This section of English 419, “Stranger Things,” will focus on mythic journeys and strange transformations in settings that range from the historical to the otherworldly.  Texts include classics like Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as contemporary U.S. writing about the legacies that haunt us still, for instance Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, recipient of the 2017 National Book Award.  A variety of shorter texts will be provided by the instructor.

English 419 fulfills two of the Discovery Program’s requirements: the Inquiry requirement and the Writing Intensive requirement.  It also fulfills a core requirement for the B. A. in English Teaching and the B. A. degrees within the Literary Arts & Studies program (Literary Studies, Digital Language Arts, Professional and Technical Communications).

ENGL 501.06  --Special Topic Fall 2020

Tracking our Lives: How Music Stories Us

This particular section of Creative Non-fiction will explore the ways in which our experiences with music shape our stories—how listening to (and/or making) music defines and transforms us. Examining a variety of modes in which writers engage with music, we will develop our own approaches to articulating the meaning of music in our own lives. The class will begin with describing and analyzing/reviewing music, leading to forms of personal contextualizing—articulating the ways in which music affects or creates our experiences. Students need not have any formal or technical understanding of music to be successful in the course.