Fall 2019 Undergraduate Courses

ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric

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

• Major Requirement/s Foundational, Theories & Methods
• NUCore Humanities Lvl 1
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

How do we persuade others to change their minds or take action? How do we come to beliefs about ourselves, each other, and the world around us? What is the relationship between language and truth, between knowledge and belief? How do verbal as well as nonverbal symbols—such as images, architecture, clothing, and music—influence what we do, believe, and think we know? This course explores these questions by examining the work of writers who articulate a wide range and diversity of rhetorical theory. We will read theoretical texts with an eye toward applying them in contemporary contexts. Assignments include informal writing, a mid-term exam, two short papers, and a take-home final.

ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies

Section 01

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

Section 02

Instructor: Professor Patrick Mullen
Sequence: 2 – MWR 9:15-10:20

Attributes:

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

This a foundational course, required of all English majors. It introduces the various objects and methodologies that make up your study as an English major.  While the course cannot be exhaustive, we will look at a wide variety of texts and ways of approaching different objects of study such as literature, cultural studies, linguistics, film, rhetoric, and composition.  We will explore strategies for reading, interpreting, and theorizing about these works; 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.

ENGL 1700 Global Literatures to 1500

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

• Major Requirement/s Foundational
• Combined Major Requirement Pre-Nineteenth-Century Literature
• NUCore Humanities Level 1
• NUpath Difference/Diversity (DD), Interpreting Culture (IC)

Readings in Greek, Roman, and biblical literature and beyond: Homer, Virgil, Old and New Testament, and Dante’s Inferno. The works all writers read. Emphasis upon background to Western culture and imagination: myth, literary genres and conventions, philosophy, and religion.

See Spring 2020.

ENGL 3618 Milton

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

• Major Requirement/s 17th-18th Centuries

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.

ENGL 3619 Emerson and Thoreau

Instructor: Professor Theo Davis
Sequence: 4 – MWR 1:35-2:40
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s 19th Century

This course will take a close look at the essays, poetry, and journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, two nineteenth-century American writers and friends. In their often whimsical, prophetic, philosophical and at times personal writings, they each considered what it would mean to think that a new day was dawning in human existence: how might persons live to their true potential, in harmony with nature and with society? In addition to studying these writers’ literary and philosophical achievements, we’ll consider their troubled friendship, and their circle of colleagues, friends, and rivals. Requirements: three six to seven page papers and a reading journal. This course will include a field trip to Concord, Mass., where Emerson and Thoreau both lived.

ENGL 2690 Boston in Literature: Representing Black Boston

Instructor: Professor Nicole Aljoe
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Comparative; Experiential or Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience (EX)

This course explores the various ways in which the city of Boston is represented in literature and other media. Each semester, the course will focus 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 etc. Students will build upon their readings about the city by experiencing independent site visits, class field trips, guest speakers, and other activities.

For Fall 2019 “Representing Black Boston”: drawing on literature from the 18^th century to the 21^st, we will consider how Boston is constructed in a range of discourses and disciplines with a particular focus on writing by and about Boston’s Black communities. In addition, as an Experiential and Service-Learning course, students will also have opportunities to connect in-class and academic activities about the politics of representation with the hands-on literacy experiences of tutoring and public education with community partners.

ENGL 3572 Fantasy Literature

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

• Major Requirement/s Comparative
• NUPath Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion genius of It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), laments that contemporary computer-generated special effects are too realistic; they lack the feel of a “dream world”:

Stop motion is wonderful for a fantasy film because it’s not quite real, you know it’s not real, but yet it looks real . . . If you make fantasy too real it becomes mundane.

And in The Craft of Fiction, the 1921 study that enshrined the opposition between showing and telling in modern critical consciousness, Percy Lubbock begins his discussion of Flaubert by asserting that

the art of fiction does not begin until the novelist thinks of his story as a matter to be shown, to be so exhibited that it will tell itself. . . . The book is not a row of facts; it is a single image. . . . Narrative—like the tales of Defoe for example—must look elsewhere for support; Defoe produced it by the assertion of the historic truthfulness of his stories. But in a novel, strictly so called, attestation of this kind is, of course, quite irrelevant; the thing has to look true, and that is all. (62)

And this is where we will begin: how is it that fantasy worlds—parallel worlds, or worlds laid on top of the “real” world, and/or worlds powered by magic—look true? Why is it that so many of us desire to suspend our disbelief in order to enter into the worlds of C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin, J. K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others? (And why do fantasy writers have so many initials?) We’ll read a variety of texts, both classic and contemporary, and view a few films as well. Requirements: in-class responses and two papers.

ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric

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

• Major Requirement/s Foundational, Theories & Methods
• NUCore Humanities Lvl 1
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Understanding Societies and Institutions (SI)

How do we persuade others to change their minds or take action? How do we come to beliefs about ourselves, each other, and the world around us? What is the relationship between language and truth, between knowledge and belief? How do verbal as well as nonverbal symbols—such as images, architecture, clothing, and music—influence what we do, believe, and think we know? This course explores these questions by examining the work of writers who articulate a wide range and diversity of rhetorical theory. We will read theoretical texts with an eye toward applying them in contemporary contexts. Assignments include informal writing, a mid-term exam, two short papers, and a take-home final.

ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text

Instructor: Professor Ryan Cordell
Sequence: B – MW 2:50–4:30
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Experiential
• NUCore: Humanities Level 1, Math/Anly Think Lvl 2
• NUPath: Analyzing and Using Data (AD), Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI), Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience (EX)

When you hear the word “technology,” you may think of your computer or smart phone. You probably don’t think of the alphabet, the book, or the printing press: but each of these was a technological innovation that changed dramatically how we communicate and perhaps even how we think. Literature has always developed in tandem with—and often in direct response to—the development of new media technologies—e.g. moveable type, the steam press, the telegraph, radio, film, television, the internet. Our primary objective in Technologies of Text will be to develop ideas about the ways that such innovations shape our understanding of classic and contemporary texts, as well as the people who write, read, and interpret them. We will compare our historical moment with previous periods of textual and technological upheaval. Many debates that seem unique to the twenty-first century—over privacy, intellectual property, information overload, and textual authority—are but new iterations of familiar battles in the histories of technology, new media, and literature. Through the semester we will get hands-on experience with textual technologies new and old through labs in letterpress printing, bibliography, digital editing, and computational text analysis, including through field trips to museums, libraries, and archives in the Boston area.

ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing

Instructor: Professor Kat Gonso
Sequence: 2 – MWR 9:15-10:20
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Experiential in the Major
• NUCore Experiential Learning, Writing Intsv in Majr
• NUPath Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience (EX), Writing-Intensive in the Major (WI)

Focuses on the teaching of writing by studying the professional literature of writing theory as well as a teaching practicum. Students work as a writing tutor or shadow experienced teachers. Offers students an opportunity to prepare for future teaching of writing and to obtain deeper insight into their own writing processes. ENGL 3381 satisfies the experiential learning and writing-intensive requirement for English majors and is an elective option for Rhetoric minors.

ENGL 2700 Creative Writing

Instructor: Professor Kat Gonso
Sequence: B – MW 2:50–4:30
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 2710 Style and Editing

Instructor: Professor Elizabeth Britt
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25
Attributes:

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

Style is often thought of as the clothes with which we dress our thoughts. Such an understanding tends to sepa­rate what we say from how we say it. Since antiquity, philosophers and others have urged speakers and writers to speak as plainly as possible to allow the truth of their thoughts to emerge unadulterated by lan­guage. Others have argued that language and thought cannot be so neatly separated, that what we say cannot be disentangled from how we say it. Drawing on the rhetorical tradition, this course explores the relationship between style and substance through close attention to choices made at the level of the document, paragraph, sentence, and word. You will develop a vocabulary for describing the stylistic techniques of other authors, and then you’ll use the practices of imitation to make these techniques your own. The course will also cover copyediting and proofreading, giving you practice in achieving the clear style so highly valued today. By the end of the course, you will be able to assess the editing needs of documents and use copyediting marks, style sheets, and reference materials to edit documents accurately and consistently. Assignments may include a style blog, tests, short papers, and several editing projects.

ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal

Instructor: Professor Laurie Edwards
Sequence: 4 – MWR 1:35-2:40
Attributes:

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

Explores how creative writing can be used as a healing tool. Offers students opportunities to analyze, theorize, and create healing narratives through readings, in-class writing activities, writing workshops, and process journals. Culminates in the creation and revision of written personal narratives as well as a digital storytelling project.

ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction

Instructor: Professor Neal Lerner
Sequence: D – TuF 9:50–11:30
Attributes:

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

Creative non-fiction is a genre in which writers apply narrative strategies and techniques to factual material. This course will orient writers within the genre as we address the following questions: What is creative non-fiction? What makes it different than other approaches to writing about factual material? What is the non-fiction writer’s obligation to “the truth”? What does the best creative non-fiction require of its writers? Over the semester we’ll read and write our way to answers through a variety of non-fiction forms, for example, narrative essays, travel and science writing, memoir, editorials. We’ll also practice cross-genre and hybrid forms, for example, non-fiction prose mixed with audio, video, or images. Class time will include lectures, discussion of readings, writing exercises, and weekly feedback for peers in a workshop format. The topics for creative non-fiction writing apply to a wide array of disciplines, including the humanities, the sciences, and journalism.

ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Professor Gary Goshgarian
*Updated 03/29/19* Sequence: F – TuF 1:35–3:15
Attributes:

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

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 roundtable response and to offer comments on others’ material. Maximum 15 students.

ENGL 2690 Boston in Literature: Representing Black Boston

Instructor: Professor Nicole Aljoe
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Comparative; Experiential or Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience (EX)

This course explores the various ways in which the city of Boston is represented in literature and other media. Each semester, the course will focus 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 etc. Students will build upon their readings about the city by experiencing independent site visits, class field trips, guest speakers, and other activities.

For Fall 2019 “Representing Black Boston”: drawing on literature from the 18^th century to the 21^st, we will consider how Boston is constructed in a range of discourses and disciplines with a particular focus on writing by and about Boston’s Black communities. In addition, as an Experiential and Service-Learning course, students will also have opportunities to connect in-class and academic activities about the politics of representation with the hands-on literacy experiences of tutoring and public education with community partners.

ENGL 2690 Boston in Literature: Representing Black Boston

Instructor: Professor Nicole Aljoe
Sequence: A – MR 11:45-1:25
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Comparative; Experiential or Diversity
• NUPath Interpreting Culture (IC), Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience (EX)

This course explores the various ways in which the city of Boston is represented in literature and other media. Each semester, the course will focus 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 etc. Students will build upon their readings about the city by experiencing independent site visits, class field trips, guest speakers, and other activities.

For Fall 2019 “Representing Black Boston”: drawing on literature from the 18^th century to the 21^st, we will consider how Boston is constructed in a range of discourses and disciplines with a particular focus on writing by and about Boston’s Black communities. In addition, as an Experiential and Service-Learning course, students will also have opportunities to connect in-class and academic activities about the politics of representation with the hands-on literacy experiences of tutoring and public education with community partners.

ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text

Instructor: Professor Ryan Cordell
Sequence: B – MW 2:50–4:30
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Experiential
• NUCore: Humanities Level 1, Math/Anly Think Lvl 2
• NUPath: Analyzing and Using Data (AD), Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation (EI), Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience (EX)

When you hear the word “technology,” you may think of your computer or smart phone. You probably don’t think of the alphabet, the book, or the printing press: but each of these was a technological innovation that changed dramatically how we communicate and perhaps even how we think. Literature has always developed in tandem with—and often in direct response to—the development of new media technologies—e.g. moveable type, the steam press, the telegraph, radio, film, television, the internet. Our primary objective in Technologies of Text will be to develop ideas about the ways that such innovations shape our understanding of classic and contemporary texts, as well as the people who write, read, and interpret them. We will compare our historical moment with previous periods of textual and technological upheaval. Many debates that seem unique to the twenty-first century—over privacy, intellectual property, information overload, and textual authority—are but new iterations of familiar battles in the histories of technology, new media, and literature. Through the semester we will get hands-on experience with textual technologies new and old through labs in letterpress printing, bibliography, digital editing, and computational text analysis, including through field trips to museums, libraries, and archives in the Boston area.

ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing

Instructor: Professor Kat Gonso
Sequence: 2 – MWR 9:15-10:20
Attributes:

• Major Requirement/s Theories & Methods, Experiential in the Major
• NUCore Experiential Learning, Writing Intsv in Majr
• NUPath Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience (EX), Writing-Intensive in the Major (WI)

Focuses on the teaching of writing by studying the professional literature of writing theory as well as a teaching practicum. Students work as a writing tutor or shadow experienced teachers. Offers students an opportunity to prepare for future teaching of writing and to obtain deeper insight into their own writing processes. ENGL 3381 satisfies the experiential learning and writing-intensive requirement for English majors and is an elective option for Rhetoric minors.

ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar: Literature as Makerspace

Instructor: Professor Erika Boeckeler
Sequence: E – WF 11:45-1:25
Attributes:

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

A literary text may conjure up a world of things: Othello’s handkerchief, the gollum’s ring, Alice’s “Eat Me” cakes, Adam & Eve’s apple, Toni Morrison’s blue-eyed dolls.

