, poetry, and drama. Students will identify common literary elements in each genre, understanding how specific elements influence meaning.

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 all day and 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 that 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 you will have the ability to:  

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

2120.001: Intermediate Composition: An Examination of the American Mafia 

Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950
Deanna Tenorio, dtenorio24@unm.edu

What comes to mind when we think of mob bosses and organized crime? What were the conditions that led to secret societies and eventually the mafia? This intermediate composition course is an exploration of the American Mafia in the 20th century. Students will consider the historical context of the rise and fall of the American Mafia, while writing through thoughts on how this infamous group has influenced our current historical moment. This course will draw from literature, film, art, and music in order to guide students through the aspects of mafia life including codes, political power, and business. 

2120.002: Intermediate Composition: The New West: Contemporary Writers of the American West

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Julianne Peterman, jpeterman1@unm.edu

When you think of “Western” literature, what do you imagine? Independent cowboys? Tumbleweeds? Rugged terrain and isolated travelers? In this class, we’ll explore contemporary literature that is forging a new story of the American West. We’ll discover writers whose sense of place, landscape, and identity have shaped nuanced literary worlds, beyond romanticization or cliché. And together, we’ll read texts that explore the American West holistically — its landscape, its cultures, its identities, its beauty, and its challenges. We’ll read texts across genres, from writers based in the American West (including several New Mexican authors) such as Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Jennifer Givhan, and more. 

2120.003: Intermediate Composition: For Your Eye Only: Diaries and Letters in and as Novels

Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Gwyne Henke, ghenke1@unm.edu

Diaries imply truthfulness and a lack of pretense, but they’re often where we deceive ourselves the most. Letters allow us to communicate—but what? And with whom? This Expository Writing course explores diary novels, epistolary novels (novels written through letters), and everything in between. We’ll explore how authors use diaries and letters to establish a unique (and sometimes disturbing) intimacy between protagonist and reader. Course texts may include NazlıKoca’sThe Applicant, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Ocean Vuong’sOn Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. 

2120.004: Intermediate Composition: Japanese Folklore

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Ian Martin, martini@unm.edu

Folklore has been a driving force in the development of multimodal compositions, and it will act as a foundation for the content composed in this class. Students will be reading rhetorical works from ancient and medieval Japan, and they will learn to find and incorporate primary and secondary sources into their writing. They will analyze the rhetorical situation, find and evaluate information, compose documents, present documents, and continuously reflect on their creations using the theme Japanese folklore to guide their writing. Students will walk away with skills that will help them compose academic-quality expository compositions in traditional and multimodal media. 

2120.005: Intermediate Composition: A Voice of One’s Own: Exploring Identity in Language Use

Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Isabella Valdez, isabellamarievaldez@gmail.com

This course will investigate the ways in which language and identity interact, and, ultimately, reinforce one another. We will examine how the identities we craft through our individual and collective language use are often policed and suppressed by dominant language ideologies, like monolingualism and standardization, resulting in a language that does not feel, or sound, like our own. By exploring ourselves through the multiple languages we possess, creative writing, and reflection, we will, hopefully, develop a linguistic voice that reflects us in the way we want to be reflected instead of how we are told to reflect ourselves. 

2120.006: Intermediate Composition: The Future is Now: Indigenous Futurisms Literature and Pop Culture 

Face to Face, TR 930-1045
Madeline Mendoza, mmendoza13@unm.edu

This course looks at various short stories from foundational anthologies of Indigenous Futurisms Literature. The genre Indigenous Futurisms are stories that imagine present Indigenous futures using science fiction extending to speculative and fantasy sub-genres. We will examine how Indigenous Futurisms Literature, as a powerful act of storytelling, paired with Art, Pop Culture, Music, Short Films, Video Games, and Fashion contributes to the existence of Indigenous social alterities, and pathways forward that consider the past, present and future for Indigenous cultures. Topics to be discussed include the relationships between Indigenous futurisms and visual, artistic, and digital storytelling; Indigenous futurisms and decolonization; Indigenous science; and Indigenous understandings of time.

