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Course Offerings by Semester

Spring 2021 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.

BANNER LISTINGS GO LIVE ON OCTOBER 26.

First day of spring registration: November 16

ENGL by Major Requirement

ENGL 1000 English at Northeastern

Instructor: Professor Neal Lerner
Sequence:  W 11:45-1:25 PM
Attributes:

Intended for first-year students in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. Introduces first-year students to the liberal arts in general; familiarizes them with their major; helps them develop the academic skills necessary to succeed (analytical ability and critical thinking); provides grounding in the culture and values of the University community; and helps them develop interpersonal skills—in short, familiarizes students with all skills needed to become a successful university student.

ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies

Instructor: Professor Erika Boeckeler
Sequence:  F – TF 1:35-3:15 PM

Attributes:

This foundational course introduces the various disciplines that make up Literary Studies. It explores strategies for reading, interpreting, and theorizing about texts; for conducting research; for developing skills in thinking analytically and writing clearly about complex ideas; and for entering into written dialogue with scholarship in the field. Readings include a mix of theoretical texts examining how, why, and what we read and a thought-provoking mix of literary genres from many periods.

ENGL 1410 Introduction to Writing Studies

Instructor: Mya Poe
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

  • Major Requirement/s Foundational or Theories and Methods (either/or; cannot count for both)
  • NUCore Writing Intsv in Majr
  • NUPath Writing-Intensive in the Major (WI)

Introduces students to the basic histories, theories, and methodologies surrounding how people learn to write and how writing is used in home, school, work, and civic contexts. Explores writing practices in the U.S. and in international contexts, including the social and political significance of writing in such cultural contexts. Class projects emphasize archival research and research on the development of writing practices, including students’ understanding of their own experiences and practices of other groups. Satisfies introductory course requirement for English majors.

ENGL 1700 Global Literature to 1500

Instructor: Professor Isabel Sobral Campos
Sequence: 4 – MWR 1:35-2:40 PM
Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Foundational
  • NUCore Humanities Lvl 1
  • NUPath Engaging Difference & Diversity (DD), Interpreting Culture (IC)

The reconsideration of “Global Literature” over that past thirty years or so arises out of a desire to break down barriers that have traditionally kept literatures of the world separate, divided by language, nationalism, geography, and politics. In this course devoted to the study of classical, medieval, and early modern works, we will travel to distant times and across vast geographies to share experiences at once alien and familiar: war, love, vengeance, betrayal, triumph, encompassing the full range of human experience and the height of its artistry. We will read some of the most important and revered texts in the world, whose stories formed and continue to influence a number of enduring literary and cultural traditions. All texts will be in translation, including: the Mesopotamian poem, Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Ferdowsi’s Persian epic Shahnameh; The Irish national epic, Táin Bó Cúailnge; Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. For this introductory survey course, assignments will include regular Blackboard posts, a take-home midterm, a creative/critical assignment that examines the afterlife of the classic texts we are studying together, and an in-class final.

ENGL/JWSS/WMNS 3678 Bedrooms and Battlefields: Hebrew Bible and the Origins of Sex, Gender, and Ethnicity

Instructor: Professor Lori Lefkovitz
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM
Attributes:

We will read stories from Hebrew Scripture in English translation, beginning with the Garden of Eden through the Book of Ruth, asking how these foundational narratives establish the categories that have come to define our humanity. We will look at how the Bible’s patterns of representation construct sexual and ethnic identities and naturalize ideas about such social institutions as “the family.” The course will analyze the Bible’s bedrooms and battlefields, repeated stories of identity masquerade, and metaphors of fluids and voices. We will read the Bible as a collection of stories that sets in motion one trajectory of the Western narrative tradition, and we will interrogate some of the basic assumptions of that tradition.

ENGL 4000 Topics in Early Literatures: Greek Tragedy

Instructor: Frank Blessington
Sequence: 4 – MWR 1:35-2:40 PM

Attributes:

Ancient Greek tragedy forges powerful emotion with complexity of thought. Its actions are the most violent imaginable: matricide, patricide, infanticide, incest, madness, suicide, and mutilation, and sometimes they even end happily. Actions that many cultures avoided mentioning in public the Greeks put on the stage. To balance the atrocities and avoid disgust, Greek drama had formal elements that gave aesthetic distance and acceptability to its plots. Such controlled culture shock had an exportablility, a clarity, and a relevance that fascinated many later civilizations.

