Process-based introduction to applying rhetorical principles to source-based writing and speaking with multimedia for diverse audiences.

Continuation of ENGL 1001. Focus on principles of rhetoric and composition. Investigation and practice of the uses of the written language in exposition, persuasion, and critical analysis.

Study the ways in which human beings have fashioned imaginative works that reflect, challenge and transfigure the worlds in which they live, with intensive analysis of texts selected from such writers as Adams, Austen, the Brontes, Camus, Chopin, Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Flaubert, Hemingway, Kafka, Keats, Melville, Morrison, Pope, Rhys, the Shelleys, Swift, Voltaire, Woolf and Wordsworth. Strong emphasis placed on student writing. As an Honors Program course, includes a more intensive research or project component. Equivalent of ENGL 2000 or ENGL 2010 for English majors and minors.

Engages students as writers in the broad, introductory study of different research methods and methodologies. Surveys the ways people seek, make sense of, and share knowledge, paying attention to history, culture and use. Invites hands-on learning through problem-based inquiry and short-form writing (including multimodal compositions) for different audiences. Regular reflection encourages self-awareness and sustained attention to writers’ and researchers’ responsibilities to others.

Learn to analyze literature and its genre conventions in a self-conscious, logical and rigorous manner. Discover the pleasure of reading complex works of art and develop critical thinking habits for life beyond the university. Genre (e.g., novel, short story, drama, poetry, film) provides one of the most basic ways of creating meaning. Focus varies by instructor; students should consult the Department of English website for information on specific sections. Course may be repeated if instructor and subtitle are different.

Begins with the premise that reading challenging, complex literature well is a useful and important activity. Models a variety of reading practices to help students to make reading a personally meaningful activity. Encourages students to become lifelong readers by choosing a variety of texts that are pleasurable to read.

Learn to deepen your appreciation of great poems without fear. Survey a variety of poetic forms while practicing the basics of poetic reading. Discover that reading poetry can be a deeply joyful process. Read a wide range of poets, from medieval to modern. Practice listening to poetry together in class by reading aloud ourselves, but also playing contemporary spoken-word poets and lyricists.

Engage fictional and nonfictional texts that represent differences and similarities among diverse groups of people. Ask hard questions about what it means to belong to a community. Learn how groups are constituted through language. Examine how literary texts register and transmit social equality and inequality, and how the acts of reading and writing can prepare everyone to act as people "with and for others.”

Engage the challenging process of reading fictional and nonfictional texts from a range of cultures across the world. Investigate the nature and formation of discursive communities and the reasons why some of those communities have power and status and others do not. Examine how literary texts register and transmit social equality and inequality, how literature acts as an agent for social change and how reading and writing can create bridges between cultures. Recognize your own position in social systems and think about how you contribute to creating conditions of equality/inclusivity or inequality/exclusion. The goal is to reflect on our own values and social contexts in order to imagine how best to engage social systems and values systems different from our own.

Learn the key foundational questions and practices in literary studies. Gain a more sophisticated ability to draw upon historical and cultural contexts to understand literary works. Learn how to read different genres. Explore significant questions in light of current debates within the disciplines. The focus of the content varies by instructor. Students should consult the Department of English website for information on specific sections before enrolling.

Understand how every day, simply by speaking, we reconstruct the world and our place in it: our age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, place of origin and more. Grapple with the following questions: How does language reflect and create social difference? Why do languages change? What is the role of language legislation and language education in working for social justice? Topics may include linguistic diversity in Milwaukee, World Englishes, language and gender, and African-American English.

Engage in and reflect on multiple processes of writing; compose in different media and/or genres; address a variety of rhetorical situations and audiences; and examine how social power relates to uses of writing. Consider key questions: What can writing do? Who am I as a writer? Who am I as a writer among others? What responsibilities do I have when I write? Required for ENGW and ENGA majors, but open to all. May not be counted as a Literature course.

Examine workplace writing (broadly defined) from a rhetorical perspective, with particular emphases on purposes, genres, styles, and audiences. Understand practical workplace problems and respond to these problems by designing, composing, and revising workplace documents, such as resumes, letters, memos, emails, reports and webpages as well as oral and visual presentations. May not be counted as a Literature course.

Research, write, design and edit technical documents, including technical descriptions, reports and procedures. Projects individualized to meet students' needs and interests.

Examines health writing (including illness narratives, academic research articles, public health texts and science journalism) with an eye towards both critique and imitation. Relevant to humanities students interested in technical communication in the health industry and sciences student thinking about a career in the health sciences or graduate school.

Discover creative writing (and reading) by exploring two or more short-form genres: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting and/or screenwriting. Read and write a range of work (content varies according to instructor), engage in peer review, and develop new creative and critical skills applicable to many careers and disciplines. No prior background in creative writing is required or assumed.

Explore core concepts of the short story—character, perspective, plot, setting, metaphor, voice and genre—alongside celebrated short stories that exemplify or challenge that concept. Respond to the stories in a critical and analytic mode. Collaborate with classmates in a “rewriting lab,” composing short pieces that experiment with each concept from a more creative perspective. Draft and revise an original short story. No prior background in creative writing is required or assumed.

Write, workshop and revise narratives from what is broadly called speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural romance and more). Learn how to build out the complex storyworld background necessary for a prose, gaming or screenwriting project.

Challenge the idea that creative genius is an elite phenomenon owned by a select few people. Explore personal creativity alongside members of the local community through experiential learning. Use art as a powerful medium to form communities across socioeconomic, racial, ethnic and experiential divisions. No prior background in creative writing is required or assumed.

Study and practice life-writing techniques while learning about memory as it relates to narrative. Read a diverse array of memoirs from across the life-course. Explore questions of language and representation, memory and imagination, creativity and authenticity, and individual and group identities.

Read and write poetry in the context of present-tense concerns and experiences. Forge a community of writers through workshop exercises and practices. Explore the relationship between textual revision and personal/social transformation. Discover how poetry connects to contemporary art, music, politics, and the environment. No prior background in creative writing is required or assumed.

Explore the monster myths of medieval Europe that use monstrosity in inventive ways to think through sociopolitical issues. Working through medieval monster myths, consider a variety of socially-constructed boundaries and the questions they raise about gender roles and ethnic and religious difference. Consider the relevance of these myths to the contemporary world.

Considers the boundary between life and death, salvation and damnation, animal and human, and human and fairy in medieval writings. Explores how early modern texts represented ethnic and racial difference. Throughout, examines how “English” texts that were not always originally composed in English and how England itself is a place of crossroads. Grapples with the question: what exactly is “English” literature?

Read and see some of the great plays of the British and Irish dramatic tradition, from William Shakespeare to Martin McDonagh. Engage in playful reading practices to understand drama as a living form meant for performance. Evaluate how drama operates on our minds and emotions.

Understand how the questions raised by Romantic thinkers in reaction to a period of radical intellectual, technological and sociopolitical changes revolutionized the western world’s attitude towards “nature.” Through experiential learning, visits to the Riverside Urban Ecology Center, examine how, in a very immediate way, today’s arguments about climate change, animal rights and ecology are products of contradictions first brought to light by Romanticism.

Trace the development of the Gothic tradition from its origins in the late eighteenth century to the present day, with attention to formal experiments and cultural concerns. Consider how Gothic texts comment on gender, sexuality, race, and the body, as well as crime, transgression and guilt. Authors may include Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker and Toni Morrison.

Reads modern Irish literature as an archive of contested cultural memory in which writers tried to generate a usable past for a public whose history has been defined by colonial oppression, enforced amnesia of their native language, and violence. Studies some of the best-knows writers from Ireland in the modern period, from Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and J.M. Synge to, more recently, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Marina Carr, Conor McPherson, Colm Toibin and Colum McCann.

Read some of the most exciting works of Irish literature and film produced in the 21st century. Understand how distinct literary forms perform different cultural work as Irish literature attempts imagining new futures that can cope with the weight of Irish history and its embodied cultural memories

Ask why some of the best recent works of contemporary historical fiction has been obsessed with remembering, distorting, clarifying, appropriating and forgetting the distant and recent past. Explore what contemporary historical fiction has to show us about our own moment in history. Consider how contemporary historical fiction is not only about history but also invites us to think with it about the ethics of what we remember and what we don’t.

Study Jane Austen’s greatest novels to understand how they depicted and challenged the inner lives of women in a culture that kept them from achieving their full human potential and in a patriarchal society rigged against them. Through attentive readings, examine the ways that Austen innovated the novel form to intervene in the cultural paradigms of her time.

Study film from a media studies perspective and consider audiovisual reception, the political economy of the culture industry, and developments in the cinematic apparatus alongside narrative analysis. Specific topics may vary. Explore cinematic depictions of refugees and migrants in the contemporary world and/or the potential for film as a medium to circulate in the global economy.

Examine war fiction to consider the various strategies writers have employed to justify or condemn war, to make the experiences of soldiers real and important to civilian readers, and to process the home front in the aftermath of war. Become attentive to how fiction depicts the experience of soldiers, from enlistment, to combat and homecoming. Consider how fiction has attempted to convey the traumatic, inexpressible pain of war for all members of the community.

Study illness stories in literary genres spanning the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Explore how culture constructs stories of sickness and how those stories shape our own experiences of health and wellbeing. Contrasting stories from distinct and sometimes opposing perspectives (e.g., experience gap between doctor and patient; different cultural notions of health; differences in gender, race, class and social status), learn how to listen and respond to various ways people tell their own illness stories.

Examine disability as a cultural phenomenon affecting around 50 million Americans in order to work toward a more socially just future. Learn how to apply innovative thought about disability to interpretations of literature, film and popular culture. Key questions addressed include, how is disability commonly represented in visual and print media, and how can we transform that understanding to work toward the creation of more inclusive communities?

