English

Degrees and Certificates

Classes

ENG 1040 : English as 2nd Language

This course develops the academic reading,writing, and research skills of students new to undergraduate study in the U.S. for whom English is a second language. Course aims to refine grammatical, organizational, rhetorical, and genre-based skills crucial for success.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 1050 : The Literary Experience

Introduction to literature and the methods of literary analysis. Close readings of texts. Individual sections vary in the works covered.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 1842 : Perspectives in Literature

Close readings of literary texts, examined from particular thematic perspectives. Individual sections vary in the works covered. Does not fulfill Core Curriculum requirements. Preference given to freshman students.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 1975 : Core Lit and Writing Seminar

Careful reading of and intensive writing about literature. Individual sections vary in themes and works covered. Restricted to Arts & Sciences students governed by the New Core Curriculum instituted in Fall 2011.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2003 : Intro to Creative Writing

Designed for students who wish to experiment with composing several kinds of creative writing: short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2005 : Writing of Short Story

In this writing workshop course, we will explore setting, point of view, characterization, plot and other craft elements that make short stories run. We will read influential authors and give feedback to one another to foster our growth as writers.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2006 : The Writing of Poetry

Instruction in poetry writing, including how to craft imagery, figurative language, sound, line, and rhythm, as well as traditional and contemporary forms. Students read widely and write lyric, narrative and experimental poems that are shared in a supportive workshop setting.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2009 : Writing the Traditional Novel

A creative writing workshop course designed for students eager to leap into the complex process of writing a novella or short novel. Students will close-read short novels to analyze elements of craft and workshop sections of their own novel in-progress.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2012 : Advanced Creative Writing

Usually taught by visiting professors. For writers of poetry and short fiction. Reading of models of exemplary technique and application of these to students' own work. Critical feedback from peers and professors.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2013 : Writing of Memoir

Memoir is an opportunity to understand life. This writing workshop provides students with practical skills in reading and writing about the events, memories, places that inform their lives.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2016 : Writing Speculative Fiction

This creative writing workshop explores craft elements of writing short- and long-form fiction. Reading and writing assignments focus on speculative fiction, including the genres of horror, fantansy, science fiction and historical fiction.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2018 : Nature Writing Workshop

The natural world will be a source for the creative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction pieces students will write in this class. Through readings, field trips, writing exercises, and workshops students will learn to sharpen their language and see more deeply.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2019 : Writing for Social Change

Can stories change society? In this workshop you will braid your social justice, environmental, healthcare, and migration interests into creative pieces. We will read works by contemporary writers that address existing problems and call for justice, resistance, equality, activism.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2020 : Digital Journalism

Introduces students to the fundamentals of journalism, with an emphasis on digital media. Class will focus on the ins and outs of digital journalism as a practice, with students gaining hands-on experience within a variety of media platforms.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2022 : Writing Through Conflict

In this creative writing workshop you will study contemporary Irish/Northern Irish writers while working on your own creative pieces. Over semester break, you will travel to Belfast for a week of seminars and creative writing workshops at the Seamus Heaney Centre.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2023 : Journalism

Introduces students to key techniques of news gathering and news writing. We will also explore the principles and rules that guide the writing of news pieces, editorials, and features.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2030 : Tutoring Writers

Theory and practice of Writing Center Work; writing, editing and tutoring skills. Permission of instructor required.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2041 : Travel Writing

Writing of travel narratives with focus on descriptive and narrative techniques. Readings in contemporary travel tales as well as critical theory associated with travel writing.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2043 : Worldwide Popular Culture

An analysis of notable works of art, music, literature, video and social media created by people of various international, ethnic and minoritized groups to publicize situations of importance to their communities.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2046 : Teach ENG to Non-Nat Speaker

This service-learning course provides students with the background, tools, and experience needed to teach English to non-native speakers. In addition to classes at Villanova, students practice teaching at a Hispanic culture center.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2050 : Writing for Magazines

The craft of magazine writing. Genres of non-fiction including profile writing, essay writing, travel writing, criticism, and long-form journalism.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2051 : Sports Writing

Sports are more than games; they're a crucible for examining human experience. By examining the work of some of the genre's best writers, students will learn to report and write about this arena with deeper understanding and insight.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2060 : Desktop Publishing

Use of software to write editorials, news articles, and press releases, and to design flyers, brochures, and newsletters for community organizations. The basics of web page design.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2061 : Editing & Publishing

Literary publishing in a diverse, compelling field involving both art and commerce. This hands-on class explores the economic, social, and artistic forces that shape contemporary literature. Grapple with what it means to """make culture"""" while honing editorial skills."

