Upcoming Semester Courses - Spring 2027

1110: Composition I

Many days, times, and online sections available

In this course, students will read, write, and think about a variety of issues and texts. They will develop reading and writing skills that will help with the writing required in their fields of study and other personal and professional contexts. Students will learn to analyze rhetorical situations in terms of audience, contexts, purpose, mediums, and technologies and apply this knowledge to their reading and writing. They will also gain an understanding of how writing and other modes of communication work together for rhetorical purposes. Students will learn to analyze the rhetorical context of any writing task and compose with purpose, audience, and genre in mind. Students will reflect on their own writing processes, learn to workshop drafts with other writers, and practice techniques for writing, revising, and editing. (EPW)

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

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

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

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, students must proceed to take and pass ENGL 1110Y in the semester following the semester after taking ENGL 1110X.

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

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

1110Y: Composition I (Stretch II)

Many days, times, and sections available

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

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

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

Prerequisite: 1110X.

1120: Composition II

Many days, times, and online sections available

In this course, students will explore argument in multiple genres. Research and writing practices emphasize summary, analysis, evaluation, and integration of secondary sources. Students will analyze rhetorical situations in terms of audience, contexts, purpose, mediums, and technologies and apply this knowledge to their reading, writing, and research. Students will sharpen their understanding of how writing and other modes of communication work together for rhetorical purposes. The emphasis of this course will be on research methods. (EPW)

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

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

1410.001: Introduction to Literature 

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Aeron Haynie, ahaynie@unm.edu

Why do we read, write, or study literature? Some argue that stories make us human. Writer James Baldwin has said that literature, "taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." In this course we will look at literature broadly, from your favorite song lyrics, to fiction, plays, and poetry. We will experiment with creative assignments. This is an introductory course that doesn't assume any pre-knowledge: everyone is welcome.

1410.002: Introduction to Literature

Online
Finnie Coleman, coleman@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.

2110.001: Traditional Grammar

Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950  
Carl Johnson, ctylerjohnson@unm.edu

In this course, I hope to convince you that grammar is not something to fear; grammar is your friend. You intuitively use grammar all day and every day, regardless of whether you realize it. As a speaker of English, you employ 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: Queering the Victorian Gothic

Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950
Damien Rasberry, drasberry@unm.edu 

Victorian Gothic literature remains relevant in our modern day. The anxieties the Victorians had about society and its changes closely mirror our own. Victorian Gothic literature resonates with us because in our own time, we are dealing with many questions that the Victorians were also grappling with. We will read some foundational Victorian Gothic texts to understand the period and genre, and learn to interpret different elements of the Gothic as it appears in Victorian literature. We will also read queer and trans scholarship to understand its relationship to modern-day criticism and society.

2120.002: Intermediate Composition: Writing from the Margin

Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
Fairooz Saiyara, fsaiyara24@unm.edu 

How can we challenge marginalization through writing? What does it mean to challenge marginalization? In this course, we will study different forms of marginalization —race, class, gender & sexuality, disability, etc., and observe how marginalized writers negotiate with standardized ways of writing to claim their own spaces. Our discussions will aim towards developing methods we marginalized writers can use to tell our stories. Through a semester-long focus on research and analysis, students will strengthen their abilities to read and interpret from different perspectives, read and write across various genres and forms, and present arguments effectively to different audiences.

2120.003: Intermediate Composition: Moving Stanzas: Contemporary Poetry and the Poetics of Cinema 

Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Enrique Armijo, earmijo11z@unm.edu 

This course explores the interconnectivity of poetry and cinema. Grounded in formalist criticism and critical theory, students will examine how cinematic elements, such as montage, mise-en-scène, and color composition function as structural equivalents to poetic devices like meter, diction, and metaphor. By framing poetry and film as interconnected systems of signification, students will engage with a variety of texts stretching from the French New Wave to contemporary visual poetry. Students will compose multimodal projects that will not only help them become better writers and critical thinkers but will also help them navigate and understand the poetry that can be found in our everyday lives.

