Upper Division Courses

Matt Pitt 
TR 11:00-12:20
Core: WEM 
English Major: Writing, Elective 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective 
Creative Writing Major: Upper-Division Creative Writing Workshop  

Artful fiction manufactures entire events, displays dialogue never uttered, describes settings no foot ever set foot in, and concocts characters, or even entire worlds, out of whole cloth. Fiction writers may also, in their work, make visible and center voices that history erased, overlooked, or discarded. As the writer Arundhati Roy notes, though: “There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” In this course we will examine published short stories, discovering how prominent authors raise the decibel level on voices that otherwise might remain muted. Students will seek to attain this same level of aspiration in their own works, thanks to regular writing prompts assigned in and out of the classroom, through crafting original fiction and, as a class community, discussing peer work with dogged care. By doing so, students can better grasp why each made-up moment matters, and how to make their own imagined moments matter more.

Likely texts include:

The Making of a Story, by Alice LaPlante

The Best Short Stories 2022: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Valeria Luiselli

Prerequisites: CRWT 10103 or CRWT 20103 or CRWT 20133

Chantel Carlson
TR 2:00-3:20  
Core: WEM
English Major: Writing 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective 
Creative Writing: Upper-Division Creative Writing Workshop

“I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also, I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness.”

August Wilson

In this introductory dramatic writing workshop, students will be introduced to creative writing techniques in drama. They will then apply these techniques by writing scenes and one-act plays, including character and plot development and writing dialogue. Prior to written assignments, students will learn critical terms (such as characterization, plot structure, setting, dialogue, staging, etc.) as well as become familiar with the possibilities of the modern stage through readings of traditional and/or experimental plays. Because this is a writing workshop that values inclusivity, students will participate in a collaborative environment through student-led workshops and group assignments.  Film students are welcome!

Prerequisites: CRWT 10103 or CRWT 20103 or CRWT 20133

Alex Lemon  
MWF 11:00-11:50
Core: WEM
English Major: Writing, Elective
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Advanced CRWT Writing Seminar

The Advanced-Multi Genre Workshop is a craft/workshop course in writing poems, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. This class is intended for students who are dedicated to creative writing, who have a strong background in CW and previous experience workshopping. In this course, you are expected to read, discuss, and lead discussion on literary texts in multiple genres and produce four assignments of original creative work in the genre/s of your choosing.

Prerequisites: CRWT 10103 or CRWT 20103 or CRWT 20133, plus the prior completion of a 30000-or 40000-level Creative Writing Workshop with a grade of at least B-

Layne Craig  
TR 12:30-1:50
Core: HUM,LT
English Major: Brittish Literature
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Literature and Language Elective

In this course, students will read a selection of British literature beginning with the late Romantic era and ending in the twenty-first century—we’ll begin with Jane Austen and end with Zadie Smith. Assigned texts will come from a variety of genres, including poetry, novels, drama, and essay. Students will leave the course with a working knowledge of major authors and literary movements, as well as with enhanced skills in close reading, writing about literature, and archival and secondary research. To organize our survey of the huge array of literature produced in Great Britain in this time period, we will be concentrating loosely on how authors represented urbanization in Britain, including depictions of interconnected issues such as labor, travel, gender roles, immigration, access to medical care, and the role of the artist in society. Graded work will include short writing assignments, exams, and presentations. 

Mona Narain  
TR 11:00-12:20
Core: CA, GA, WEM
English Major: Brittish Literature, Global & Diasporic Lit
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Literature and Language Elective

Are you curious about Asian and African cultures? We live in a time when our world is increasingly interconnected and what happens in one part of the world usually impacts another area and its people. Understanding and knowing more about other cultures, in part through their literatures, is an essential aspect of living a good life in harmony with other living beings. In this course we will read some exciting texts that represent Literatures written in English from different parts of the world today. We will concentrate primarily on writing in English from (post) colonized nations in Asia and Africa and their diasporic communities of Britain, known collectively as the Global South, engaging in a cross-cultural analysis. Due to the legacies of colonization and occupation, billions of people across the world use English. However, previously colonized peoples have changed the language and made English malleable to reflect the intertwining of their indigenous and colonized pasts. They have produced some of the most exciting and innovative writing in English in the last century. We will examine the differences, similarities, conflicts, and interrelationships between the literatures of global south to begin to fashion methodologies that respond to the challenges of reading global ethnic literatures in their full complexity. From a comparative angle, this course will explore the historical, social, cultural, and racial contexts which shape each literary text.