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2300 : Women in Literature

Study of the place of women in literature, with emphasis on modern fiction, drama and poetry written in English.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2302 : Apocalyptic Literature

One of the oldest forms of narrative, apocalyptic literature is more popular - and powerful - than ever. Starting with Revelation, this course traces this tradition through fascinating poems, stories, novellas, novels and films to the present day.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2304 : Cont World Lit & Environment

The study of global contemporary fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and film that focuses on the environment, climate change, social justice and the future of nature.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2305 : Black Life Writing

Examines major autobiographies by African American and Africans, exploring self, truth, the body politic, and construction of identity. These authors develop crucial dimensions of black intellectual self-representation, whether as individuals or as part of a larger portrait of Black lives.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2306 : Harry Potter:Quests/Questions

In this course we will use the tools of literary analysis to discuss all seven Harry Potter novels. Central topics will include how the series evolves; Rowling's use of novelistic form, character and characterizations, and literary models; and the books' representations of gender, class, and other social issues.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2341 : American Short Story

The short story can span vast reaches of time and space within a few pages. We examine a range of American short stories, from the fanciful to the frightening, with particular attention to questions of race, gender, and sexuality.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2350 : Narrative Television

Plot, character, voice, point of view in visual, aural, dramatic, and verbal aspects of serial television. What works similarly or differently in television and prose fiction? In television and film?

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2360 : Adaptation:Film as Literature

The relationship between movies and literature dates back to film's earliest days. Comparing films and texts allows for an explanation of storytelling and the fascinating choices auteurs make. Plot, tone, and symbolism are considered alongside questions of power and representation.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2400 : Classical Hero in Ancient Lit

In this course we delve into some of the most famous and influential works of classical Western literature, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Virgil. We will discuss the complexities and depth of their explorations of issues such as war, glory, political power, the place of the gods, and tragic loss.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2410 : The Art of Translation

Translation is a passport to the world. Explore texts translated from a range of languages into English. Translation theory and experiments in translation will support our reading and writing across boundaries. Fluency in a second language is not required.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2460 : Irish Poetry since Yeats

The major Irish poets of the last fifty years, including an initial assessment of the importance of W. B. Yeats's career, and treatment of poets such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Thomas Kinsella, and John Montague.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2500 : Irish Revival

Selected readings in the drama and fiction literature of Ireland in the 20th century.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2505 : Black Literature: Poetry

The poetry of Wheatley, Harper, Dunbar, Johnson, Hughes, Brooks, Sanchez, Giovanni, Angelou, Harper, Dove, and other writers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2610 : Tutorial Readings

Program of approved readings under the supervision of a selected faculty member; examination on readings and a lengthy paper required. Restricted to senior English majors with high cumulative averages. Permission of chair required; ordinarily may not be repeated.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2800 : Teaching Practicum

Open only to senior English majors with a GPA of at least 3.5. Permission of consulting teacher and chair required.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 2992 : English Topics Abroad

Co-requisite 1-credit course designed to provide an embedded study-abroad experience to complement a requisite English course.

Credits

Credits 1

Corequisites

ENG 2022

ENG 2994 : Reading and Community

Studying the kind of reading that takes place outside of the classroom in book groups and community reads, this course practices reading in community while studying hot new books selected by students in the course.

Credits

Credits 1

ENG 2998 : Publishing Co-op

Full-time employment with a selected firm in the area of publishing, where experience is gained through appropriate training, instruction, and supervision. Approval of English Department Chair required.