2120.021: Intermediate Composition: Rhetoric and Technical Communication in the Video Game Industry

Online
Gabriel Garcia, gabegarcia@unm.edu

Do you like video games? Whether your interest lies in analyzing the stories, art, gameplay, history, or values embedded in video games, or whether you want to research and analyze video games from a technical standpoint, this class has something for you. In this course, we’ll cover both sides – players and makers -- of the industry, but you’ll have the freedom to focus on projects that interest you. You will analyze genre conventions, research games, studios or topics within the video game industry, and create multimodal presentations on your work. This course will advance your ability to discuss games on deeper levels.

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

2240.001: Intro to Studies in English

Face to Face, T 1230-1345

1H *This course is scheduled for the FIRST eight weeks*

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, and literary studies. Students will be introduced to the life of the department through in-person class visits with faculty members, attendance at departmental events, and a variety of additional online 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 *This course is scheduled for the SECOND eight weeks*

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, and literary studies. Students will be introduced to the life of the department through in-person class visits with faculty members, attendance at departmental events, and a variety of additional online 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
Amy Dotson, adotson1@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, TR 1100-1215
Joseph Byrne, jbyrne@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
Kani Aniegboka, kani@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, TR 1230-1345
Matthew Hofer, mrh@unm.edu

This class on the foundations of literary analysis turns on an extended consideration of The Odyssey and its modern and postmodern adaptations. Our discussions of the features and functions of epic, the nature of heroes and antiheroes, and the enduring concept of the mythic quest will foreground key aspects of contemporary practices of literary, visual, and cultural analysis. We will analyze the primary text attributed to Homer (or the Homeridae) and significant later visions of it in an attempt to assess the tense yet productive relationship of myth to reason, both in the ancient world and in our own. We will think about the transmission and renovation of an enduring mythic narrative in relation to a persistent effort to comprehend why an ancient form continues to inform the cultures of the future.  Our examination of mythic structures, figures, and thought ultimately aims to clarify how—and to what extent—individual subjects may be determined by the narratives they tell as well as those told about them. But this fine-grained and incremental process also affords us an ideal opportunity for a larger, metacritical examination of the function of criticism, asking whether, if myth is “ideology in narrative form,” the mind of the critic is in fact a mind of myth. Can critique be productively understood as a form of myth-making as well as truth-seeking? What might it mean if it is?

2510.002: Analysis of Literature

Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950
Sarah Hernandez, hernands@unm.edu

This section of English 2510 focuses specifically on Southwest literature. As part of this course, you will read and analyze poems, short stories, novels, and plays by writers who have lived in New Mexico or have strong ties to the Land of Enchantment. New Mexico is a diverse state with writers from a variety of cultural/historical backgrounds and experiences. This semester we will explore how Southwest writers – such as Shonto Begay, Jake Skeets, Esther Belin, Nia Francisco, Ana Castillo and Tony Hillerman to name to name a few – use poetry and prose to imagine and reimagine their communities, cultures, and land.

In this course, 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 all these skills together in a research essay. This writing-intensive course includes two literary analysis essays and one analytical research essay, which we will revise and workshop multiple times this semester.

2560.001: Introduction to Native American Literature

Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
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 (plus 63 state-recognized tribal nations), 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 will be placed on Diné authors and poets. This semester, we will use the newly published textbook, The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, to guide us toward a broader understanding of Navajo oral stories, writing, culture, racism, prejudice, intergenerational trauma, and resilience. We will analyze Diné poetry, short stories, memoirs, and other writings in their specific cultural/historical contexts, and start to examine some of the shared thematic concerns and literary strategies expressed by each of these writers.

