Spring 2022 Undergraduate Courses

ENGL 1000 English at Northeastern

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

• Major Requirement/s Foundational

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 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric

Instructor: Professor Beth Britt
Sequence: 4 – MWR 1:35-2:40 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Foundational, Theories & Methods (either/or; cannot count for both)
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

Introduces major concepts, traditions, and issues in rhetorical studies. Explores topics such as the range of ways that people persuade others to change their minds or take action; the relationship among language, truth, knowledge, and power; the role of language in shaping identity, communities, and cultures; and the use of rhetoric for activism and advocacy. Focuses on rhetoricians and rhetorics from diverse traditions, emphasizing contemporary and interdisciplinary approaches to investigating a wide range of rhetorical artifacts.

ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies

Instructor: Professor Sari Altschuler
Sequence:  D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Foundational
• NUPath Writing-Intensive in the Major (WI)

Introduces the diverse fields that comprise literary studies for English majors and minors. Surveys the methods and topics of English literary and textual studies, including a wide range of media (e.g., images, film, and graphic narrative). Explores strategies for reading, interpreting, and theorizing about texts, including how race, gender, sexuality, class, and colonialism are represented in literary texts, other media, and scholarship. Focuses on developing skills in thinking analytically, writing clearly about complex ideas, and conducting research.

ENGL 1410 Introduction to Research on Writing

Instructor: Neal Lerner
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

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

Introduces students to research about the histories, theories, and practices informing how people learn to write and how writing is used in home, school, work, and civic contexts. Explores writing and writing instruction in the United States and in international contexts, including the social and political significance of writing in particular cultural contexts with an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Class projects emphasize methods such as archival research, case study research, multimodal composing, and community-based writing that invite students to think about their own experiences and practices of other groups.

ENGL 1700 Global Literatures 1

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

• Major Requirement/s Foundational
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Introduces students to global works from the earliest literatures to 1500. May include texts from Africa (Sunjara); the Americas; Asia (Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji from Japan and Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching from China); Europe (Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy from Italy, the Song of Roland from France, Homer’s Iliad from Greece); and the Middle East (The Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia and One Thousand and One Nights from Arabic, Indian, and Persian sources). Works in translation where necessary.

No courses offered for Spring 2022. See Fall 2022.

ENGL 3618 Milton

Instructor: Professor Frank Blessington
Sequence: A – MR 11:45 AM-1:25 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s 17th-18th Century Literatures

For many readers, Paradise Lost is the greatest poem in English. Sigmund Freud thought the poem contained all human wisdom.  After we survey some of Milton’s prose and shorter poems, we shall focus upon a detailed study of Paradise Lost. A course in the nature of poetry.

No courses offered for Spring 2022. See Fall 2022.

ENGL 2440 The Modern Bestseller

Instructor: Professor Kat Gonso
Sequence: A – MR 11:45 AM-1:25 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s 20th-21st Century Literature
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC)

Focuses on contemporary commercially successful fiction and nonfiction, including memoir, dystopian, fantasy, young adult, and experimental works. Examines the historical, cultural, and political contexts in which bestsellers were written and how they are named “bestsellers.” Taking race, gender, class, and other identity markers into consideration, explores how some writers and audiences are included or excluded from the most popular bestseller lists.

ENGL/JWSS 3685 Modern and Contemporary Jewish Literature

Instructor: Professor Lori Lefkovitz
Sequence: B – MW 2:50-4:30 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s 20th-21st Century Literatures, Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Surveys Jewish literature from the late modern (1880–1948) and contemporary (1948–present) periods. Considers themes of immigration and cross-cultural influences and issues of religious, ethnic, and gender identity. Emphasizes American and European literatures to begin to define an international Jewish literary canon, including Yiddish poets and playwrights, Russian Jewish writers, and modern writers. ENGL 3685 and JWSS 3685 are cross-listed.

ENGL 1502 American Literature to 1865

Instructor: Theo Davis
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

Surveys the major American writers and major literary forms from the colonial period to the Civil War. Includes works by such writers as Bradstreet, Taylor, Wheatley, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Melville, and Emerson.