Credits

Credits 6

ENG 2999 : Publishing Co-op

Full-time employment with a selected firm in the area of publishing, where experience is gained through appropriate training, instruction, and supervision. Approval of English Department Chair required.

Credits

Credits 9

ENG 3001 : Foundational Lit in ENG 1

Influential British literature from beginnings to 1750, tracing key ideas, power relations, and genres that still impact literature in English, and Anglophone culture, today. Relationships between writing and political change, media history, gender, spirituality, the environment, oppression and liberation.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3150 : Chaucer

This course introduces the work of Geoffrey Chaucer through a reading of his lively collection of stories and storytellers, The Canterbury Tales. Through its devout stories, explicit comedies, and probing romances, we will explore medieval society, Chaucer's insights on subjectivity, and influential medieval genres.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3160 : Fabulous Middle Ages

The Middle Ages mixed history (historia) and fable (fabula) freely. This course traces the intersections between the fablous (the fictional and fantastic) and the """real"""" in medieval narratives about the history

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3170 : Love & War in Medieval Romance

Medieval romances - texts about chivalry and love - have shaped everything from racial identity to flirting. This course considers how romances depict sexuality and gender; construct notions of religious otherness; and shape ideas about peoples and political power.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3195 : Medieval Saints and Sinners

In this course, we will consider how and why secular Renaissance plays adapt plots, characters, and motifs of medieval religious literature, and how they both exploit and challenge medieval moral extremes, including the saint, martyr, virgin, whore, torturer, pagan, and devil.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3250 : Shakespeare

This course studies the plays and/or poems of Shakespeare. It may be focused on a particular genre of Shakespeare's work, a period in his career, or a topic. The course seeks to develop students' appreciation of Shakespeare's artistry and relevance.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3260 : Revenge Tragedy

This course studies a popular and influential type of Renaissance drama: the revenge tragedy, a genre preoccupied with spectacular acts of murder and revenge and with the psychological, social, familial, and political circumstances that motivate and justify violent revenge.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3300 : 17th Cent Poetry & Prose

The poetry of Donne, Jonson, Lanyer, Herrick, Herbert; essays, sermons, journals, letters, pamphlets of Bacon, Donne, Milton, and others.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3350 : Milton

The writing of John Milton has fascinated and infuriated English-speaking people for 350 years. We explore why Milton's sometimes radical ideas about conscience, liberty, gender, and marriage remain influential, and how other writers (especially women) have responded to Milton.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3425 : British Gothic Fiction

Traces the development of British gothic fiction from the late eighteenth century to today, exploring its themes of violence, sexuality, anxiety and social turmoil alongside its historical contexts and major theoretical approaches to understanding this genre.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3426 : Science, Lit & Enlightenment

In this course, students will read and analyze some of the key philosophical texts that established the founding principles of modern science alongside literary texts from different genres that explore science's social meaning and its moral and political implications.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3427 : Adventures in 18th Century Lit

Analyzing realist novels, witty comedies, original tales, and mock epic-poems, we will explore the techniques and styles of authors fascinated by adventure and committed to the power of human reason to discover novel truths about nature, politics, and the rise of a modern commercial economy.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3428 : Brit Novel in Romantic Period

Tracing the expansion in the scope and popularity of the novel as a literary form, we will consider how the major political developments of the Romantic period including the French Revolution and the abolition of the slave trade, shaped its central themes of transgression, violence, and the precariousness of social order.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3440 : Harlots, Rakes, & Libertines

Discover the Libertine authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, whose witty, scandalous works promoted a freethinking philosophy of sexual pleasure and individual freedom, and provoked critics who blamed them for modern social problems such as prostitution, poverty, and crime.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3500 : Foundational Lit. in English 2

Influential British and Irish literature since about 1800 (covering the period after ENG 3001), exploring key ideas, power relations, and genres that still shape literature in English today. Topics include political change, gender, artist and audience, and the environment.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3504 : 19th Cent Brit Women Writers

Writings by important nineteenth-century British women novelists and poets, including Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and others.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3507 : StrangeCases:ImagHealth&Illnes