2620.001: American Literature II

Face to Face, TR 0030-1045
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

In this course we will trace some of the major movements in the development of American literature, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. Beginning with Frederick Douglass’s 1845 account of his escape from slavery, and concluding with a series of contemporary examinations of the ways that our notions of race, class, sexuality, and gender are haunted by the earlier formulations, we will explore parallel approaches across different periods and movements. As a means of complicating the traditional “progress narrative” of American literary studies, whereby romanticism leads inevitably to realism, which leads to modernism and so on, we will focus on how modes and approaches reoccur—with critically important changes towards distinct purposes—across each of the periods and genres we will discuss. With an emphasis on historical context, we will use the selection of poetry, novels, novellas, essays, speeches, stories, films, and plays that we read together in part as cultural artifacts. Our very selective foray into the last 170 years will foreground the contradictions involved in literature’s dual roles as cultural product and producer, enabling us better to develop scholarly frameworks for understanding the shifts in literary notions of belonging, citizenship, and resistance.

2630.001: British Literature I

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
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 the thematic trends of sex, gender, and the body. From dragon-swallowed saints to ghost-infested castles, the Round Table, werewolves, and mystical erotic visions, the readings for this class are packed with intrigue concerning bodily experience and identity. In addition to analyzing key textual features, this class will also examine the importance of the historical and cultural milieus from which these texts originate and influence. 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. Beyond reading the literature, we will participate in the architecture, art, cuisine, music, and other technologies of the past. Assignments will range from weekly readings, class activities, essays, and multimodal projects. I believe that successful learning is best achieved through careful reflection and collaboration with colleagues, and both your peers and I are valuable resources. In my class, the goal is to practice and grow, so try your best and take some risks as together we delve into a rich trove of fantastic tales.  

2640.001: British Literature I

Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Bradley Tepper, btepper@unm.edu

This is a survey of British/Irish literature from 1785 to the present day.  We will engage with a number of authors including Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Wolfe and  Zadie Smith and examine how they reflected and shaped their world. We will encounter, discuss and analyze issues of marriage and divorce, industrialization and mercantilism, and colonialism and immigration.  By doing so, we will hopefully enrich our understanding of Romanticism, Victorianism, Modernism, Post-modernism and Postcolonialism and the positive and negative influences these periods bring to bear on us today.

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
Doaa Omran, domran@unm.edu

"World Literature II" studies the Seventeenth Century to the Present and introduces students to a representative sample of influential works from a variety of the world's literary traditions written in the past five centuries. Readings include works by writers from the Americas, China, Japan, Egypt, Sudan, Europe, India, and Nigeria, and comprise a variety of genres including some philosophical and historical texts, as well as poetry and prose. My goal is to examine world literatures within different historical contexts as well as from different socio-cultural angles to better understand the rich and nuanced landscape of this vast body of texts. Students will use close reading strategies to formulate arguments about these texts, and support their interpretations with other works from the course examples gleaned from close reading. I will be inviting different visitors from various churches and backgrounds to fill in your background knowledge. Please feel free to have open discussions and ask questions. This is an important caveat for participating in this class. I tend to rely on class discussions and would expect courteous professional discussions. Hence both attendance and participation are important.

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.

306.001: Arthurian Legend and Romance

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

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.

319.001: User Centered Design

Online
Julianne Newmark, newmark@unm.edu

In this course, students will come to understand the interrelatedness of creativity, ethics, and design in regard to the usability of “products” of many kinds, be they documents, computer interfaces, or consumer products. In order to understand the impacts of this relationship, students will learn how to understand users and their behaviors. Students will learn practices and theories of audience identification across cultures, ages, and communities, and will develop skills of analysis. Students will learn high- and low-tech methods for testing products’ usability to safely and ethically serve audience needs. Students will create, analyze, and test, and will come to understand the foundational role that user-oriented design plays in the broader realm of technical and professional communication.

320.001: Taos: Professional Writing and Publishing History

Face to Face W 1600-1830, Remote Scheduled M 1600-1830

1H *This course is scheduled for the FIRST eight weeks*

Julianne Newmark, newmark@unm.edu

• Learn about Northern New Mexico literary, artistic, Indigenous, and settler history and textual outputs

• Practice techniques for site assessment, curation, and preservation

• Create public-facing interpretive on-site and digital texts, using professional writing and public humanities approaches

Field experience: required weekend in Taos (8/26-28); and paid-for travel as a part of the class.