ENGL/WMNS 2455 American Women Writers

Instructor: Carla Kaplan
Sequence: B – MW 2:50-4:30 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative, Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Surveys the diversity of American women’s writing to ask what it means to describe writers as disparate as Phillis Wheatley, Edith Wharton, Toni Morrison, and Alison Bechdel as part of the same ‘tradition.’ With attention to all genres of American women’s writing, introduces issues of race, genre and gender; literary identification; canons; the politics of recuperation; silence and masquerade; gender and sexuality; intersectionality; sexual and literary politics, compulsory heterosexuality, and more.

ENGL 2470 Asian-American Literature

Instructor: Eunsong Kim
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative, Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

This course will analyze the historical representations of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Immigrant Acts, the internment of Japanese Americans, Vietnam War activism and the LA Uprisings. Race, gender, sexuality and class will frame our discussions concerning the socio-historical context of Asian American formations. In order to carefully traverse the complexities of Asian American histories and politics, we will examine Asian American social movement and run newspaper archives (such as Gidra), alongside novels such as No-No Boy by John Okada and the poetry of Bhanu Kapil. We will examine of the history and presence of settler-colonialism and migrant labor to ground our critiques of contemporary Asian American politics and frameworks.

ENGL 2520 Science Fiction

Instructor: Professor Kelly Garneau
Sequence: F – TF 1:35-3:15 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC)

Traces the development of various science fiction themes, conventions, and approaches (human vs. machine, human/machine hybrids, alien encounters, colonizing other worlds, dystopian and postapocalyptic futures). Examines how science fiction explores what it means to be human and how self- and group identities are formed when measured against the idea of the non- or other-than-human.

ENGL 2620 What is Nature?

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

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)

Focuses on a variety of texts (imaginative literature, memoir, scientific writing, creative nonfiction, and popular journalism) that take nature, ecology, and the environment as their subject. Examines paintings, photography, and other visual representations (such as computer simulations) of the natural world.

ENGL/AFAM 2690 Boston in Literature

Instructor: Professor Michael McCluskey
Sequence: E – WF 11:45 AM-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative, Experiential Learning
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)

Explores the various ways in which the city of Boston and its environs are represented in literature and other media. Each semester, the course focuses on a different aspect of Boston in literature, such as representations of Boston’s different communities, different historical eras, particular genres or concepts associated with the city, and so forth. Offers students an opportunity to build upon their readings about the city by experiencing independent site visits, class field trips, guest speakers, and other activities. In addition to a culminating group or individual research project about Boston, students may also have the opportunity to participate in a community-based reading project.

ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric

Instructor: Professor Beth Britt
Sequence: 4 – MWR 1:35-2:40 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Foundational or  Theories & Methods (either/or; cannot count for both)
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

Introduces major concepts, traditions, and issues in rhetorical studies. Explores topics such as the range of ways that people persuade others to change their minds or take action; the relationship among language, truth, knowledge, and power; the role of language in shaping identity, communities, and cultures; and the use of rhetoric for activism and advocacy. Focuses on rhetoricians and rhetorics from diverse traditions, emphasizing contemporary and interdisciplinary approaches to investigating a wide range of rhetorical artifacts.

ENGL 1410 Introduction to Research on Writing

Instructor: Neal Lerner
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

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

Introduces students to research about the histories, theories, and practices informing how people learn to write and how writing is used in home, school, work, and civic contexts. Explores writing and writing instruction in the United States and in international contexts, including the social and political significance of writing in particular cultural contexts with an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Class projects emphasize methods such as archival research, case study research, multimodal composing, and community-based writing that invite students to think about their own experiences and practices of other groups.

ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law

Instructor: Professor Beth Britt
Sequence: A – MR 11:45 AM-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC)

Introduces students to the persuasive work of legal texts, procedures, and institutions. Investigates the range of critical approaches to the study of law and rhetoric, as well as the implications of understanding law as rhetorical. Draws on texts produced by lawyers and judges, classical rhetoricians, contemporary rhetorical critics, and legal scholars.