Explore how the “spirit of place” articulated in early American communities produces and portrays a range of individualisms. Examine early American writers who portray individual characters establishing themselves within a particular setting, challenging while contributing to their social environment, as well as experiencing resistance, prejudice, and oppression from the communal setting.

Delve into the history of water relations by looking at various Indigenous texts, stories, poetry, maps, artworks and cultural materials that speak to the history and ongoing water relationships. Learn about Native American and Indigenous philosophies about water as well as efforts, particularly located in the Mid-West and Plains regions of the United States, to address changing climates with a focus on water protection. Understand how this vital element shapes our relationships to each other and to the state. Includes experiential learning opportunities and work collaboratively with peers on multimedia projects.

Examine the work of LGBTQ+ authors, artists, and directors. Consider the significance of LGBTQ+ identities for our contemporary culture. Critique widespread cultural assumptions that uphold the violence of ableism, heteronormativity, racism, sexism and transphobia. Address LGBTQ+ as a social justice issue through analysis of films and literary texts that represent diverse LGBTQ+ identities. May include authors such as E.M. Forster, James Baldwin, Alison Bechdel, Christopher Isherwood, Janet Mock and Gloria Anzaldua.

Examine the literary qualities of hip hop in global contexts. Engage in a rigorous close reading of hip hop lyrical and filmic texts from different countries and continents, studying them comparatively within the larger framework of their rhetorical strategies, narrative structures and reinvention of oral literary traditions. Explore how hip hop artists mobilize the symbolic force of hip hop to engage with marginalities that are connected to race, place, ethnicity, culture, language, gender and sexuality and age.

Engage and be transformed by the masterpieces of three giants of Russian literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Bulgakov. Understand reading as a way to address crucial questions that animate human existence: Why do bad things happen to innocent people? What does goodness look like in the world? How can one overcome despair and continue to live a hopeful life? Does life have meaning, and if so, what might that be? All works read in translation.

What has your English major prepared you to do? Who has your English major prepared you to be? What comes next for you after graduation? Approach life after Marquette with confidence and excitement using the Ignatian practice of discernment as your guide.

Explores how humans use a small set of sounds to express an infinite set of meanings, why dialects exist, and if other species have language. Studies the physical, cognitive and social dimensions of human language.

Explore the glamour of grammar (the words are related!) as we develop a working model of the structure of sounds, words and sentences of English and develop a basis for making informed decisions about style, usage and grammar pedagogy.

Explore the glamour of grammar (the words are related!) as we develop a working model of the structure of sounds, words and sentences of English and develop a basis for making informed decisions about style, usage and grammar pedagogy. As an Honors Program course, includes a more intensive research or project component.

Marauding Germanic tribes in a corner of Europe in the 5th century established an island society whose native tongue is now spoken by billions around the world as the language of business, technology, and diplomacy. This is the story of English from before Ælfric to present-day Zimbabwe. Explore the nature of linguistic change, major developments in the structure and use of the English language, and current variation in English worldwide.

Explores topics in linguistics such as language and cognition; phonology; language and gender; English as world language; and language in the city, among others. See course listings on English Department website for current topics. May be repeated if topic is different.

Explores current topics within rhetoric and composition, such as community literacy, digital rhetoric, multimodal composing, women's rhetorics, rhetorics of peace, writing and race and others. Engages these (inter)disciplinary conversations by developing scholarly and/or community-based projects that combine critical thinking, research, and reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

Explores rhetoric, how a knowledge of rhetorical theories enhance critical thinking, reading, writing, speaking, listening and others by tracing rhetorical theories spanning from Greco-Roman ideas about the logic and ethics of argument to contemporary concepts of identification, performativity and raced voices and consciousness. May include opportunities to analyze texts, people and cultures and to compose and revise texts in different genres, media, contexts and styles for a variety of audiences. May not be counted as a Literature course.

What is rhetoric, and how does a knowledge of rhetorical theories enhance critical thinking, reading, writing, speaking, and listening? In this theory and writing course, students explore these questions and others by exploring rhetorical theories spanning from Greco-Roman ideas about the logic and ethics of argument to contemporary concepts of identification, performativity, and raced voices and consciousness. Assignments may include opportunities to analyze texts, people, and cultures and to compose and revise texts in different genres, media, contexts, and styles for a variety of audiences. As an Honors Program course, includes a more intensive research or project component.

Examines two of the most well-known figures from the African American civil rights movement of the 1960s: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Evaluates the rhetoric of King and Malcolm X within their historical contexts and contemporary narratives about them.

Engage with women’s writing throughout history to understand a variety of rhetorical strategies and how feminist thought has developed and transformed over time. Proceed chronologically, beginning with ancient writing and rhetorical theory and working towards present day texts and frameworks. Frequent opportunities for application and practice are provided, including an in-class debate and an analysis of contemporary feminist rhetoric.

Examine the rhetorical strategies African Americans have used in their fight for racial justice. In addition to studying the rhetorical strategies, learn: 1) the historical events that led to the creation of the movement; 2) the various periods of the specific movement; and 3) the interpretations of the movement by both African Americans and the dominant culture.

Hone decision-making processes by learning discernment practices grounded in Ignatian spirituality. Explore the art of discernment by critically examining readings, critically reflecting on life experiences, and writing about them as a way to better understand professional and personal callings.

Offers insight as to how conversations about writing helps writers and how writing centers promote change. Reveals the challenges and rewards of peer tutoring while studying the theory and practice of peer tutoring. Topics drawn from writing center scholarship include processes of written, oral, and multimodal composition; concepts of genre and situation; and strategies for giving writers effective feedback. Includes a required writing center “internship.” Upon completion, students can apply to become Ott Memorial Writing Center tutors.

Engages narrative imagination and harnesses it productively to explore the spectrum between and including tragedy to comedy. Teaches the craft and techniques of writing fiction and the creative process by analyzing published fiction from the practitioner’s perspective, by writing and revising, and by discussing participant writings in workshop.

Discover how poetry is all about surprise and how the practice of poetry develops innovation in writing and thinking. Explore the work of living poets while developing a portfolio of drafts and revisions. The workshop format, open and accessible to all - from beginners to advanced practitioners - allows students to find their voice in the context of a supportive, rigorous and exploratory atmosphere.

Explore how creative nonfiction deploys literary techniques associated with fictional prose in the service of stories that are actually true. Develop a creative nonfiction project through analyzing prominent examples of creative nonfiction, by writing and revising creative nonfiction pieces of varying lengths, and by workshopping creative nonfiction with peers.

"The Canterbury Tales" sets itself in the late decades of fourteenth-century England when political upheavals and revolts against feudal hierarchy were abroad in both country and court: agricultural workers rising up against tax burdens, friars being viewed as figures of excess, women increasing pressure to compete in the marketplace and to travel, prompting thereby hundreds of treatises censuring them as unruly and dangerous to society. Chaucer, however, seems to have thrived on such havoc. His are nervy questions in his "Tales" as he explores corruption within the Church, the dangerous and comical effects of courtly love, women challenging clerical interpretation of Scripture, men who try to hold their wives “narwe in cage,” what constitutes happiness, the impulses behind our choices, and the clergy’s abuse of knowledge. The explorations are both comic and dead-serious. Text include "Troilus and Criseyde" and "The Canterbury Tales."

"The Canterbury Tales" sets itself in the late decades of fourteenth-century England when political upheavals and revolts against feudal hierarchy were abroad in both country and court: agricultural workers rising up against tax burdens, friars being viewed as figures of excess, women increasing pressure to compete in the marketplace and to travel, prompting thereby hundreds of treatises censuring them as unruly and dangerous to society. Chaucer, however, seems to have thrived on such havoc. His are nervy questions in his "Tales" as he explores corruption within the Church, the dangerous and comical effects of courtly love, women challenging clerical interpretation of Scripture, men who try to hold their wives “narwe in cage,” what constitutes happiness, the impulses behind our choices, and the clergy’s abuse of knowledge. The explorations are both comic and dead-serious. Text include "Troilus and Criseyde" and "The Canterbury Tales." As an Honors Program course, includes a more intensive research or project component.

Discover the origin of the very discipline we now call “English”, in its emphasis on “close reading” and “critical thinking”, in the medieval habits of reading the Bible allegorically for figurative meaning. Then as now, medieval bookworms sought to uncover the hidden truths that lay just below its surface. In the process, they read, absorbed and in turn produced their own allegorical texts, in which they clothed alien concepts in layers of symbolism and myth.

Starting with the key sources in classical antiquity that informed English poets’ discussions of both love and war, examine the rise of English courtly love poetry in the context of a devastating and drawn-out conflict that would forever alter England’s cultural and political climate and set the stage for the birth of English nationalism: the pre-condition for the eventual formation of the British Empire and for the birth of “English” itself as an academic discipline in the university.

In the decades after the Reformation, Britain was roiled by religious and political debates both intensely local and far transcending the country’s national boundaries, at the same time that its citizens were figuring out for the first time what it meant to be a nation with its own distinct language and culture. Sonnets, epics, political treatises, closet drama, and the first plays for the public stage all competed in what became the country’s first public literary marketplace, as economic and political changes helped foster the first English literature and the first conception of the person that we can call truly modern. Students make themselves present at the hotly contested beginnings of genres, categories and ideas familiar enough to them now that they take them as natural, by reading poems and plays so enduring that 400 years later they are still part of our cultural fabric.

Become aware of the extraordinary variety and breadth of the subjects that interested Shakespeare: property law, Roman history, same-sex love, gender-bending, political representation, profound questions of existence and ethics. Read poems and plays that both locate Shakespeare in his own particular context and suggest why his work has been so enduring and useful all over the modern world.