ENGL 3160 Topics in 17th/18th-Century British Literature: Jane Austen

Instructor: Nicole Aljoe
Sequence: Online NUFlex

Attributes:

This course will provide an introduction or re-introduction to a selection of Jane Austen’s published novels. Along with the novels, students will also consider film and other media versions inspired by the novels. Closely attending to the themes and literary conventions associated with the novels, students in the course will also examine Austen’s intriguing family background. The course will also consider key aspects of the historical and social context of the novels such as changing gender conventions, maritime history, the expansion of slavery, and developments of popular culture.

ENGL 3190 Topics in 19th-Century American Literature: American Women Writers

Instructor: Theo Davis
Sequence: B – MW 2:50-4:30 PM

Attributes:

This course looks at fiction, poetry, and essays by women in the nineteenth century, with a focus on how women in the era defined their social identities in relation to the rise of capitalism, nineteenth-century feminism’s relationship to abolitionism, relationships between black and white feminisms, the history of the conception of the “woman writer” in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminist thinking, and on tensions between individualist and community-oriented accounts of female identity in the period. Authors will include Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and Anna Julia Cooper.

ENGL 2440 The Modern Bestseller

Instructor: Kat Gonso
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes:

“The Modern Bestseller” offers students an opportunity to join a collaborative community of readers to discuss the books that have captured readers’ imaginations and their historical and social context. We’ll consider what makes a bestseller a bestseller and explore which authors (and audiences) are excluded from commercial success.

ENGL 3730 Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Major Figure: James Joyce

Instructor: Patrick Mullen
Sequence: 3 – MWR 10:30-11:35 AM

Attributes:

This course will introduce students to James Joyce through the pairing of two works: the short story collection, Dubliners, and his great work about a day in the life of the city of Dublin, Ulysses. We will use Dubliners to connect us to Joyce and his world, and in particular his interest in language, gender, sexuality, and race. Then we will launch into the careful reading of Ulysses. This work transformed “the novel” as it was known, opening it up to the demands and pleasures of modern life. Reading Ulysses for the first time is a transformative experience and one which will stick with you for a lifetime. No prerequisites for this course beyond curiosity and an open mind. Students will write both critical and creative works. We will get the chance to meet with at least one contemporary Irish author through Zoom!

ENGL 1450 Reading and Writing in the Digital Age

Instructor: Ryan Cordell
Sequence: Online NUFlex

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Comparative
  • NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Analyzing and Using Data (AD), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI)

Grapples with the long and sometimes tumultuous relationship between literature—including fiction, poetry, film, and video games—and new media technologies. Offers students opportunities to historicize and engage the social and literary upheavals of our own technological moment through reading, discussion, writing projects, and practicums that seek to develop skills for analyzing the data and metadata of texts through both qualitative and quantitative methods.

ENGL 1500 British Lit to 1800

Instructor: Erika Boeckeler
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes:

Read the greatest hits of early English Literature in one, action-packed semester: fight scenes and mom-power in Beowulf; sex, lies, and religious pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales; King Arthur and the adventures of the knights of the round table; the best and worst places in the universe according to Utopia & Paradise Lost;  raunchy poetry about skulls, love triangles, shipwrecks, fleas and worms, wearing wings, and forsaken lovers; a trip to fairyland in The Faerie Queene;  a racy roman à clef –the first novel in English!–by a woman publicizing her scandalous affair with a first cousin in The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania; and Shakespearean play thrown in for good measure.  The course pays careful attention to how historical texts reflect and promulgate ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and non-human and human “others” to offer a deep history to our contemporary discourses.

