Undergraduate Courses
Composition courses that offer many sections (ENGL 101, 201, 277 and 379) are not listed on this schedule unless they are tailored to specific thematic content or particularly appropriate for specific programs and majors.
100-200 level
ENGL 151.S01: Introduction to English Studies
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Dr. Sharon Smith
ENGL 151 serves as an introduction to both the English major and the discipline of English studies. In this class, you will develop the thinking, reading, writing, and research practices that define both the major and the discipline. Much of the semester will be devoted to honing your literary analysis skills, and we will study and discuss texts from several different genres—poetry, short fiction, the novel, drama, and film—as well as some literary criticism. As we do so, we will explore the language of the discipline, and you will learn a variety of key literary terms and concepts. In addition, you will develop your skills as both a writer and researcher within the discipline of English.
English 201.ST1 Composition II: The Mind/Body Connection
Online
Dr. Sharon Smith
In this section of English 201, students will use research and writing to learn more about problems that are important to them and articulate ways to address those problems. The course will focus specifically on issues related to the mind, the body, and the relationship between them. The topics we will discuss during the course will include the correlation between social media and body image; the efficacy of sex education programs; the degree to which beliefs about race and gender influence school dress codes; and the unique mental and physical challenges faced by college students today. In this course, you will be learning about different approaches to argumentation, analyzing the arguments of others, and constructing your own arguments. At the same time, you will be honing your skills as a researcher and developing your abilities as a persuasive and effective writer.
ENGL 201 Composition II: Environmental Writing
S09 Monday, Wednesday and Friday 11-11:50 a.m.
S11 Monday, Wednesday and Friday 12-12:50 p.m.
Gwen Horsley
English 201 will help students develop the ability to think critically and analytically and to write effectively for other university courses and careers. This course will provide opportunities to develop analytical skills that will help students become critical readers and effective writers. Specifically, in this class, students will (1) focus on the relationships between world environments, land, animals and humankind; (2) read various essays by environmental, conservational, and regional authors; and (3) produce student writings. Students will improve their writing skills by reading essays and applying techniques they witness in others’ work and those learned in class. This class is also a course in logical and creative thought. Students will write about humankind’s place in the world and our influence on the land and animals, places that hold special meaning to them or have influenced their lives, and stories of their own families and their places and passions in the world. Students will practice writing in an informed and persuasive manner, in language that engages and enlivens readers by using vivid verbs and avoiding unnecessary passives, nominalizations and expletive constructions.
Students will prepare writing assignments based on readings and discussions of essays included in Literature and the Environment and other sources. They may use The St. Martin’s Handbook, as well as other sources, to review grammar, punctuation, mechanics and usage as needed.
ENGL 201.13 Composition II: Writing the Environment
Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Dr. Paul Baggett
For generations, environmentalists have relied on the power of prose to change the minds and habits of their contemporaries. In the wake of fires, floods, storms, and droughts, environmental writing has gained a new sense of urgency, with authors joining activists in their efforts to educate the public about the grim realities of climate change. But do they make a difference? Have reports of present and future disasters so saturated our airwaves that we no longer hear them? How do writers make us care about the planet amidst all the noise? In this course, students will examine the various rhetorical strategies employed by some of today’s leading environmental writers and filmmakers. And while analyzing their different arguments, students also will strengthen their own strategies of argumentation as they research and develop essays that explore a range of environmental concerns.
ENGL 201.S15 Composition II: Monsters
Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-10:45 a.m.
April Myrick
This course builds upon those reading and writing competencies acquired in English 101 by developing further your ability to conduct research and to structure and extend an argument. Through a variety of course readings, students will examine the concept of monsters, both literal and metaphorical, through a variety of lenses, from science and technology to psychology and anthropology. Our readings and class discussions (as well as the essays you write for this course) will explore the following questions: Why do we need monsters? How do monsters reflect the fears and experiences of a specific culture or time period? In what ways can humans be monsters? In addition to the major essays, students will also create short reflection papers and an annotated bibliography that allow them to better understand the writing process and their own rhetorical choices.
ENGL 201 Composition II: Food Writing
S17 Tuesday and Thursday 12:30-1:45 p.m.
S18 Tuesday and Thursday 2-3:15 p.m.