Colonialism and empire, economic slavery, regicide, revolution, one of the earliest experiments with republicanism in the modern world, the development of scientific empiricism and positivism, the invention of newspapers… all of these events and institutions in seventeenth-century Britain, so fundamental to our own culture, not only shaped but were shaped by its literature, which was one of the central public forums in which ideas were ventured and debated. Students read poems, plays, prose, and speeches by writers both famous and (now) obscure, from Francis Bacon and Mary Wroth to John Milton and Kenelm Digby, as a window into their thinking about such central problems as love, friendship, community, beauty, profit and self-interest, and political justice.

In our world, in which we debate how and if we can protect our freedoms, in which our use of reason has brought us such unprecedented power to communicate but also to destroy, and in which religious discourse figures so prominently, for good and for ill, Milton has particular relevance. His apparent confidence (arrogance?) in advancing his ideas, in many works but in "Paradise Lost" especially, forces each one of us to reevaluate our own. Students explore Milton’s major poetry and prose in the context of seventeenth-century England.

What constitutes the earliest forms of American literature? How did writing in the Americas prior to the foundation of modern nation-states grow out of and respond to the unique circumstances of contact and collision between the “Old World” of Europe and the “New World” of America? How was colonial American literature situated in the larger geopolitical arenas of the Atlantic World, the Black Atlantic, and competing imperialist projects? Students encounter the diverse genres and multiple literary traditions that converged in North America from the initial arrival of Europeans up to the American Revolution. May take a comparative transatlantic, transnational, and / or hemispheric approach, with readings drawn from the literatures of British, French and Spanish America as well as Native American cultures.

Traces the development of the novel genre from its origins in the late seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth, focusing on the relationship between literary form and social change. Considers writers’ treatment of topics such as personal identity and individual psychology, gender and marriage, race and empire, industrialization and market culture, and political and social reform. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad.

Transatlantic studies reframe Anglophone literature (and sometimes literature in translation) to incorporate perspectives beyond the national. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were eras of economic and cultural exchange across the Atlantic ocean; this course tracks some of these “currents.” Individual instructors may focus on comparative revolutions, on the Black Atlantic, on transnational romanticism, travel and exploration, slavery and abolition or other topics.

During the "long eighteenth century" (1660-1830), England experienced unprecedented literary and cultural innovation: writers developed new forms of fiction, actresses appeared on stage for the first time and poets used verse as vehicles for satirical and public expression. Meanwhile, political parties took shape, the government expanded the reach of its empire, the nuclear family assumed its modern form, and burgeoning print media provided a stream of gossip and news. Students explore the era’s literary developments in the context of such social, cultural and political changes. Topics vary each term.

Considers the centrality of law and lawlessness to eighteenth-century British fiction, while exploring the ways in which novels can help us understand the nature and consequences of illicit acts. Addresses questions concerning justice and judgment, crime and punishment, gender and marriage, and legal terror and popular violence. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen and Walter Scott.

The eighteenth century saw profound changes in America; there were revolutions not only in politics but in the ways people lived their everyday lives, in travel, in industry and in literature. While the American Revolution ended the colonial domination of European settlers and the founding of the United States, those citizens in turn were colonizing Native American lands and African labor. Women clamored to be included in the democratic conversation, and the ideology of “Republican Mortherhood” simultaneously stimulated and constrained those desires. Students look at the ways a diverse group of writers responded to these sea changes by employing a comparative transatlantic or transpacific approach or by focusing more closely on issues specific to the North American continent; issues studied may include the rise of the novel and the changes in print culture surrounding the Revolution, or may focus on the literature of women or narratives of captivity and slavery.

The first decades of the nineteenth century marked a period of innovation and abundance in the literary history of the United States. Students explore the landmark developments of the early national and antebellum periods within the broader contexts of American cultural history, paying particular attention to the influence of Romanticism and such North American variants as New England Transcendentalism and the American Gothic. They may also explore the intersections between literature and a variety of social reform movements, such as those involving abolitionism, women’s rights and Native American rights. Authors assigned may include a selection of the following: Apess (Pequot), Brockden Brown, Cooper, Irving, Poe, Sedgwick, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Wells Brown, Whitman and Stowe.

From the French Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1837. How exactly did civil and human rights evolve in Great Britain? Gender, class, religious turmoil and race are also central issues in the study of works by romantic-era writers such as Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, William Wordsworth, William Blake, John Keats, Percy Shelley, George Gordon Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley. Students study thematic approaches to or surveys of the literature of the period.

Examines literary developments alongside broader transformations in Victorian culture, with special attention to social, political, and ethical concerns. Explores topics such as gender, marriage, and the family; industrialization and market culture; race and empire; crime and violence; and social and political reform. Studies authors such as Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde.

The period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century was one of profound social, technological and political changes in the United States. Students look at how writers reflected and responded to the world of the late nineteenth century (sometimes reaching into the early twentieth century) in literature written by American authors and, sometimes, by the European writers that influenced them during this period of intense transnational literary exchange. Course may address the waxing and waning popularity of sentimental literature, the elite enthusiasm for realist literature and the related growth of regional literature, the connection between fiction and the muckraking school of journalism, the expansion of publication in magazines and newspapers, the explosion of literatures by and about immigrants, and/or African American literary production in the eras of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Students may read works by Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, W. E. B. DuBois, Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett, Sarah M. B. Piatt, Zitkala Sa, Charlotte Perkins GIlman, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and a multitude of others.

Students explore English literature written since 1900, a period when writers have confronted the turbulence of modern history while defending the value of their art. The last century is marked by two world wars, the rise and fall of the British Empire, globalization, accelerating technological development, and changing gender roles and class structures. In this era, some artists have followed the modernist dictum to “make it new,” to overthrow, reimagine, and thus revitalize older forms of literary expression no longer attuned to the modern era, while others have sought to refine traditional structures for plays, poems, novels, and short stories. Against an historical backdrop that has witnessed the rise of radio, television, film, the Internet, and the 24-hour news cycle, writers have used their art to assert that (in the words of twentieth-century poet Ezra Pound) “literature is news that stays news.”

What should literature be and do in an era of war, revolution and cataclysmic cultural change? Modernist literature emerged across Europe and North America in the early twentieth century in response to this question. Old ideas and forms suddenly seemed ill-equipped to respond to the twentieth century, which led modernist artists to rebel against convention. Writers such as Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, H.D., W.B. Yeats and Gertrude Stein worked across languages, national traditions and genres to reinvent the literary past and change contemporary history. In the process, they created some of the most astonishing, daring and rewarding poems, novels and plays of the twentieth century.

Students construct an overview of American literature from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of World War II, focusing on the historical contexts of literary production. The themes and formal and stylistic aspects of the different works under discussion are situated within the context of the political, social, scientific, technological and economic transformations in this period of American history. Examines the interactions between the development of modern American literature and key issues of the period including racial segregation and racial uplift, class inequality, labor and immigration debates, the feminist movement, global war, the invention of the atom bomb and the rise of mass entertainments and consumerism.

Students explore modern and contemporary English literature, which engages catastrophes and humiliations blared in countless headlines, from England’s near starvation by German U-boats in World War I to the loss of the Raj, the British expulsion from Suez and not long after what was once called Rhodesia, the Christine Keeler scandal and the Falklands debacle. Whether the collapse of the British empire qualifies as disaster, opportunity, retribution, graveyard or cradle depends on who is talking. And exactly who is talking, often for the first time, is the point. As Kipling feared, Conrad hoped, and Orwell predicted, the weakening empire gave new freedom and power to the once England itself. Students study the accelerating evolution of new genres, the trade-offs of dialect literature, the appropriation and/or resistance of "popular" cultures, the danger of the high-tech police state, and the search for a way to awaken the sleepwalkers and inspire the denialists without trampling their freedom, even if that freedom is enthralled to commercially motivated and cynically silenced and voiceless, not only in the former colonies and throughout the Commonwealth but within destructive mythologies. Among the storytellers and poets threading this labyrinth can be counted Auden, Orwell, Thomas, Reed, Bennett, Harrison, Wa Thiong’O, Larkin, Walcott, Hughes, Achebe, Naipaul, Heaney, Gordimer, Rushdie, Boland and Muldoon.

Students explore fiction, poetry and drama composed since World War II, with special attention to the shift from modernism to postmodernism. How has American literature in the twentieth century responded to and been influenced by the civil rights and feminist movements, the Vietnam War, anti-communism, consumer culture, environmentalism, scientific and technological progress, economic crisis, and the ever-looming threat of the nuclear bomb? What are the intersections between literary culture and popular culture, and between literary culture and the state, in the high-water years of the “American Century”? Approaches vary with instructor, but authors studied are likely to include Auster, Baldwin, Barth, Bishop, Carson, Carver, DeLillo, Didion, Ellison, Erdrich, Graham, Heller, Kingston, Levine, Morrison, Nabokov, O'Connor, Ozick, Plath, Pynchon, Rich, Roth, Silko, Spiegelman, Stone, Vonnegut, Wallace, Walker and White.

Students study the literature of the twenty-first century from a variety of national and transnational perspectives. How have different authors responded to the rapid social changes and urgent political crises the world has undergone since the year 2000? What role has literature played in registering and shaping our collective response to these events? What is the continued relevance of literature (and literary study) for an era increasingly dominated by nonliterary and non-narrative media forms? Possible authors include Atwood, Díaz, Ishiguro, Lahiri, Mitchell, McCarthy, Morrison, Murakami, Saramago, Sebald, Smith, Rowling, Roy, Winterson and Wallace.

