Courses Offered (Summer 2025)

101 Professor Danielle Koepke (5/19-8/16), 100% distance learning
102 Professor Gitte Frandsen (7/7-8/16) 100% distance learning
103 Professor Grant Gosizk (7/7-8/9), 100% distance learning

Course Title: Foundations in Rhetoric

Students learn to:

• Critically engage scholarly communication by identifying and analyzing the main rhetorical features of variously mediated texts used by scholars to express ideas in academic settings;
• Pursue inquiry with rigor and responsibility by formulating feasible and meaningful research questions and revising them while conducting thorough, ethical inquiries using appropriate available resources;
• Understand writing as a purpose-driven, audience-oriented, multimodal activity that involves writers in making continuous ethical and informed choices;
• Develop writing by engaging in overlapping phases of invention, synthesis of ideas and information, and revision undertaken in response to others' feedback and self-critique;
• Deliver writing by making full use of appropriate available media, genres, formats and styles;
• Write with exigence by addressing issues of importance with the goal of increasing one's own and others' understanding as a foundation for future action of various kinds;
• Develop an appropriate ethos by meeting academic audiences' expectations for credibility, consistency, and integrity.
• For additional details, including unit-by-unit syllabi, contact Dr. Lilly Campbell.

101 Professor Jenna Green , Session 1, 100% distance learning

Course Title: Ways of Knowing

Course Description: This course is about writing and research. It’s also about you as a person, a student, and a member of different communities and groups. Starting from where you’re at, this course asks you to think about not only what you know but also how you know, what you want to know, what you think you should know, what you believe can’t be known, and what you’re pretty sure isn’t worth knowing. This course also asks you to find out about others’ ways of knowing and how they connect to specific social systems and related values. The learning you do will be active and hands-on, from in-class discussions and workshops to a class inquiry that design. The learning you do will also be writing-intensive, including regular informal assignments as well as several short-form formal assignments that will include peer review and revision. You will also have plenty of chances to reflect in order to better understand yourself as well as your relationships and responsibilities to others.

101 Professor Megan Paonessa, Session 2, 100% distance learning

Course Title: Books That Matter 

Course Desciption: 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.

101 Professor Sarah Stanley (7/8-8/9), 100% distance learning

Course Title: Texts, Social Systems, and Values

Course Description: Texts, Social Systems, & Values engages students with fictional and nonfictional texts that represent differences and similarities among diverse groups of people. The course asks hard questions about: what it means to belong to a community; how groups are constituted through language; 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.”

Our specific section of English 2020, titled ‘”Elementary, My Dear’: Detecting Fictions of ‘Law & Order,’” will interrogate the ways in which we narrativize “crime” not only in fiction, but in “real life.”

Why do we delight in stories about crimes and their culprits? What is at stake in the ways we portray cops and criminals, detectives and ne’er-do-wells? In exploring fictions about the process of “detecting,” what fictions surrounding “law and order” can we actively detect emerging within our imaginative representations of crime?

Throughout this course, we will interrogate the diverse ways in which crime fictions represent questions of justice, equality-under-the-law, and social order. How do these ideals shift throughout differing eras and/or between cultures? Whom do these ideals include and protect; whom do they exclude and pathologize? Such questions will drive our discussions of texts from classic Sherlock Holmes stories to modern graphic novels, true crime podcasts, news coverage, and television episodes. Examining the cultural and historical contexts of these works, we will consider the ways in which narratives about breaking the law reinforce or subvert societal attitudes regarding which activities—and which individuals—should be protected or suppressed. We will examine the ways in which representations—of gender, race, sexuality, social class, (dis)ability, etc.—complicate the seemingly cut-and-dry nature of “good guys vs. bad guys.” Extending our discussions to encompass documentaries and current events, we will also examine the impacts narratives of detection have upon the lived experiences of ordinary people. Ultimately, we will attempt to understand the role that fictional portrayals of crime-and-punishment might play in our real-world assumptions about, and unequal applications of, “justice.” 

101 Professor Jenna Green, Session 1, 100% distance learning

Course Title: Writing for Workplaces
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Writing Practices and Processes requirement for ENGA and ENGW majors. Fulfills ENGL major Elective requirement.  

Course Description: Professional communication is essential to the workplace, and this course helps you become an effective professional communicator. Professional communication is the presentation of workplace material in written and visual formats, and as communicators, you must write, design and speak across multiple audiences and for multiple purposes; professional fields require these skills. This class, in content and form, models these successful communication practices, and will help you learn effective strategies to communicate by working individually and collaboratively to complete course projects that are tailored to your personal and career goals. 
 
