| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ENGLISH 10 | CONTEMPRY AFAM LIT | GRADY, K. | |
| ENGLISH 11 | SOCIETY, LAW, & LIT | IZENBERG, O. | |
| ENGLISH 15 | PROBL OF DESCRIPTN | STAFF | |
| ENGLISH 15 | ALL ABOUT EVE | LEWIS, J. | The biblical Eve was the first rebel, the first penitent, the first mother, the first genetic experiment, the first person to ask a question, the first scientist, and the first woman to go off her diet. No wonder she has always been an object of literary fascination—a mythic figure endlessly reimagined in response to changing ideas about female desire, curiosity, subjection, and potentiality. In this class, we’ll explore some of the ways that Eve’s multivalent story has been told and retold over time. That means embarking on the genre- sensitive journey through literary history that every English major should take. It also means thinking about what it means to read Eve from a literary perspective, as opposed to a religious or historical one, and about how different kinds of readers have interpreted her in different ways at different historical moments. As we journey from Genesis to today’s fembot EveR and…wait for it…Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, we’ll pay special attention to the ways that women or female-identified writers have imagined themselves as Eve’s daughters, while also examining Eve’s ever-complicated role in the gender ideologies of every cultural moment. Over the reading quarter, expect to meet the self-seeking bride of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the curious ingenue of Frances Burney’s Enlightenment comedy of manners Evelina, the fallen woman demonized in Victorian gothic literature and pre-Raphaelite art, the ambitious modern woman who steals the limelight in the classic film All about Eve (1950), the African demi-goddess collaboratively imagined by Toni Morrison and Kara Walker, Carmen Maria Machado’s monster bride, and Angela Carter’s gender-bending, fairy tale-inspired new Eve. If you’re a fan of Eve’s ‘other woman,’ Lilith, fear not: She’ll be making more than a guest appearance! PLEASE BE AWARE THAT SOME OF THE READING FOR THIS CLASS IS CHALLENGING!!!!! Course requirements: midterm essay (4 pages), final 6-page ‘biography’ or ‘autobiography’ of Eve; a series of super-short creative exercises/response paragraphs; active participation and periodic leadership in class conversations. |
| ENGLISH 16 | CRAFT OF POETRY | STAFF | |
| ENGLISH 17 | CRAFT OF FICTION | STAFF | |
| ENGLISH 100 | INTRO TO LIT THEORY | MCCALL, S. | |
| ENGLISH 101W | UNDERGRADCRITICALWR | WAY, J. | |
| ENGLISH 101W | INTRO TO POETRY | HENDERSON, A. | This class will provide a focused introduction to the workings of English poetry; no prior knowledge of poetry is required. We will begin by reviewing the formal qualities of poems, including rhyme, rhythm, and stanza structure. We will then examine some standard poetic forms and topoi from the English tradition, such as the sonnet, the dramatic monologue, and the blazon. Our readings will range chronologically from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. We will focus on developing skills in analysis and writing without the aid of AI. Writing requirements will include several short assignments and papers, in addition to a longer final paper. |
| ENGLISH 101W | UNDERGRADCRITICALWR | MATTHEWS, R. | |
| ENGLISH 102A | MEDIEVAL & REN LIT | MATTHEWS, R. | |
| ENGLISH 102B | 18TH CENT LIT | WAY, J. | |
| ENGLISH 102C | AWKWARDNS & OUTCAST | BARTLETT, J. | |
| ENGLISH 102D | EXISTENTIALISM LITERATURE | RADHAKRISHNAN, R. | You may well ask, Isn’t all literature existential? What can literature be if not about existence? Fair enough. What is special about existential literature is that it focuses on subjectivity and the subjective dimension of human experience. If reality comprises both the objective pole and the subjective, the social and the individual, the historico-political and the psychological, then existential literature chooses to privilege the subjective/personal perspective with the intention of interrogating the objective structure known as Reality, Society, and the World in general. Existential voices often express despair, anger, grief, chagrin, alienation, and a general sense of ontological malaise. These voices of the outsider, the other, the exile, the misfit, the alien, the minority, the non-mainstream, and the “abnormal” can function as critiques, manifestos, jeremiads, and radical testaments of non-belonging. Traversing a broad range of registers (ontological, philosophical, ethical, political, personal, interpersonal, methodological, and epistemological), these perspectives seek to liberate the phenomenology of experience from the rigid cartography of dominant and hegemonic systems. Focusing on