Studies of the works of selected individual authors, usually within biographical, historical, intellectual, and/or cultural contexts. Authors studied may include Austen, the Brontes, the Brownings, Cheever and Carver, Conrad, Frost, Hardy and Hopkins, Heaney, Melville, Morrison, Wharton and Stein and Yeats. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific author(s).

Explore J.R.R. Tolkien's works, looking backward from the perspective of the twenty-first century. Consider why his works, and the genre of heroic fantasy which he remade so completely in his image, remained intensely popular, even as the world has transformed around them.

Students engage in an in-depth, semester-long study of a “major” or “monumental” work in its cultural and historical context. Alongside a close and thorough reading of the text, such a study may include analysis of its source texts; its contemporaneous interlocutors; significant critical and theoretical responses; transmedia adaptations; unauthorized rewrites, fan fictions and sequels; and contemporary remixes. Central texts vary from year to year but may include such works as "Paradise Lost," "Hamlet," "Frankenstein," "Middlemarch," "Ulysses," "Invisible Man," "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Beloved," "Almanac of the Dead" or "Infinite Jest."

Engage in an in-depth, semester-long study of a Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick as a “major” or “monumental” work in its cultural and historical context. Alongside a close and thorough reading of the text, the study may include analysis of its source texts; its contemporaneous interlocutors; significant critical and theoretical responses; transmedia adaptations; contemporary prequels, rewrites or remixes.

Embark on one of the great adventures of an academic career: reading James Joyce’s dazzling, gorgeous, messy novel, Ulysses. The board at the Modern Library (among others) calls it the best novel of the twentieth century, which is a fitting vindication for a novel that was once put on trial in New York (in the 1934 case THE UNITED STATES vs. ONE BOOK CALLED ‘ULYSSES’). Ulysses depicts the ordinary lives of Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus on a single day in Dublin in 1904 (June 16th, Bloomsday, a day celebrated around the world each year with readings, re-enactments, and revelry). Joyce began his novel during the First World War by remaking Homer’s epic of homecoming, the Odyssey, to celebrate the value of the everyday lives of ordinary men and women. We read Ulysses alongside three precursor texts that will help us to better understand it: the Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The course environment demands both serious intellectual engagement and a willingness to think in playful, creative ways.

Discover a literary and cultural giant, a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning national voice, who brought to the world the most complex, sophisticated, and trenchant analysis of how race, anti-Black racism, classism and misogyny shaped the history of the United States. Explore Morrison’s role in American literary history by studying her primary texts, both fictional and critical, within the social, historical, cultural and political contexts framing their production.

Advanced study of a particular genre and its ability to articulate meaning in historical, social and/or literary contexts. Offerings have included Romance and Epic in Early Modern England, the Family Novel, the Novella, the Epic, the Court Romance and the American Western. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topics.

How does writing for children negotiate the boundaries between instruction and entertainment? How does it engage with controversial social issues? How is it situated in the broader currents of British and American cultural history? How is it gendered and classed? Students survey an array of texts written for children but compelling for adult readers too. Students are introduced to a range of critical approaches that reveal complexity, sophistication and surprises in these seemingly “simple” texts. Readings may include fairy tales, "Alice in Wonderland," "Little Women," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "Treasure Island," "Peter Pan", "The Secret Garden," "The Wind in the Willows," "Charlotte’s Web," and "Harry Potter," along with other classic as well as recent contributions.

“Everything is becoming science fiction,” wrote J.G. Ballard in 1971. “From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.” What has been the role of speculative and fantastic media in anticipating and articulating social change? How have creators in science fiction and fantasy used the relative safety of these genres’ unreal situations to comment on very real crises in politics, identity, economics, ecology and war? How have science fiction and fantasy provided a space for reflection upon and resistance to dominant ideologies, and where have they served instead to reproduce and augment such powers? What role does the imagination of improbable and impossible worlds play in contemporary life? Content may range from surveys of different periods in the history of science fiction and fantasy to focused study of particular themes, subgenres and authors.

Students explore the production and reception of comics and graphic narrative as a literary-artistic form, with topics ranging from the early history of the genre to its ongoing fixation on the figure of the superhero to the development of an international art movement crossing gender, class and ethnic lines. Texts discussed may include DC and Marvel superhero comics, manga and anime, "Watchmen," "Maus," "Persepolis," "Fun Home," "Gemma Bovary," "Buddha," "Understanding Comics," underground and alternative comics and "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth."

Study of a wide variety of literary and critical methods ranging from New Criticism to the Frankfurt School to deconstruction to Cultural Studies to the digital humanities. Emphasis is on premises and strategies of criticism, exercises in practical criticism, and application of theory to analysis of literary works, as well as the question of the continued relevance of “theory” in an era that is now said to be “after theory.”

Discover the history of reading and writing from the Mesopotamian tablet (3500 BCE) to the electronic tablet today. Explore the evolution of reading and writing technologies. Learn about Marquette’s rare books through trips to Raynor Library Special Collections and the Haggerty Museum of Art. Work hands-on with physical books. Read literary texts that exemplify the book’s evolution: stories written as letters, as comics, as Twitter feeds. Create a collaborative group project based around a rare book.

Epic poetry is one of the oldest literary genres, and in the western literary tradition it has always been intimately associated with exploring the unknown—whether far-off oceans, the edges of the theological universe, or the dark territory of the self. Surveys four of the most important literary epics in the western tradition: Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh. All four document how exploring distant realms always, at the end of the day, means exploring yourself. These epics ask their heroes where they came from and where they’re going as ways of forcing them to understand who they are.

"There is no doubt," says Doris Lessing, "that fiction makes a better job of the truth." What is the connection between fiction and truth? Why are stories (narrative fictions) so compelling? Fiction takes a variety of forms, including the novel, the short story, the story cycle, the novella, the graphic novel, etc. New media has added to these in the forms of collaborative tales, fan fiction and hypertextual works, for examples. Students focus on one specific fictional form (topics vary by term) and study it in depth. Upon completing the course, students have a firm grasp of the form’s literary conventions, relation to the cultural/historical contexts of its production and ongoing reception, and relation to other literary genres.

Where does fact end and fiction begin? Sometimes referred to as the “literature of fact,” creative nonfiction blurs the line between literary art (poetry, fiction, and drama) and “objective” writing practices of research and reportage (history and journalism). Works of creative nonfiction have been galvanizing forces in the transformation of public opinion, influencing debates on the abolition of slavery, the environment, pacifism, women’s rights and more. Students explore different types of creative nonfiction including documentary, literary journalism, memoirs and other types of life-writing, and travel writing. Students engage creative nonfiction to explore ethical issues that might arise from practices of fictionalization including recent high-profile cases and controversies in the journalism and popular media.

Students engage with the discipline and pleasure of poetry, from ancient sacred lyrics to twenty-first century experimental texts. The possibilities are endless: individual sections may focus on indigenous poetry of the Americas; on the poetry of witness; on feminist poetry; on long-form poetry; on ecopoetics; or on prosody; or on a particular “school” such as Deep Image, Black Arts or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.

Learn how to tell your own stories out loud and in writing across media. Learn how to become a better listener. Learn to tell the stories of others ethically and effectively. Become a Narrative 4 facilitator.

What does it mean to be literate in the age of digital natives? Students explore new media forms that have arisen since the mid-twentieth century, including video games, social media, digital music and art, and Internet writing. Students address questions such as: How can or should the study of literature and film include new media? How does the production and reception of different types of new media texts challenge our ideas about writing and reading? How do available technologies impact digital genres and forms? What theoretical constructs and aesthetic frameworks do they demand? And how are new media augmenting, challenging, or changing education, including university study?

Survey the field of game studies, focusing on the history and reception of video games. Explore ethical, political and intellectual debates following the rise of video games as popular entertainment. What is the status of gaming in a world where the boundary between work and leisure is fluid? How do we consume, create and interpret different game texts? Are video games addictive? Are they bad for human development? Can “bad” games do humans any good?

What prompts book challenges? What fears, anxieties and social concerns cause certain types of ideas to seem dangerous, especially in schools and public libraries? Are there legitimate limits to what can be thought and said, even in a country with free speech laws and norms as robust as in the United States? Informed citizenship calls on us to understand the complex interrelationship of obscenity, censorship, childhood education and the right to freedom of expression.

Examines the centrality of law and justice to literature as well as the ways in which literature can help us think through legal questions and concerns. Considers topics such as the nature of law; the limits of legal authority; the legal construction of gender, race, and class; and the causes and consequences of crime and punishment. Authors may include Sophocles, Shakespeare, Melville, Dickens, Conan Doyle, and Atwood.

A vigorous democracy relies on the ability of its citizens to engage in collective deliberation on complex issues. Work with classmates to solve shared problems while negotiating conflict and difference, and learn about what it means to argue for a particular audience about what you believe.

Explores a range of psychological, behavioral, and neurological conditions through careful reading of literature that represents neurodiversity. Examines how narratives about neurodiversity register the ongoing efforts of social and political movements to expand awareness about the lives of people whose minds and brains are not neurotypical. Reflects on ways to change social structures, especially in education and medicine, in order to make the world more inclusive of neurodifference.

Shifts English studies off the page toward analysis of other sorts of objects, employing methodologies from history, anthropology, archaeology, museum studies and sociology alongside literary and linguistic methods and exploring the materiality of text and other methods of representation. Topics may range from the study of archives, museums, national parks and monuments to food, clothing, toys and games; to the history of the book; to investigation of Milwaukee architecture and historical sites.

Learn about sustainability as a concept in academic discourse and popular debate from antiquity to the present day. Consider the nature of change as an inevitability and source of tension assessing what is worth preserving and what is disposable. Engage in interdisciplinary scholarship to probe the central question underlying all environmental protection: what should we value enough to pass on to future generations?