2120.004: Intermediate Composition: Reading the Body, Seeing the Body

Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Camilla Hayes, cnhayes@unm.edu

How do we read the written body? How do we see the photographed body? This course will look at the ways in which the body is written about and photographed, especially Queer/Trans/People of Color, to question how the imagery of bodies functions in culture and rhetoric. We will explore a variety of genres and forms including contemporary speculative fiction, memoir, and the photographic essay to analyze and critique our historical and contemporary considerations of the body across composition, reporting, and art. Through a semester long research project and portfolio, students will develop their skills in researching, presenting, and interpreting written and visual information.

2120.005: Intermediate Composition: Vampires: From Literature to Film

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Katherine Gonzales, kmccoy81@unm.edu 

This course will explore the evolution of the vampire myth and legend through fiction and scholarship and analyze the ways in which different characteristics, themes, and stories have been adapted from literature to the big screen. We will discuss and analyze the ways in which the vampire developed through the ages, all the while asking why and how did this creature’s own mythology grow over the centuries and remained so popular in the human psyche. This course will be reading and discussion heavy of texts, articles, and film. Students will explore the evolution of the vampire motif and develop their own arguments and assessments about the undead.

2120.006: Intermediate Composition: Beowulf in a Viking World

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Chandler Veal, vealc1257@unm.edu

A hall, a monster, a man, a fight, a mother, a king, a broken kingdom. Beowulf is the longest surviving Old English poem that is now over 1000 years old. Beowulf is much more than a monster story, and may reveal to us how a new genre of story is made. This course provides a background of Norse history and literary tradition as a means to uncover places in Beowulf where the author is building off of an established narrative tradition. Perhaps these moments can give us insight into the kinds of stories that aided the creation of such a mysterious poem.

2120.007: Intermediate Composition: Who Owns English: Standardization, Power, and the Politics of Language

Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Tahenaz Biva, tbiva@unm.edu 

Who owns English? Who decides what counts as “good” English, and why do those decisions matter? This course explores the history and politics of English standardization, from colonial language education to contemporary classrooms, workplaces, media, and AI. Students will investigate how ideas about correctness, grammar, accents, dialects, and “professional” language shape identity, credibility, and access to opportunity. Through close analysis, research, and writing across genres, students will examine whose voices are privileged, whose are marginalized, and how English changes as it travels across cultures and communities. The course invites students to question familiar language rules while developing thoughtful, evidence-based ways of communicating research.

2120.015: Intermediate Composition: Peasant Rebellion et Tyrannical Kings in Medievalisms

Online 
Asa Holcombe, aholcombe@unm.edu 

Medievalisms, i.e. interpretations of the medieval era, tend to discuss monarchy, money, power etc. and through that framework discuss morality. This course discusses themes in medievalisms such as authoritarianism or tyranny, rebellion and the overthrow of evil. We will delve the deepest dungeons of rhetoric and climb the mistiest of mountainous questions to critically analyze the role of storytelling within a democracy. Does the rhetoric used in this literature promote pacifism or violence, practices which include or Other groups of people, the destruction or the preservation of nature? We also will discuss similarities and differences between modern and medieval literature.

2210.001: Professional & Technical Communication 

Many days, times, and online sections available

Course description video

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

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

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

2220.001: Introduction to Professional Writing

Online
Rachael Reynolds, reynoldsr@unm.edu 

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

2240.001: Introduction to Studies in English

Face to Face, T 1230-1345 and Remote Scheduled, R 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: Introduction to Studies in English

Face to Face, W 1300-1350 and Remote Scheduled R 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: Introduction to Creative Writing    

Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Hannah Janson, hjanson@unm.edu 

This course introduces students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  Students will read and study published works of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction as models, but this is first and foremost a writing workshop, with the focus of the course on students writing, revising, reflecting and productively critiquing their own and others pieces in all three of these genres.

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

2310.002: Introduction to Creative Writing        

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Andrew Sowers, asowers@unm.edu 

This course introduces students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  Students will read and study published works of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction as models, but this is first and foremost a writing workshop, with the focus of the course on students writing, revising, reflecting and productively critiquing their own and others pieces in all three of these genres.