But the literary text is also itself an object, one with its own history, agencies, and effects upon its readers.  In this course, we examine the entanglements of objects in books with the text as object. To that end, we consider theories of materiality, the agency of non-human things (like coins and electricity), philosophies of bodily autonomy and material human exchanges with texts (how does the human literally rub off on the book and the book rub off on the human?).  We consider the enmeshment of the literary object in ecosystems and in networks of labor and mobility. Readings involve a chronologically broad mix of genres from chronology, e.g. an old English tree poem, poems on rings and other personal objects, a Shakespearean play, eighteenth century “it narrative” told from the point of view of an object, twentieth-century avant-garde writing, children’s literature.

Capstone

ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (see Capstone)

Comparative Study of Cultures

Experiential Learning

ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing (see Theories & Methods, Experiential)

Humanities Level 1

ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational)
ENGL 1700 Global Literatures to 1500 (see Foundational)
ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text (see Theories & Methods)

Math/Anly Think Lvl 2

ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text (see Theories & Methods)

Writing-Intensive in the Major

ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies (see Foundational)
ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal (see Writing)
ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction (see Writing)
ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing (see Theories & Methods, Experiential)
ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (see Capstone)

AD = Analyzing and Using Data

ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text (see Theories & Methods)

CE = Demonstrating Thought and Action in a Capstone

ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (see Capstone)

DD = Engaging Difference and Diversity

ENGL 1700 Global Literatures to 1500 (see Foundational)

EI = Exploring Creative Expression and Innovation

ENGL 2700 Creative Writing (see Writing)
ENGL 2710 Style and Editing (see Writing)
ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal (see Writing)
ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text (see Theories & Methods)
ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction (see Writing)
ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop (see Writing)

EX = Integrating Knowledge and Skills Through Experience

ENGL 2690 Boston in Literature (see Comparative)
ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text (see Theories & Methods)
ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing (see Theories & Methods, Experiential)

IC = Interpreting Culture

ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational)
ENGL 1700 Global Literatures to 1500 (see Foundational)
ENGL 2690 Boston in Literature (see Comparative)

ND= Engaging with the Natural and Designed World

SI = Understanding Societies and Institutions

ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational)
ENGL 3572 Fantasy Literature (see Comparative)

WI = Writing Intensive in the Major

ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies (see Foundational)
ENGL 2710 Style and Editing (see Writing)
ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal (see Writing)
ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction (see Writing)
ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing (see Theories & Methods, Experiential)
ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (see Capstone)

Introductory Course Offerings*

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational)
• ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies (see Foundational)
• ENGL 1700 Global Literatures 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.

Required Elective

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational)

Elective

• ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing (see Theories & Methods, Experiential)

Writing Theories & Methods

• ENGL 1160 Introduction to Rhetoric (see Foundational)
• ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing (see Theories & Methods, Experiential)

Writing Electives

• ENGL 2700 Creative Writing (see Writing)
• ENGL 2710 Style and Editing (see Writing)
• ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal (see Writing)
• ENGL 3376 Creative Nonfiction (see Writing)
• ENGL 3381 The Practice & Theory of Teaching Writing (see Theories & Methods, Experiential)

Digital and Computational Methods

• ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text (see Theories & Methods)

Culture, Society, and Value in the Digital Age

• ENGL 3340 Technologies of Text (see Theories & Methods)

Humanities Requirement

• ENGL 2770 Writing to Heal (see Writing)
• ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (see Capstone)

• ENGL 1400 Introduction to Literary Studies (WI)
• ENGL 1410 Introduction to Writing Studies (WI)
• ENGL 1700 Global Literatures to 1500 (IC, DD)

• ENGL 1600 Introduction to Shakespeare (IC, SI)

• ENGL 2250 18th-Century British Literature

• ENGL 2330 American Renaissance (IC, DD)

• ENGL 3685 Modern & Contemporary Jewish Literature (IC, DD)
• ENGL 4060 Topics in 20th and 21st Century Literatures

• ENGL 1450 Reading & Writing in the Digital Age (IC, AD, WI)
• ENGL 2510 Horror Fiction (IC)

• ENGL 1140 Grammar: The Architecture of English
• ENGL 1410 Introduction to Writing Studies (WI)
• ENGL 3325 Rhetoric of Law (IC)

• ENGL 2700 Creative Writing (EI)
• ENGL 3375 Writing Boston (EI, EX)
• ENGL 3377 Poetry Workshop (EI)
• ENGL 3378 Fiction Workshop (EI)
• ENGL 3382 Publishing in the 21st Century (EI, WI, EX)
• ENGL 3384 The Writer’s Marketplace (EI, WI)

• ENGL 3685 Modern & Contemporary Jewish Literature (IC, DD)

• ENGL 3375 Writing Boston (EI, EX)
• ENGL 3382 Publishing in the 21st Century (EI, WI, EX)

• ENGL 4710 Capstone Seminar (WI, CE)