Investigates the relation between literature and its culture from a variety of perspectives that might include the historical, political or anthropological. Past offerings have included the English Urban Novel, Catholicism and Literature, and Texts, Audiences and Social Change. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topic.

Gender and sexuality can be identities, performances, prisons, or fields for exploration. They shape public and private experience – politics, economics, education, families, friendships, even one’s most personal relation to oneself. And literature is one of the central forums where writers and readers both make sense of this experience and imagine how it might be different. Students analyze changing literary representations of gender and sexuality and their intersections with other identities and categories of analysis – for instance, race and ethnicity, nationality, historical location – in order to explore the meaning and the function of these most basic building blocks in our culture.

Studies selected women writers to engage and explore the effect of women’s social/cultural positions on their literary aesthetics and whether women have separate and/or multiple literary traditions. Explores the literary innovations of women writers in order to connect their use of form to their social engagement. Authors studied vary by instructor.

Constructs a foundation for further study in the literatures of racialized and “ethnic” groups in the United States (e.g., African American, American Indian, Asian American, Chicana/o, Latina/o, Arab American, etc.). Presents key concepts necessary for more advanced work in comparative race and ethnic studies such as racial formation, varieties of privilege, intersectionality (of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, class, etc.), and settler colonialism, as well as literary theoretical concerns about the relationship between aesthetic form and content, the influence of historical and cultural contexts on literary production and reception, and the political role of literature in society.

Explores selected topics in critical race and literary studies with the intent of allowing in-depth exploration and analysis. Topics vary by term but range from women of color feminism to Asian American literatures to literary captivities. Consult the Department of English website each term for specific topics. Though not required, having taken English 4810 is advantageous.

Understand the historical and legal contexts of tribal nations within the United States and Canada and why indigenous peoples are both politically and culturally distinct from other U.S. and Canadian citizens. Read such writers as Sherman Alexie, Charles Eastman and Louise Erdrich to learn Native critical terms and concepts elucidated through oral literature, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, film and novels, primarily drawn from members of tribal nations in the United States and Canada.

Explore literature from Indigenous peoples around the globe. Map the emergence of trans-indigenous methodologies, exploring the fine differences as well as the shared concerns expressed by various Indigenous peoples. Delve into the environmental protection policies and religious and human rights movements with which Indigenous peoples are currently and historically engaged.

Explores literature produced by people of African descent. Topics vary by term. Consult the Department of English website each term for specific topics. Offerings may include the Harlem Renaissance; the Great Migration; Caribbean literatures; Justice, the State and Citizenship; and Race/Literature in Milwaukee after WWII.

Explores literatures written in English since the 1960s from Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and Great Britain. Discusses decolonization, the emergence of neocolonialism, and cultural imperialism, as well as literary responses to these issues.

Students explore authors and texts that have become prominent on a global scale. Students read Anglophone texts as well as literary works in translation focusing on global economic, social and historical issues. Emphases and texts vary depending on instructor. Topics may include notions of universal human rights, migrant labor, issues of censorship and problems of literary translation.

Topics vary according to instructor, but past offerings have included the Bible as Literature, Literary Responses to the Vietnam War, Literature and the Environment, Literature of the Holocaust, the Vikings, and Meaning and Identity. Consult the Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topics.

Students study writing topics that vary according to instructor. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topic.

Develop proficiency in creative writing, drawing on techniques developed through course work in creative writing and/or individual practice. Students read current texts and journals, write in new forms, revise extensively, engage in peer review, and explore the world of publishing. Offered in a range of genres depending on the instructor’s expertise. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific genres. Prior course work in creative writing or prior independent practice in one or more genres is expected.

On-the-job experience as writer and/or editor for a local agency; supervised by the agency and by English faculty. Although course is graded S/U, it counts toward the major or minor. May be taken only once. Guidelines and forms available in English department office. S/U grade assessment.

Professional experience in publishing, supervised by the publishing agency and by English faculty. Guidelines and forms are available in the English department.

Students gain experience working in the nonprofit sector, learning key project management skills alongside more specialized skills that vary with individual placements, which range from nonprofit publishing internships to community-engaged fellowships focusing on community building through asset mapping and story facilitation.

Faculty-supervised, independent study/research of a specific area or topic in English. Independent studies are not normally allowed on material already addressed by other courses.

Draw together knowledge and skills developed in previous course work to integrate and improve knowledge, transfer skills to post-university life. Explore how key questions and concerns can be thought of in different ways through project design and production and self-reflection. Content varies by instructor. Consult Department of English website for information on specific sections before registering. Senior undergraduates in English M.A. accelerated degree program should take ENGL 5997.

Concentrated and independent study with a specific faculty member intended to allow the student to write a 40-60 page senior thesis on specific topic of interest to student.

Concentrated and independent study with a specific faculty member intended to allow the student to write a 40-60 page senior thesis on specific topic of interest to student. As an Honors Program course, includes a more intensive research or project component.

Explores how humans use a small set of sounds to express an infinite set of meanings, why dialects exist, and if other species have language. Studies the physical, cognitive and social dimensions of human language.

Explore the glamour of grammar (the words are related!) as we develop a working model of the structure of sounds, words and sentences of English and develop a basis for making informed decisions about style, usage and grammar pedagogy.

Marauding Germanic tribes in a corner of Europe in the 5th century established an island society whose native tongue is now spoken by billions around the world as the language of business, technology, and diplomacy. This is the story of English from before Ælfric to present-day Zimbabwe. Explore the nature of linguistic change, major developments in the structure and use of the English language, and current variation in English worldwide.

Explores topics in linguistics such as language and cognition; phonology; language and gender; English as world language; and language in the city, among others. See course listings on English Department website for current topics. May be repeated if topic is different.

Explores current topics within rhetoric and composition, such as community literacy, digital rhetoric, multimodal composing, women's rhetorics, rhetorics of peace, writing and race and others. Engages these (inter)disciplinary conversations by developing scholarly and/or community-based projects that combine critical thinking, research, and reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

Explores rhetoric, how a knowledge of rhetorical theories enhance critical thinking, reading, writing, speaking, listening and others by tracing rhetorical theories spanning from Greco-Roman ideas about the logic and ethics of argument to contemporary concepts of identification, performativity and raced voices and consciousness. May include opportunities to analyze texts, people and cultures and to compose and revise texts in different genres, media, contexts and styles for a variety of audiences. May not be counted as a Literature course.

Examines two of the most well-known figures from the African American civil rights movement of the 1960s: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Evaluates the rhetoric of King and Malcolm X within their historical contexts and contemporary narratives about them.

Offers insight as to how conversations about writing helps writers and how writing centers promote change. Reveals the challenges and rewards of peer tutoring while studying the theory and practice of peer tutoring. Topics drawn from writing center scholarship include processes of written, oral, and multimodal composition; concepts of genre and situation; and strategies for giving writers effective feedback. Includes a required writing center “internship.” Upon completion, students can apply to become Ott Memorial Writing Center tutors.

Engages narrative imagination and harnesses it productively to explore the spectrum between and including tragedy to comedy. Teaches the craft and techniques of writing fiction and the creative process by analyzing published fiction from the practitioner’s perspective, by writing and revising, and by discussing participant writings in workshop.

Discover how poetry is all about surprise and how the practice of poetry develops innovation in writing and thinking. Explore the work of living poets while developing a portfolio of drafts and revisions. The workshop format, open and accessible to all - from beginners to advanced practitioners - allows students to find their voice in the context of a supportive, rigorous and exploratory atmosphere.

"The Canterbury Tales" sets itself in the late decades of fourteenth-century England when political upheavals and revolts against feudal hierarchy were abroad in both country and court: agricultural workers rising up against tax burdens, friars being viewed as figures of excess, women increasing pressure to compete in the marketplace and to travel, prompting thereby hundreds of treatises censuring them as unruly and dangerous to society. Chaucer, however, seems to have thrived on such havoc. His are nervy questions in his "Tales" as he explores corruption within the Church, the dangerous and comical effects of courtly love, women challenging clerical interpretation of Scripture, men who try to hold their wives “narwe in cage,” what constitutes happiness, the impulses behind our choices, and the clergy’s abuse of knowledge. The explorations are both comic and dead-serious. Text include "Troilus and Criseyde" and "The Canterbury Tales."

Discover the origin of the very discipline we now call “English”, in its emphasis on “close reading” and “critical thinking”, in the medieval habits of reading the Bible allegorically for figurative meaning. Then as now, medieval bookworms sought to uncover the hidden truths that lay just below its surface. In the process, they read, absorbed and in turn produced their own allegorical texts, in which they clothed alien concepts in layers of symbolism and myth.

Starting with the key sources in classical antiquity that informed English poets’ discussions of both love and war, examine the rise of English courtly love poetry in the context of a devastating and drawn-out conflict that would forever alter England’s cultural and political climate and set the stage for the birth of English nationalism: the pre-condition for the eventual formation of the British Empire and for the birth of “English” itself as an academic discipline in the university.

In the decades after the Reformation, Britain was roiled by religious and political debates both intensely local and far transcending the country’s national boundaries, at the same time that its citizens were figuring out for the first time what it meant to be a nation with its own distinct language and culture. Sonnets, epics, political treatises, closet drama, and the first plays for the public stage all competed in what became the country’s first public literary marketplace, as economic and political changes helped foster the first English literature and the first conception of the person that we can call truly modern. Students make themselves present at the hotly contested beginnings of genres, categories and ideas familiar enough to them now that they take them as natural, by reading poems and plays so enduring that 400 years later they are still part of our cultural fabric.

