ENGL 2880

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  • Schedule of Classes - January 15, 2024 7:50PM EST
  • Course Catalog - January 15, 2024 7:28PM EST

ENGL 2880
Expository Writing

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024.

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, Spring.

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, and with the letter grade option, 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 For descriptions of each topic, please visit the university class roster.

View Enrollment Information

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Shakespeare Offstage

  •  3517 ENGL 2880   SEM 101

    • MW White Hall B04
    • Aug 21 - Dec 4, 2023

    • Stamatiades, S

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    On the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, the New York Times published a video tribute that called the author not only “a literary titan” but also “a literary termite.” Shakespeare is everywhere, whether we like it or not, burrowing his way into our books, movies, and TV commercials long after his death. This course will focus on the ways in which Shakespeare continues to reappear in modern media to consider the question: is Shakespeare still relevant? Is there something exceptional about Shakespeare, or is he just an overused namedrop on our English syllabi? Major texts and films may include: Maqbool (2003), Romeo + Juliet (1996), The Prince of Cats (2012), and the HBO series Succession (2018).

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Call of Duty: Feeling Masculine in the West

  •  4743 ENGL 2880   SEM 102

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    From medieval European crusading poems to the reboot of Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, Western society’s perpetual “call of duty” has continually reimagined links between militancy, masculinity, and feelings. This course will examine cultural messages about what masculinity “feels” like, what men are “supposed” to do with their feelings, and what place feelings have in Western crusading culture. Exploring texts featuring men and feelings on and off the battlefield from medieval poetry, video games, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and DC and Marvel, we’ll explore connections between gender, race, war, peace, and feelings. Maintaining a critical eye for propaganda, recruitment tactics, and military-funded media production, we’ll investigate Western cultural investments in linking masculinity and feelings and how our own media consumption potentially reinforces toxic standards.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Write Now: Storytelling for the 21st Century

  •  5178 ENGL 2880   SEM 103

    • MW Uris Hall G28
    • Aug 21 - Dec 4, 2023

    • Harlan-Gran, K

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    This class will explore unique new ways that we have adapted to tell stories in the 21st century. Though technology from the pen to the printing press has long shaped how we tell stories, the last few decades of digital revolution have transformed communication more swiftly and insistently than ever before. How has globalized communication and the immediacy of information shaped ideas about art, culture, science, and politics? How do different forms of media demand different methods for communicating? What is lost or gained when we move away from the printed page? Students will write essays for various audiences analyzing media including audiobooks, video essays, alternate reality games (ARGS), and fiction and poetry published on social media apps such as Instagram and Reddit.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Creative Nonfiction: Exploring the Personal Essay

  •  6318 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. 

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • Topic: Cool Britannia: Exporting Britishness

  • 20525 ENGL 2880   SEM 105

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    A century ago, Great Britain ruled the largest empire in the history of the world. By 1960, the vast majority of that empire was independent, and the USA was the world's most powerful country—yet Britain still seemed to be everywhere. In pop music (starting with the Beatles), spy stories (James Bond), fantasy fiction (The Lord of the Rings), and costume dramas (Jane Austen any way you want her), the global Anglosphere kept buying "Britain." In this class, we will inquire about the nature of the "special relationship" between Britain and the US and the role mass culture plays in it. Readings will be drawn from popular culture, literary fiction, and theories of global power, and student writing will reflect sophisticated engagement with this material.

    Instructor Consent Required (Add)