            Students should anticipate a consistent reading schedule, which will include literary theory, primary and secondary literary texts, regular attendance, consistent class participation, presentations, in-class written responses and research projects.  Prerequisites: ENGL 10803, ENGL 20803 and at least one 10000- or 20000- level ENGL course

Core Curriculum Outcomes: CA, GA and WEM

Anticipated Literature Course Texts:

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Anchor Books) ISBN 0-385-47454-7

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Penguin) ISBN 0-14-013270-8

Mohsin Hamid The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harvest Books) ISBN 978-0-156-03402-9

Nnedi Okorofor Binti (Tom Doherty Associates) ISBN 978-0-8525-3

Gurinder Chadha Bend it Like Beckham (film) (film shown in class)

Marjane Satrapi Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon Books, Random House) ISBN 0-375-42230-7

Additional selections from Literary Theory, and readings on the history, culture, and literary contexts of the course texts will also be assigned.

Bonnie Blackwell  
MWF 4:00-5:50
Core: None
English Major: Theory
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Literature and Language Elective 

This theory course critically examines consumer-driven participatory culture through multiple media, including magazine and newspaper serial publication, film franchises, television series, parodies, pastiches and interactive fan cultures using the case study of Sherlock Holmes, arguably the first modern fan culture.  We will examine Sherlock fan cultures around the world, with a special emphasis on the US and Japan.  We will practice drafting and revising arguments in a variety of formats, including essay exams, threaded discussions, informal freewrites and formal papers.  We will be reading about Holmes, but your ethnographic research paper will be about a fan culture of your choosing.  Readings include Henry Jenkins, Fan Cultures, Textual Poachers, Convergence Culture, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Sign of Four, and Maurice LeBlanc, Lupin.

Screenings will include: Miss Sherlock (Japan, 2018), Guy Ritchie’s franchises Sherlock Holmes (UK, 2009-2011), and Young Sherlock (UK, 2026), Mr. Holmes, (UK/Japan, 2015), Enola Holmes, (US, 2020), Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. (US, 1924), The Hound of the Baskervilles (US, 1939), Mademoiselle Holmes (FRA, 2025), Astrid (FRA, 2019-2025), Lupin (FRA, 2021-2026), and the BBC series Sherlock (UK, 2010-2014).

Jill Havens  
MWF 10:00-10:50
Core: None
English Major: Brittish Literature, Jr Research Seminar, Early Lit & Culture
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Literature and Language Elective 

Him se yldesta   ondswarode,

werodes wisa,   wordhord onleac:

[The eldest among them gave him answer,

the leader of the troop, unlocking his word-hoard:]

-Beowulf, ll. 258-59

Landing on the Danish shore, Beowulf speaks for the first time, unlocking his word-hoard to reveal his identity as the great Geatish hero. In Old English literature speech is sometimes described as “unlocking a word-hoard,” when poets or speakers release their precious words into the world. In this seminar, we will explore the “word-hoard” of Old English literature, focusing primarily on the longest and most important text from this time, the epic poem Beowulf. To contextualize this poem, we will study contemporary literary traditions and poetic styles, explore the history and material culture of Anglo-Saxon England, examine interactions with other cultures like the Vikings, learn some Old English, and follow the fate of Beowulf through to our modern age where it now appears in music, graphic novels, films, video games, and other popular media.

The semester will be divided into two parts: in the first half, students will complete three research skills projects: close reading of the original texts, archival research of historical documents, and critical response to current scholarship. For the second half, students will use those skills to complete a major research paper on a topic of their choice connected to our focus on Old English literature, Anglo-Saxon history and culture, Beowulf, and modern adaptations.

While the purpose of this seminar is to introduce English majors to a sustained, long-format research project over the course of the semester, students will also work to connect their skills as English majors with individual career goals, explore possible professional pathways or advanced study in English, and complete online portfolios showcasing their talents.

Ariane Balizet  
TR 2:00-3:20
Core: WEM
English Major: Brittish Literature, Early Lit & Culture
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Literature and Language Elective 

“The Humanities are about meaning. Law gives meaning power.” 

• Laura Beth Nielsen, legal scholar and sociologist

In this class, we will study several plays by Shakespeare to better understand the connection between meaning and power in the Renaissance and today. Our readings will include five plays that dramatize justice through trials of combat, hearings, arguments, and testimony: Richard II, Henry V, Measure for Measure, Merchant of Venice, and Henry VIII. We will also read contemporary legal scholarship on issues of justice and power today. Written assignments will focus on literary interpretation as a tool for deeper understanding and the foundation of interpretive skills for policy in daily life. Students will apply these interpretive skills to Shakespeare’s plays, historical testimony, and current TCU policies. Assignments include essays, policy analysis, and both individual and group presentations.

