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Department of English Language and Literature

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Undergraduate Course Descriptions - Summer 2024

6 Week Summer Sessions

ENGL 102.J18       RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION       WEB ASYNCH      REES-WHITE

Instruction and intensive practice in researching, analyzing, and composing written arguments about academic and public issues.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights and that all people are entitled to the same freedoms without distinction of any kind. However, many countries around the world are divided by language, raising the question at the heart of our course: is language a human right? Some speak the privileged, majority language and are freely able to conduct business, educate their children, and receive government services, most likely never giving their language privilege much of a thought. Those who speak indigenous or minority languages, however, encounter obstacles and discrimination in their day-to-day lives, even in “free” societies: we just have to look to Spanish speakers in the United States for a close-to-home example. This summer, we will research examples of countries where language differences and human-rights violations have sparked ethnic fragmentation, political polarization, and even civil violence, while composing a variety of argumentative papers concerning the subject.

3 Week Summer Sessions

ENGL 101.J10      CRITICAL READING AND COMPOSITION      WEB ASYNCH      LEE
Instruction in strategies for critically reading and analyzing literature and non-literary texts; structured, sustained practice in composing expository and analytical essays.


ENGL 102.J10      RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION      WEB ASYNCH      SMITH
Instruction and intensive practice in researching, analyzing, and composing written arguments about academic and public issues.


ENGL 102.J11      RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION      WEB ASYNCH      GLAVEY
Instruction and intensive practice in researching, analyzing, and composing written arguments about academic and public issues.


ENGL 280.J10      LITERATURE AND SOCIETY      WEB ASYNCH       BARILLA
(AIU & VSR)

Fiction, poetry, drama and other cultural texts engaged with questions of values, ethics and social responsibility.

ENGL 101.J11       CRITICAL READING AND COMPOSITION       WEB ASYNCH       DINGS
Instruction in strategies for critically reading and analyzing literature and non-literary texts; structured, sustained practice in composing expository and analytical essays.


ENGL 102.J15       RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION       WEB ASYNCH       WOERTENDYKE
Instruction and intensive practice in researching, analyzing, and composing written arguments about academic and public issues.


ENGL 102.J20       RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION       WEB ASYNCH       FISCHER
Instruction and intensive practice in researching, analyzing, and composing written arguments about academic and public issues.


ENGL 428B.J10       AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT II        WEB ASYNCH       TRAFTON

(Crosslisted with AFAM428B)

Representative works of African-American writers from 1903 to the present.

ENGL 102.J12       RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION       WEB ASYNCH       JARRELLS
Instruction and intensive practice in researching, analyzing, and composing written arguments about academic and public issues.


ENGL 102.J19       RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION       WEB ASYNCH       MULLER
Instruction and intensive practice in researching, analyzing, and composing written arguments about academic and public issues.


ENGL 437.J10       WOMEN WRITERS       WEB ASYNCH       GULICK

(Crosslisted with WGST437)

This section of ENGL/WGST 437 will focus primarily on contemporary women writers of color from outside the United States. Reading across a wide range of genres including autobiography, narrative fiction, graphic novels, poetry, prose essays, and science fiction, we will pay special attention to how feminism gets imagined, challenged, and redefined by writers from the global South. Authors will include Mary Prince, Nawal El Saadawi, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Marjane Satrapi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tsitsi Jaji, Tracy Smith, and Nnedi Okorafor.

Students can expect a lot of bang for their buck out of this intensive summer session: we will encounter a wide range of extraordinary literary works, treating each one on its own terms and placing them in conversation with each other, in a very short amount of time. Books will be available at All Good Books in Five Points as well as at the Russell House Bookstore. I will post a complete reading list online at least one week before our session’s start date. Students who plan to juggle jobs, internships, etc. while taking this course, or who simply like to read at a more leisurely pace, are strongly encouraged to start the reading for the course a bit ahead of time. Our longest reads will be Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (Volumes 1 and 2). This class will be taught online and asynchronously, but will require students to read, watch short lectures (or read transcripts thereof), and submit authentic, thoughtful, low-stakes writing assignments each weekday of our session. Consistent engagement, intellectual curiosity and generosity, and a commitment to participating fully in our online discussions will play a major part in assessment.


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