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

2310.003: Introduction to Creative Writing        

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Elizabeth Sparks, lizzysparks@unm.edu 

This course introduces students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  Students will read and study published works of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction as models, but this is first and foremost a writing workshop, with the focus of the course on students writing, revising, reflecting and productively critiquing their own and others pieces in all three of these genres.

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

2310.015: Introduction to Creative Writing    

Online
Alissa Kuster, akuster@unm.edu 

This course introduces students to the basic elements of creative writing, including short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  Students will read and study published works of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction as models, but this is first and foremost a writing workshop, with the focus of the course on students writing, revising, reflecting and productively critiquing their own and others pieces in all three of these genres.

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

2510.001: Analysis of Literature 

Face to Face, TR 0930-1045 
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, mviz@unm.edu 

This course is the gateway to the English major. Students 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. Students become familiar with the MLA Style Handbook (9th edition), and they learn relevant theories and criticism to engage in literary analyses. In addition to the “nuts-and-bolts” readings, the course introduces students to select pieces in American fiction and poetry, and it concludes with two case studies of Chicana/o theater and their crossover into film.

2510.002: Analysis of Literature 

Online
Bernadine Hernández, berna18@unm.edu 

This course provides an in-depth examination of literary analysis across various genres, focusing on how to critically examine, interrogate, and analyze literary techniques, devices, conventions, and themes. Students will learn how to write focused literary analyses, demonstrating their understanding of textual, biographical, critical, cultural, and historical contexts of various writers and genres. Students will learn close reading, literary interpretation, and how to construct a text-based argument to uncover meaning in literary texts. This course introduces literary analysis, teaching students the skills necessary for literary scholarship. First, we will begin with the question: What is literature? Why should we care about literature? Next, we will move on to the essential skills for reading literature and constructing a literary argument. We will then move on to how to write a literary analysis, examining the key components of a literary essay, including explanation, summary, interpretation, paraphrasing, and review. You will then learn about various theoretical approaches to reading literature, including close reading, cultural materialism, Marxism, feminism, structuralism, and post-structuralism. While learning all the techniques required to write a literary analysis, you will be reading canonical texts from American literature. We will examine the major literary movements, considering texts in the context of new poetics, realism, modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary literature.

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 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.

2640.001: British Literature II

Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Aeron Haynie, ahaynie@unm.edu 

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

Face to Face, MWF 1200-1250
Averie Basch, abasch@unm.edu 

This course provides 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; Medieval Romance poetry from the British Isles and the Continent; selections from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and the Qur’an; a play by Euripides; poetry by Sappho, Li Bai, Ono no Komachi, 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 we can read texts through a restorative justice model. 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. 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, as well as the Critical Analyses of US and Global Cultures Requirement.

304.001: Bible as Literature 

Online
Kelly Van Andel, kvanande@unm.edu 

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

305.001: Mythology  

Face to Face, TR 1230-1345       
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.

321.001: Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction 

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu 

This course emphasizes the analysis, production, and revision of literary short stories. You will read and analyze published stories by a diverse selection of authors and do exercises designed to hone the use of craft elements, such as scene and summary, plot, character development, POV, and setting. Ideally, these exercises will inspire ideas for your stories. You will write and significantly revise two short stories during the semester. We’ll explore how to create complex characters and realistic situations through carefully selected details that strip away the mask of the mundane. The craft techniques we study and writing we do should ideally serve you in all areas of your creative work, and though the focus of our writing and readings will be literary fiction, we’ll touch on how our what we're learning may also be incorporated if you write speculative and genre fiction.

322.001: Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry  

Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Jake Skeets, mskeets@unm.edu 

This course invites students to see language as both text and texture that is shaped by sound, image, breath, and materiality. Through reading poems and writing our own, we will explore how poems emerge, evolve, and move with the world. As an intermediate workshop, students will share work with each other, offer feedback, and engage in conversations about the making of a poem.

323.001: Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction

Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Gregory Martin, gmartin@unm.edu 

In this course, we will explore creative nonfiction in the highly flexible form of the personal narrative, a personal essay that tells a story, and so has much in common with short fiction in its shape and plot. We will read and discuss published work, and we will also write our own personal narratives, experimenting in the opening weeks of class with low-stakes exercises, and later expanding, drafting and revising these into more complex, resonant essays. 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.