Explore literary responses to pivotal developments in medical science and practice from the eighteenth century to the present.Study works that engage with the new ideas about illness, treatment, and disability that arose alongside changing understandings of the human body.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3530 : Victorian Doubles

Investigate how Victorian literature represents doubles - self and other, women and men, past and present, public and private - and study changing constructions of gender, industrialization, and imperial expansion in nineteenth-century Britain.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3535 : Gender, Authorship & Anonymity

This class studies how and why women writers used pseudonyms and forged collective authorial identities to grapple with gendered expectations. It considers the knotty politics of authorship, biography, and autobiography in nineteenth-century Britain and the twenty-first century.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3540 : Institutional Fictions

This course examines the intriguing relationship between literature and institutions, including governments, schools and prisons. Reading nineteenth-century literature in relation to our contemporary moment, we focus especially on universities, interrogating students' experiences of universities and institutional narratives about universities.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3550 : Victorian Publics& Populations

Reading nineteenth-century literature with an eye to who was reading, what they were reading, and how this reading shaped political debates, we'll consider the Victorian Britain's burgeoning print culture, mass movements, colonial publics, and emergent demographic thinking.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3580 : Topics in 19th C Irish Lit&Cul

Special topic in 19th century Irish literature and culture. For access to the full course description, go to this course number in the Villanova Master Schedule and click on the """syllabus available"""" link."

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3610 : Modern British Poetry

British poetry from 1900 to the present, with emphasis on Hopkins, Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Muir, Edith Sitwell, K3 Dylan Thomas, and Philip Larkin.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3615 : James Joyce

A study of the novels and short stories of James Joyce, with concentration on Ulysses.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3617 : Irish Revivalism

Study of Irish Revival of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century; focus on revivalism, gender, and colonial politics, reading multiple literary genres, beginning with Jane Wilde and William Butler Yeats.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3618 : Intro to African Lit l

Chronological study of forms of cultural and literary production in Africa. Begins from oral epic traditions up to late 20th century written literatures. Examines postcolonial theory and the issues of language and """authenticity"""" in representations of African societies."

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3619 : Intro to African Lit II

Continuation of study of the various literary practices in Africa, from the late 20th-century writing to 21st-century artists. In addition to postcolonial representation, examines African feminism, Afropolitanism, and Africa and Diaspora intersections in age of globalization.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3620 : Modern British Novel

Modernism exploded onto the literary scene when writers, exhausted by Victorian strictures, explored experimental forms, taboo language, and new ideas about empire, sexuality, race, and technology. We will read 20th-century British novels from 1900 through World War II.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3621 : Contemp British Novel

This course explores British fiction written after the second World War until today. What stories do novelists tell about the meaning of """Britishness"""" after the British empire? We investigate themes of nostalgia

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3622 : Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, novelist, essayist, and diarist, is one of the most influential 20th-Century Writers. Woolf explores the self, modernity, depression, and the joy of an ardent feminist life. We will read Woolf's novels and contemporary debates about form, gender, and sexuality.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3640 : Irish Drama

Irish plays and performances including Abbey Theatre plays by William Butler Yeats, Augusta Gregory, John Millington Synge, and Teresa Deevy, followed by works by Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Marina Carr and new Irish theatre.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3650 : African Drama

Examination of the aesthetics, politics, and practices of the theatre and drama in Africa. Focused on written plays, course explores drama performances on stage, television, and movies. Introduces students to role-playing and small-scale adaptation of texts to American contexts.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3660 : Contemp. Lit & Film of India

India produces some of the most innovative and engrossing literature in the world, while also releasing more films than any other nation. Through both forms, we'll explore debates in contemporary India concerning border tensions, caste, gender, fantasy, and imperial histories.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3680 : Top: 20th-21st C Irish Lit&Cul

Special topic in 20th-21st century Irish literature and culture. For access to the full course description, go to this course number on the Villanova Master Schedule and click on """syllabus available"""" link."