ENGL 2420 Contemporary Poetry

Instructor: Eunsong Kim
Sequence: 2 – MWR 9:15-10:20 AM

Attributes:

This course will focus on the development of US poetics movements post 1945. We will pay attention to how poets sought to differentiate their racial, gender and class politics through artistic and formal innovations. Particular attention will be given to: the Objectivists, Confessionalists, the Black Arts Movement and Language Poetry, as well as to present day collectives. In thinking about the developments of new movements and their debates we will look at the social movements surrounding and fueling the growth of new poetic camps, such as the anti-capitalist and anti-War movements, the Black Panther Party, and anti-colonial transnational feminisms. In order to grapple with the tensions of contemporary poetic movements, we will read from a range of anthologies, manifestos, critical essays and the collections of Anne Sexton, Louis Zukofsky, Nikki Giovanni, Harryette Mullen, Layli Long Soldier, Bhanu Kapil, and Craig Santos Perez.

ENGL 2510 Horror Fiction

Instructor: Gary Goshgarian
Sequence: F – TF 1:35-3:15 PM

Attributes:

This course explores English and American horror fiction from Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker (author of Dracula), to contemporary writers such as Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Dean Koontz,  Tananarive Due, Neil Gaiman, and Clive Barker. Using short stories, novels, and movies (from adaptations of Dracula to Jordan Peele’s “Get Out”), we will examine the evolution of horror fiction and the various themes, techniques, and uses of the macabre—that is, depictions of the frightening, the gruesome, and death. We will also explore the nature of Evil and the various depictions of it in our readings.

Student writing: announced quizzes, midterm & final take-home essay exams (7-10 pages); optional critical analysis of some horror work not read in the course (7-10 pages)

ENGL 2520 Science Fiction

Instructor: Kathleen Kelly
Sequence: B – MW 2:50-4:30 PM

Attributes:

So many books and films to choose from, so little time in the semester! This course offers a curated collection of novels, short stories, graphic novels, and film intended to introduce students to the vast variety of work that rowdily crowds under the umbrella of science fiction. Once considered the province of white male writers and characters, dismissed as junk or ridiculed as a genre for nerds—and often forbidden by parents—sci-fi has emerged as a serious vehicle for exploring what it means to be human, diversity and difference, the dangers of technology, the challenges of exploration and conquest, and the concomitant problem of the effects of imperialism. We will read a mix of classics and the current, and cover robot tales, dystopian worlds and futures, climate-change fiction, cyberpunk fiction, Afro-futurism, and the queering of space. Students will choose some of the material to be assigned. Plan on weekly posts to Canvas, two papers derived from those posts, and a project that offers an opportunity to speculate creatively in any medium or genre: fan-fiction, the visual and plastic arts, original short story, or a plan for a novel or screenplay. Or?

ENGL 2695 Travel Writing

Instructor: Kelly Garneau
Sequence: Online NUFlex

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Comparative or Writing (either/or; cannot count for both)
  • 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 3426 Literature and Politics

Instructor: Theo Davis
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Comparative
  • *New as of  11/24* NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

This interdisciplinary course explores how modern democratic politics intersects with British and American literary history. We take up literature as a key cultural form that has given specificity to the theories of freedom and equality advanced in liberal democratic theory, and explore how literature has spoken back to liberal theory’s abstract formality and challenged its relationship to white supremacy and gender inequality. We will look at tales of self-making, poems exploring the ethos of radical egalitarianism, literature of social protest, and literature invested in the ideal of revolution.

ENGL 4000 Topics in Early Literatures: Greek Tragedy

Instructor: Frank Blessington
Sequence: 4 – MWR 1:35-2:40 PM

Attributes:

Ancient Greek tragedy forges powerful emotion with complexity of thought. Its actions are the most violent imaginable: matricide, patricide, infanticide, incest, madness, suicide, and mutilation, and sometimes they even end happily. Actions that many cultures avoided mentioning in public the Greeks put on the stage. To balance the atrocities and avoid disgust, Greek drama had formal elements that gave aesthetic distance and acceptability to its plots. Such controlled culture shock had an exportablility, a clarity, and a relevance that fascinated many later civilizations.

[CANCELLED] ENGL 4070 Topics in Genre: Irish Short Story

This class has been cancelled as of 12/2/20.