321.002: Intermediate Creative Writing – Fiction

Online
Andrew Bourelle, abourelle@unm.edu

Previously, in English 224: Introduction to Creative Writing, you were 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.

322.001: Intermediate Creative Writing – Poetry

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Lisa Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu

This course will introduce you to a variety of forms of poetry, from classic forms like sonnets and sestinas, to more contemporary forms like prose poems and erasure poems.  We'll read a variety of poems, but will focus most on contemporary poets—including some local poets!--and we'll also spend time discussing your own work in a workshop setting.  The study of poetry helps strengthen imagery, word choice, and compression, and thus is helpful for all writers, even if poetry is not your primary form. 

323.001: Intermediate Creative Writing – Nonfiction

Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Gregory Martin, gmartin@unm.edu

In this course, we will focus on one of the many forms of creative nonfiction – the Memoir.  We will read and study memoir both in its essay-length form and in its book-length form. In doing so, we will ask the questions:  How is the memoir different from, and similar to, the novel? The short story? What makes the author of the memoir credible?  What are the boundaries between truth and invention?  What ethical obligations does the memoirist have to the real people who populate their stories, who in one sense will never become “characters.” Are these obligations different from the author’s obligations to the audience? All the while, we will be writing our own personal narratives—memoirs of our own, experimenting each week with low-stakes freewrites, exercises, and improvisations, and later choosing two of these pieces to expand upon and workshop together. The class will help you to build upon your understanding of prose craft and technique, and we will focus on the development of the "habit" of art, emphasizing process more than product, emphasizing exploration, risk taking, and pushing yourself to write in ways that you could not write before.  In the beginning weeks of class, we will focus on generating material, experimenting with different craft techniques, creating the messy “stuff” out of which all good writing comes. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the ways that good writing is collaborative and that responding constructively to another’s work is an equally important skill, and as much an act of the imagination. One primary goal is to encourage you to write what is urgent and essential to who you are—to help you develop your writing persona, the character who is you, telling a story. Finally, I hope to debunk the myth of the artist. We all can participate in the making of art.

343.002: T: Topics in Chinese Film

Face to Face, MW 1700-1815
Ying Xu, yingxu@unm.edu

By introducing Chinese language films produced in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China, this course aims to lay out a historical map of the Chinese film industry on one hand and on the other to examine the cinematic texts of distinctive styles. The course is organized by five major theses, such as “The Female Body and Desire”, “Identity and Spatial Narrative”, “Traumas and Memories”, and “The Marginalized, the Insulted, and the Injured.” The topics for discussion cover visuality and soundscape, trauma and ruins, identity and memory, and modernity and tradition. All films are English subtitled. The knowledge of Chinese is a plus but not required.

352.001: Early Shakespeare

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
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.

353.002: Later Shakespeare

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

This course covers the Jacobean-era works of William Shakespeare, focusing on the various conventions of the genres of comedy, tragedy and romance. Student will gain familiarity with the later works of Shakespeare and an understanding of the Early Modern theater as well as the importance of Shakespeare’s dramatic innovations. Texts include: Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale.

366.001: African American Literature II 

Face to Face, MW 1400-1515
Finnie Coleman, coleman@unm.edu

Dating from 1747 when Lucy Terry penned her elegiac poem “The Bars Fight,” African American Literature is one of the United States of America’s oldest and most varied literary traditions. And while this particular tradition is one of the nation’s oldest, it is actually the youngest of the three major traditions that comprise the African American Cultural Tradition.  Both the Oral or Vernacular Tradition and the Musical Tradition precede Terry’s poem which may very well not be the first piece of African American literature. In African American Literature II we will focus primarily on literature published from 1919 through 1987; from the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance to the publication of Toni Morrison’s seminal novel Beloved.  Along the way we will delve into the poetry of Langston Hughes, read seminal novels in the African American literary tradition like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and explore literature of the Black Arts / Black Power movements.  Beyond literature, you will leave this course with an introduction to jazz, blues, and maybe even a bit of Hip Hop culture.  In this course, we will use African American literature to help us better understand the political, social, and cultural legacies that continue to impact life in the United States and across the African diaspora.

