Fall 2024 // English // Marquette University

1001 Foundations in Rhetoric (Foundation Tier)

2020 Texts, Social Systems, and Values (ESSV1)

3210 Writing Practices and Processes (WRIT)

101 TuTh 11:00-12:15 Professor Jenn Fishman
102 TuTh 12:30-1:45 Professor Jenn Fishman

Course Title: College Writing: Before, During, & Beyond
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Writing Practices and Processes is a requirement for ENGA and ENGW majors; it also fulfills an elective requirement for ENGL majors.

Course Description: This course is designed to give you, the students who sign up, new perspectives on college writing. How? Through 3 projects, which invite you to think about writing before, during, and after college itself:

Project #1 invites you to gather and analyze past examples of your own writing in order to answer questions like these: Who am I as a writer? How did I get here? And how do I move on to become the writer(s) I'd like to be?
Project #2 puts you in charge of your own editorial project, giving you a chance to create a reader (e.g., a collection of your own and/or other people’s writing) that reflects who you are now, what interests you, and an audience you want to connect with.
Project #3 is up to you, save for a short list of requirements and guidelines, and I’ll encourage you to pick something related to your hopes, dreams, and plans for life beyond college. Previous projects have ranged from podcasts and video documentaries to 'zines, social media campaigns, and cookbooks as well as photo essays and children's books. Using archival and original research as well as a host of secondary sources, 3210s have studied family genealogies, kindness, and the human stories behind Milwaukee crime stats. Some students use this assignment to pursue passion projects; others seed honors projects or write with an eye to future publication.

To support all of the above, we'll read and discuss several chapters of Bad Ideas about Writing (free) as well as one of three books by Austin Kleon: Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, or Keep Going ($2-$20); there will also be regular peer exchanges (e.g., of ideas, writing). Although this course is full of surprises, the workflow is steady: we meet onsite Tuesdays and Thursdays; reading responses are due Wednesdays; and weekly writing is due by Sunday at 11:59pm Central.

Please note: Rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors from all majors and minors are welcome to enroll in this WRIT course. Anyone who has taken ENGL 4230 should be in touch, since we’ll cover some familiar ground.

3221 Technical Writing (WRIT, Discovery Tiers - Expanding our Horizons and Cognition, Memory, and Intelligence)

3240 Introduction to Creative Writing (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Individuals and Communities)

3241 Crafting the Short Story (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Cognition, Memory, and Intelligence)

101 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Professor Katherine Zlabek

Course Title: Crafting the Short Story
Fulfills English Major Requirement: ENGA and ENGW writing elective requirement and ENGL major elective requirement.

Course Description: Students will produce fresh, original writing that appeals to an audience’s imagination in this intermediate-level journey into short fiction. In it, we will be discussing the various elements of fiction, including concrete and specific detail, voice, atmosphere, and plot, to name a few. Students will explore the formal elements of writing alongside fiction that exemplifies or challenges these formal elements. Each story will be examined critically for its form as well as its representation of social, cultural beliefs and values, economic or global conditions, and environmental circumstances. In a workshop setting, we will critique one another’s creative writing, and discuss strategies for revising creative writing effectively.

Readings: Stories and craft essays will be posted on D2L.

Assignments: Thoughtful attention to published work, and the work of peers; considerate workshop participation; short stories; outside reading and short presentation; final portfolio.

102 TuTh 3:30-4:45 Professor Megan Paonessa

Course Title:Crafting the Short Story
Fulfills English Major Requirement: ENGA and ENGW writing elective requirement and ENGL major elective requirement.

Course Description: Following the outline Jeff Vandermeer provides in “Wonderbook,” this course will focus on the craft involved in writing short stories. We will explore the core elements of fiction, like character, point of view, dialogue, description, and style, as well as some of the lesser mysteries of writing and the role of the imagination. Taking cues from celebrated short stories that exemplify or challenge these core elements of short story writing, we will build our critical and analytical skills while also composing short pieces that experiment with these core concepts from a more creative perspective.