ENGL 1140 Grammar: The Architecture of English

Instructor: Janet Randall
Sequence: 3 – MWR 10:30-11:35 AM

Attributes:

You can certainly live in a building without knowing how it’s constructed, but if you want to do any remodeling, you might want to look at the blueprints.  The same is true of language.  Every day, we put words together into grammatical phrases and sentences without thinking at all about the “construction principles” we follow.  How do we do this amazing task?  We follow an internalized – and completely unconscious — system of linguistic rules, a “blueprint” of our mental grammar. In this course we will explore the elements in this blueprint and the construction principles for combining them.  By the end of the course, you will have a fresh approach to analyzing and constructing sentences and the architecture of English overall.

ENGL 1410 Introduction to Writing Studies

Instructor: Mya Poe
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

  • Major Requirement/s Foundational or Theories and Methods (either/or; cannot count for both)
  • NUCore Writing Intsv in Majr
  • NUPath Writing-Intensive in the Major (WI)

Introduces students to the basic histories, theories, and methodologies surrounding how people learn to write and how writing is used in home, school, work, and civic contexts. Explores writing practices in the U.S. and in international contexts, including the social and political significance of writing in such cultural contexts. Class projects emphasize archival research and research on the development of writing practices, including students’ understanding of their own experiences and practices of other groups. Satisfies introductory course requirement for English majors.

ENGL 2150 Literature and Digital Diversity

Instructors: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Sarah Connell
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Diversity
  • NUPath Analyzing and Using Data (AD), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Focuses on the use of digital methods to analyze and archive literary texts, emphasizing issues of diversity and inclusion. Covers three main areas: text encoding, textual analysis, and archive construction. Considers literary texts and corpora, including works by well-known authors such as Shakespeare, together with collections by marginalized writers, including slave narratives and writings by early modern women. Offers students an opportunity to explore what counts as literature and how computers, databases, and analytical tools give substance to concepts of aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual value as inflected by race and gender.

ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law

Instructor: Beth Britt
Sequence: F – TF 1:35-3:15 PM

Attributes:

In 1995, the televised double murder trial of O.J. Simpson brought courtroom rhetoric into the living rooms of millions of viewers. Skillful oral performances–such as defense attorney Johnnie Cochrane’s memorable summation line, “If [the glove] doesn’t fit, you must acquit”–seemed to epitomize rhetoric’s ability to mesmerize the listener, to spin the facts to favor one outcome over another. This ability, decried since the birth of rhetoric over two millennia ago, has prompted many attempts to “get past” the rhetoric, to separate content from form, substance from delivery. Yet scholars in all fields–including law–have begun to believe that words and ideas cannot be neatly or easily separated, that all ideas come from a particular perspective and are conceivable (and expressible) only through language, which is always biased. For the law, this recognition means that rhetoric doesn’t just exist in courtroom oratory; it exists in every piece of legislation, every judicial opinion, and even the very procedures through which law does its work. This recognition also means that the law is always “interested,” reinforcing particular social relations and ways of thinking at the expense of others. Because law “plays on a field of pain and death” (as legal scholar Robert Cover puts it), the relationship between rhetoric and law thus has profound implications for justice. This course explores this relationship. Our readings will be drawn primarily from rhetorical studies and legal studies, with special attention paid to critical race theory and feminist legal theory. Assignments include two papers and a formal presentation. No prior coursework in rhetoric or law is required.

[CANCELLED] ENGL  3404 African-American Rhetorical Traditions

This course has been cancelled as of 12/2/20.

ENGL 4440 Opening the (Queer) Archive

Instructor: K.J. Rawson
Sequence:  E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Experiential
  • NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)
  • Counts towards the Women’s, Gender,  and Sexuality Studies minor

Delve into rich, quirky, and campy queer archives! From ‘zines to buttons, photographs to high heels, this course invites you to sift through queer pasts as we consider how those pasts are compiled, sorted, and opened up for our use.

ENGL 2695 Travel Writing

Instructor: Kelly Garneau
Sequence: Online NUFlex

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Comparative or Writing (either/or; cannot count for both)
  • 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

Instructor: Francis Blessington
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes:

A course in writing the three genres of poem, story, and play. Workshop format. Text: Creative Writing by David Starkey, 2nd ed.