Jodilyn Andrews
In this composition class, students will critically analyze essays about food, food systems and environments, food cultures, the intersections of personal choice, market forces, and policy, and the values underneath these forces. Students will learn to better read like writers, noting authors’ purpose, audience, organizational moves, sentence-level punctuation, and diction. We will read a variety of essays including research-intensive arguments and personal narratives which intersect with one of our most primal needs as humans: food consumption. Students will rhetorically analyze texts, conduct advanced research, create annotated bibliographies, reflect on the writing process, and write essays utilizing intentional rhetorical strategies. Through doing this work, students will practice the writing moves valued in every discipline: argument, evidence, concision, engaging prose and the essential research skills for the 21st century.
ENGL 240.S01 Juvenile Literature Elementary-5th Grade
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 12-12:50 p.m.
Instructor TBA
A survey of the history of literature written for children and adolescents, and a consideration of the various types of juvenile literature.
ENGL 240.ST1 Juvenile Literature Elementary-5th Grade
Online
Randi Anderson
In English 240 students will develop the skills to interpret and evaluate various genres of literature for juvenile readers. This particular section will focus on various works of literature at approximately the K-5 grade level. We will read a large range of works that fall into this category, as well as information on the history, development and genre of juvenile literature.
Readings for this course include classical works such as Hatchet, Little Women, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Brown Girl Dreaming, as well as newer works like Strom in the Barn, Anne Frank’s Diary: A Graphic Adaptation, Lumberjanes, and a variety of picture books. These readings will be paired with chapters from Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction to help develop understanding of various genres, themes, and concepts that are both related to juvenile literature, and also present in our readings.
In addition to exposing students to various genres of writing (poetry, historical fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, picture books, graphic novels, etc.) this course will also allow students to engage in a discussion of larger themes present in these works such as censorship, race, and gender. Students’ understanding of these works and concepts will be developed through readings, research, discussion posts, exams, and writing assignments designed to get students to practice analyzing poetry, picture books, informational books and transitional/easy readers.
ENGL 241.S01: American Literature I
Tuesday and Thursday 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Dr. Paul Baggett
This course provides a broad, historical survey of American literature from the early colonial period to the Civil War. Ranging across historical periods and literary genres—including early accounts of contact and discovery, narratives of captivity and slavery, poetry of revolution, essays on gender equality, and stories of industrial exploitation—this class examines how subjects such as colonialism, nationhood, religion, slavery, westward expansion, race, gender and democracy continue to influence how Americans see themselves and their society.
Required Texts
- The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Package 1, Volumes A and B Beginnings to 1865, Ninth Edition. (ISBN 978-0-393-26454-8)
ENGL 248.S01: Women in Literature
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10–10:50 a.m.
Dr. Katherine Malone
In this course, we’ll explore the role of storytelling in gender and identity formation. We will read six novels that depict the journey from childhood to adulthood and from silence to power. As we follow characters who struggle with prescribed gender roles and expectations, we will consider how the stories we inherit from our families and culture shape our identity and what it means for individuals to take control of their own narratives. Through close reading and a range of feminist and gender studies lenses, we will analyze how literary texts both reflect and influence our definitions of femininity and masculinity and how they might move us beyond binary thinking.
ENGL 283.S01 Introduction to Creative Writing
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 1-1:50 p.m.
Professor Steven Wingate
Students will explore the various forms of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) not one at a time in a survey format—as if there were decisive walls of separation between then—but as intensely related genres that share much of their creative DNA. Through close reading and work on personal texts, students will address the decisions that writers in any genre must face on voice, rhetorical position, relationship to audience, etc. Students will produce and revise portfolios of original creative work developed from prompts and research. This course fulfills the same SGR #2 requirements ENGL 201; note that the course will involve creative research projects. Successful completion of ENGL 101 (including by test or dual credit) is a prerequisite.
ENGL 283.ST1 Introduction to Creative Writing
Online
Amber Jensen, M.A., M.F.A.
This course explores creative writing as a way of encountering the world, research as a component of the creative writing process, elements of craft and their rhetorical effect, and drafting, workshop, and revision as integral parts of writing polished literary creative work. Student writers will engage in the research practices that inform the writing of literature and in the composing strategies and writing process writers use to create literary texts. Through their reading and writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, students will learn about craft elements, find examples of those craft elements in published works, and apply these elements in their own creative work, developed through weekly writing activities, small group and large group workshop, and conferences with the instructor. Work will be submitted, along with a learning reflection and revision plan in each genre and will then be revised and submitted as a final portfolio at the end of the semester to demonstrate continued growth in the creation of polished literary writing.