3249 Creativity and Community (ESSV2)

3250 Lifewriting, Creativity, and Community ESSV2, WRIT, Discovery Tier - Cognition Memory, and Intelligence)

4000 The Career Class

4250 Creative Writing: Fiction (WRIT)

4260 Creative Writing: Poetry (WRIT)

4954 Seminar in Creative Writing (WRIT)

4986 Writing Internship

3140 Sociolinguistics (ESSV2, Discovery Tier - Individuals and Communities)

4110 Exploring the English Language (Discovery Tier - Cognition, Memory, and Intelligence)

3000 Introduction to Literary Studies (WRIT)

101 TuTh 11:00-12:15 Professor Leah Flack

Course Title: Introduction to Literary Studies: How to Read and Write like an English Major
Fulfills English Major Requirement: The foundation course requirement in the major sequence for ENGA, ENGL, and ENGW majors.

Course Description: Students will leave this class feeling more confident about how to read different kinds of texts—plays, poems, fiction, film, music, art, stand-up comedy, speeches, media—from different moments in history and different cultural traditions. We will learn to pay attention to genre, form, and context as we read. We will also learn how different kinds of discourses and genres understand what it means to tell the truth. Most of the course’s texts will be short so that we can privilege attentive, slow reading in order to appreciate how to have meaningful experiences of reading. Students will also learn how to ask and answer different kinds of questions about texts so that they leave class with flexible and useful set of tools that will serve them well in future classes. Students will write in multiple genres and media to understand how the purpose and audience of their writing can help them make informed choices about form, format, length, and medium. Regular informal writing will help students to become deliberate, purposeful writers of lively sentences, lucid paragraphs, and readable, engaging, powerful papers when they put it all together.

This class prepares students for upper-level English classes and is required for English majors and minors. It is also available for anyone interested in a class that helps them to think more clearly, read more skillfully, and write more powerfully.

Readings: Texts will include: Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground; Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow; Kazuo Ishiguro, Remains of the Day; Claudia Rankine, Citizen; Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Samuel Beckett, Endgame; Ali Smith, Autumn; Mike Birbiglia, The Old Man and the Pool (stand-up comedy special); Hannah Gadsby, Douglas (stand-up comedy special); Derek DelGaudio, In and Of Itself (filmed theatrical performance); Janelle Monae, Dirty Computer (album and film); Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly (album); Memento (film); Get Out (film).

Assignments: Weekly writing exercises; completing all reading in a thoughtful, focused way; informed, consistent class participation; 6 short papers; final exam.

102 TuTh 3:30-4:45 Professor Paul Gagliardi

Course Title: Introduction to Literary Studies
Fulfills English Major Requirement: The foundation course requirement in the major sequence for ENGA, ENGL, and ENGW majors.

Course Description: This course serves as an entry point for the advanced study in the discipline of English literature. While the course is oriented toward new majors and minors, it is also open to anyone interested in honing their critical skills in the interpretation and evaluation of works that fall under the purview of literary studies. Our readings will range mainly thru twentieth and twenty-first century works of literature, poetry, drama, film, and television, and we will also consider these works through various critical, theoretical, and scholarly lenses. This course will consist of a series of various multi-media projects, informal writing assignments, as well as more formal academic essays, that will develop critical reading and writing skills that draw from a range of perspectives.

3301 Here Be Monsters (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Crossing Boundaries)

3410 Drama (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Cognition, Memory, and Intelligence)

3514 Contemporary Irish Literature (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Cognition, Memory, and Intelligence)

3740 Film Studies (Discovery Tier - Crossing Boundaries)

3762 Disability and Literature (WRIT, Discovery Tier- Basic Needs and Justice)

3841 Global Hip Hop (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Crossing Boundaries)

4331 Shakespeare (WRIT)

4402 The Novel to 1900 (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Individuals and Community)

4612 J.R.R. Tolkien

101 MWF 11:00-11:50 Professor Gerry Canavan

Course Title: J.R.R. Tolkien
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Post-1900