ENGL 2740 Writing and Community Engagement

Instructor: Amy Carleton
Sequence: 2 – MWR 9:15-10:20 AM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Writing, Experiential
  • NUCore Writing Intensive in the Major
  • NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)

We write every day—whether it be formal course-based assignments, short texts to friends, or pithy posts on social media. In these ways we are engaging with our immediate circle of colleagues, classmates, or family members—but what if we were to expand that circle and think about the ways in which writing has the power to engage the broader community and enact social reform? Further, what if we were to write with purpose in order to achieve clearly-defined outcomes? This course will encourage students to “write outside the box” and to explore various community contexts from non-profits to activist organizations as well as the genres they use. Through guest speakers, classroom discussion, and collaborative projects with partner institutions and local organizations, students will develop an understanding (and a practice) of writing for community engagement and social action.

ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal

Instructor: Laurie Edwards
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes:

Sometimes, writing through the tough stuff can help us process it. In this course, we’ll examine how expressive writing can serve as a healing tool for physical or emotional trauma. We’ll read essays from a diverse group of authors that demonstrate the transformative power of the healing narrative, and we will explore the research that supports the use of expressive writing as a means of healing. We will also investigate the ways technology and social media have influenced storytelling and the publishing of healing narratives. We will do lots of informal writing prompts together, and you will compose three major written and digital healing narratives, with substantive writing workshops and peer feedback to revise your work. By the end of the semester, you will be able to identify suitable places of publication for your healing narrative and understand the process of pitching your work. Most importantly, together we will create an inclusive writing community where we are comfortable sharing our stories and deepening our narrative writing skills.

ENGL 3375 Writing Boston

Instructor: Sarah Finn
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Writing, Experiential
  • NUPath Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI), Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)

In this course, we will explore how texts construct the city through entertainment, innovation, and social action.  We will watch film, critique art, read city reports, study news articles, analyze archives, and more as we examine how the diverse city is created by multiple and overlapping discourses.  We will partner with a community organization to advocate for Bostonians and support social change.  This course offers students the chance to add to conversations about Boston by writing in a wide range of genres.

ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction

Instructor: Caitlin Thornbrugh
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes:

The central aspect of this course will be the consideration, discussion, and practice in writing of creative nonfiction essays. We will also push the boundaries of this genre by writing in cross-genre and hybrid forms as well as exploring what “counts” as nonfiction. What does it mean to tell the truth in creative nonfiction? This class encourages openness to discovery combined with a critical examination of each text we will read and write. A large portion of the class will be dedicated to workshopping student writing. Some of the authors we will consider to help us meet our course goals are: Lee Gutkind, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Lauren Slater, C.D. Wright, Annie Dillard, Jim Fingal and John D’Agata, Leslie Jameson, Claudia Rankine, and Ocean Vuong.

ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Gary Goshgarian
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes:

This is a fiction-writing workshop, the objective of which is to get you started on the novel you always wanted to write. With an eye to producing material worthy of publication, our primary objective is for you to produce at least two solid chapters (the first and a subsequent chapter) and an enticing synopsis which will serve as bases to develop and eventually present to a literary agent and or editor. Any fictional genre is acceptable—mainstream, literary, mystery, thriller, horror, science fiction, romance, western, etc.—all but vampire or zombie stories. Those have been overdone. I do not encourage writing short stories since they don’t sell. You will be expected to read your own material in class for round-table response and to offer comments on others’ material.

HONR 3310 Honors Seminar: Online Creative Writing

Instructor: Ellen Noonan
Sequence: Online NUFlex

Attributes:

