English Courses: Required and Elective
Fall 2026: English Literature & Cultural Studies Courses
ENG 100 - Mindful Reading
Meeting Time: Tu Th 12:30-1:50
Professor: Dr. Cynthia Scheinberg
This is a course for students who like to read and discuss literature. It will cover a variety of literary forms including poetry, short fiction, novel, drama and/or non-fiction prose. Students will learn to identify the building blocks of literary genres, while also practicing interpretation, close-reading and historical contextualization. Readings and discussions will highlight how diverse identities and perspectives impact the creation and interpretation of literature, as well as discuss different attitudes to literature from different historical and national contexts. Along with an emphasis on techniques of mindful and critical reading, students will also be introduced to various modes of critical writing about literature, including personal reflection, close-reading and persuasive use of evidence.
Counts for the English Literary Studies major as well as the Social Inquiry and Humanities GE requirement. No pre-requisites or prior experience with literature required.
ENG 250.01 – Forbidden Lit
Meeting Time: Tu Fr 3:30 - 4:50
Professor: Dr. Laura D’Amore
Have you read any banned books lately? You probably have, because over the past two hundred years, a shocking array of moral, legal, and cultural justifications have gotten literary texts into all kinds of trouble, in terms of publication, distribution, or popularity. Writers are not arbiters of public opinion, and what is “acceptable,” “award winning,” or “cutting edge” in one generation might be forbidden lit in another. Reception is fickle, as social and cultural norms shift. In this course we will read American literature written since 1865, that has been forbidden either in its time or our own. We will also explore the cultural and historical contexts that have led to these ebbs and flows of taste, popularity, and even vulgarity in the literary - and audience - imagination.
Counts for the English Literary Studies major and minor as well as the Social Inquiry and Humanities GE requirement, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion GE requirement. Required for Secondary Education/English Literary Studies double majors.
ENG 280 – Women Warriors
Meeting Time: Tu Th 11-12:30
Professor: Dr. Jason Jacobs
Not all damsels are in distress, and sometimes the knight in shining armor is a woman! This course examines the figure of fighting women in pre- and early-modern literary texts, from early depictions of Amazon warriors to Joan of Arc to the female knights of Renaissance epic poetry. We will consider how women warriors fit—or don’t—into the cultural codes of warrior masculinity constructed in literary texts, and how these women challenge—or not—the ideologies of femininity shaping readers’ ideas about who and what women are or can be. And we will reflect on the striking recurrence of the theme of ‘martial maids’ in canonical literary works: the warrior woman is not a niche interest, but a cultural obsession lasting centuries. NOTE: this course is linked with Dr. D’Amore’s Spring 2027 course CULST 370: Warrior Women, which will focus on contemporary US popular culture and media. Students enrolled in ENG 280 in Fall 2026 will be granted priority registration for CULST 370 in Spring 2027.
No prerequisites (contact instructor if unable to register). Meets a major and minor requirement in English Literary Studies, required for Secondary Education/English Literary Studies double majors. Meets the Social Inquiry and Humanities GE requirement.
ENG 320 – Global Literatures: Fiction from Africa
Meeting Time: M Th 3:30-4:50
Professor: Dr. Cynthia Scheinberg
In this course, we will look at fiction (written in English) from writers representing a range of African countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Zimbabwe and South Africa, among others, with a focus on women writers. Topics will include colonial and post-colonial history, African responses to Western representations of Africa, environment and climate, gender and sexuality, exile and immigration; we will also watch a Nollywood (“Nigerian Hollywood”) film. Students will do research projects on different aspects of these national cultures and writers to contextualize our readings within the diversity of African identities and nationalities; we will devote some time to the important critical theorists in this field as well. Finally, we will consider our own positionality as U.S. based readers of African literatures, considering questions like: what responsibilities do readers have when they engage with literary traditions that are not our own, how can we consider and reconsider our different assumptions about African identity, and how reading these texts might broaden our assumptions about literature more generally. Along with weekly reading, assignments will include online discussion boards, informal responses, a final project and research presentations. This course counts toward the Global Literature requirement for English Literary Studies majors and meets Global and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion GE requirements.