300-400 level
ENGL 363.S01 Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings
Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Dr. Michael Nagy
J. R. R. Tolkien draws upon an imposing array of ancient languages, literatures, prosodic forms and styles in order to construct both Middle Earth and those who inhabit it. Yet, despite Tolkien’s rather daunting range, his works nevertheless entertain rather than intimidate the reader for they seamlessly blend history and mythology, fact and fantasy, and philosophy and philology into labyrinthine tales of remote lands, times, and peoples, ones whose darker sides often seem disturbingly modern and familiar.
This course will introduce students to select Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse texts (all in translation), and examine The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in light of these earlier works. Further, in addition to the required reading for this course, students will also participate in the Tolkien Film Festival sponsored by the Department of English. This will afford them the opportunity to explore, and perhaps write their papers about, the adaptation of Tolkien’s written word into an alternative medium. Various themes we’ll cover include cultural relativity; the origin and nature of evil; religion and its fairytale and folktale motifs; philology; the use and abuse of power; ecological theory; mythology and the modern day; and the corruptions and continuities of language, to name a few.
Texts:
- The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology. Trans. Kevin Crossley-Holland. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.
- The Saga of the Volsungs. Trans. Jesse L. Byock. London: Penguin, 1999.
- Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
- The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
- The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966
- Jackson, Peter. All three LotR Films.
ENGL 424.S01 Language Arts Methods grades 7-12
Tuesday 6-8:50 p.m.
Danielle Harms
Techniques, materials, and resources for teaching English language and literature to middle and secondary school students. Required of students in the English Education Option.
AIS/ENGL 447.S01: American Indian Literature of the Present
Thursdays 4-6:50 p.m.
Dr. Paul Baggett
This course introduces students to contemporary works by authors from various Indigenous nations. Students examine these works to enhance their historical understanding of Indigenous peoples, discover the variety of literary forms used by those who identify as Indigenous writers, and consider the cultural and political significance of these varieties of expression. Topics and questions to be explored include:
- Genre: What makes Indigenous literature indigenous?
- Political and Cultural Sovereignty: Why have an emphasis on tribal specificity and calls for “literary separatism” emerged in recent decades, and what are some of the critical conversations surrounding such particularized perspectives?
- Gender and Sexuality: What are the intersecting concerns of Indigenous Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and how might these research fields inform one another?
- Trans-Indigeneity: What might we learn by comparing works across different Indigenous traditions, and what challenges do such comparisons present?
- Aesthetics: How do Indigenous writers understand the dynamics between tradition and creativity?
- Visual Forms: What questions or concerns do visual representations (television and film) by or about Indigenous peoples present?
Possible Texts
- Akiwenzie-Damm, Kateri and Josie Douglas (eds), Skins: Contemporary Indigenous Writing. IAD Press, 2000. (978-1864650327)
- Erdrich, Louise, The Sentence. Harper, 2021 (978-0062671127)
- Harjo, Joy, Poet Warrior: A Memoir. Norton, 2021 (978-0393248524)
- Harjo, Sterlin and Taika Waititi, Reservation Dogs (selected episodes)
- Talty, Morgan. Night of the Living Rez, 2022, Tin House (978-1953534187)
- Wall Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweet Grass, Milkweed Editions (978-1571313560)
- Wilson, Diane. The Seed Keeper: A Novel. Milkweed Editions (978-1571311375)
- Critical essays by Alexie, Allen, Cohen, Cox, King, Kroeber, Ortiz, Piatote, Ross and Sexton, Smith, Taylor, Teuton, Treuer, Vizenor, and Womack.
ENGL 479.01: Capstone
Wednesday 3-5:50 p.m.
Dr. Jason McEntee
In his significant work Novels into Film: The Metamorphosis of Fiction into Cinema (1957), George Bluestone notes that the process of making novels into movies has been “overtly compatible [yet] secretly hostile” (2). Bluestone’s assessment of this process prompts us to think of the love/hate binary that we engage when reading literature and then seeing it made into a movie: “This would make a great movie!”/“I can’t believe they butchered the book like that!”
