Courses

110 Introduction to College Writing 2 or 4 hours

An introductory English course designed to help students become more fluent, confident, and effective writers and readers. Focus on strengthening skills in writing college-level essays, including identification of surface errors. Frequent writing, reading, and individual conferences. The four hour course is offered only in the summer when the course meets daily for six weeks. Hours do not count towards an English major. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

130 Literary Ventures 4 hours

An introductory literature course, with specific focus and readings announced each semester. Please go to registrar.luther.edu for descriptions. This course is both an introduction to the pleasures of reading and interpretation and also an opportunity for student writing in a range of analytic and creative forms. Open to all students in all majors. Students may enroll in more than one version of the course. Sample topics: Carribean Women Writers, Literature of the Apocalypse, Multiple Hamlets, Poems for Life.

139, 239, 339, 439 Special Topics Credit Arr.

147 Literature of the African Peoples 3 hours

Modern African writers are some of the most dynamic and innovative writers as they draw from and respond to different literacy traditions, such as their own oral traditions and European models. This course serves as an introduction to the various themes and styles of written literature of 20th-century Africa. The course will begin wth a histroical analysis of European colonialism in Africa, using a variety of primary and secondary sources. Representative authors include Tsitsi Dangarembga, J.M. Coetzee, Buchi Emecheta, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Andre Brink, Tayib Salih, and Nawal El Saadawi. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: Paideia 111 (Same as Africana Studies 147.)

210 Effective Writing 4 hours

A writing course for students in all disciplines. The course includes practice and instruction in writing for a variety of audiences, emphasizing revising and responding to others' writing. Students discuss well-crafted prose essays that include effective argument and clear language and organization. This course cannot be taken concurrently with Paideia I. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

211 Writing for Print Media 3 hours

A comprehensive course in basic news writing, advanced reporting, literary journalism, and travel writing. Focus on the issues and skills central to journalism, public relations, and other professional writing careers. Readings from newspapers, magazine, and book-length reportage (e.g., Orwell, Mailer, McPhee, Didion). Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

212 Creative Writing: Fiction and Poetry I 4 hours

An introductory course in the writing of poems and stories that explore lived and imagined experience. Writing will include experiments in each genre and in-class exercises in craft inspired by a variety of readings in contemporary poetry and fiction. Student work will be discussed in a workshop format. Prerequisite: Paideia 111 and sophomore standing.

213 Creative Writing: The Essay 3 hours

A reading and writing course in the art of the personal essay. Reading will survey the genre, examining essays from a variety of periods and kinds. Writing will include some larger pieces and attention to matters of craft such as voice, tone, and patterns of development, which will help students cultivate a personal style. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

230 The Writer's Voice 4 hours

When writers write, they sing, whisper, and shout. This course, an introduction to the English major, emphasizes literature and writing as forms of personal and cultural expression. Our central literary focus is on poetry, by may include fiction, drama, or non-fiction. The course also gives extended attention to student writing as a performative act, conscious of voice, audience, and purpose. (Eng 230 is designated for intentional writing instruction in the major.) Prerequisite:sophomore standing.

231 Film 4 hours

Study of the varieties of film experience from documentaries to feature-length films, American and foreign. Practice in film analysis and criticism of current films based upon viewing, discussing, and writing about films. Emphasis upon acquiring knowledge and appreciation of the techniques by which filmmakers achieve their effects, rather than upon systematic study of film history. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

240 African Literature 3 hours

A study of one topic in the wide range of literature by Africans and African-Americans. Focuses will vary, but will be centered around a particular theme, period, or group of writers. Representative topics include: Africana Women's Writing, Caribbean Literature, The Harlem Renaissance, South African Literature, The African-American Novel, and Contemporary Africana Fiction. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. (Same as Africana studies 245.)

245 Literature By Women 3 hours

A study of how women writers from different historical periods use poems, stories, essays, and plays to address gender issues in the private and public world. The course looks at how literature both presents and critiques culture and its construction of gender, as well as how it offers new visions and choices for women and men. Readings include such writers as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maxine Hong Kingston. Prerequisite: Paideia 111 (Same as women's studies 245.)