ENGL 3700 Narrative Medicine

Instructor: Professor Sari Altschuler
Sequence: A – MR 11:45 AM-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC)

Introduces students to the field of narrative medicine, which explores literary analysis as a set of tools for medical practice. Offers students an opportunity to develop close reading and analytical skills that are useful for improving doctor-patient relationships and patient care. Requires students to complete essays that cultivate these skills.

ENGL 2650 Science Writing: Origins, Ethics, and Emerging Genres

Instructor: Professor Cecelia Musselman
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Writing
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

Explores the history, development, and roles of academic and popular science writing, beginning with a critical examination of the origins of scientific genres. Students describe, define, and contextualize science writing genres. Reviews the ethical foundations and problems of current scientific genres. Offers students an opportunity to participate in the global dissemination of scientific knowledge and knowledge creation through a variety of writing assignments.

ENGL 2700 Creative Writing

Instructor: Professor Caitlin Thornbrugh
Sequence: 2 – MWR 9:15-10:20 AM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Writing
• NUPath Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI)

Gives the developing writer an opportunity to practice writing various forms of both poetry and prose. Features in-class discussion of student work.

ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction

Instructor: Professor Sebastian Stockman
Sequence: A – MR 11:45 AM-1:25 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Writing
• NUPath Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI)

Explores how writers apply narrative strategies and techniques to factual material. Offers students an opportunity to read and write a variety of nonfiction forms (e.g., narrative essays and narrative journalism, travel and science writing, memoir, editorials, protest and political essays), as well as cross-genre and hybrid forms (e.g., nonfiction prose mixed with poetry, audio and graphic nonfiction). The topics for narrative nonfiction writing apply to a wide array of disciplines, including the humanities, the sciences, and journalism.

ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Professor Frank Blessington
Sequence: 3 – MWR 10:30-11:35 AM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Writing
• NUPath Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI)

Offers an advanced workshop in writing and reading original fiction. Features in-class discussion of student work.

ENGL 3380 Writing Seminar: Critical Art & Culture Writing

Instructor: Professor Eunsong Kim
Sequence: F – TF 1:35-3:15 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Writing
• NUPath Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI), Writing Intensive in the Major (WI)

In this course students will study contemporary art & culture writing. The course will examine the variegated approaches writers and artists have taken to the exhibition catalogue and critical reviews in order to best conceptualize and execute our own writing practices. Students in the course will take up a range of different writerly tasks, from journalistic ethics, to researching interview questions, archival research, co-writing essays, and providing editorial feedback. Students will research local artists, writers, and institutions to pitch reviews and essays. Engagement with the readings, discussions, archives and interviews will culminate in a final portfolio that will serve as a foundation for future publications.

ENGL/WMNS 2455 American Women Writers

Instructor: Professor Carla Kaplan
Sequence: B – MW 2:50-4:30 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative, Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Surveys the diversity of American women’s writing to ask what it means to describe writers as disparate as Phillis Wheatley, Edith Wharton, Toni Morrison, and Alison Bechdel as part of the same ‘tradition.’ With attention to all genres of American women’s writing, introduces issues of race, genre and gender; literary identification; canons; the politics of recuperation; silence and masquerade; gender and sexuality; intersectionality; sexual and literary politics, compulsory heterosexuality, and more.

ENGL 2470 Asian-American Literature

Instructor: Eunsong Kim
Sequence: D – TF 9:50-11:30 AM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative, Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Introduces students to American writers of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, South Asian, and Southeast Asian descent. Focuses on works published since the 1960s. Pays close attention to prevalent themes, sociohistorical contexts, and literary form.

ENGL/JWSS 3685 Modern and Contemporary Jewish Literature

Instructor: Professor Lori Lefkovitz
Sequence: B – MW 2:50-4:30 PM
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s 20th-21st Century Literatures, Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD)

Surveys Jewish literature from the late modern (1880–1948) and contemporary (1948–present) periods. Considers themes of immigration and cross-cultural influences and issues of religious, ethnic, and gender identity. Emphasizes American and European literatures to begin to define an international Jewish literary canon, including Yiddish poets and playwrights, Russian Jewish writers, and modern writers. ENGL 3685 and JWSS 3685 are cross-listed.