347.001: Viking Mythology

Face to Face, TR 0930-1045
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu

This course is designed to comprehensively introduce students to Viking Mythology. It will cover Norse ideas about the creation of the world, the end of the world, and pretty much everything in between. Students should expect to read about Odin, Thor, Loki, and a host of other characters not so well-known today in addition to accounts of important events like the conversion to Christianity. Texts include, but are not limited to, The Elder/Poetic Edda, Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, and The Saga of the Volsungs. Moreover, students will learn about the culture(s) that produced these wonderful stories and their literary conventions. This course will foster a valuable familiarity with this important mythological tradition and expose students to a variety of methods of reading them. Assignments include a midterm, final, written assignments, and discussion board posts.

349.001: Beowulf to Arthur

Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu 

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

352.001: Early Shakespeare

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515 
Carmen Nocentelli, nocent@unm.edu 

Over 400 years after his death, Shakespeare remains the most often quoted poet and most regularly produced playwright of the English-speaking world—and has now become one of its most popular screenwriters as well. Why is that? What’s so great about Shakespeare’s writing? What meanings did Shakespeare’s works have in his own time, and what meanings can they have for us? What should we pay attention to when we read Shakespeare’s plays or watch them in performance? And whose plays are we reading or watching, anyway? We’ll tackle these and other questions as we examine and discuss several major plays penned during the early part of Shakespeare's career, including The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry V, and The Merchant of Venice.

353.001: Later Shakespeare

Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
Andrea Borunda, apborunda@unm.edu 

This course incorporates Shakespeare and social justice, and will offer students a creative entry point to interrogate the later dramatic works of Shakespeare with an emphasis on underserved and disenfranchised communities. Using Shakespeare’s work as a conduit, we will explore themes of agency and autonomy through theatre with an emphasis on race, class, gender, identity and belonging that will allow students to carve out a Shakespeare for themselves.

363.001: Nineteenth Century America

Face to Face, MWF 1300-1350
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu 

This course focuses on the long nineteenth-century period, roughly 1790 – 1910. We will examine a series of canonical and under-read works, towards the goal of situating authors in cultural and historical context via focus on a few concepts that were widely influential throughout this period. The nineteenth century was a tumultuous, vibrant era of American cultural history. It was marked by rapid industrialization and urbanization; unprecedented income inequality; increases in non-white and non-Protestant migration to the U.S.; various forms of American economic and political expansionism; a series of brutal wars, including the Civil War, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American War; shifts away from traditional forms of religion and spiritual practice; transformations in ideas about gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship; and profound developments in both technology and science. What we now see as basic truths about the relationship of literature and politics, science and meaning, social movements and art were all being created by the authors we’re going to discuss. Required materials will include novels, short fiction, essays, and poetry, with occasional incursions into journalism and advertising as well as photography and other forms of visual art. Students will be evaluated on participation, an in-class presentation, one midterm essay exam, and a final paper.

388.001:  Comedy in Literature and Film

Face to Face, M 1400-1630
Online, F 1400-1630 
2H **This course is scheduled for the SECOND eight weeks**

Nahir Otaño Gracia, nahir@unm.edu 

Contemporary comedy in all its forms—including literature, film, and stand-up—is well-versed in the struggles faced by society both in the US and globally. Comedians are often able to touch on difficult topics of discussion without alienating their audiences. Through close readings of written, filmed, and performed comedy, students will learn how comedians use language to bring attention to difficult topics while keeping their readers and listeners laughing, engaged, and entertained.

397.001: Regional Literature

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Sarah Hernandez, hernands@unm.edu 

The Great Plains is a vast region of grasslands stretching from Canada through the central United States, encompassing Indigenous homelands, rural settlements, and farming communities. This course examines the region’s literature and the stories it tells about land, place, and belonging. In this course, students will compare settler and Indigenous narratives of land and analyze how these narratives shape ideas about place, culture, gender, regional identity and belonging.

