Courses Offered (Summer 2021)

101 Professor Tyler Farrell (session 1, 100% distance learning)
102 Professor Paul Gagliardi (session 2, 100% distance learning, EOP)
103 Professor Jenna Green Azaz (session 2, 100% distance learning, FFP)

English 1001, Foundations in Rhetoric

Students learn to:

• Critically engage scholarly communication by identifying and analyzing the main rhetorical features of variously mediated texts used by scholars to express ideas in academic settings;
• Pursue inquiry with rigor and responsibility by formulating feasible and meaningful research questions and revising them while conducting thorough, ethical inquiries using appropriate available resources;
• Understand writing as a purpose-driven, audience-oriented, multimodal activity that involves writers in making continuous ethical and informed choices;
• Develop writing by engaging in overlapping phases of invention, synthesis of ideas and information, and revision undertaken in response to others' feedback and self-critique;
• Deliver writing by making full use of appropriate available media, genres, formats and styles;
• Write with exigence by addressing issues of importance with the goal of increasing one's own and others' understanding as a foundation for future action of various kinds;
• Develop an appropriate ethos by meeting academic audiences' expectations for credibility, consistency, and integrity.
• For additional details, including unit-by-unit syllabi, contact either Dr. Rebecca Nowacek or Dr. Amelia Zurcher.

101 Professor Justice Hagan (session 2, 100% distance learning)

Course Title: Asylum and State Violence in the 21^st Century 

Course Description: While many individuals, families, and communities across the planet enjoy security as citizens of their nation-states, others do not. Sometimes this lack of security can even exist within their country of origin despite the possession of citizenship, either because of an indifferent or antagonistic government, or because the infrastructure to ensure security is not sufficient to meet the needs of the citizens—or a combination of both. The threat of violence or destitution in these cases can be so dire that the only option for many is to leave and seek security elsewhere. In this course, we will look at the forces that drive individuals and families to seek asylum in other countries. Paying close attention to the surge of refugee populations migrating to the United States and Europe in the past decade, we will study works of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, and international legislation to investigate the violence that these populations face, not just in their places of origin but also from the nation-states to which they have fled seeking basic human rights. 

Readings: May include selections from: Mohsin Hamid, John Washington, Khaled Hosseini, Sharon Bala, Conventions from the United Nations & United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and others.

101 Professor Jackielee Derks (session 1, 100% distance learning)

Course Title: Global Literatures: Contemporary Women’s Voices 

Course Description: Contemporary women writers from around the world are reshaping literature as we know it by challenging conventions and transgressing boundaries. From rewriting history to imagining possible futures, women writers are asserting their voices through innovative and transformative narratives. In this course we will study a variety of genres including novels, short stories, essays, graphic novels, and multimodal texts by late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century women from diverse locations and cultural backgrounds. By reading texts by and about women, will explore how modern authors are confronting systems of inequality and oppression while carving out space for their own unique identities.   

Readings: Possible texts may include Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami, Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and short stories by Nalo Hopkinson, Ch’oe Yun, and Alifa Rifaat. 

101 Professor Gerry Canavan (session 1, 100% distance learning)

Course Title: Crafting the Short Story

Course Description: “Crafting the Short Story” offers a unique version of the typical English 3241 experience that takes place entirely online, offering students the opportunity to produce creative writing alongside traditional scholarly prose. These two modes of writing, normally kept distinct in the English curriculum, are blended together here to make this intensive six-week summer course a formative intellectual experience for its students. The course is built around Tom Bailey’s short-story anthology On Writing Short Stories (2nd edition), which combines a vibrant anthology of twentieth-century short stories with writerly reflections on the mechanics of short story construction and the craft of creative short story composition. Alongside their assigned readings, forum responses, and directed creative pieces, students will also spend the summer session drafting and revising an original short story of their own devising. In the final week of class, students will share their stories with me and their peers in supportive online workshop groups, receive both due praise and constructive critical feedback, and then craft a personal reflection on the workshop and a revision of their story as their final exam.

Readings: Tom Bailey’s On Writing Short Stories (2nd Edition)

Assignments: D2L responses; short creative assignments; original short story; workshop participation; workshop reflection and revision.

101 Professor Sherri Hoffman (session 2, 100% distance learning)

Course Title: Flash Fiction

Course Description: Flash Fiction is the study of the shortest form of fiction. Its essence is an exactness of language. Its form is more defined by conciseness than a specific word count. At its best, it is fine-tuned storytelling honed to a single page or a few short lines in which universal emotion and the strength or frailties of being human are revealed. The workshop structure allows for an active discussion of student work. Readings are a diverse selection of authors as examples of craft and the diversity of voice. Supporting craft materials include essays, film, and excerpts of craft books, which invite the study of language and story reimagining our world in a quick flash. 

Readings:

Required reading: (purchase or rent by the first week of class)

The Best Small Fictions 2018, Ed: Aimee Bender, $16.00, Paperback: 152 pages, Publisher: Braddock Avenue Books 1^st edition (2018); Language: English, ISBN-10 : 0998966770, ISBN-13 : 978-0998966779.

ssignments: Over the course of the semester, students will give a class presentation, write workshop reviews, and produce a portfolio of flash fiction pieces.