368.001: T: New Wave Sci Fi

Online

2H *This course is scheduled for the SECOND eight weeks*

Matthew Hofer, mrh@unm.edu

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. 

374.001: T: Southwest Literature and Culture

Online

2H *This course is scheduled for the SECOND eight weeks*

Melina Vizcaino-Aleman, mviz@unm.edu

New Mexico and the greater Southwest has long been a contested region. In this course, we will examine how literature and visual culture provide complex portrayals of the beauty, borders, and violence that form the Southwest’s unique history. We begin with Simon Ortiz and a critical Indigenous lens to understand Spanish colonial history and Manifest Destiny. The class then moves into the 19th-century and its print culture, and we read one of the “first” Native American novels, as well as a selection of dime novels that inch into the early 20th century. The course content focuses especially on 20th-century Chicana/o and Native American literature and culture, which respond to and reconfigure dominant perceptions of the region.

This course will also make use of some of the University of New Mexico’s unique collections of art and literature at the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, especially its dime novel collections and modernist “little” magazines. Students will develop ways to think about the Southwest through its literary and cultural histories that include conflict and accommodation in the literature, art, and public histories about the region. Assignments include a series of discussion forums, two analysis essays, and two exams.

378.001: Cli-Fi and Petrofiction of the Arab World and the Global South

Face to Face, MW 1400-1515
Doaa Omran, domran@unm.edu

Since the discovery of “black gold,” in the Arab Peninsula in 1938, the face of the region has utterly changed. Not only has oil become a source of affluence, but also a cause of coloniality, conflict, and war. As early as the first half of the nineteenth century, the Middle East became a coveted target by European powers as well as a place of conflict between neighboring countries. Petroleum was the main factor behind conflict among neighboring countries, culminating in the 2003 Gulf War. “Climate Fiction and Petrofiction of the Arab World and the Global South” is a course that offers transnational, comparative, and ecocritical readings of Global South literature. The term “Petrofiction” was coined by Amitav Ghosh when reviewing the Jordanian Abdul Rahman Munif's Cities of Salt (1992)­––a leading work that depicts the influence of oil on Bedouin and rural societies in Saudi Arabia. The course also explores the written experiences of nations that were exposed to the influx of oil and the ensuing influences on their peoples and climate. Other examples of assigned Petrocritical and Cli-Fi readings include novels by the Libyan Ibrahim al-Kuni, the Kuwaiti Saud Alsanousi, the Saudi Rajaa al-Alim, the Omani Jokha Alharthi, and the two Egyptian writers Nawal El-Saadawi and Sonallah Ibrahim. However true that Africa and Asia are not as privileged with petroleum as the Middle East is, the discovery of oil also had a tremendous impact on these territories. In addition to being exposed to works in Arabic and translated into English, students will also be assigned works written originally in English such as those by Helon Habila (Nigeria), Imbolo Mbue (Cameron), Prayaag Akbar (India), Deepak Unnikrishnan (India &UAE), and Amitav Ghosh. The readings in “Climate Fiction and Petrofiction of the Arab World and the Global South” capture and problematize mainstream media and former Western representation of the Global South as “the pantry of Europe” and its source of natural resources. In addition, students will understand how to use ecocritical and ecofeminist concepts and principles of literary postcolonial criticism together with plausible critical thinking tools to discern the actual struggles the Global South has been facing since the colonial era through the discovery of oil, The Iraqi-Kuwait war, the urbanization of rural societies, and industrialization are foregrounded. It is through reading Petrofiction vis-à-vis other works that the Middle East can be understood from a more global context.

400-Level

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

410.001: Criticism & Theory

Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Bernadine Hernandez, berna18@unm.edu

This course will chart a diverse field of theoretical schools of thought, from Marxism to Trans Theory. We will study major theoretical movements and critical theories such as structuralism, post structuralism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, formalism, The Frankfurt School, and Cultural Studies. We will consider the main arguments and distinguishing elements of each theoretical field and the questions and ideas they are attempting to think through, but more importantly, we concentrate on the dialectical relation of these theories and thinkers. To add to this dialectical conversation of major works, we will examine and interrogate critical theories that have emerged in line with or in direct juxtaposition to these major authors. Feminist theory, Critical Gender and Sexuality Studies, Queer Theory, Settle Colonial Theory, Women of Color feminism, and Decolonial Theory are some of the adjacent workings that will intervene on these critical approaches. You will come out of the class with the critical tools necessary to craft a litearary analytical and theoretical argument.