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 3682 : Contemporary Irish Literature

Readings of Irish poets and prose writers of the last fifty years, starting with Seamus Heaney and Edna O'Brien, and including contemporary works by visiting Irish Heimbold Chairs.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4000 : American Literary Trad 1

What makes literature """American""""? Who gets to decide? This course examines how literary traditions developed and changed in nineteenth-century America

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4001 : Major American Writers I

This course offers a focused examination of a handful of key American writers from early influential voices to major figures publishing to 1945. Significant time will be given to each writer, and a range of genres and themes will be considered.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4003 : African-American Lit Trad 1

Black people helped craft the narrative of their lived experiences from their arrival in the New World. Students read the earliest African American literary offerings through the first decade of the twentieth century, including political treatise, autobiography, poetry and novels.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4010 : Early American Textual Bodies

This course asks: how can we read about early American bodies, and how are bodies legible? We will chart how Indigenous, Black, and settler persons used developing forms and genres to navigate identity in texts from sixteenth- through nineteenth- century America.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4015 : Why Indigenous Lit Matters

This course introduces students to a vivid spectrum of Indigenous literatures, exploring how Indigenous peoples have expressed their truths and imagined their futures. We will ask what makes something ?literary?? Why do Indigenous literatures matter, inside and outside our classroom?

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4500 : American Slave Narrative

Slavery as a central paradox of American history and literature with emphasis on race and gender. Readings by Douglass, Brent, Stowe, Morrison, and others.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4502 : The Black Atlantic

This interdisciplinary course looks at the history and literature of the transatlantic slave trade, which fundamentally altered Europe, Africa, and the Americas during the early modern era. It also considers the diasporic Black culture that emerged during and after slavery.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4503 : Indigenous Lit of the Americas

How have Indigenous peoples of the Americas created their own literary traditions? This course introduces students to a wide range of Indigenous literatures produced before 1900, examining how Native writers navigated varying forms that challenge conventional understandings of """literature""""."

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4505 : Concord Writers

The major works of and interactions between Concord's most celebrated writers: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson and Louisa May Alcott.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4510 : Early American Poetry

We will immerse ourselves in four transformative poets -- Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatly Peters, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson -- while also considering how their lives and work have inspired contemporary culture from prestige television to Taylor Swift.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4515 : American Gothic

The nature and evolution of horror writing in America from the eighteenth-century to today.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4545 : Early American Novel

This course survey's groundbreaking U.S. novels from the American Revolution to the Civil War. We'll focus on literary aesthetics as wells as how novels affirm or resist prevailing politics, paying particular attention to racism, settler colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4600 : Amer Literary Trad 2

A survey of American literature from 1945 to the present, meant to give students familiarity with a wide range of authors and genres who have contributed significantly to American writing in the 20th century and beyond.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4601 : Major American Writers ll

This course offers a focused examination of a selection of the most influential American writers writing from 1945 to the present. Significant time will be given to each writer, and a range of genres and themes will be considered.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4602 : African American Lit Trad 2

Contemporary African American literature narrates exciting social, political and aesthetic changes in the US. Students will read a variety of literature, including essays, short stories, poetry, novels and plays, beginning with the Harlem Renaissance to today.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4603 : African American Short Story

African American short fiction has taken on a number of forms throughout the 20th and 21st century. Students will read works by writers diverse as Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler and Edwidge Danticat.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4605 : Amer Poetry: 1900-1950

American poets of the first half of the twentieth Century, including Robinson, Frost, Stevens, Cummings, Williams, Millay, Pound, Eliot, and others.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4606 : Alone Together-Social Dist Lit

How can we feel connected even when alone? This course explores how the activities of reading and writing produce the strange and sustaining feeling of being alone together. We'll examine examples of this paradoxical condition in recent fiction and poetry.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4610 : African American Poetry

The exquisite poetry of 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century African American writers, like Wheatley, Dunbar, Johnson, Hughes, Brooks, Sanchez, Giovanni, Angelou, Dove, Rankine and Mullen introduces students to a range of experience and the power of language.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4618 : Harlem Renaissance

F. Scott Fitzgerald called the years between the wars the """Jazz Age."""" Folks uptown recognized that a Renaissance was happening in Harlem. Students will study major works by African Americans written during the 1920s and 1930s."