The course covers the following principle topics: 

• Nature and importance of ethical, effective professional communication
• Workplace research methods, including interviews and usability testing
• Planning, drafting, revising, and editing workplace documents, like proposals and reports
• Elements of organization and document design
• Design and delivery of documents and oral presentations
• Style in multiple mediums and genres

Readings: Textbook to be determined with additional readings on D2L.  

Assignments: You will create a professional career portfolio that will include deliverables such as a cover letter or personal statement, résumé, proposal, documentation/instructions, reports, memos, and reflections. Students will partner with community organizations and collaborate in writing documents requested by the organizations. All projects are individualized to meet students’ individual goals, needs, and interests. 

101 Professor Lilly Campbell, Session 1, 100% distance learning

Course Title: Writing for Health and Medicine
Fulfills English Major Requirement: ENGA and ENGW writing elective requirement and ENGL major elective requirement.

Course Description: While most would agree that healthcare is a basic need and right, simply providing access to healthcare does not guarantee equitable treatment for populations with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Language and communication are frequently at the heart of discrepancies in healthcare – whether it be a condescending doctor who overlooks a female patient’s pain symptoms or a well-meaning public health professional who cannot account for the ways her cultural biases interfere with her care of patients. By focusing on writing in health and medicine, this course encourages both future health professionals and future communication professionals to critically reflect on the importance of their language choices in shaping how various populations can access and use healthcare. *No scientific background required.* 

Assignments:  Will include a reading journal, a Health Narrative, a Rhetorical Analysis, a Document Life Cycle Report, a Redesign, and a Health Writing Reflection. Assignments are open-ended to meet a variety of goals, needs, and interests.

101 Professor Tyler Farrell, Session 1, 100% distance learning

Course Title: Introduction to Creative Writing
Fulfills English Major Requirement: ENGA and ENGW writing elective requirement and ENGL major elective requirement.

Course Description: Learn to write creatively in multiple genres. Vladimir Nabokov once wrote, “Literature belongs not to the department of general ideas, but to the department of specific words and images.” In this course, students will learn to read and write short/flash fiction, poetry, and a short drama/screenplay. We will focus on our writing community and place attention on word choice, sound, voice, subject matter, style, and revision in all of our work. All students will read and write weekly while also engaging in workshops to critique and offer/receive guidance. Time and space to practice writing and learn technique is our constant aim. A supportive community of writers will help to cultivate a helpful atmosphere and a final portfolio of work in at least two genres. Go writing!

101 Professor Megan Paonessa, Session 1, 100% distance learning

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

Course Description: 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 “writing workshop,” composing short pieces that experiment with each concept from a creative perspective.

102 Professor Katherine Zlabek, Session 2, 100% distance learning

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.

101 Professor Leah Flack 5/12-6/6/25

Course Description: We are at a historical moment when American society is usually described as polarized as we face what the American surgeon general called an epidemc of loneliness and isolation. This course takes as its starting point the question: what role can creativity and art play in helping us to recover a sense of nuance, connection, and hope? As one of the summer course offerings at the Les Aspin Center, it will engage with the vast cultural resources of Washington D.C. to explore how art and creativity help us to think in more expansive, nuanced ways about ourselves, others, and our world. 

Readings: Our course readings are taken from across five centuries and include Shakepeare's Twelfth Night, Ali Smith's How to Be Both, Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,an American Slave, and Colum McCann's Transatlantic. We will go beyond the pages of each work to connect our reading to performances, art exhibits, and cultural and historic sites in the DC area

Note: Students will be in Washington DC for the first two weeks of the course (5/12-5/23). They will wrap up the course with two weeks of virtual study, finishing by 6/6. This 3-credit course fulfills the ESSV2 requirement in the Marquette Core Curriculum. For more information, please contact Dr. Leah Flack at leah.flack@marquette.edu.

101 Professor Paul Gagliardi, Session 1, 100% distance learning

Course Title: Cult Cinema
Fulfills English Major Requirement:  Post-1900, American Literature

Course Description: This course will explore the art and discourse surrounding cult films or cult classics – films that have developed passionate fan bases that have formed their own unique subcultures. Over the course of the term, students will be given historical, aesthetic, and theoretical contexts for studying cult films, while also considering the political and cultural transgressions of many of the films we examine. We will also explore the development of cult fandoms, as well as manufactured cult cinema of the modern media environment. Films to be discussed may include Serial Mom (John Waters, 1994),  They LiveJohn Carpenter, 1988), Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, 1967), Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973), and Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2004).