This love/hate binary will serve as our springboard into a larger discussion of how to address the process of making literature into film. This class will address the basic issues involved in the process, such as the narrative choices filmmakers have to make when adapting, to the economics involved in adapting, to the receptions (both critical and popular) of the final products (both the literature and the film). However, these basic issues will serve only as a means to engage in larger discussions of genre and genre theory, literary theory, film theory, silent and sound film, the historical periods Modernity and Postmodernity and their resulting schools of thought Modernism and Postmodernism, among others. Course requirements will include lots of reading, viewing, and discussion, three presentations, an annotated bibliography and a major research essay.
ENGL 491.S01: Undergraduate Writing Center Learning Assistants
Independent Study
Dr. Nathan Serfling
Since their beginnings in the 1920s and 30s, writing centers have come to serve numerous functions: as hubs for writing across the curriculum initiatives, sites to develop and deliver workshops, and resource centers for faculty as well as students, among other functions. But the primary function of writing centers has necessarily and rightfully remained the tutoring of student writers. This course will immerse you in that function in two parts. During the first four weeks, you will explore writing center praxis—that is, the dialogic interplay of theory and practice related to writing center work. This part of the course will orient you to writing center history, key theoretical tenets, and practical aspects of writing center tutoring. Once we have developed and practiced this foundation, you will begin work in the writing center as a tutor, responsible for assisting a wide variety of student clients with numerous writing tasks. Through this work, you will learn to actively engage with student clients in the revision of a text, respond to different student needs and abilities, work with a variety of writing tasks and rhetorical situations, and develop a richer sense of writing as a complex and negotiated social process.
ENGL 492.S01 Topics: Professional Editing & Publishing
Monday 3–5:50 p.m.
Dr. Katherine Malone
This course focuses on the theory and practice of professional editing in the field of English studies. Our readings will consider questions relating to authorship, textuality, and the role of the editor in journal, book, and web publishing. In addition to exploring contemporary debates in scholarly editing, we will consider how editorial decisions (such as introductory essays, appendices, footnotes, illustrations, and textual sources) shape meaning across various editions of a work. You will learn how to build style sheets, ensure error-free copy, and manage editorial projects while gaining hands-on experience with a top-tier academic journal. Assignments include a course blog, two edited articles, a textual history essay, and a final project for which you will use your research and editing skills to create an anthology of nineteenth-century short stories.
Required Texts
- Einsohn, Amy, Marilyn Schwartz, and Erika Buky. The Copyeditor's Handbook and Workbook: The Complete Set. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. (9780520306677)
- Keleman, Erick. Textual Editing and Criticism: An Introduction. New York: Norton, 2009. (9780393929423)
- Williams, Joseph M., and Joseph Bizup. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. 12th edition Boston: Pearson, 2016. (9780134080413)
ENGL 492.ST1 Screenwriting
Online
Professor Steven Wingate
Students will learn the fundamentals of screenwriting: good format, believable and imaginative stories, solid characterization, and well-turned narrative arcs. The class will read outstanding screenplays as craft examples, adapt a literary work to learn format, then draft, workshop, revise, and expand original scripts or adaptations. At the end of the course, students should have either a complete and polished first act of a feature script they can complete on their own time, or a fully-realized script for a short film or series episode. While we will not focus on “making it” in Hollywood, we will cover the basics of how the film industry works and what that means for writers who want to see their work onscreen.
GRADUATE COURSES
ENGL 592.01: Professional Editing & Publishing
Mondays 3-5:50 p.m.
Dr. Katherine Malone
This course focuses on the theory and practice of professional editing in the field of English studies. Our readings will consider questions relating to authorship, textuality, and the role of the editor in journal, book, and web publishing. In addition to exploring contemporary debates in scholarly editing, we will consider how editorial decisions (such as introductory essays, appendices, footnotes, illustrations, and textual sources) shape meaning across various editions of a work. You will learn how to build style sheets, ensure error-free copy, and manage editorial projects while gaining hands-on experience with a top-tier academic journal. Assignments include a course blog, two edited articles, a textual history essay, and a final project for which you will use your research and editing skills to create an anthology of nineteenth-century short stories.