417.001: Editing

Online
Bethany Davila, bdavila@unm.edu

This course teaches students how to approach editing as a career or as writers who want to improve their own writing. Along with practicing advanced copyediting skills, you will learn how to perform comprehensive editing that results in documents that are complete, accurate, comprehensible, usable, and reader-focused. Assignments include regular homework, quizzes, and two large editing projects as well as reflection on your progress toward the student learning outcomes.

418.001: Proposal and Grant Writing

Face to Face, TR 945-1045
Charles 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

This class introduces you to the production of UNM’s national literary magazine, Blue Mesa Review. We receive hundreds of submissions each year from writers hoping to see their stories, essays, or poems published in our journal. Your primary responsibility is to assess these submissions for possible publication in BMR. In addition, you will keep a log about your participation reading submissions, write a couple of short papers (maybe a blog post or book review for BMR's website), and engage in discussions that arise from the submissions we receive. Understanding how literary magazines work can be of great value for writers; not only can it help you improve your own writing, but it can focus your editorial sensibilities as well as help you learn more about the submission and publication process.

In order to enroll in this class, you should have first completed introductory creative writing. Send an email to Professor Clark detailing your literary interests and courses you've taken, and be sure to include your Banner ID number.

421.002: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Fiction

Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Daniel Mueller, dmueller@unm.edu

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

423.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop - Nonfiction

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Greg Martin, gmartin@unm.edu

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

440.001: Rhetorical Figures of Speech

Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Charles Paine, cpaine@unm.edu

There’s an old joke that goes like this: One fish asks another, “How’s the water today?” And the other fish replies, “What’s water?” Metaphor is the linguistic water in which we all swim. It is a fundamental mechanism of mind that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. In fact, some philosophers of language say that all language and knowledge is metaphorical—that we can understand something new only in terms of what we already know. Now “tropes” are a species of metaphor that writers use when they want to call attention to their use of metaphor. We’ll explore tropes that amplify, invert word order, repeat words or phrases, or are purposely ungrammatical or just plain unusual. By examining the vast array of tropes—“ways to turn a phrase”—we will attempt to become more aware of the metaphors we live by, that structure our thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs. We’ll do our best to make the water in which we swim more noticeable.

445.001: History of English Language

Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu

Ever wonder where “bad words” come from? Have you ever looked at a passage from Chaucer or Shakespeare and wondered why everything seems misspelled? Then this course is for you! The English language has a long and fascinating history, but to many students the most ancient form of English—Old English—looks practically nothing like the Present-day English we are all familiar with today. This course will trace the development of the English language from its very earliest Indo-European beginnings all the way up to the present. Students will learn about important historical and linguistic influences on English and develop skills for analysis and an appreciation of the English language. No previous experience with linguistics or Old or Middle English is needed for this course. All are welcome.

449.001: T: Old to Middle Irish

Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Nahir Otano Gracia, nahir@unm.edu

As an introduction to Old Irish, one of the most fascinating and complex Indo-European languages, this course concentrates on three aspects of the language. First, we will spend considerable time learning the intricacies of the grammar, from the acquisition of grammatical principles to vocabulary and pronunciation. Second, we will reinforce the grammar with translation and grammar exercises including translating Conchobar Mac Nessa and Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó. Finally, we will read several Old Irish stories in translation to get a feel for the literature. We will also keep in mind the history of Ireland as one of the first colonies of England, and how the creation and preservation of Old Irish texts create community and resist Anglo Norman subordination.

456.001: British Romanticism

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Stephen Benz, sbenz@unm.edu

“The world is too much with us.”