Colonialism and empire, economic slavery, regicide, revolution, one of the earliest experiments with republicanism in the modern world, the development of scientific empiricism and positivism, the invention of newspapers… all of these events and institutions in seventeenth-century Britain, so fundamental to our own culture, not only shaped but were shaped by its literature, which was one of the central public forums in which ideas were ventured and debated. Students read poems, plays, prose, and speeches by writers both famous and (now) obscure, from Francis Bacon and Mary Wroth to John Milton and Kenelm Digby, as a window into their thinking about such central problems as love, friendship, community, beauty, profit and self-interest, and political justice.

In our world, in which we debate how and if we can protect our freedoms, in which our use of reason has brought us such unprecedented power to communicate but also to destroy, and in which religious discourse figures so prominently, for good and for ill, Milton has particular relevance. His apparent confidence (arrogance?) in advancing his ideas, in many works but in "Paradise Lost" especially, forces each one of us to reevaluate our own. Students explore Milton’s major poetry and prose in the context of seventeenth-century England.

What constitutes the earliest forms of American literature? How did writing in the Americas prior to the foundation of modern nation-states grow out of and respond to the unique circumstances of contact and collision between the “Old World” of Europe and the “New World” of America? How was colonial American literature situated in the larger geopolitical arenas of the Atlantic World, the Black Atlantic, and competing imperialist projects? Students encounter the diverse genres and multiple literary traditions that converged in North America from the initial arrival of Europeans up to the American Revolution. May take a comparative transatlantic, transnational, and / or hemispheric approach, with readings drawn from the literatures of British, French and Spanish America as well as Native American cultures.

Traces the development of the novel genre from its origins in the late seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth, focusing on the relationship between literary form and social change. Considers writers’ treatment of topics such as personal identity and individual psychology, gender and marriage, race and empire, industrialization and market culture, and political and social reform. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad.

Transatlantic studies reframe Anglophone literature (and sometimes literature in translation) to incorporate perspectives beyond the national. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were eras of economic and cultural exchange across the Atlantic ocean; this course tracks some of these “currents.” Individual instructors may focus on comparative revolutions, on the Black Atlantic, on transnational romanticism, travel and exploration, slavery and abolition or other topics.

A study of Tudor poetry, drama, and prose, with emphasis on literary and cultural issues of the Elizabethan period. Writers considered might include Lodge and More (prose); Shakespeare, Philip and Mary Sidney, Spenser, and Wyatt (lyric and narrative poetry); and Carey, Kyd, and Marlowe (drama).

During the "long eighteenth century" (1660-1830), England experienced unprecedented literary and cultural innovation: writers developed new forms of fiction, actresses appeared on stage for the first time and poets used verse as vehicles for satirical and public expression. Meanwhile, political parties took shape, the government expanded the reach of its empire, the nuclear family assumed its modern form, and burgeoning print media provided a stream of gossip and news. Students explore the era’s literary developments in the context of such social, cultural and political changes. Topics vary each term.

Considers the centrality of law and lawlessness to eighteenth-century British fiction, while exploring the ways in which novels can help us understand the nature and consequences of illicit acts. Addresses questions concerning justice and judgment, crime and punishment, gender and marriage, and legal terror and popular violence. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen and Walter Scott.

A study of English poetry, drama and prose from 1603 to the beginnings of the neoclassical period. Writers considered might include Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Jonson, and Marvell (lyric); Bacon and Wroth (prose); and Jonson, Middleton, and Webster (drama).

The eighteenth century saw profound changes in America; there were revolutions not only in politics but in the ways people lived their everyday lives, in travel, in industry and in literature. While the American Revolution ended the colonial domination of European settlers and the founding of the United States, those citizens in turn were colonizing Native American lands and African labor. Women clamored to be included in the democratic conversation, and the ideology of “Republican Mortherhood” simultaneously stimulated and constrained those desires. Students look at the ways a diverse group of writers responded to these sea changes by employing a comparative transatlantic or transpacific approach or by focusing more closely on issues specific to the North American continent; issues studied may include the rise of the novel and the changes in print culture surrounding the Revolution, or may focus on the literature of women or narratives of captivity and slavery.

The first decades of the nineteenth century marked a period of innovation and abundance in the literary history of the United States. Students explore the landmark developments of the early national and antebellum periods within the broader contexts of American cultural history, paying particular attention to the influence of Romanticism and such North American variants as New England Transcendentalism and the American Gothic. They may also explore the intersections between literature and a variety of social reform movements, such as those involving abolitionism, women’s rights and Native American rights. Authors assigned may include a selection of the following: Apess (Pequot), Brockden Brown, Cooper, Irving, Poe, Sedgwick, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Wells Brown, Whitman and Stowe.

From the French Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1837. How exactly did civil and human rights evolve in Great Britain? Gender, class, religious turmoil and race are also central issues in the study of works by romantic-era writers such as Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, William Wordsworth, William Blake, John Keats, Percy Shelley, George Gordon Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley. Students study thematic approaches to or surveys of the literature of the period.

Examines literary developments alongside broader transformations in Victorian culture, with special attention to social, political, and ethical concerns. Explores topics such as gender, marriage, and the family; industrialization and market culture; race and empire; crime and violence; and social and political reform. Studies authors such as Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde.

The period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century was one of profound social, technological and political changes in the United States. Students look at how writers reflected and responded to the world of the late nineteenth century (sometimes reaching into the early twentieth century) in literature written by American authors and, sometimes, by the European writers that influenced them during this period of intense transnational literary exchange. Course may address the waxing and waning popularity of sentimental literature, the elite enthusiasm for realist literature and the related growth of regional literature, the connection between fiction and the muckraking school of journalism, the expansion of publication in magazines and newspapers, the explosion of literatures by and about immigrants, and/or African American literary production in the eras of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Students may read works by Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, W. E. B. DuBois, Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett, Sarah M. B. Piatt, Zitkala Sa, Charlotte Perkins GIlman, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and a multitude of others.

Students explore English literature written since 1900, a period when writers have confronted the turbulence of modern history while defending the value of their art. The last century is marked by two world wars, the rise and fall of the British Empire, globalization, accelerating technological development, and changing gender roles and class structures. In this era, some artists have followed the modernist dictum to “make it new,” to overthrow, reimagine, and thus revitalize older forms of literary expression no longer attuned to the modern era, while others have sought to refine traditional structures for plays, poems, novels, and short stories. Against an historical backdrop that has witnessed the rise of radio, television, film, the Internet, and the 24-hour news cycle, writers have used their art to assert that (in the words of twentieth-century poet Ezra Pound) “literature is news that stays news.”

A study of the literature and culture of the early-to-mid 19th century, including the periods of the American Renaissance and the Civil War. Writers studied may include: Alcott, Child, Cooper, Dickinson, Douglass, Emerson, Fuller, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Stowe, Thoreau, and Whitman.

What should literature be and do in an era of war, revolution and cataclysmic cultural change? Modernist literature emerged across Europe and North America in the early twentieth century in response to this question. Old ideas and forms suddenly seemed ill-equipped to respond to the twentieth century, which led modernist artists to rebel against convention. Writers such as Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, H.D., W.B. Yeats and Gertrude Stein worked across languages, national traditions and genres to reinvent the literary past and change contemporary history. In the process, they created some of the most astonishing, daring and rewarding poems, novels and plays of the twentieth century.

Students construct an overview of American literature from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of World War II, focusing on the historical contexts of literary production. The themes and formal and stylistic aspects of the different works under discussion are situated within the context of the political, social, scientific, technological and economic transformations in this period of American history. Examines the interactions between the development of modern American literature and key issues of the period including racial segregation and racial uplift, class inequality, labor and immigration debates, the feminist movement, global war, the invention of the atom bomb and the rise of mass entertainments and consumerism.

Students explore modern and contemporary English literature, which engages catastrophes and humiliations blared in countless headlines, from England’s near starvation by German U-boats in World War I to the loss of the Raj, the British expulsion from Suez and not long after what was once called Rhodesia, the Christine Keeler scandal and the Falklands debacle. Whether the collapse of the British empire qualifies as disaster, opportunity, retribution, graveyard or cradle depends on who is talking. And exactly who is talking, often for the first time, is the point. As Kipling feared, Conrad hoped, and Orwell predicted, the weakening empire gave new freedom and power to the once England itself. Students study the accelerating evolution of new genres, the trade-offs of dialect literature, the appropriation and/or resistance of "popular" cultures, the danger of the high-tech police state, and the search for a way to awaken the sleepwalkers and inspire the denialists without trampling their freedom, even if that freedom is enthralled to commercially motivated and cynically silenced and voiceless, not only in the former colonies and throughout the Commonwealth but within destructive mythologies. Among the storytellers and poets threading this labyrinth can be counted Auden, Orwell, Thomas, Reed, Bennett, Harrison, Wa Thiong’O, Larkin, Walcott, Hughes, Achebe, Naipaul, Heaney, Gordimer, Rushdie, Boland and Muldoon.

A study of American literature of the early twentieth century with particular attention to the formal experiments of modernism. Writers studied generally include Cather, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Frost, Hemingway, Hurston, Larsen, Stein, Stevens, Williams, and Wright.

Students explore fiction, poetry and drama composed since World War II, with special attention to the shift from modernism to postmodernism. How has American literature in the twentieth century responded to and been influenced by the civil rights and feminist movements, the Vietnam War, anti-communism, consumer culture, environmentalism, scientific and technological progress, economic crisis, and the ever-looming threat of the nuclear bomb? What are the intersections between literary culture and popular culture, and between literary culture and the state, in the high-water years of the “American Century”? Approaches vary with instructor, but authors studied are likely to include Auster, Baldwin, Barth, Bishop, Carson, Carver, DeLillo, Didion, Ellison, Erdrich, Graham, Heller, Kingston, Levine, Morrison, Nabokov, O'Connor, Ozick, Plath, Pynchon, Rich, Roth, Silko, Spiegelman, Stone, Vonnegut, Wallace, Walker and White.

