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Experiential Academics – Undergraduate

Summer 2020 Undergraduate Courses

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The following information is subject to change.

For the most up-to-date and comprehensive course schedule, including meeting times, course additions, cancellations, and room assignments, refer to the Banner Class Schedule on the Registrar’s website.

For curriculum information, see the Undergraduate Full-Time Day Programs catalog, also on the Registrar’s website.

Banner listings are live as of January 27, 2020.

First day of summer class registration: February 18

Summer I 2020

ENGL by Major Requirement

ENGL/AFAM 2362: Modern & Contemporary African-American Literature

Instructor: Alanna Prince
Sequence: MW 1:30-5:00 PM
Attributes:

What does it mean to be black in the 21st century? How does the political, social, and cultural climate of the new millennium situate and construct Blackness? Despite differences across
geographic locations and origins, socioeconomic statuses, gender identities and sexual orientations, religions, generations, and education levels, is there any collective experience in Blackness? In this course we will examine multiple genres of Black American literature including novels, music, poetry, personal essays, movies, and even Black Twitter in order to move towards answering these questions.

ENGL/AFAM 2362: Modern & Contemporary African-American Literature

Instructor: Alanna Prince
Sequence: MW 1:30-5:00 PM
Attributes:

What does it mean to be black in the 21st century? How does the political, social, and cultural climate of the new millennium situate and construct Blackness? Despite differences across
geographic locations and origins, socioeconomic statuses, gender identities and sexual orientations, religions, generations, and education levels, is there any collective experience in Blackness? In this course we will examine multiple genres of Black American literature including novels, music, poetry, personal essays, movies, and even Black Twitter in order to move towards answering these questions.

ENGL 2700 Creative Writing (Online)

Section 01

Instructor: Christen Enos
Sequence: ONLINE

Section 02

Instructor: Sebastian Stockman
Sequence: ONLINE

Attributes:

In this introductory course, we will explore three genres of creative writing: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Students will work through the process of generating their own creative pieces, including brainstorming, drafting, workshopping, and revising. In addition, we will study various examples from each genre, examining form, theme, and language.

ENGL 2850 Writing for Social Media (Online)

Section 01

Instructor: Cara Marta Messina
Sequence: ONLINE

Section 02 

Instructor: Abbie Levesque
Sequence: ONLINE

Attributes:

Why do hashtags like #OKBoomer trend? Why do I receive advertisements from Prager University when I watch videogame streamers on YouTube? How does writing form or disrupt online communities? In this #OnlineCourse, we will discuss social media community formation and participation, the infectious nature of language and ideas, and the flourishing of social movements like #MeToo or #SayHerName.

Topics include data and digital #ethics; the construction of #OnlineIdentities; social media genres and rhetorical practices; how #algorithms interpret your online identity construction; and important online #SocialMovements and their real- life #impacts. You will analyze different social media content; read and write about social media texts, communities, and genres; and participate in social media communities of your choosing.

HONR 3310 Building a (Better) Book

Instructor: Ryan Cordell
Sequence:  MTWR 9:50-11:30 AM
Attributes:

What is a book, and what might it become? In this studio-based course, students investigate intersections among media, literature, and computation in order to understand the history of the book and imagine its future. Students cultivate new technical skills that will enable them to effectively use a range of historical and contemporary textual technologies, including letterpress, binding, 3D printing, and interactive, online storytelling. The course draws extensively on resources such as Huskiana Press, NU’s new experiential letterpress studio, and Snell Library’s 3D Printing Studio. Students use the skills they develop over the course of the semester to develop multimodal creative or research projects, building their own print-digital books. As a studio course, “Building a (Better) Book” centers around students’ conceiving, developing, and workshopping these independent projects. In addition, the course includes a number of trips to archives and museums around the Boston area such as the Massachusetts Historical Society, local letterpress shops, and Boston Cyberarts.

Note: this course has been approved by the English Department to fulfill the Theories & Methods major requirement. All majors and combined majors should work with their advisor to make this exception on your DARS. 

Summer II 2020

ENGL by Major Requirement

ENGL 2695 Travel Writing (Online)

Instructor: Kathleen Kelly
Sequence: ONLINE
Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Comparative or Writing
  • NUPath Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI), Interpreting Culture (IC)

I’m betting that many of you have a phone full of pictures of places you’ve visited, even for a day. People love taking selfies in front of world-famous places—Stonehenge, Niagara Falls, the Taj Mahal, Mt. Fuji. We take pictures, collect postcards, and buy souvenirs to remind us of the experiences we’ve had across town, across the country, across the world. We are enlarged each time we reach beyond what is known and familiar.

This course is intended to enrich your experiences away from home. You will learn about travel writing and place-based writing by reading examples of the two genres (many about the place where you are), as well as reading what experienced travel writers, critics, and scholars have to say about travel writing and place-based writing. You will also contribute your own thoughtful, informed observations about traveling through essays, photo-collages, and videos. Your experiences are the foundation for everything that you create in this course.

ENGL 2700 Creative Writing (Online)

Section 01

Instructor: Isabel Sobral Campos
Sequence: ONLINE

Section 02

Instructor: Aaron Block
Sequence: ONLINE

Attributes:

In this introductory course, we will explore three genres of creative writing: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Students will work through the process of generating their own creative pieces, including brainstorming, drafting, workshopping, and revising. In addition, we will study various examples from each genre, examining form, theme, and language.

ENGL 3380 Topics in Writing: Coded Content (Online)

Instructor: Greg Palermo
Sequence:  ONLINE
Attributes:

Who, or what, decides what shows up on your media feeds and in Google searches? Increasingly, it’s “algorithms.” Instead of following human-written instructions to perform tasks, computers are more often writing their own algorithms for themselves, based on data about our digital lives. How do we function as readers and writers in this changing landscape, in which digital technologies can act, free from their creators, and determine what we “should” experience? We will read, watch, and listen to a range of popular and academic texts to understand how algorithms are lent the power to shape values, ethics, and what counts as knowledge. In your writing assignments, you will explore possibilities to confront critically algorithms and the information they deliver. Along the way, we’ll consider algorithms as texts themselves and think about where a line might be between writing and coding, or reading and “compiling.” We’ll study the computer code in which algorithms are written and read, by us and by machines, as something that might have style and elegance, and we’ll even learn to write some content-mediating code of our own.