We will use language—writing, reading, etc.—as a social activity, as one way to connect with others (past, present, future others)—and to document and, sometimes, to trouble, those connections. By thinking about and “practicing” language in this way, by adopting this approach, you will all see and practice how the rhetorical choices writers make are consequential, impacting not only the clarity of the sentences (an annoyingly persistent view of writing that reduces the complexity of writing (situations, circumstances, audiences, identities, genres…) to a simplistic exercise in skill building, i.e., learning the rules of a monolithic grammar), but also, and most importantly, the shaping of what is possible to think about, what is worth thinking about, what is worth writing about. The courses within the NU creative writing program are not, in fact, focused on “skill building” or THE right way to write; rather, they aim to raise your level of awareness, to make you conscious of the complex social nature of writing and reading, their dynamism and power.  In this course, we will be using the “frame” of connections and connectedness (and disconnections and disconnectedness) alongside the concepts of “translating,” “borrowing,” and “adapting” to think about the “tools” that writing uses to construct identities— personal, social, private, public: How do you (how might you) use writing to create a space in the world? How is identity crafted? How is identity understood by others (your readers, your audience)? What tools are at your disposal as a maker? How do you negotiate the myriad choices of purpose and audience and tone and style? These questions have many answers, which I hope to explore with you; there are also many more questions to ask, which will—along with generating lots of “writing”— be our most important class activity.

ENGL 2150 Literature and Digital Diversity

Instructors: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Sarah Connell
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Diversity
  • NUPath Analyzing and Using Data (AD), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Focuses on the use of digital methods to analyze and archive literary texts, emphasizing issues of diversity and inclusion. Covers three main areas: text encoding, textual analysis, and archive construction. Considers literary texts and corpora, including works by well-known authors such as Shakespeare, together with collections by marginalized writers, including slave narratives and writings by early modern women. Offers students an opportunity to explore what counts as literature and how computers, databases, and analytical tools give substance to concepts of aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual value as inflected by race and gender.

ENGL 3190 Topics in 19th-Century American Literature: American Women Writers

Instructor: Theo Davis
Sequence: B – MW 2:50-4:30 PM

Attributes:

This course looks at fiction, poetry, and essays by women in the nineteenth century, with a focus on how women in the era defined their social identities in relation to the rise of capitalism, nineteenth-century feminism’s relationship to abolitionism, relationships between black and white feminisms, the history of the conception of the “woman writer” in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminist thinking, and on tensions between individualist and community-oriented accounts of female identity in the period. Authors will include Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and Anna Julia Cooper.

[CANCELLED] ENGL  3404 African-American Rhetorical Traditions

This course has been cancelled as of 12/2/20.

ENGL/JWSS/WMNS 3678 Bedrooms and Battlefields: Hebrew Bible and the Origins of Sex, Gender, and Ethnicity

Instructor: Professor Lori Lefkovitz
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM
Attributes:

We will read stories from Hebrew Scripture in English translation, beginning with the Garden of Eden through the Book of Ruth, asking how these foundational narratives establish the categories that have come to define our humanity. We will look at how the Bible’s patterns of representation construct sexual and ethnic identities and naturalize ideas about such social institutions as “the family.” The course will analyze the Bible’s bedrooms and battlefields, repeated stories of identity masquerade, and metaphors of fluids and voices. We will read the Bible as a collection of stories that sets in motion one trajectory of the Western narrative tradition, and we will interrogate some of the basic assumptions of that tradition.

ENGL 2740 Writing and Community Engagement

Instructor: Amy Carleton
Sequence: 2 – MWR 9:15-10:20 AM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Writing, Experiential
  • NUCore Writing Intensive in the Major
  • NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)

We write every day—whether it be formal course-based assignments, short texts to friends, or pithy posts on social media. In these ways we are engaging with our immediate circle of colleagues, classmates, or family members—but what if we were to expand that circle and think about the ways in which writing has the power to engage the broader community and enact social reform? Further, what if we were to write with purpose in order to achieve clearly-defined outcomes? This course will encourage students to “write outside the box” and to explore various community contexts from non-profits to activist organizations as well as the genres they use. Through guest speakers, classroom discussion, and collaborative projects with partner institutions and local organizations, students will develop an understanding (and a practice) of writing for community engagement and social action.

ENGL 3375 Writing Boston

Instructor: Sarah Finn
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Writing, Experiential
  • NUPath Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI), Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)

In this course, we will explore how texts construct the city through entertainment, innovation, and social action.  We will watch film, critique art, read city reports, study news articles, analyze archives, and more as we examine how the diverse city is created by multiple and overlapping discourses.  We will partner with a community organization to advocate for Bostonians and support social change.  This course offers students the chance to add to conversations about Boston by writing in a wide range of genres.