410.001: Criticism and Theory

Face to Face, MWF 1000-1050
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 texts from earlier eras, representing keystones in the intellectual foundations that ground later developments. Specifically, we will trace the ongoing influences of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Simone de Beauvoir, and W.E.B. Du Bois. These discursive origins remain central to contemporary examinations of language; race and racialization; sex, gender, and sexuality; and the ways that literature both produces and reflects cultural meaning. We then will explore together the ways that these first examinations develop and change 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 and decolonial studies, queer theory, and critical theories of race will enable us to begin mapping the conflicts of our own period. These inquiries shape conversations on every level, in our daily lives as well as our scholarship. Seemingly new ideas gain dimension and clarity when we understand their long histories.

411.001: T: Ecocriticism

Face to Face, W 1600-1830 
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu 

This course introduces students to the major theories and practices of environmental criticism, or ecocriticism. The course focuses on the interaction between literature and the environment, and we will examine the ways in which a variety of texts and authors approach the natural world. We will read key theoretical texts and consider some of the themes and debates that have helped shape the field, but the main focus of the class will be on the application of these theories to an analysis of literature. This class seeks to break free from the standard approach of ecocritical studies that centers American and British Romantic texts and will examine literature from a variety of traditions and time periods. Texts include: The Recognition of Śakuntalā, Beowulf, The Life of Guthlac, selected Robin Hood ballads, selected poems of John Clare, Silas Marner, Ceremony, Through the Arc of the Rainforest, Engineering Eden, and selected episodes of Reservation Dogs. We will also visit the UNM Art Museum to view important landscape artwork.

417.002: Editing

Face to Face, MW 1400-1515
Bethany Davila, bdavila@unm.edu

This course places an emphasis on professional editing for the workplace. Along with practicing advanced copyediting and proofreading skills, you will learn how to perform comprehensive editing that results in documents that are complete, accurate, organized, usable, and reader focused. Assignments include regular homework, three major projects (editing professional, academic, and creative writing), and a final course reflection on your progress toward student learning outcomes. This course does not include a midterm or a final exam.

418.001: Proposal and Grant Writing        

Face to Face, MWF 0900-0950
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 include but also go beyond so-called clarity. We’ll discuss writing and design strategies 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. Therefore, although it is not essential, I urge you to find a real cause, project, organization, or company that you can work with in a collaborative manner.

420.001: T: Blue Mesa Review II

Face to Face, MWF 1400-1450       
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu

This course 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 will be to work alongside graduate students in our MFA program 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.

Ideally, to enroll, you will have completed at least the introductory creative writing course; however, exceptions can be made, depending on experience. Send an email to Dr. Clark detailing your literary interests and courses you've taken, and be sure to include your Banner ID number.

This is a course that you can take multiple times for full credit. We thrive when there are experienced readers, so please join our team!

420.002: T: Influence and How It Works

Face to Face, MWF 1100-1150
Charles Paine, cpaine@unm.edu 

For information regarding this course, please contact the instructor.

421.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction 

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

In this course designed for writers serious about improving their understanding of narrative craft, we'll discover strategies for writing compelling fiction by reading, and responding critically to, one another's original short stories and novel excerpts, generating new work by responding to assigned writing prompts, and discussing published works of fiction written by a diverse array of new and established authors.  Prerequisite: ENGL 321/Intermediate Fiction Workshop.

422.001: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Lisa Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu

This is an advanced creative writing workshop in poetry.  This class presupposes a certain understanding of the genre: ie. at least a basic understanding of the use of image, line, and form.  Our goals in this course will be to hone craft skills, try new styles and forms of poetry, and practice revision skills.  While the main focus of the course is on workshopping student poems, we will also read several collections of poetry written by writers with a UNM connection, including a novel in verse.

449.001: T: Middle English Dialects

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

This course provides an introduction to the principal dialects of Middle English, demonstrated by selected readings, in the context of the development of the language from Old English to Early Modern English (c. 1150-1500). We will be looking at the language both diachronically (the historical development) and synchronically (the differentiation of dialect features at a given time). The primary goal of the course is to familiarize students with the range of texts available in different dialects during the period. At the end of the course, students should, for example, be able to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original North-West Midlands dialect with a full appreciation of the contribution of the language to the artistry of the poem, and to recognize its difference from the London dialect of Chaucer. Assignments will include take-home exercises, a midterm, a final, and a group translation project.