ENG 481 - Senior Thesis II
Meeting Time: Tu 5-8
Professor: Dr. Jason Jacobs
In the second semester of the Senior Seminar, each student writes a substantial thesis of publishable quality based upon readings explored in ENG 480. Primarily a writing seminar, students meet individually with the professor each week to advance the draft through the writing process. Students present abstracts of their final papers at a public colloquium.
CULST 100 - Approaches to the Study of Society and Culture
Meeting Time: Tu F 2-3:20
Professor: Dr. Laura D’Amore
Meeting Time: M Th 3:30-4:50
Professor: Dr. Laura D’Amore
This course teaches students to analyze a variety of sources related to popular culture, material culture, and the built environment to examine diverse issues concerning race, class, gender, and sexuality.
Using a variety of sources, such as popular culture, material culture, and the built environment, and viewing them through diverse lenses, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion, students will practice applying the skills of retrieval, evaluation, analysis and interpretation of written, visual, and aural evidence in the construction of well-argued narratives. All students are welcome.
No prerequisites. This course is an interdisciplinary elective option for ENG majors. Required for Cultural Studies minor. Meets Social Inquiry and Humanities + Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion GE requirements.
CULST 370.01: Girl Culture
Meeting Time: M Th 2-3:20
Professor: Dr. Laura D’Amore
This course examines the lives of girls, and makes the assertion that the study of girls needs to be separated from the study of women, and from the study of children and adolescents. The experience of gender on the development of girls is profoundly affected by their social location, which is shaped by class, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, disability, and geography. This class critically examines cultural assumptions about the identities of girls, and the ways that girls are, or are not, agents of their own lives.
Using literature, popular and material culture, and film from the 20th and 21st centuries as our context, we will focus our frame on the lives of girls who experience marginalization as a result of identity factors that are out of their control. We will interrogate the assumptions that are made about their lives while centering girls’ self-representation, and tracing these patterns in the larger social context of United States history and culture.
No prerequisites. Counts as elective for the English Literary Studies major and minor, meets requirements for Cultural Studies minor, and counts toward Social Inquiry and Humanities GE requirement, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion GE requirements.
CULST 370.02: Finding Ourselves
Meeting Time: Tu Th 12:30-1:50
Professor: Dr. Jason Jacobs
This course examines narratives of self-discovery in contemporary literature and media. While the theme of self-knowledge is a constant in cultures from all over the world, going back centuries, today we mainly think of finding our “true” selves as a process of coming to terms with “who we are” as gendered and sexual beings. “Coming out” names a social process of shifting what others know about us, but this course focuses on howwe come to know ourselves as a literary and cultural phenomenon. From Glee to Genderqueer via But I’m a Cheerleader!, Call Me by Your Name, and—yes—Heated Rivalry, we will interrogate the ways available to us for telling the story of who we are.
No prerequisites. Counts as elective for the English Literary Studies major and minor, meets requirements for Cultural Studies minor, and counts toward Social Inquiry and Humanities GE requirement, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion GE requirements.
CULST 372: The Car and the World That Made It
Meeting Time: Tu 2-5
Professor: Dean Lampros
Throughout its long history, cars have always been more than a means to get from point A to point B. They have been a shifting symbol of independence, innovation, modernity, prosperity, consumerism, masculinity, and the American Dream; youth culture, rebellion, sex, and danger; both liberation and oppression for women, people of color, and immigrants; and, more recently, environmental degradation, deindustrialization, the enduring presence of labor unions, America's dependence on foreign oil, and her struggle to compete in an increasingly globalized economy. Now, in the twenty-first century, with the rise of Uber and ride-sharing apps, the advent of self-driving vehicles, a renewed emphasis on public transportation and walkability, and an entire generation that appears uninterested in driving, one cannot help but wonder whether we are witnessing the end of America's long love affair with the open road.
No prerequisites. Counts as elective for the English Literary Studies major and minor, meets requirements for Cultural Studies minor, and counts toward Social Inquiry and Humanities GE requirement, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion GE requirements.