Course Description: The last decade has seen the hundredth anniversary of J.R.R. Tolkien’s earliest writings on Middle-Earth (The Book of Lost Tales, begun in 1917) alongside the completion of Peter Jackson’s career-defining twenty-year project to adapt The Lord of the Rings for film (1995-2015) and the inauguration of a new cycle of adaptation on Amazon Prime (The Rings of Power, 2022-), in anime (The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, 2024), and in countless games. This course asks the question: Who is J.R.R. Tolkien, looking backward from the perspective of the twenty-first century? Why have his works, and the genre of heroic fantasy which he remade so completely in his image, remained so intensely popular, even as the world has transformed around them? Our study will primarily trace the history, development, and reception of Tolkien’s incredible magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings (written 1937-1949, published 1954-1956) — but we will also take up Tolkien’s contested place in the literary canon of the twentieth century, the uses and abuses of Tolkien in Jackson’s blockbuster films, the special appeal of Tolkien in politically troubled times, and the ongoing critical interests and investments of Tolkien fandom today. As Tolkien scholars we will also have the privilege of drawing upon the remarkable J.R.R. Tolkien Collection at Raynor Library, which contains the original manuscripts for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Farmer Giles of Ham.

Note: No prior knowledge of Tolkien is required. The course is designed for a mix of first-time readers, frequent re-readers, and people who are returning to the books for the first time as adults after many years away.

Readings: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and selected additional readings

Assignments: Final critical paper or creative project; weekly sandbox posts on D2L; enthusiastic and informed class participation

4615 Text in Context (Honors for All)

101 MWF 9:00-9:50 Professor Amy Blair

Course Title: Text in Context: Angels in America
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Post-1900, American Literature
Note: This is an "Honors for all" course open to all undergraduates, and enrollment is by permission number

Course Description:

“The world only spins forward.”

Is this a paradox? Perhaps, but it also neatly describes the prescience and ever-increasing relevance of Tony Kushner’s two-part play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. First performed in 1991, and set in 1985, amid the pre-treatment years of the AIDS epidemic, Angels is “about” AIDS, the queer community, mourning, the U. S. medical establishment, Roy Cohn, Mormonism, the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, social justice protests, the hole in the ozone layer—it is also, we will discover, “about” the 2020s…Covid, the queer community, mourning, the U. S. medical establishment, Trump, InstaMoms, Anthony Fauci, Putin, social justice protests, climate change. In this course, we will approach Angels from multiple angles: literary, philosophical, theological, historical, socio-political, epidemiological. We will look at the play as it has been performed and think about ways that it might be performed in a world that knows Covid. We will read the plays multiple times and will supplement our readings with important intertexts for Kushner’s work, with other literary and documentary treatments of the 1980s, and with histories of the play itself and the events it portrays. We will look at Marquette’s relationship to some of the key figures in the play and will experiment with performance in various venues on and off campus.

Along with Kushner’s play, we will read poetry by Walt Whitman, a history of Mormonism, and an oral history of Angels; will screen multiple documentaries about the AIDS crisis, Roy Cohn, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and 1980s popular music; will read secondary criticism in performance studies; and will watch and/or read at least one additional contemporaneous account of the AIDS crisis.

Enthusiastic and consistent participation in seminar meetings and conscientious reading are the most essential requirements of the course. Other assignments will include weekly discussion posts and/or creative responses to the class readings and a culminating essay or multimodal project of the student’s own design.

4734 The Epic (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Expanding our Horizons)

4739 Narrative 4: Storytelling for Others (ESSV2, WRIT, Discovery Tier - Basic Needs and Justice)

101 TuTh 2:00-3:15 Professor Leah Flack

Course Title: Narrative 4: Storytelling for Hope, Justice and Community
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Post-1900

Course Description: In this new course, students will learn to think in new, transformative ways about the work stories do in their own lives, the lives of others, and in our communities. The class will have four emphases:

Creativity. We will study experimental literature and art to consider how to tell and understand stories that might otherwise get silenced in traditional narrative forms. Students will try out different methods such as telling stories in a graphic medium, via podcast, via social media, and other forms. Students will be asked to play and to engage the world through their imaginations during in-class exercises and creative practice journals.
Storytelling for Empathy. Students will become certified Narrative 4 story exchange facilitators. The training they will get broadly prepares them to convene group discussions, to become better listeners, and to build community. These skills are broadly useful and this credential is one students will take with them to graduate and professional school and in their careers. Students will collaborate to consider how storytelling exercises might be used to build community on campus.
Collaborative research. The class will collaborate around a few shared research questions, such as: What impact do experiences of beauty and awe have on mental health? On our capacity to engage with the pressing issues of our time? What can creative exercises have on our capacity to concentrate and focus? What can stories do to help us to develop a hopeful orientation to the future? Students will have the opportunity to help shape research studies in these areas currently underway. And, they will be led through a process of designing their own studies based on their own questions.
Community engagement. Members of class will have several opportunities to develop leadership skills and work with community partners such as the Florentine Opera Company, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Haggerty Museum, the Milwaukee Rep Theater, and others. We will also consider how public storytelling can be used to call for justice or to perpetuate injustice. Students will assemble a portfolio of their experiences and their visions and ideas for applied storytelling in their lives and futures.

There are no traditional essays in this class—see the unit descriptions to get a sense of the kind of work you can expect to do. Each unit will feature a handful of writers, artists, and public figures—some of whom will speak to our class—as exemplars to learn from. Class expectations include: energetic engagement, willingness to try out new forms of creativity, meaningful contributions to research and community projects, keeping a creative practice journal, 4 unit assignments, and a final presentation.

This is an ideal class for English majors or minors who have wondered “what can I do with what I am learning in my English classes?” and for those with an interest in humanities, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Political Science, and Health Science disciplines such as Nursing, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, and Occupational Therapy.

4755 Law and Literature (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Basic Needs and Justice, Honors for All)

101 TuTh 12:30-1:45 Professor Melissa Ganz

Course Title: Crime and Punishment in English Fiction
Fulfills English Major Requirement: 1700-1900
Note: This is an "Honors for all" course open to all undergraduates, and enrollment is by permission number

Course Description: From thieves and murderers to bigamists and terrorists, criminals have long figured prominently in English fiction. In this course, we consider the centrality of crime and punishment to the novel tradition while exploring the ways in which novels can help us understand the causes and consequences of illicit acts. We focus on novels from the Victorian period (such as Oliver Twist and Jekyll and Hyde) and end with Margaret Atwood’s marvelous reimagining of the era’s crime fiction in Alias Grace. We pay particular attention to the implications of criminality for literary form while sampling recurring debates about the effects of reading and writing about vice. Along the way, we consider topics including the value and limits of transgression; the origins of the human capacity for evil; the role of gender, class, and nation in representations of criminality; and the relationship between law and literature. As an upper-level English class, this course places special emphasis on close reading and critical writing. There will be opportunities to participate in mock trials and debates and to consider texts and discussions in this class in relation to those in other classes in the Basic Needs and Justice theme. By the end of the course, my hope is that you will have gained a better understanding of perennial problems of criminal justice, a sense of the range and richness of nineteenth-century fiction, and a set of reading and writing skills that will serve you well in the years ahead.

Note: This class satisfies the 1700-1900 literary history requirement for English majors and counts toward the minor in Law and Society and the major/minor in Gender and Sexualities Studies. In addition, the course counts toward the Basic Needs and Justice theme of the Marquette Core Curriculum (MCC)’s Discovery Tier and satisfies the MCC Writing-Intensive requirement.

Readings: Novels and short fiction by authors such as Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and Margaret Atwood, as well as selected works of literary criticism and legal/cultural history.

Assignments: Two papers; a “crime log” (reading journal); short discussion posts; and lively participation.