Theresa Gaul  
TR 3:00-4:50
Core: CA,LT
English Major: American Literature, Early Literature and Culture
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Literature and Language Elective 

Welcome to your women’s writing era! BookTok has introduced millions of readers to new favorites, but some of the most influential books by American women never made it into the algorithm.  In this course, you’ll discover the “missing classics”: the women writers who transformed American literature long before social media, bestseller lists, and celebrity book clubs. In this course, you’ll learn how women entered the sphere of authorship, how they shaped American culture, and why so many of their writings continue to speak to us in meaningful ways. By the end of the semester, you’ll have a new set of recommendations for your own bookshelf and a richer understanding of where today’s bookish culture began. Likely texts:  Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson, Hope Leslie by Catharine Sedgwick, The Lamplighter by Susanna Cummins, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Iola Leroy by Frances Harper, and stories by Zitkala-Ša (Yankton Dakota). Assignments:  lead responses, critical commentaries, essay exams and a project where you recover your own lost woman author.

Stacie McCormick
TR 9:30-10:50
Core: WEM
English Major: American Literature
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Elective
Creative Writing Major: Literature and Language Elective 

Our course will explore Toni Morrison’s work in various genres and forms. We will consider questions such as: How do we comprehend Morrison’s literary contributions from her 1970 debut novel The Bluest Eye to today? In what ways does Morrison’s art inform not only artistic practice but also ways of understanding the world?

We will read Morrison’s oeuvre largely through the lens of liberation and think together on how Morrison theorizes freedom especially in relation to race and gender. Thematic frameworks that we will be taking up include but are not limited to the following: Black girlhood, motherhood, Afrofuturism, gender and sexuality, beauty, geography, etc.

Mohammed Iddrisu
MWF 10:00-10:50 
Core: CA, WEM 
English Major: Writing, Elective 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Rhetorics and Cultures
Creative Writing Major: Elective 

This course is designed to critically explore rhetorical traditions and cultural practices mainly across non-Western cultures. We will engage with and examine issues and ways of knowing and being among different cultures, especially in the so-called “Global South”, and within Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. The scholarship we will engage with will call you to bear witness and respond to, in the words of Ellen Cushman, “the obligation of challenging imperial legacies of knowledge and power that have continued to structure the relationships we can have to place/land, history, our bodies, and one another.” To do this, we will delve into scholarship and case studies of decolonial rhetorics and cultural practices about land, language, food, clothing, the environment, and wellness.

Assignments include case studies of cultural artifacts, oral presentations, and a final critical essay.

 

Ying-wen Yu 
MWF 9:00-9:50
Core: HUM
English Major: Theory, Writing 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Rhetorics and Cultures
Creative Writing Major: Elective 

In Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, Daniel Heath Justice writes that stories “connect us with one another, and with the other-than-human world” while reminding us that humans matter to the world but are not its center. This course draws on this understanding of story, relationship, and responsibility to explore non-human rhetoric and representation through Indigenous-centered methodologies. Broadly defined, rhetoric is the creation and communication of meaning. While Western rhetorical traditions have often treated rhetoric as primarily human-centered, Indigenous traditions challenge assumptions about human exceptionalism. Drawing on concepts of kinship, relationality, reciprocity, and “all our relations,” students will examine how plants, animals, land, monsters, machines, and other more-than-human beings participate in meaning-making and relationships. Major themes include human/non-human relationships, kinship criticism, responsibility, monstrosity, technology, survivance, and Indigenous approaches to knowledge and storytelling. Students will consider questions such as: Who or what can communicate? How do more-than-human beings carry knowledge and memory? What happens when boundaries among human, animal, monster, and machine become unstable? What responsibilities emerge when humans understand themselves as part of a larger network of relations? Major readings may include Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, Stephen Graham Jones’s Mongrels, Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth, and Andrea L. Rogers’ Man Made Monsters, supplemented by Indigenous films, visual texts, and scholarship. Students will complete a series of critical journal assignments that develop ideas and analytical skills toward a final research project. The course culminates in a public showcase and mock academic poster session, where students create posters based on their final projects and share their research with classmates and other members of the university community.