Required Texts
- Einsohn, Amy, Marilyn Schwartz, and Erika Buky. The Copyeditor's Handbook and Workbook: The Complete Set. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. (9780520306677)
- Keleman, Erick. Textual Editing and Criticism: An Introduction. New York: Norton, 2009. (9780393929423)
- Williams, Joseph M., and Joseph Bizup. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. 12th edition Boston: Pearson, 2016. (9780134080413)
ENGL 592.ST1 Screenwriting
Online
Professor Steven Wingate
Students will learn the fundamentals of screenwriting: good format, believable and imaginative stories, solid characterization, and well-turned narrative arcs. The class will read outstanding screenplays as craft examples, adapt a literary work to learn format, then draft, workshop, revise, and expand original scripts or adaptations. At the end of the course, students should have either a complete and polished first act of a feature script they can complete on their own time, or a fully-realized script for a short film or series episode. While we will not focus on “making it” in Hollywood, we will cover the basics of how the film industry works and what that means for writers who want to see their work onscreen.
ENGL 705.S01 Seminar in Teaching Composition
Thursdays 1-3:50 p.m.
Dr. Nathan Serfling
This course will provide you with a foundation in the pedagogies and theories (and their attendant histories) of writing instruction, a foundation that will prepare you to teach your own writing courses at SDSU and elsewhere. As you will discover through our course, though, writing instruction does not come with any prescribed set of “best” practices. Rather, writing pedagogies stem from and continue to evolve because of various and largely unsettled conversations about what constitutes effective writing and effective writing instruction. Part of becoming a practicing writing instructor, then, is studying these conversations to develop a sense of what “good writing” and “effective writing instruction” might mean for you in our particular program and how you might adapt that understanding to different programs and contexts.
As we read about, discuss, and research writing instruction, we will address a variety of practical and theoretical topics. The practical focus will allow us to attend to topics relevant to your immediate classroom practices: designing a curriculum and various types of assignments, delivering the course content, and assessing student work, among others. Our theoretical topics will begin to reveal the underpinnings of these various practical matters, including their historical, rhetorical, social, and political contexts. In other words, we will investigate the praxis—the dialogic interaction of practice and theory—of writing pedagogy. As a result, this course aims to prepare you not only as a writing teacher but also as a nascent writing studies/writing pedagogy scholar.
At the end of this course, you should be able to engage effectively in the classroom practices described above and participate in academic conversations about writing pedagogy, both orally and in writing. Assessment of these outcomes will be based primarily on the various writing assignments you submit and to a smaller degree on your participation in class discussions and activities.
ENGL 726.S01 Seminar in English Literature since 1660: Living “In the Wake” of Colonization and Slavery
Tuesdays 3-5:50 p.m.
Dr. Sharon Smith
This course examines representations of race in literature of the long eighteenth century, considering how these representations were used to both rationalize and critique colonization and transatlantic slavery. Though we’ll consider texts written from the perspective of the colonizing culture, a significant portion of the course will focus on texts from multiple historical, geographical, and generic contexts that push back against and fill gaps within colonial narratives, texts written "in the wake" of colonization and slavery, to use Christina Sharpe's term. Long eighteenth-century texts will include Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, The Woman of Colour, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, Mary Prince’s Autobiography, as well as a variety of shorter texts. We will also consider the work of more recent authors and scholars, including Robert Hayden, Toni Morrison, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe and Layli Long Soldier.
ENGL 792.ST1 Reading Contemporary Poetry and Creative Nonfiction
Online
Amber Jensen, M.A., M.F.A.
In this course, we will explore how contemporary poetry and creative nonfiction build upon traditional models but also continue to innovate and blur genre distinctions. We will draw from theoretical texts How to Read (and Write About) Poetry, Second Edition by Susan Holbrook and The Next American Essay (A New History of the Essay) by John D’Agata) and read individual poems and essays, as well as complete collections and memoirs, including (selections subject to change): Kaleb Ray Cadrilli’s Water I Won’t Touch, Tyree Daye’s Cardinal, Christine Stewart’s The Poet & The Architect, Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave, and Mary Alice Haug’s Out of Loneliness.Our rhetorical reading of these texts will focus on the relationship between text and context, examining how these works reflect and impact the world they are produced and consumed in, what we bring to our reading of these texts and what these texts offer to us.