Students study the literature of the twenty-first century from a variety of national and transnational perspectives. How have different authors responded to the rapid social changes and urgent political crises the world has undergone since the year 2000? What role has literature played in registering and shaping our collective response to these events? What is the continued relevance of literature (and literary study) for an era increasingly dominated by nonliterary and non-narrative media forms? Possible authors include Atwood, Díaz, Ishiguro, Lahiri, Mitchell, McCarthy, Morrison, Murakami, Saramago, Sebald, Smith, Rowling, Roy, Winterson and Wallace.

Studies of the works of selected individual authors, usually within biographical, historical, intellectual, and/or cultural contexts. Authors studied may include Austen, the Brontes, the Brownings, Cheever and Carver, Conrad, Frost, Hardy and Hopkins, Heaney, Melville, Morrison, Wharton and Stein and Yeats. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific author(s).

Explore J.R.R. Tolkien's works, looking backward from the perspective of the twenty-first century. Consider why his works, and the genre of heroic fantasy which he remade so completely in his image, remained intensely popular, even as the world has transformed around them.

Students engage in an in-depth, semester-long study of a “major” or “monumental” work in its cultural and historical context. Alongside a close and thorough reading of the text, such a study may include analysis of its source texts; its contemporaneous interlocutors; significant critical and theoretical responses; transmedia adaptations; unauthorized rewrites, fan fictions and sequels; and contemporary remixes. Central texts vary from year to year but may include such works as "Paradise Lost," "Hamlet," "Frankenstein," "Middlemarch," "Ulysses," "Invisible Man," "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Beloved," "Almanac of the Dead" or "Infinite Jest."

Engage in an in-depth, semester-long study of a Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick as a “major” or “monumental” work in its cultural and historical context. Alongside a close and thorough reading of the text, the study may include analysis of its source texts; its contemporaneous interlocutors; significant critical and theoretical responses; transmedia adaptations; contemporary prequels, rewrites or remixes.

Embark on one of the great adventures of an academic career: reading James Joyce’s dazzling, gorgeous, messy novel, Ulysses. The board at the Modern Library (among others) calls it the best novel of the twentieth century, which is a fitting vindication for a novel that was once put on trial in New York (in the 1934 case THE UNITED STATES vs. ONE BOOK CALLED ‘ULYSSES’). Ulysses depicts the ordinary lives of Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus on a single day in Dublin in 1904 (June 16th, Bloomsday, a day celebrated around the world each year with readings, re-enactments, and revelry). Joyce began his novel during the First World War by remaking Homer’s epic of homecoming, the Odyssey, to celebrate the value of the everyday lives of ordinary men and women. We read Ulysses alongside three precursor texts that will help us to better understand it: the Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The course environment demands both serious intellectual engagement and a willingness to think in playful, creative ways.

A study of Chaucer's works with emphasis on his techniques, thematic concerns, cultural contexts, and place in literary history.

Advanced study of a particular genre and its ability to articulate meaning in historical, social and/or literary contexts. Offerings have included Romance and Epic in Early Modern England, the Family Novel, the Novella, the Epic, the Court Romance and the American Western. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topics.

How does writing for children negotiate the boundaries between instruction and entertainment? How does it engage with controversial social issues? How is it situated in the broader currents of British and American cultural history? How is it gendered and classed? Students survey an array of texts written for children but compelling for adult readers too. Students are introduced to a range of critical approaches that reveal complexity, sophistication and surprises in these seemingly “simple” texts. Readings may include fairy tales, "Alice in Wonderland," "Little Women," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "Treasure Island," "Peter Pan", "The Secret Garden," "The Wind in the Willows," "Charlotte’s Web," and "Harry Potter," along with other classic as well as recent contributions.

“Everything is becoming science fiction,” wrote J.G. Ballard in 1971. “From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.” What has been the role of speculative and fantastic media in anticipating and articulating social change? How have creators in science fiction and fantasy used the relative safety of these genres’ unreal situations to comment on very real crises in politics, identity, economics, ecology and war? How have science fiction and fantasy provided a space for reflection upon and resistance to dominant ideologies, and where have they served instead to reproduce and augment such powers? What role does the imagination of improbable and impossible worlds play in contemporary life? Content may range from surveys of different periods in the history of science fiction and fantasy to focused study of particular themes, subgenres and authors.

Students explore the production and reception of comics and graphic narrative as a literary-artistic form, with topics ranging from the early history of the genre to its ongoing fixation on the figure of the superhero to the development of an international art movement crossing gender, class and ethnic lines. Texts discussed may include DC and Marvel superhero comics, manga and anime, "Watchmen," "Maus," "Persepolis," "Fun Home," "Gemma Bovary," "Buddha," "Understanding Comics," underground and alternative comics and "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth."

Discover the history of reading and writing from the Mesopotamian tablet (3500 BCE) to the electronic tablet today. Explore the evolution of reading and writing technologies. Learn about Marquette’s rare books through trips to Raynor Library Special Collections and the Haggerty Museum of Art. Work hands-on with physical books. Read literary texts that exemplify the book’s evolution: stories written as letters, as comics, as Twitter feeds. Create a collaborative group project based around a rare book.

Epic poetry is one of the oldest literary genres, and in the western literary tradition it has always been intimately associated with exploring the unknown—whether far-off oceans, the edges of the theological universe, or the dark territory of the self. Surveys four of the most important literary epics in the western tradition: Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh. All four document how exploring distant realms always, at the end of the day, means exploring yourself. These epics ask their heroes where they came from and where they’re going as ways of forcing them to understand who they are.

"There is no doubt," says Doris Lessing, "that fiction makes a better job of the truth." What is the connection between fiction and truth? Why are stories (narrative fictions) so compelling? Fiction takes a variety of forms, including the novel, the short story, the story cycle, the novella, the graphic novel, etc. New media has added to these in the forms of collaborative tales, fan fiction and hypertextual works, for examples. Students focus on one specific fictional form (topics vary by term) and study it in depth. Upon completing the course, students have a firm grasp of the form’s literary conventions, relation to the cultural/historical contexts of its production and ongoing reception, and relation to other literary genres.

Where does fact end and fiction begin? Sometimes referred to as the “literature of fact,” creative nonfiction blurs the line between literary art (poetry, fiction, and drama) and “objective” writing practices of research and reportage (history and journalism). Works of creative nonfiction have been galvanizing forces in the transformation of public opinion, influencing debates on the abolition of slavery, the environment, pacifism, women’s rights and more. Students explore different types of creative nonfiction including documentary, literary journalism, memoirs and other types of life-writing, and travel writing. Students engage creative nonfiction to explore ethical issues that might arise from practices of fictionalization including recent high-profile cases and controversies in the journalism and popular media.

Students engage with the discipline and pleasure of poetry, from ancient sacred lyrics to twenty-first century experimental texts. The possibilities are endless: individual sections may focus on indigenous poetry of the Americas; on the poetry of witness; on feminist poetry; on long-form poetry; on ecopoetics; or on prosody; or on a particular “school” such as Deep Image, Black Arts or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.

What does it mean to be literate in the age of digital natives? Students explore new media forms that have arisen since the mid-twentieth century, including video games, social media, digital music and art, and Internet writing. Students address questions such as: How can or should the study of literature and film include new media? How does the production and reception of different types of new media texts challenge our ideas about writing and reading? How do available technologies impact digital genres and forms? What theoretical constructs and aesthetic frameworks do they demand? And how are new media augmenting, challenging, or changing education, including university study?

Survey the field of game studies, focusing on the history and reception of video games. Explore ethical, political and intellectual debates following the rise of video games as popular entertainment. What is the status of gaming in a world where the boundary between work and leisure is fluid? How do we consume, create and interpret different game texts? Are video games addictive? Are they bad for human development? Can “bad” games do humans any good?

What prompts book challenges? What fears, anxieties and social concerns cause certain types of ideas to seem dangerous, especially in schools and public libraries? Are there legitimate limits to what can be thought and said, even in a country with free speech laws and norms as robust as in the United States? Informed citizenship calls on us to understand the complex interrelationship of obscenity, censorship, childhood education and the right to freedom of expression.

A study of American drama with emphasis on form and function of the genre. Course emphasis and authors taught can vary with instructor. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's Web site for specific topic.

Examines the centrality of law and justice to literature as well as the ways in which literature can help us think through legal questions and concerns. Considers topics such as the nature of law; the limits of legal authority; the legal construction of gender, race, and class; and the causes and consequences of crime and punishment. Authors may include Sophocles, Shakespeare, Melville, Dickens, Conan Doyle, and Atwood.

Explores a range of psychological, behavioral, and neurological conditions through careful reading of literature that represents neurodiversity. Examines how narratives about neurodiversity register the ongoing efforts of social and political movements to expand awareness about the lives of people whose minds and brains are not neurotypical. Reflects on ways to change social structures, especially in education and medicine, in order to make the world more inclusive of neurodifference.

Shifts English studies off the page toward analysis of other sorts of objects, employing methodologies from history, anthropology, archaeology, museum studies and sociology alongside literary and linguistic methods and exploring the materiality of text and other methods of representation. Topics may range from the study of archives, museums, national parks and monuments to food, clothing, toys and games; to the history of the book; to investigation of Milwaukee architecture and historical sites.

