English Course Offerings
The English Department's course offerings vary by semester. We offer 100-level composition
courses, 200-level introductory courses, 300-level intermediate courses, 400-level
advanced courses, and 500-level graduate courses.
Summer 2025 Undergrad Courses
EH 372 - Technical Writing (W) | Amare
FULL SUMMER TERM: JUNE 3 - JULY 31
Online Course
The course is designed to help you to accomplish the following:
- Understand and analyze writing situations and technologies and invoke the roles and strategies necessary to produce effective writing in localized and globalized contexts.
- Improve your understanding of how writing practices and genres (memos, email, proposals, reports, and websites) function within and across organizations, including how various readers read, where readers look for information, and what multiple purposes documents serve inside and outside particular organizations.
- Produce more effective visual, textual, and multimedia documents.
EH 372 - Technical Writing (W) | Jeter
FULL SUMMER TERM: JUNE 3 - JULY 31
Online Course
EH 489 - Folklore and Ways of Listening | Jackson
MAYMESTER: MAY 11 - JUNE 1
MTWRF 9:00-11:30
This 2025 Maymester course focuses on the connection between folklore, fieldwork, and expressive culture in Mobile, Alabama's Africatown. Students will learn to investigate current debates about folk forms, fieldwork data collection, and performance by reading and discussing seminal articles that explore the genres and contexts of folklore performances and the benefits of doing sixteen days of ethnographic fieldwork. The class will be held at the historic Robert Hope Community Center in Africatown.
EH 490 - Religious Fanatics, Heretics, & Rebels | McLaughlin
FULL SUMMER TERM: JUNE 3 - JULY 31
MW 10:20-12:50
The story we tell ourselves about our Puritan forbears is one in which a courageous band of faithful Christians create a "city upon a hill" as a beacon of religious tolerance and good will. But from the 17th century’s three "crime waves"—the Antinomian Controversy, the Quaker Persecutions, and the Salem Witch Trials—to the three Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, religious controversy has been the order of the day. This course will examine through the lens of psychoanalysis the highs and the lows of our spotted religious history and their impact on American literature.
Summer 2025 Graduate Courses
EH 590 - Religious Fanatics, Heretics, & Rebels | McLaughlin
FULL SUMMER TERM: JUNE 3 - JULY 31
MW 10:20-12:50
The story we tell ourselves about our Puritan forbears is one in which a courageous band of faithful Christians create a "city upon a hill" as a beacon of religious tolerance and good will. But from the 17th century’s three "crime waves"—the Antinomian Controversy, the Quaker Persecutions, and the Salem Witch Trials—to the three Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, religious controversy has been the order of the day. This course will examine through the lens of psychoanalysis the highs and the lows of our spotted religious history and their impact on American literature.
Fall 2025 Undergraduate Courses
EH 300 - Intro to Literary Study | St. Clair
TR 3:30 - 4:45
The greatest living American writer is a folk singer, so it makes perfect sense that this section of EH 300 will be structured around the work of Nobel laureate Bob Dylan. In addition to considering Dylan's memoir Chronicles, Volume One (2004) and watching A Complete Unknown (2024), students will get a crash course in reading strategies, research methodologies, and literary techniques — all while listening to a lot of weird music and being subjected, inevitably, to St. Clair's increasingly digressive rants.
EH 320 - Shakespeare's Plays | Hillyer
TR 12:30 - 1:45
We will be studying Shakespeare's best work in the four kinds of plays he wrote: comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. This means we will be getting to know such varied characters as the gleeful villain Richard III, the maverick jester Sir John Falstaff, and the endlessly brooding introvert Hamlet. Assigned writing will consist of two short papers, a midterm, and a final exam.
EH 354 - The 19th Century Novel | Harrington
MWF 11:15 - 12:05
From elegant drawing rooms to urban rookeries, discover bias, betrayal, passion, and alienation in the rich psychological portraits and redemptive vision of the nineteenth-century novel. This class will cover Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Dickens's Oliver Twist, Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, and Conrad's Chance along with stories by Gaskell, Wilde, Trollope, and Swinburne.
EH 364 - British Novel from 1900 to 1945 | Raczkowski
MWF 2:30 - 3:20
Houses are weird. We are always running to them or away from them. They can be haunted, hallowed, divided, on fire, for sale; they can protect us and simultaneously imprison us. A house, or home, always comes with awkwardly shaped furniture that precedes us: traditions, gender relations, politics, and forms of identity. This course will study some of the central houses built — and well, blown up — in the fiction of E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and other British modernist authors who sought to unhouse us from conventional ideas about reading and the world in which we seek shelter.