ENGL/AFAM 2690 Boston in Literature

Instructor: Professor Michael McCluskey
Sequence: E – WF 11:45 AM-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

• Major Requirement/s Comparative, Experiential Learning
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills through Experience (EX)

Explores the various ways in which the city of Boston and its environs are represented in literature and other media. Each semester, the course focuses on a different aspect of Boston in literature, such as representations of Boston’s different communities, different historical eras, particular genres or concepts associated with the city, and so forth. Offers students an opportunity to build upon their readings about the city by experiencing independent site visits, class field trips, guest speakers, and other activities. In addition to a culminating group or individual research project about Boston, students may also have the opportunity to participate in a community-based reading project.

ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar – Fiction & the Archive: Speculative Knowledge and Poetics

Instructor: Professor Elizabeth Dillon
Sequence: E – WF 11:45 AM-1:25 PM

Attributes: 

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

This capstone course will explore the relation between history and literature, with a focus on how literature is able to tell untold stories of the past and what futures literature makes possible. What stories appear in our archives of the past and what (and whose?) stories disappear? How do literary writers shape our understanding of the past and of the future? We will look at both historical, archival material and contemporary revisions of familiar histories in the form of novels, essays, and poetry. We will focus on histories related to the Boston area, including witchcraft, Indigenous history, settler colonialism, and the slave trade. We will read works by authors including Phillis Wheatley, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Maryse Condé, Octavia Butler, John Keene, and Layla Long Soldier.

Introductory Course Offerings*

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational, Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies (see Foundational)
• ENGL 1410 Introduction to Research on Writing (see Foundational, Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 1502 American Literature to 1865 (see Comparative)
• ENGL 1700 Global Literatures 1 (see Foundational)

*Students in the English minor will need to contact CSSHAdvising@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.

Foundational 

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational, Theories & Methods)

Electives

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

Writing Theories & Methods

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational, Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 1410 Introduction to Research on Writing (see Foundational, Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law (see Theories & Methods)

Writing Electives

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational, Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 1410 Introduction to Research on Writing (see Foundational, Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 2700 Creative Writing (see Writing)
• ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law (see Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction (see Writing)
• ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop (see Writing)
• ENGL 3380 Writing Seminar (see Writing)

No ENGL courses offered for Spring 2022. See Fall 2022.

Humanities Requirement

• ENGL 3700 Narrative Medicine (see Theories & Methods)
• ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (see Capstone)

• ENGL 1000 English at Northeastern
• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric
• ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies
• ENGL 1700 Global Literatures 1

Early Literatures

• ENGL 1600 Introduction to Shakespeare
• ENGL 3101 Early Literatures: Romance

17th-18th Centuries

• ENGL 2240 17th-Century British Literature
• ENGL 3120 17th/18th Century Literatures: Women and the Rise of the Novel

19th Century

• ENGL 2330 American Renaissance

20th-21st Centuries

• ENGL 3161 20th- and 21st-Century Literatures: Crime and Comedy in Irish Literature

• ENGL 2420 Contemporary Poetry
• ENGL 2430 Contemporary Fiction
• ENGL/CLTR 2450 Postcolonial Literature
• ENGL/AFAM 2690 Boston in Literature
• ENGL 2695 Travel Writing

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric
• ENGL 2150 Literature and Digital Diversity
• ENGL 3322 Rhetoric and Power
• ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text
• ENGL 3458 Language Matters

• ENGL 2695 Travel Writing
• ENGL 2700 Creative Writing
• ENGL 2710 Style and Editing
• ENGL 2760 Writing in Global Contexts
• ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal
• ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction
• ENGL 3377 Poetry Workshop

• ENGL 2150 Literature and Digital Diversity
• ENGL/CLTR 2450 Postcolonial Literature
• ENGL 2760 Writing in Global Contexts

• ENGL/AFAM 2690 Boston in Literature

• ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (topic TBD)