ALIENATION as a structure of experience, these texts call into question a world structured as much in dominance as in the logic of brutal biopolitical instrumentality. These workwise are informed by an eloquence that is radically “otherwise.” They may or may not seek a political resolution or revolution. We will together in solidarity, explore these depths and surfaces. Examples of texts and authors in the syllabus, not finalized yet: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Ralph Ellison, WEB Du Bois, Richard Wright, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, Kamel Daoud, Franz Kafka, Mahmoud Darwish, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Frantz Fanon, and possibly lyrics by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Tracy Chapman, and others. Please don’t be intimidated. Clearly this is an unwieldy list and will be trimmed before it becomes official. Expectations: Most likely, 1 short essay, 5 pages plus, and 1 long essay, 7 to 10 pages. |
| ENGLISH 105 | ASAM NONFIC FILM | CHO, J. | Cross-listed with AsianAm 114 in the Fall 2026 quarter. This interdisciplinary course examines documentary film, experimental nonfiction, oral history, community media, archival practice, and podcasting not simply as forms of representation, but as modes of testimony, evidence, memory work, political intervention, and community history. The course also introduces students to documentary modes and points of view, and introductory training for oral history and interviewing. We also study Asian Americans’ active interventions to access and develop institutional infrastructures that continue to support story work, including community media organizations, festivals, and archives. |
| ENGLISH 105 | WRITING RACE | TOBAR, H. | Course is cross-listed as a Lit Jrn 103. This course is a survey of nonfiction writing about race in the United States of America, from the 19th century to the present. We will examine how writers have tackled issues of racial inequality and discrimination, and constructed narratives centered on the lives of people of color in various nonfiction genres, including: newspaper and magazine journalism, investigative reporting, essays, criticism, documentary film, and memoirs. Readings will include works by Ida B. Wells, W.E.B Du Bois, James Baldwin, Carey McWilliams, Ta-Nehisi Coates and others. Part of the aim of this class is what we can learn about the craft of writing as a tool of social engagement and change. How do writers construct works that cut through the falsehoods of prejudice and ignorance? How do they work to defend the humanity of those who have been marginalized or oppressed by dominant cultures? How do they express the joy and fortitude unseen or unknown by outsiders? As a final requirement, students will produce their own work of cultural reportage or criticism. Students will work on this project in several stages throughout the quarter, producing a 2,000-word piece by finals’ week. In addition, students will produce four, 300-word “responses” to the readings |
| ENGLISH 106 | MILTON | STAFF | |
| ENGLISH 106 | COMMUN IN AFAM LIT | MORGAN, C. | |
| ENGLISH 106 | LITERATURE AND THE MIND | MONTERO ROMAN, V. | E 106: Literature and the Mind In her well-known work on the fictional representation of consciousness, Dorrit Cohn argues that the “singular power possessed by the novelist” is that the author is a “creator of beings whose inner lives [they] can reveal at will” (4). This course will introduce you to scholars like Cohn, who have studied how and why novelists represent the inner lives of characters. We will read scholarship that analyzes the narrative strategies authors use to represent cognition (like free indirect discourse, stream of consciousness, unreliable narration, and description) and ask questions about the nature of literary imagination, the relationship between fiction and reality, and the uses of fiction. Because the study of the mind has never been objective or neutral, though, we will also think critically about how gender and race have impacted the representation and theorization of fictional minds. Primary sources are likely to include women authors like Jane Austen, Nella Larsen, Virginia Woolf, Maria Cristina Mena, and Jean Rhys. |
| ENGLISH 107 | ENGLISH IN ACTION | DAVIS, R. | E107 English in Action Wondering what to do with your English major? E107 is a workshop that explores career pathways for English majors through discussion, writing workshops, mentorship, and learning from invited speakers. This course is required for students completing an internship through the Internships for English Majors program but it is also open to all English majors who are interested in career exploration. E107 meets once a week and is graded P/NP. |
| ENGLISH 198 | SPECIAL TOPICS | STAFF |