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Some of the most familiar lines in English poetry come from the literary movement we commonly call “Romanticism,” which reached its peak during the first half of the nineteenth century. In this course, we’ll tackle some of the “greatest hits” of the era, including poems by Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Byron, as well as prose by De Quincey, Lamb, and Hazlitt. For research projects, students will also have the opportunity to explore novels by Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, or Mary Shelley. Along the way, we’ll learn about the principal attributes of Romanticism as perceived by traditional scholarship, while also exploring how recent scholarship has shed new light on the era, recovering marginalized voices and expanding the canon of “Romanticism” beyond the usual suspects.

462.001: American Realism and Naturalism

Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

As literary movements, American realism and naturalism express and respond to the crisis in national identity that characterizes the post-Civil War period. The era is marked by cultural shocks: demographic shifts through immigration; unprecedented economic inequality, urbanization and overcrowding; federal withdrawal from the South and the rise of Jim Crow; continued Westward expansionism and the violent rise of U.S. military and economic imperialism; the emerging visibility of women workers; and an explosion in scientific and pseudoscientific discourses in the wake of the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Writing in the period of the Gatling gun, the railroad, the telegraph, and the photograph, these authors call for an end to literary romanticism, seeking to depict life as it really is. In different ways, each examines the influences of environment, race, heredity, and gender on individual development. Mark Twain, Henry James, and Edith Wharton explore the conflicts of their own changing society through depictions of characters who most embody its values. Rebecca Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, W.E.B. DuBois, and Jacob Riis form new approaches to understanding writing as social activism. Gertrude Bonnin, Charles W. Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, and Paul Laurence Dunbar critique the fantasy of an Anglo-American national literary identity. The conflicts evident in literary expression during this dynamic era present alternatives to emerging concepts of an American national consciousness—variously understood by the authors we examine as a bad joke, an embattled social good, a naive fantasy, or a form of colonial whitewashing.

468.001: T: Environmental Southwest

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Melina Vizcaino-Aleman, mviz@unm.edu

This course takes an environmental approach to the Southwest and a southwestern approach to the environment. The Southwest is a geographical region, a place, as much as it is a concept or idea, so we begin by considering different conceptions of the region: historical, anthropological, architectural, as well as literary. We also consider the study of the environment as it has developed over the past twenty-five years, especially in the scholarship about racial and ethnic writers who are often silent or absent in discussions of environmentalism but whose work intertwines environmental justice with racial justice, women’s empowerment, and struggles over land and sovereignty. In in this manner, we work to develop a critical understanding of the environmental Southwest, with readings and scholarship that give us a vocabulary for discussions, and with literary texts that give us the creative material through which to develop critical thinking about the environmental Southwest. We read texts that range in their literary “merit,” so to speak, and they include key histories, ethno-biographies, novels, poetry, and short fiction that span the colonial period through the twentieth century. This breadth of time provides a critical context for reading and discussing the environment in the Southwest and the environmental Southwest, especially as it develops in the twentieth century and through the contemporary period. Students will learn the different methods of research and analysis for developing their own research projects on the environmental Southwest. We will visit the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections as well as other actual and digital sites across campus to build a collective understanding of the place in which we study the Southwest. Students will develop a research project over the course of the semester and produce a final deliverable in the form of an academic essay; an archival proposal; or a creative portfolio. Students must meet with me in the first quarter of the semester (prior to week five) to discuss individual final projects. Students will also produce a review essay and an analysis essay, as well as an annotated bibliography, in addition to the final research project.

487.001: T: Speculative Fiction

Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Lisa Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu

What do murderbots, vampires, and heroic quests have in common? They fall into the category of contemporary speculative fiction, a term for a variety of fictional genres, including fantasy, science fiction, and horror.  From dystopian worlds to alternate history to ghost stories, writing in this genre focuses on worldbuilding and  "what if?" and lets readers and writers engage their imaginations in the broadest sense.  We'll read a variety of award-winning short fiction, focusing on work by writers working in the genre today. This course is appropriate for both readers and writers of speculative fiction, and writing assignments will have creative options.

499.001: Professional Writing Internship Seminar

Online, By Permission Only
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.