ENGL 2880

Last Updated

  • Schedule of Classes - April 13, 2023 2:00PM EDT
  • Course Catalog - April 12, 2023 7:14PM EDT

ENGL 2880
Expository Writing

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2022-2023.

This course offers guidance and an audience for students who wish to gain skill in expository writing—a common term for critical, reflective, investigative, and creative nonfiction. Each section provides a context for writing defined by a form of exposition, a disciplinary area, a practice, or a topic intimately related to the written medium. Course members will read in relevant published material and write and revise their own work regularly, while reviewing and responding to one another's. Students and instructors will confer individually throughout the term. Topics differ for each section.

When Offered Fall.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: completion of First-Year Writing Seminar requirement or permission of the instructor.

Distribution Category (ALC-AS, LA-AS)
Satisfies Requirement This course satisfies requirements for the English minor but not for the English major. Taken with the instructor's permission, it satisfies First-Year Writing Seminar requirements for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. If counted toward the First-Year Writing Seminar requirement, the course will not count toward LA-AS or ALC-AS.

Comments ENGL 2880 is not a prerequisite for ENGL 2890. For descriptions of each topic, please visit the university class roster.

View Enrollment Information

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Having a Body, Having a Disability

  •  4329 ENGL 2880   SEM 101

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    Having a body can be joyous, terrifying, frustrating, and often painful. Many people associate disability with limitations and assume that disabilities prevent people from living full, happy lives. These assumptions, however, have been routinely challenged by the work of activists who show how disability is an enforced condition created by an inaccessible world—and how disabilities can foster joy, happiness, and fulfillment despite hostility toward disabled bodies. In this course, we will explore what disability is and what it means, and how disability informs the way we think about bodies (and vice versa). Writing for this course will include sections of a critical memoir, the designing and drafting of an activist pamphlet, a podcast episode, and more.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: The Speculative Self

  •  5601 ENGL 2880   SEM 102

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    In this Creative Nonfiction course, we will explore the burgeoning genre of speculative nonfiction, focusing on the various ways that fantasy and the speculative offer alternative routes for self-reflection. By reading the works of writers such as Sofia Samatar, Carmen Maria Machado, Laraine Herring, and Ariel Gore, we will learn how to assert our voices and discover our writing style while simultaneously incorporating elements of the fantastic and the speculative through metaphor, imaginative scenarios and, perhaps, the paranormal. Through frequent editing and revision, we will not only learn how to hone our own craft, but we will also learn to be kind, constructive, and compassionate peer reviewers.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Our Shelves, Ourselves: Books in the Digital Age

  •  6056 ENGL 2880   SEM 103

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    When Amazon launched the Kindle, Jeff Bezos observed that through reading, “the paper, glue, ink and stitching that make up the book vanish, and what remains is the author’s world.” A good read, in other words, eclipses its container. As new technologies transform our relationship with the book—and the structure of the book itself—the ways we practice reading and writing change, too. Though personal essays, analytical assignments, and hands-on workshops, we’ll reflect on our reading and writing practices while analyzing the book as a physical object. We’ll ask how a book’s design shapes its readership and think about how that design might encourage or limit meaning-making. Together, we’ll explore how the book evolved—and imagine what it might look like in the future.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Creative Nonfiction: Exploring the Personal Essay

  •  7831 ENGL 2880   SEM 104

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    In this course, we will read and write personal essays, exploring the various possibilities within the genre. We will explore the power of image and specific detail, the uses and limits of the first-person narrating self, and the boundary between public and private. Reading will focus on contemporary essayists, possibly including Leslie Jamison, Eula Biss, and Alexander Chee; we will also read older essays, including those of Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and James Baldwin. We will also pay close attention to students' writing, with workshop feedback. Working through drafts, students will develop fuller skill at criticism and revision.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Wages for Dating: Emotional Labor, Gender and Work

  •  7832 ENGL 2880   SEM 105

    • TR Uris Hall 303
    • Aug 22 - Dec 5, 2022

    • Chun, P

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    Why is "feminine labor" and work performed predominantly by women - childcare, sex work, domestic labor - not deemed "real" work? Why is emotional labor unrecognized and underpaid? How does labor uphold normative ideas about gender and maintain social inequalities? And why are we urged to "do what we love?” This course explores how gender identity (as well as race, disability, class, and so on) impacts the financial, cultural, and emotional value of labor. It also explores the work that performing gender requires. Texts may include contemporary fiction and poetry, reality TV such as Keeping Up with the Kardashians, journalism, archival documents, and feminist theory. Students will produce research essays, podcasts, creative and personal writing, and public projects on topics of their choosing.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)