Learn about sustainability as a concept in academic discourse and popular debate from antiquity to the present day. Consider the nature of change as an inevitability and source of tension assessing what is worth preserving and what is disposable. Engage in interdisciplinary scholarship to probe the central question underlying all environmental protection: what should we value enough to pass on to future generations?

Investigates the relation between literature and its culture from a variety of perspectives that might include the historical, political or anthropological. Past offerings have included the English Urban Novel, Catholicism and Literature, and Texts, Audiences and Social Change. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topic.

Gender and sexuality can be identities, performances, prisons, or fields for exploration. They shape public and private experience – politics, economics, education, families, friendships, even one’s most personal relation to oneself. And literature is one of the central forums where writers and readers both make sense of this experience and imagine how it might be different. Students analyze changing literary representations of gender and sexuality and their intersections with other identities and categories of analysis – for instance, race and ethnicity, nationality, historical location – in order to explore the meaning and the function of these most basic building blocks in our culture.

Studies selected women writers to engage and explore the effect of women’s social/cultural positions on their literary aesthetics and whether women have separate and/or multiple literary traditions. Explores the literary innovations of women writers in order to connect their use of form to their social engagement. Authors studied vary by instructor.

Constructs a foundation for further study in the literatures of racialized and “ethnic” groups in the United States (e.g., African American, American Indian, Asian American, Chicana/o, Latina/o, Arab American, etc.). Presents key concepts necessary for more advanced work in comparative race and ethnic studies such as racial formation, varieties of privilege, intersectionality (of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, class, etc.), and settler colonialism, as well as literary theoretical concerns about the relationship between aesthetic form and content, the influence of historical and cultural contexts on literary production and reception, and the political role of literature in society.

Explores selected topics in critical race and literary studies with the intent of allowing in-depth exploration and analysis. Topics vary by term but range from women of color feminism to Asian American literatures to literary captivities. Consult the Department of English website each term for specific topics. Though not required, having taken English 4810 is advantageous.

Understand the historical and legal contexts of tribal nations within the United States and Canada and why indigenous peoples are both politically and culturally distinct from other U.S. and Canadian citizens. Read such writers as Sherman Alexie, Charles Eastman and Louise Erdrich to learn Native critical terms and concepts elucidated through oral literature, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, film and novels, primarily drawn from members of tribal nations in the United States and Canada.

Explores literature produced by people of African descent. Topics vary by term. Consult the Department of English website each term for specific topics. Offerings may include the Harlem Renaissance; the Great Migration; Caribbean literatures; Justice, the State and Citizenship; and Race/Literature in Milwaukee after WWII.

Explores literatures written in English since the 1960s from Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and Great Britain. Discusses decolonization, the emergence of neocolonialism, and cultural imperialism, as well as literary responses to these issues.

Students explore authors and texts that have become prominent on a global scale. Students read Anglophone texts as well as literary works in translation focusing on global economic, social and historical issues. Emphases and texts vary depending on instructor. Topics may include notions of universal human rights, migrant labor, issues of censorship and problems of literary translation.

Topics vary according to instructor, but past offerings have included the Bible as Literature, Literary Responses to the Vietnam War, Literature and the Environment, Literature of the Holocaust, the Vikings, and Meaning and Identity. Consult the Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topics.

Students study writing topics that vary according to instructor. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific topic.

Advanced practice in the techniques and discipline of intensive literary study. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's Web site.

Develop proficiency in creative writing, drawing on techniques developed through course work in creative writing and/or individual practice. Students read current texts and journals, write in new forms, revise extensively, engage in peer review, and explore the world of publishing. Offered in a range of genres depending on the instructor’s expertise. Consult Schedule of Classes or the English Department's website for specific genres. Prior course work in creative writing or prior independent practice in one or more genres is expected. 

Students gain experience working in the nonprofit sector, learning key project management skills alongside more specialized skills that vary with individual placements, which range from nonprofit publishing internships to community-engaged fellowships focusing on community building through asset mapping and story facilitation.

Draw together knowledge and skills developed in previous course work to integrate and improve knowledge, transfer skills to post-university life. Explore how key questions and concerns can be thought of in different ways through project design and production and self-reflection. Content varies by instructor. Consult Department of English website for information on specific sections before registering. Senior undergraduates in English M.A. accelerated degree program should take ENGL 5997.

The grammar and syntax of Anglo-Saxon. Selected readings from the prose and poetry in the corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Topics vary.

Topics vary.

Investigate topics in the literature, culture and politics of the Early Modern or Renaissance period in England. Topics may include: Race and Gender in Early Modern Drama; Spenser, Milton and Epic History; Literature of the Revolution (with reference to the English Civil War); and Transformations in Renaissance Humanism.

Topics vary.

Topics vary.

Investigates major works of 21st Century literature written in English. Explores the major concepts, methods and theoretical movements that have shaped practices of contemporary literary studies. Students write an original, self-directed scholarly essay in the field of 21st Century literary studies that intervenes in contemporary debates, with an eye toward conference presentation and eventual publication. Emphases and texts vary depending on instructor.

Comparative literary and cultural relations across the Atlantic Ocean; may include literature originating in Europe, Africa, the Americas and/or the Caribbean. Emphases and texts vary depending on instructor.

Investigates literary works beyond the framework of the nation-state and national literary traditions. Texts commonly include postcolonial and global literatures, including literatures translated into English. Topics may include: diaspora, postcoloniality, globalization, exile, border theory, migration, capitalism, empire, war, modernity, human rights and environmental crises. Specific emphases and texts vary depending on the instructor.

Study of the major critics and texts in literary criticism and critical theory from the classical period to 20th century New Criticism.

Presents a survey of approaches commonly used in a range of modern literary studies. The scope of epistemologies that currently shape interpretations in the discipline. Methods of archival and bibliographic research, career discernment, and new research technologies.

Philosophy and theory of rhetoric, with emphasis on primary classical sources and the relationship of contemporary to classical theory. Provides theoretical background for the teaching of writing at the college level.

Topics vary by section to offer a variety of methodological, thematic or generic approaches to bodies of literature. See Schedule of Classes or dept. website for specific topic.

Students explore professorial, administrative and nonacademic career paths in and around the humanities. Includes preparation of materials for students planning to enter the job market.

Prepares doctoral students to teach in the Foundations in Rhetoric program. Students discuss pedagogical theory and practice, are paired with a faculty mentor, and design their own syllabi for the spring term.

Faculty-supervised, independent study/research of a specific area or topic in English.

A project developed in consultation with the director of graduate studies and an assigned faculty mentor.

S/U grade assessment.

Focuses attention on issues that inform readings across the spectrum of British literature. Provides a forum where students can share research on topics of mutual interest.

Focuses attention on issues that inform readings across the spectrum of American literature. Provides a forum where students can share research on topics of mutual interest.

Examines theoretical issues that inform the construction and comprehension of specific literary genres. Takes interest both in traditional conceptions of that genre and in efforts to redefine those traditional conceptions.

Preparation for doctoral qualifying examination, including post-graduate career discernment. S/U grade assessment.

Various issues covering genres, literary periods, criticism, or language are examined in a fashion that emphasizes reading from particular critical perspectives while recognizing options for interpretation.

Students prepare for ENGL 8830 and for the process of writing their dissertation proposals by designing a summer reading list and reading calendar. They also learn to write the various components of a dissertation proposal (including an annotated bibliography, an abstract, a statement of the problem, a methodology section, career discernment, and more). Students engage in ongoing dialogue with one another and the instructor during the course about their work, their projects, and the skills they are learning.

A course whose mode of instruction offers a student the opportunity to study or do in-depth research on a topic or subject matter not usually offered in the established curriculum, with a current Marquette faculty of his/her choice and independent of the classroom setting.

S/U grade assessment.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Designated as less than half-time status only, cannot be used in conjunction with other courses, and does not qualify students for financial aid or loan deferment.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Designated as full-time status. If a student is already registered in other courses full time, this continuation course is not needed.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Designated as full-time status. If a student is already registered in other courses full time, this continuation course is not needed.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Designated as full-time status. If a student is already registered in other courses full time, this continuation course is not needed.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of less than half-time status. Requires that the student is working less than 12 hours per week toward their master's comprehensive exam.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of half-time status. Requires that the student is working more than 12 to less than 20 hours per week toward their master's comprehensive exam. May be taken in conjunction with credit-bearing or other non-credit courses to result in the status indicated, as deemed appropriate by the department.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of full-time status. Requires that the student is working 20 hours or more per week toward their master's comprehensive exam. May be taken in conjunction with credit-bearing or other non-credit courses to result in the status indicated, as deemed appropriate by the department.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of less than half-time status. Requires that the student is working less than 12 hours per week toward their doctoral qualifying exam.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of half-time status. Requires that the student is working more than 12 to less than 20 hours per week toward their doctoral qualifying exam. May be taken in conjunction with credit-bearing or other non-credit courses to result in the status indicated, as deemed appropriate by the department.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of full-time status. Requires that the student is working 20 hours or more per week toward their doctoral qualifying exam. May be taken in conjunction with credit-bearing or other non-credit courses to result in the status indicated, as deemed appropriate by the department.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of less than half-time status. Requires that the student is working less than 12 hours per week on their doctoral dissertation. All 12 dissertation credits required for the degree should be completed before registering for non-credit Doctoral Dissertation Continuation.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of half-time status. Requires that the student is working more than 12 to less than 20 hours per week on their doctoral dissertation. All 12 dissertation credits required for the degree should be completed before registering for non-credit Doctoral Dissertation Continuation.

Fee. SNC/UNC grade assessment. Allows a student to be considered the equivalent of full-time status. Requires that the student is working 20 hours or more per week on their doctoral dissertation. All 12 dissertation credits required for the degree should be completed before registering for non-credit Doctoral Dissertation Continuation.