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4622 : African American Women Writers

From Phyllis Wheatley to Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry to Alice Walker, Toni Morrison to Chimamanda Adichie, black women writers have helped shape and complicate the contours of the American literary canon. Students read an exciting range of genres.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4623 : African American Novel

From American slavery to Afrofuturism, writers of the African American novel have explored the lived experience of black people in America and and throughout the African Diaspora.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4624 : Crime Fiction and Gender

This course studies crime and detective fiction as an intellectually rich phenomenon preoccupied by gender and sexuality. It examines how crime narratives from the nineteenth century to the present critique socioeconomic realities and address fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4632 : African American Drama

"""The play's the thing"""" to capture the conscience of not only a king but a nation. Students will read plays written by African Americans including Lorraine Hansberry

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4640 : Contemp Amer Women's Lit

Writings by women from WW II to the present. Works by Ann Petry, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Kathy Acker, Bobby Ann Mason, and others.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4641 : American Immigrant Narratives

This course examines the fierce, vibrant strain of writing by immigrants who have pushed beyond boundaries of genre and nation to tell their stories. It focuses on fiction and creative nonfiction published in the U.S. after 1900.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4645 : Post Modern Amer Fiction

Experimental narratives by American writers of the last four decades. Works by Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Don DeLillo, Joanna Russ, and others.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4646 : Race & Ethnicity: Amer Novel

Canonical texts that treat questions of race and ethnicity. Focus on the critical role of language and literature in constructing and deconstructing racial categories.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4647 : Gender & Sexuality in US Lit

This course examines a fascinating range of contemporary US literary texts to explore the ways that gender and sexuality intersect with race, class and other categories of identity to form our experiences of selfhood, community, national belonging, and power.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4648 : U.S. Empire & Cont. Am. Lit.

Examines American literature in the context of U.S. empire, including histories and effects of settler colonialism, overseas expansion, and war. Focuses on authors of color from 1945 to the present.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4649 : Intro to Asian American Lit

Examines literature, film, art, and other cultural productions by Asian Americans and explores Asian American histories from the early 20th century to the present.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4652 : Letters, Texts, & Twitter

How does writing bring together distant lovers, friends, family? We'll read letters, the digital forms (social media, instant messaging) that have replaced them, and their representation in novels, poems, and essays to explore how intimacy forms across distance.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4653 : Work/Play in Cont. Latinx Lit

Through fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and genre-bending texts and performances by Latina/o/x/writers, this course will ask: How has Latinx cultural production inscribed and sometimes joyously subverted language, border and immigration politics from the 1960's to the present?

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4654 : 25 Poems

To be alive today is to feel distracted. This course offers us the chance to slow down. We read just one short poem per class meeting and learn how to give it our full attention, in writing and in conversation.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4700 : Caribbean Literature

Explores representations of the culture and history of the Caribbean in the literary and performance traditions of creative artists from the region. Examines postcolonial discourse and folklore aesthetics across genres and in cultural forms such as carnival and Carbbean music.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4702 : Authors On & Off the Page

Do you love to write? Dream of visiting with authors to discuss their work and the publishing world? This course combines creative writing workshops with literary analysis and the chance to hob-nob with prestigious authors during the Villanova Literary Festival.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4703 : 21st C. American Apocalypse

This course surveys major contemporary novels depicting American disasters and their aftermath. We'll consider the varieties of apocalypse that are imagined -- including economic collapse, pandemic, """zombie apocalypse

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4704 : Borders in Latinx Literature

How do borders impact our lives, and how might they be imagined differently? This course examines how """the border? shapes Latinx literatures

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 4705 : Lit of Addiction and Recovery

This community-based course for Villanova students and incarcerated men will use literature to explore the causes and experience of addiction in addition to the routes taken toward recovery.

Credits

Credits 3

ENG 5000 : Senior Seminar

Capstone experience combining immersion in primary and secondary materials with an intensive writing experience. Limit of 15 students.

Credits

Credits 3