Assignments: Will consist of film responses, and a creative scholarly mid-term and final project. 

101 Professor Leah Flack, Session 1, 100% distance learning

Course Title: The Art of War

Course Description: Nearly three millennia ago, the Western literary tradition began with Homer’s pair of epic stories about war and the agonizing return to peace. In our own era, we face the urgent problems of escalating global warfare, which prompts us to become informed citizens with a critical awareness of how war is represented and justified. To this end, we have much to learn from the literary tradition.  

This course will teach students to become empowered readers of war narratives through an intensive study of short stories, novels, and films about war and peace, most of which were written in the past 60 years. We will explore several features of representations of war in literature: the celebratory, commemorative, and protest functions of literature; representations of the body in war narratives; representations of various forms of psychological, physical, and cultural damage caused by war; the difficulty of return and recovery from war; and war’s challenges to traditional narrative forms as writers struggle to define, as Tim O’Brien writes, “how to tell a true war story.” 

101 Professor Leah Flack, Session 2, 100% distance learning

Course Title: The Epic: The Epics of Ancient Greece
Fulfills English Major Requirement:  Pre-1700

Course Description: This summer course will explore the founding texts of the Western cultural imagination, a pair of epics by Homer. The Iliad tells the story of the end of the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans and considers why war persists in human life, what drives men to kill and sacrifice themselves in war, and how war fits into the human experience. The Odyssey tells the story of the long, difficult journey home after the war of Odysseus, a hero whose tales of confronting the Cyclops, the Sirens, and other magical creatures and monsters in his travels have enchanted audiences for 3,000 years.

We will read the best parts of both epics. Students will learn about the historical and cultural contexts of ancient Greece as they acquire the knowledge and skills to read these stories with confidence and imagination. We will ask, at every turn, what the modern significance of these ancient stories are and what they have to teach us.

Assignments: Include online discussions, reading quizzes, and one short paper per week asking students to reflect on some aspect of Homer in today’s world.

This class is asynchronous—there are no class meetings, and students proceed through the course on their own schedule, following a schedule of doing discussions and readings online on Wednesdays and Fridays and turning in the short paper on Sundays. Attention has been given to the workload of the class to ensure that students are set up to succeed in the time we have.

101 Professor Tyler Farrell (Study Abroad)

Course Title: Poetry - International

The program, trip and class will be led by Dr. Tyler Farrell, visiting assistant professor of English. This 4-week trip (2 weeks in Galway, 2 weeks in Dublin) and class will be held at two Universities (NUI-Galway and UC-Dublin) and is a lecture and discussion-based course but also one where all students will be immersed in Irish places and culture. The class will focus on Irish literature, history and culture and examine common themes that can be seen through some of Ireland’s best and most prominent writers. (James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Eavan Boland, James Liddy, W.B. Yeats, Michael Hartnett and others.) Students will read Irish writers of the 20th century, reflecting on how they portray the Irish in fiction, non-fiction, drama, short stories, and poetry. We will together examine how the authors use their native land and its inhabitants to inform their writing and how they use of place to create a certain mood and overarching moral for their work. Readings will be assigned with ample class time to discuss themes, motifs, symbolism, ideas, etc. We will also engage in the culture of Ireland with various tours of historic places, a play at the Abbey Theater, walking tours and cultural events. Students will learn to analyze literature and its historical and cultural contexts in a self-conscious, logical, and rigorous manner. The starting point for both our reading and writing will be our personal responses to the texts, both as works of literature and as windows into the Irish world. The class will also focus on how these writers use their native land and its inhabitants to inform their writing, the use of place and surroundings to show and create a certain mood and overarching moral. Most of this class will involve lecture and discussion, and in-person engagement with all things Irish. We will also look at specific places in Ireland to ground the readings in actual history and place of Ireland. We will engage in deep class discussion and use time to allow students to present information with in-depth reflection and critical analysis. We will discuss and contemplate the places we will visit and experience. Go Ireland! Go Learning!

Deadline to apply for summer study abroad class in Ireland is March 1.

Link for more info and to apply:

https://studyabroad.marquette.edu/?go=IrishLiterature

101 Professor Heather Hathaway, Session 1, 50/50 in-person/online

Course Title: Topics in English