EH 371 - Approaches to English Grammar | Amare
TR 9:30 - 10:45
This course is designed for individuals who want a working knowledge of grammar and usage. In addition to learning grammar and usage concepts, we will explore different approaches to teaching grammar. You will research articles about the changing role of grammar in the English Studies curriculum to help you contextualize these concepts within the larger debate of English Studies and the teaching of grammar.
EH 372 - Technical Writing (W) | Amare
Online Course
The course is designed to help you to accomplish the following:
- Understand and analyze writing situations and technologies and invoke the roles and strategies necessary to produce effective writing in localized and globalized contexts.
- Improve your understanding of how writing practices and genres (memos, email, proposals, reports, and websites) function within and across organizations, including how various readers read, where readers look for information, and what multiple purposes documents serve inside and outside particular organizations.
- Produce more effective visual, textual, and multimedia documents.
EH 372 - Technical Writing (W) | Beason
MWF 2:30 - 3:20
How can you effectively convey specialized or technical information in the workplace—to readers whose expertise with this information can vary greatly? Whether your field of study deals with health care, the sciences, the computer industry, the liberal arts, or almost any field of study, this course can assist you with varied types of workplace writing and editing. EH 372 can also help satisfy the W-requirement and count as an English elective for most English majors and minors.
EH 372 - Technical Writing (W) | Guzy
MWF 1:25 - 2:15
The purpose of this course is to train students in the kinds of written reports required of practicing professionals, aiming to improve mastery of the whole process of report writing from conceptual stage through editing stage. This course will introduce you to types of written and oral communication used in workplace settings, with a focus on technical reporting and editing. Through several document cycles, you will develop skills in managing the organization, development, style, and visual format of various documents.
EH 372 - Technical Writing (W) | Jeter
MWF 11:15 - 12:05
While technical writing allows for a great deal of creativity, much of technical writing demands both a scrupulous editorial ability and a devotion to established forms: People expect a precisely written document that resembles what they have encountered before. Toward that end, this course aims to acquaint you with and help you master a variety of common letters and memos, as well as a research project on a technical topic written in APA form, a standard set of instructions for an activity of students' choice, and an oral presentation.
EH 373 - Writing in the Professions (W) | Beason
MWF 1:25 - 2:15
What does it mean to "write on the job," and how is it different from college writing? This W-Course is intended for students in diverse majors. It also counts as an "English elective" for most English majors and minors. The goal is to prepare you to write in one or more professions. To do so, we focus on three elements: (1) "generic" workplace-writing skills; (2) rhetorical analysis of workplaces; (3) and practice in writing and critiquing documents.
EH 379 - Horror | Guzy
MWF 9:05 - 9:55
Do scientific, political, cultural, and technological developments alleviate our deepest fears or create new ones? In this course, we will investigate ways in which the horror genre has developed from and in turn has shaped our culture. Through active class discussion, oral presentations, and written assignments, students will analyze and critique aspects of horror and relate horror works and themes to areas of personal and professional interest. Readings will include fictional texts and scholarly commentary on the genre; selected video clips and feature-length films will also be viewed and discussed.
EH 391 - Fiction Writing | Staff
MWF 1:25 - 2:15
Intensive practice in the short story with contemporary readings. Constructive, critical discussions are conducted on each composition. Emphasis is on the creation of compelling short fiction.
EH 395 - Poetry Writing | Staff
TR 2:00 - 3:15
Intensive study in different modes and forms in contemporary poetry such as fixed, open, and spoken word. Readings in contemporary poetry will serve as models for students' creation of new poems. Workshops a primary component of the class.
EH 401 - Teaching Composition (W) | Beason
MWF 11:15 - 12:05
EH 401 is primarily for English majors planning to teach writing at the secondary level (or seriously considering doing so). The course offers theoretical, practical, and hands-on experience to prepare you for teaching students to write effectively in diverse genres and situations. EH 401 also helps students fulfill the W-Course requirement.
EH 405 - Editing and Document Design | Amare
TR 11:00 - 12:15
This course combines the principles of editing with document design to prepare students for the vast world of professional publishing. Students gain applied experience editing and designing publications for the trade book industry, academic journals, and corporations and organizations in print and digital formats. Throughout the course, students learn general editing principles, editorial roles, and editorial terms as well as the theories and aesthetics of design. Students hone their skills in visual rhetoric by becoming more proficient in understanding the relationship between textual content, format, and graphics.