251 African-American Literature 4 hours

A survey of African-American literature. Primary emphasis will be on literature written since 1920 when the Harlem Renaissance began. Includes authors such as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Zola Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison and gives attention to theories of race and culture formation. Prerequisite: Paideia 111. (Same as Africana studies 236.)

260 Shakespeare 4 hours

For four centuries Shakespeare has been celebrated as the greatest writer in English. This course will help students more fully understand the power of his plays, both as literature for reading and scripts for performance. Reading plays in each major type (comedies, tragedies, and histories), we will explore such topics as language, moral vision, gender, politics, and historical context. Students will have the opportunity to explore their interpretations in writing and by staging a scene. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

312 Creative Writing: Poetry and Fiction II 3 hours

An advanced-level course in the writing of poems and stories for students dedicated to making imaginative, emotional, and technical discoveries in the practice of their craft. Readings in contemporary poetry and fiction, as well as in-class exercises and student workshops. Prerequisite: English 212 and sophomore standing.

314 Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice 4 hours

A study of the origin and development of rhetoric. Readings in rhetorical theory and case studies of oral and written rhetorical discourse with an emphasis on written composition. Extensive analytical and persuasive writing. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

320 Contemporary Literature 3 hours

A study of significant works written since 1945, predominantly by British and/or American writers, in both poetry and prose. Readings trace the recent evolution and refinement of literary techniques and themes, with emphasis on the varietfsy of aesthetic responses to contemporary culture and thought. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

334 Young Adult Literature 3 hours

Study of literature for young adults (ages 12-18), with emphasis on reading of representative fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Course also includes history of the genre, interpretive approaches to texts, resources and materials for teaching. Designed for teaching majors; useful for others working with young people. Prerequisite: sophomore standing

352 American Frontiers: American Literature to 1860 4 hours

American writers since the very beginnings have inscribed the natural lanscape and crossed frontiers of the human heart and soul. We will explore these frontiers and the authors who transcend boundaries into uncharted space in stories of Spanish conquistadors and native Americans; the narratives of English colonists, African-American slaves, and explorers of Lewis and Clark; nature essays of Emerson and Thoreau, illustrated by the Hudson Valley School; poetry by Bradstreet, Wheatley, Whitman, and Dickinson; fiction by Hawthorne, Melville, and Beecher Stowe. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

353 American Literature 1860 to the Present 4 hours

An invitation to explore currents and crosscurrents, traditions and individual talents, movements and masterpieces from the Civil War era to the present. Works will be chosen from a variety of genres, and course units may emphasize particular regions, periods, or themes, such as Southern voices (Faulkner, Hurston, Welty), the era of World War I (Hemingway, Cummings, Dos Passos), and feminist fiction and poetry (Kingston, Walker, Sexton). Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

354 American Novel 4 hours

A study of major American novelists from the mid-19th century to the present, such as Melville, Stowe, Twain, Cather, Faulkner, and Morrison. Some attention is given to theoretical approaches to American literature; library research and student writing required. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

361 Chaucer and Medieval Literature 4 hours

From heroes fighting monsters to Arthurian romances, medieval literature is best known for its stories of chivalry. Less well-known but equally wonderful are the comic tales of sex in trees and greedy friars dividing a fart. We will read Beowulf, narrative poems about love and adventure by Marie de France, the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and much more, with in-depth attention to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Prerequisite: junior standing.

362 Renaissance Literature 4 hours

English literature came into its own during the Renaissance, as Sidney, Spenser, and Raleigh courted Queen Elizabeth's favor through love poetry and sonnets were all the vogue. The period also produced the counter-cultural poetry of Donne and Marvell, and profound religious lyrics of Herbert, and the golden age of English drama with the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. The course will explore this rich body of literature through both literary and cultural analysis, with options for a range of student writing. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: junior standing.

363 Milton 3 hours

How could angels in Heaven and humans in Paradise rebel against the God who created the world and made it good? Is it better to rule in Hell than serve in heaven? What would it be like to live in Edenic bliss, anyway? John Milton sought to answer those questions in Paradise Lost. Second only to Shakespeare in its influence on later writers, Milton's work probes religion, politics, and gender in a remarkable melding of classical and Christian traditions. We will read this epic, as well as other poems and prose in which Milton engaged the tumultuous events of the English civil wars and its aftermath. Prerequisite: junior standing.