4770 Studies in Literature and Culture

4810 Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies (ESSV2, WRIT, Discovery Tier - Basic Needs and Justice)

101 MW 2:00-3:15 Professor Jodi Melamed
102 MW 3:30-4:45 Professor Jodi Melamed

Course Title: Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Multicultural American Literature, UCCS Diverse Cultures, Post-1900

Course Description: The course examines the construction and deployment of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity in U.S. culture and society over the course of the last 100 years up until our present moment, in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. In particular, it examines the centrality of literature for understanding cultural and political negotiations around race, ethnicity, and indigeneity. We will consider the role of literature in maintaining “common-sense” ideas about race and ethnicity and as an instrument for trying to over-turn conventional notions. We will work comparatively within and between sequences focused on a key word or concept from race, ethnic, and Indigenous studies and featuring literary texts from authors identified with European American, African American, Asian American, Latino/a, American Indian, and Arab American literary traditions. Throughout, our challenge will be to understand racialization – a process that stigmatizes some forms of humanity for the profit, pleasure, comfort and privilege of others – as a complex factor that has deeply shaped the social fabric of our own location (Marquette and Milwaukee), the U.S. and the modern world. Especially toward the end of class, we will use the case of Milwaukee to think about the history and presence of racial and ethnic differences at work on the level of both macro-institutions (such as law, economy, and government) and microstructures (such as everyday living and individual experience).

Readings: Critical race theory including texts by Howard Winant, bell hooks, George Lipsitz, David Roediger, Lisa Lowe and Roderick Ferguson. Literature including Richard Wright, Native Son and Le Thi Diem Thuy, The Gangster We are All Looking For.

Assignments: Critical reflection papers, 2 short papers, one longer research essay, oral presentation.

4830 Africana Literature (WRIT, Discovery Tier - Basic Needs and Justice)

4997 Capstone (WRIT)

6210 Literature to 1500

6300 The Long 18th Century

101 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Professor Al Rivero

Course Title: The Long 18th Century: What is Jane Austen?

Course Description: In 1997, I was asked by our then department chair to teach an undergraduate course on Jane Austen. I had read all her novels, some of them as a child, but had taught only one of them, Sense and Sensibility, as part of an undergraduate survey on British literature from 1800 to the present. I was not an expert, nor had I done any appreciable research on Austen or her works, so I assumed this would be a one-term assignment. I was wrong.

The course was enormously popular, with many students unable to enroll because of our cap of 30 for undergraduate classes. All the students in that first class were women. Twenty-seven years later, I have taught undergraduate and graduate courses on Austen every year. The occasional male student has wandered into my classroom, but this has remained a course that appeals primarily to women. I could speculate as to why this is the case, but the truth, universally acknowledged of course, is that Austen’s novels address what her sister novelist, Frances Burney, called ‘female difficulties’. Those difficulties, mostly due to economic circumstances, seem to be dismissed in the fairy-tale ending of Pride and Prejudice. They are squarely confronted in the darker Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park, but these two novels also conclude with the heroine’s marriage to the man she loves, a suitably sentimental payoff for readers. Thus, typically but mistakenly regarded as fantasy machines, Austen’s novels have come to occupy a prominent place in our popular culture, with Austen herself becoming a mega-celebrity on a par with Shakespeare.

When I began teaching Austen under the blanket course descriptor of ‘major author’ in 1997, I was interested in learning more about who was Jane Austen, the author of these amazing novels. Almost three decades later, with the Austen course now having its own dedicated number in our course catalogue, I’m intrigued by a more fascinating question: What is Jane Austen? This is the question we’ll attempt to answer in this graduate seminar by not only reading her works but by examining the social and academic institutions underwriting her status as cultural icon.

Readings: Austen’s novels (Norton); supplemental readings.

Assignments: Discussion leader for two classes; one annotated bibliography or syllabus for ‘major authors’ course; one researched final project; class participation; and regular attendance.

6730 Transnational Literature

6965 Practicum in Teaching Writing

Approved 5000 Level Courses

Courses Offered (Fall 2024)

Undergraduate Courses

First-Year English (UCCS Rhetoric Requirement)

Introduction to Marquette Core Curriculum

Writing Courses

Language Courses

Upper Division Literature Courses

Graduate Seminars

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