EH 421- Literary Criticism to 1900 (W) | Halbrooks
MWF 10:10 - 11:00
This course will survey some of the major debates about literature beginning with Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle. What is literature? What does it do, and what is its function? What is the relationship between literature and the world? How do we define and categorize literary form and genre? What is the responsibility of the writer? How can women respond to a predominantly male literary canon? How can people of color respond to a predominantly white literary canon? What might constitute productive (or ethical) strategies of literary interpretation and analysis?
EH 468 - Contemporary Black Fiction | Vrana
MWF 12:20 - 1:10
This course will examine post-1965 African American novelists' representations of enslavement and other key events in distant and recent black history, with focus on how authors respond to the present by writing about race, gender, and politics in America's past. We will discuss both realistic and imaginative or speculative depictions of the past. Texts may include: Beloved (Toni Morrison), The Chaneysville Incident (David Bradley), Leaving Atlanta (Tayari Jones), The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead), and Kindred (Octavia Butler).
EH 483 - Advanced Fiction Writing | Cullity
M 6:00 - 8:30
Innovative study in various forms of friction for students with experience in the techniques of friction writing. Discussion include cultural and critical context as well as foundational models.
EH 485 - Advanced Poetry Writing | Staff
T 6:00 - 8:30
Advanced poetry writing course that explores different styles of contemporary American poetry such as political poetry, eco-poetry, ekphrastic poetry, and more. Students will create at least ten new poems and submit them for workshop.
Fall 2025 Graduate Courses
EH 502 - Graduate Writing for English | McLaughlin
W 6:00 - 8:30
EH 502 is required of all M.A. students in their first year of course work. The central purpose of this course is to prepare students for research and academic writing at the graduate level, but it also aims to prepare students for direct engagement with the academic conversations, discourses, and practices that circulate around and through the study of literary texts—in this case, the filmic texts of auteurs who handle sound and vision in unique ways.
EH 505 - Teaching College Writing | Shaw
MW 2:30 - 3:45
This course examines issues in composition history, theory, and pedagogy in the context of teaching first-year composition. Students will use this knowledge to develop course material appropriate to teaching first-year composition. Topics include syllabus and assignment design, lesson planning, course management, teaching in the linguistically and culturally diverse classroom, and assessment. Pre-requisite / Co-requisite: EH 502.
EH 571- Modern British Fiction | Raczkowski
M 6:00 - 8:30
This course on the modernist British novel is curiously bookended by E.M. Forster's Howard's End (1908) on one side and Zadie Smith's On Beauty (2006) on the other. While we will focus on modernist novels that investigate the relationships between art, ethics, and politics, my cunning plan is to use Smith's postmodern rewriting of Howard's End as a means of evaluating the current status of modernist claims (like Forster's) that art and aesthetic experience can make the world new. Let's hope Forster was right...
EH 577 - The Renaissance Epic | Hillyer
R 6:00 - 8:30
We will be studying in modern English translation Torquato Tasso's Renaissance epic Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), a crusader narrative. Aside from its pleasing variety of episodes involving love and war, Tasso's narrative has a chief point of interest in that one of the most eminent warriors is a woman (Clorinda). The assigned writing will consist of a research paper developed in stages.
EH 583/4 - Grad Fiction Writing Workshop I/II | Cullity
M 6:00 - 8:30
Special individual instruction in fiction writing.
EH 585/6 - Grad Poetry Writing Workshop I/II | Staff
T 6:00 - 8:30
Special individual instruction in poetry writing.
EH 590 - Editing and Document Design | Amare
TR 11:00 - 12:15
This course combines the principles of editing with document design to prepare students for the vast world of professional publishing. Students gain applied experience editing and designing publications for the trade book industry, academic journals, and corporations and organizations in print and digital formats. Throughout the course, students learn general editing principles, editorial roles, and editorial terms as well as the theories and aesthetics of design. Students hone their skills in visual rhetoric by becoming more proficient in understanding the relationship between textual content, format, and graphics.
EH 590 - Contemporary Black Fiction | Vrana
MWF 12:20 - 1:10
This course will examine post-1965 African American novelists' representations of enslavement and other key events in distant and recent black history, with focus on how authors respond to the present by writing about race, gender, and politics in America's past. We will discuss both realistic and imaginative or speculative depictions of the past. Texts may include: Beloved (Toni Morrison), The Chaneysville Incident (David Bradley), Leaving Atlanta (Tayari Jones), The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead), and Kindred (Octavia Butler).
A full listing of all courses in the departmental catalog is available via the University Bulletin. For a listing of courses offered in a given semester, please visit the University's Schedule of Classes. (Select "Dynamic Schedule" > "Browse Classes," enter the catalog term you wish to search, and select "English" as the subject.)