 

Chantel L Carlson
R 3:30-4:50
Core: N/A
English Major: Elective 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Writing and Publishing
Creative Writing Major: Internship

This 1.5 credit-hour course is for students with an interest in literary magazine publication and basic web design. Students in the course will work in every stage of the production of the semester’s print issue of eleven40seven, TCU’s undergraduate journal of the arts, and its web edition (www.1147.tcu.edu). Specifically, students will gain knowledge of and experience in (1) the history and purpose of the student literary magazine, (2) the selection, editing, and proofing of the semester’s submissions, (3) the journal’s print layout and the design of the issue’s web edition, and (4) the distribution and promotion of the completed issue. Students will also receive, as needed, practical software training. This course may be repeated for credit.

Chantel L Carlson
T 3:30-4:50
Core: N/A
English Major: Elective 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Writing and Publishing
Creative Writing Major: Internship

This 1.5 credit-hour service-learning course is intended for students with an interest in basic book publication and web design, as well as community outreach.   Students in the course will work in every stage of the production of a least one of the English department's print or digital publications. Specifically, students will gain knowledge of and experience in (1) the history and purpose of the publication's genre, (2) the selection, editing, and proofing of the publication's drafts, (3) the publication's layout and the design, and (4) the distribution and promotion of the completed product. Students will also receive practical training with relevant publishing and design software. This course may be repeated for credit.

Charlotte Hogg
TR 12:30-1:50
Core: WEM
English Major: Writing 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Writing and Publishing
Creative Writing Major: Elective 

In this class, we’ll read, talk, and write digital magazines.  on the analysis and production of magazine writing. Whether addressed to mass audiences or niche readers, magazine writing does important cultural work: entertaining, informing, advising, analyzing, interpreting, persuading, and shaping readers’ view of themselves and the world. Tied closely to the consumer marketplace through advertising, magazines also lead readers to identify with consumer goods and aspire to the lifestyles those goods represent. This mix of consumerist and cultural appeal makes magazines excellent vehicles for a wide variety of writing, from the listicle to the literary. The move from print to multimedia publication has further expanded the audiences, subjects, and styles of magazines, as well as the cultural work they can do. In this class, you’ll become both a producer and a critical reader of magazine-style writing.

Ashok Bhusal
TR Arranged
Core: N/A
English Major: Elective
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Internship
Creative Writing Major: Internship 

Students with 60 credit hours and a Writing/English GPA of 3.0 or CUM GPA of 2.8 can receive workplace experience (and, depending on agency policy, sometimes a stipend) from companies or agencies in publishing, advertising, or other fields. Duties are arranged to fit each student’s schedule, and work opportunities may include research gathering, editing, report writing, social networking, web authoring, or document production. Students need to work a minimum of 8 hours a week during the semester to receive three hours of credit. The internship may help with career decisions; it may lead to full time employment; it answers questions about what certain jobs are like; helps to test writing abilities for various audiences in the workplace; provides on-the-job experience; and challenges certain personal assumptions or views a student may have about workplace behavior. Your work for WRIT 40273 is a space to demonstrate and reflect upon the kinds of written and oral communication done in a professional setting.

Because this is, first and foremost, a writing internship rather than a more general career internship (a get-your-foot-in-the-door, networking experience that may involve more office work than intensive writing-related activity), it’s your responsibility to negotiate on-site assignments with your supervisor to ensure they meet course outcomes. You should not be doing office work or tasks that are basically typing (data entry, etc.).

NOTE: You should set up your internship before the semester begins so you’re ready to start work no later than the second week of the semester. 

Stephen Boakye
TR 9:30-10:50
Core: N/A
English Major: Writing 
Writing & Rhetoric Major: Digital Rhetorics and Design
Creative Writing Major: Elective 

Sound composition is an age-old form of expression, and the recent popularity of podcasting has made learning how to author sound increasingly necessary. This is a class about sound composition with a strong emphasis on podcasting, designed for upper-level students who want to further their understanding about podcasting and want to create their own. Through this focus, we'll explore various podcast genres and formats, and by the end of the class you'll not only understand what goes into common podcast formats but also have hands-on experience creating your own. Since the class covers a range of formats, you'll work independently in some units and collaboratively in others.

The class is divided into five units. The first covers introductory material and the fundamentals of sound composition. The remaining four units are each built around a podcast format: monologue, interview, dialogue, and panel discussion. Every unit includes readings and scaffolding activities.

This class has no quizzes or exams since every in-class task, out-of-class activity, and assignment contributes to your final grade.