364 Restoration and Eighteenth Century British Literture 4 hours

This course explores the range and variety of British literature written after the restoration of the British monarchy in 1660, and before the revolution in France in 1789. Literary artists in this era produced innovative writing in several new genres, including journalism, travel writing, biography, satire, and the novel. The literature of the eighteenth century was also a crucible for modern understandings of gender, race, and class identities. In this course, we explore these literary developments within their historical contexts, aiming for a broad coverage of canonical and not-so-canonical texts. Representative authors may include Dryden, Congreve, Behn, Swift, Pope, Johnson, Fielding, Burney, and Haywood. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: junior standing.

365 British Romanticism: Revolution, Nature, and the Imagination 3 hours

The era of the American and French revolutions profoundly affected England, inspiring cultural debates about slavery and women's roles, as well as new ways of looking at the natural world, human perception, imaginative creation, and the Gothic past. We will study the cultural milieu and read such writers as Blake, Equiano, Burke, Wollstonecraft, Austen, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, Percy and Mary Shelley, Byron, and Keats. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: junior standing.fs

366 The Victorians 4 hours

The Victorians experienced cataclysmic changes in science, economics and industry, national identity, gender roles, and faith. Novelists wrestled with these changes, chronicling the broad social world and the schisms that divided it. Poets of the period registered extremes of doubt, or returned to an idealized past, or looked forward to developments like the liberation of women. Representative authors may include the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Tennyson, and Barrett Browning. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: junior standing.

367 Literary Modernism 4 hours

Many Europeans braced themselves for the start of the twentieth century, firm in their belief that it might augur the end of the world. For thousands of soldiers slaughtered during the "war to end all wars," it was. Between World War I and II, British writers and Irish nationalists transformed the literary landscape with a radicallly new approach to language, form, and style. Women writers explored new freedoms in sexuality and in their literary subjects. In the second half of the century, novelists and poets confronted the legacy of economic reform, urbanism, and the remnants of British colonialism around the globe. Readings might include writers such as Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Woolf, Forster, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, Ted Hughes, and Graham Greene. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: junior standing.

368 The British Novel 4 hours

In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's heroine remarks, "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." In this course, we defy stupidity by enjoying a variety of good British novels, beginning with the eighteenth-century, and arriving, after many pages and multiple plot twists, in the modern era. We consider the history of the genre, the social and political context of the texts, and the development of the British literary tradition. Representative authors may include Burney, Fielding, Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray, Conrad, and Woolf. Prerequsite: junior standing.

380 Internship 3-4 hours

Supervised on-campus or off-campus work experience in some area of journalism. Must have signature of department head. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. one internship may be used to satisfy requirements for the English major, but not for the minor.

395 Independent Study 1-4 hours

485 Junior-Senior Seminar 3 hours

An intensive, collaborative study of a selected period, movement, or writers, emphasizing the methods and assumptions of literary analysis and selected critical theories. The course format is student-initiated discussion and presentation, with significant independent projects. Intended primarily for seniors. Prerequisites: two courses from 352-354, 361-368.

490 Senior Project 1,2, or 4 hours

Together with the required Senior Seminar, the Senior Project is the English major's culminating experience. Projects build upon students' previous experience with scholarly research, creative writing, or the secondary education program, and include both a substantial piece of writing and an oral presentation. Permission to register will be given after submission of the application form available on the English department web site. Registration ought to be completed during the semester preceding the semester in which the project is begun.

493 Senior Honors Project 4 hours

A year-long independent research project. Applications are completed on the "Honors Program" form available at the registrar's office, requiring the signatures of a faculty supervisor, the department head, the honors program director, and the registrar. Interdisciplinary projects require the signatures of two faculty supervisors. The project must be completed by the due date for senior projects. The completed project is evaluated by a review committee consisting of the faculty supervisor, another faculty member from the major department, and a faculty member from outside the major department. All projects must be presented publicly. Only projects awarded an "A- or A" qualify for "departmental honors" designation. The honors project fulfills the all-college senior project requirement.