461.001: American Romanticism

Face to Face, T 1400-1515
Jesse Alemán, jman@unm.edu

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

465.001: Chicanx Literary Studies

Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, mviz@unm.edu 

This course is an advanced study of Chicanx literature and will explore the various genres and styles that characterize the subject. Chicana/o literature became a recognized field of study as a result of the Civil Rights era, so the class will begin with a critical examination of the Chicano movement and the literary canon it produced. We will explore the various theories, ideas and aesthetics of Chicana/o identity and literature, and we will use these to discuss, debate, and better understand the meaning of the "x" across a wide spectrum of literary history. We will read texts from the watershed moment of the Chicano movement, the rise of Chicana feminism, and the challenges to sex and gender in the emergence of Chicanx criticism. The class will come away with a good sense of the aesthetics, genres, and styles of Chicanx literary studies, as well as the social, political, and cultural conflicts that give it meaning.

473.001: Postmodernism: The Postmodern Mystery

Face to Face, MWF 1400-1450
Scarlett Higgins, shiggins@unm.edu

This undergraduate seminar will focus on texts that combine elements of what is typically thought of as the postmodern (self-reflexivity, intertextuality, questioning of subjectivity, the self-aware character, information overload and/or misinformation, lack of closure) with those of the mystery (the (unlikely) detective, the femme fatale, murders and bodies, tropes of missing information, clues, and puzzles to be solved). Though the mystery, and particularly the detective story, is largely thought to have evolved from nineteenth century roots, this genre had an explosion in the later half of the twentieth century that has continued well into the twenty-first. We will look at a few examples of hard-boiled detective fiction/film noir from mid-twentieth century and then move forward into the postmodern mystery proper, those postmodern texts, mostly prose fiction and film, that deal with these recursive tropes of mystery and detection. We will end the semester with an extended consideration of a remarkable twenty-first century postmodern mystery, the video game Disco Elysium.

487.001: T: Epistolary Writing

Face to Face, TR 1230-1345
Matthew Hofer, mrh@unm.edu

By adopting the concept of epistolarity as a hermeneutical model, this class is meant to provide an opportunity for a new, analytical consideration of the messages that the letter form—in both prose and poetry—extends to the readers of our post-letter world. Although communication technologies and conventions invariably, and inevitably, change, the form of epistolarity represents an urgent scene of textual encounter. It is unusual in literature precisely because it requires distance, in both space and time, between addresser and addressee, or writer and reader (each of whom variously shares both positions). As a consequence of this unusual situation, it was a productive site of inquiry and provocative form of exchange from its seventeenth century rise in English-language literature through its decline in the nineteenth century, a status it regained with fresh perspective in its (surprising) renewal in the middle of the twentieth century. We will employ it to examine ideas of literary address and contact in particular, but also issues relevant to archives and ethics from a broader critical perspective.

487.002: T: True Crime for Writers

Face to Face, TR 1100-1215
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@unm.edu 

For information regarding this course, please contact the instructor.

499.001: Internship

Online
Tiffany Bourelle, tbourell@unm.edu

This course is designed to prepare students in the professional writing concentration for careers after college. The scope of student interest is as broad as the scope of technical and professional writing. This course will prepare you for a career in technical and professional writing outside the academy through two approaches:

First, you will develop skills, knowledge, and strategies, and organize materials that will make you an attractive candidate in your post-college career. This will include developing electronic and/or print portfolios, résumés, application documents, and other related materials. These materials may be used in a job search or in applying to graduate education. Even if you have a job now, preparing application materials in this course will help you systematize an approach to applying for a new job in the future.

Second, you will learn about professional writing as a discipline and come to recognize the variety of experiences a professional writer could encounter, as well as the common issues that arise in the practice of professional writing. You will write about your professional experiences and those of others in activities designed to explore the complexities of writing in the workplace.