ENGL 4440 Opening the (Queer) Archive

Instructor: K.J. Rawson
Sequence:  E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Experiential
  • NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)
  • Counts towards the Women’s, Gender,  and Sexuality Studies minor

Delve into rich, quirky, and campy queer archives! From ‘zines to buttons, photographs to high heels, this course invites you to sift through queer pasts as we consider how those pasts are compiled, sorted, and opened up for our use.

ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar: Reading, Writing, and Knowledge Making in the 21st Century

Instructor: Neal Lerner
Sequence: F – TF 1:35-3:15 PM

Attributes:

  • Major Requirement/s Capstone
  • NUPath Writing Intensive in the Major (WI), Demonstrating Thought and Action in a Capstone (CE)

The broad theme of this capstone course will be explorations of “What is English?” Students will investigate that question through independent and collaborative work on projects that define their pathways through the English major, whether literary, rhetorical, digital, or some combination of those lenses. We will read and discuss notions of disciplinary identity and knowledge making in disciplinary contexts. We will explore the writing and research processes in depth, and students will ultimately be engaged in projects that offer a culmination of their interests in English as a discipline and their exemplification of “What is English?” These cumulative projects might be digital, textual, aural or some combination of those modalities, whatever is be suited to present students’ stance on and relation to the subject matter.

ENGL by Minor

Introductory Course Offerings*

  • ENGL 1140 Grammar: The Architecture of English (see Theories & Methods)
  • ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies (see Foundational)
  • ENGL 1410 Introduction to Writing Studies (see Foundational or Theories & Methods)
  • ENGL 1450 Reading & Writing in the Digital Age (see Comparative)
  • ENGL 1700 Global Literature to 1500 (see Foundational)

*Students in the English minor will need to contact Michaela Modica (m.kinlock@northeastern.edu) to have the ENGL 1400 registration restriction removed, as the class is currently only open to English majors and combined majors in Banner.

Elective

  • ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law (see Theories & Methods)

Writing Theories & Methods

  • ENGL 1410 Introduction to Writing Studies (see Foundational or Theories & Methods)
  • ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law (see Theories & Methods)

Writing Electives

  • ENGL 1140 Grammar: The Architecture of English (see Theories & Methods)
  • ENGL 1410 Introduction to Writing Studies (see Foundational or Theories & Methods)
  • ENGL 1450 Reading & Writing in the Digital Age (see Comparative)
  • ENGL 2695 Travel Writing (see Writing)
  • ENGL 2700 Creative Writing (see Writing)
  • ENGL 2740 Writing and Community Engagement (see Writing, Experiential)
  • ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal (see Writing)
  • ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law (see Theories & Methods)
  • ENGL 3375 Writing Boston (see Writing, Experiential)
  • ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction (see Writing)
  • ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop (see Writing)

Digital and Computational Methods

  • ENGL 1450 Reading & Writing in the Digital Age (see Comparative)

Humanities Requirement

  • ENGL 277o Writing to Heal (see Writing)
  • ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (see Capstone)

Upcoming ENGL Offerings (Fall 2021) – Subject to Change

  • ENGL 1000 English at Northeastern
  • ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies
  • ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric
  • ENGL 1700 Global Literature to 1500

Early Literatures

  • ENGL 1600 Introduction to Shakespeare

17th-18th Centuries

  • ENGL 4020 Topics in 17th/18th Century Literature: Print and Performance in the Atlantic World

19th Century

  • ENGL 2320 19th-Century American Novels
  • ENGL 3619 Emerson & Thoreau

20th-21st Centuries

  • ENGL 2301 The Graphic Novel
  • ENGL 1450 Reading & Writing in the Digital Age
  • ENGL 2510 Horror Fiction
  • ENGL 2695 Travel Writing
  • ENGL 1140 Grammar: The Architecture of English
  • ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric
  • ENGL 2695 Travel Writing
  • ENGL 2700 Creative Writing
  • ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal
  • ENGL 3377 Poetry Workshop
  • ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop

TBD

TBD

  • ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (topic TBD)