Department of English Spring 2022 Course Offerings
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Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
ENG 101 Writing Seminar
101 001 1131 MR 10:00 am-11:15 am PC English
101 002 1132 MR 02:30 pm-03:45 pm PC English
101 003 1133 TWF 09:30 am-10:20 am PC English
101 004 1134 TWF 10:30 am-11:20 am PC English
101 005 1135 MWF 11:30 am-12:20 pm PC English
101 006 1136 MWF 12:30 pm-01:20 pm PC English
101 007 1137 MWF 01:30 am-02:20 am PC English
101 008 1138 MWF 02:30 pm-03:20 pm PC English
101 009 1139 MR 08:30 am-09:45 am PC English
101 010 1140 TWF 10:30 am-11:20 am PC English
Focuses on the creation of complex, analytic, well-supported arguments that matter in academic contexts.
Students receive regular feedback on their writing, both from their peers and the instructor, and learn flexible
strategies for revision. Assignments promote an awareness of stylistic conventions, rhetorical possibilities, and
genuine inquiry.
Fulfills Intensive Writing Level I Proficiency
For additional details on the Writing Seminar courses, please visit https://english.providence.edu/writing-courses/.
ENG 161 Introduction to Journalism
161 001 1141 W 04:00 pm-06:30 pm PC English
161 002 1142 R 04:00 pm-06:30 pm PC English
Introduces students to basic journalistic experiences including interviewing, researching, news, feature, and
sports writing. It defines both standards of journalistic writing and the legal standards that govern journalism
and combines lively writing experience with critical awareness.
Prerequisite: Intensive Writing Level I Proficiency
ENG 175 Introduction to Literature
175 001 1143 MR 10:00 am-11:15 am PC English
175 002 1144 MWF 11:30 am-12:20 pm PC English
175 003 1145 MWF 12:30 pm-01:20 pm Margaret K Reid
175 004 1146 TR 04:00 pm-05:15 pm PC English
175 005 1147 TR 11:30 am-12:45 pm Epaphras C. Osondu
175 006 1148 TR 11:30 am-12:45 pm Tuire Valkeakari
175 007 1149 TR 01:00 pm-02:15 pm Raphael Shargel
175 008 1150 TR 01:00 pm-02:15 pm John Scanlan
175 009 1151 MWF 01:30 pm-02:20 pm PC English
175 010 1152 TWF 10:30 am-11:20 am PC English
An investigation of the three main literary genres—poetry, fiction, and drama—with an emphasis on writing.
Students completing this course should be able to read with engagement and discernment, discuss literature
critically, and write analytically and with an awareness of scholarly conventions. Required for English Majors.
All others welcome.
Fulfills Intensive Writing Level I Proficiency
For additional details on the Writing Seminar courses, please visit https://english.providence.edu/writing-courses/.
1Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
ENG 185 Introduction to Creative Writing Chun Ye
185 001 1153 MR 02:30 pm-03:45 pm
Introduction to Creative Writing in fiction and poetry for Creative Writing majors and other interested
students. Classes discuss reading and writing assignments in seminar and workshop settings. Students keep
reading journals, write substantive critiques of each other’s work, and assemble a portfolio of their work
including both poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction.
ENG 202 Rhetorical Analysis PC English
202 001 2536 TR 01:00 pm-02:15 pm
This course introduces students to foundational concepts in the analysis of persuasive speech and
argumentation across various kinds of texts and media. Students will acquire a foundational knowledge of
Aristotelian rhetoric, including its contemporary adaptations and critiques. This knowledge is then applied to a
variety of discursive domains, including narrative, cultural studies, public speech acts, and digital
communication.
ENG 231 Survey of British Literature I Raphael Shargel
231 001 1154 TR 11:30 am-12:45 pm
This survey covers poetry, prose, and drama from the beginnings of English literature through the mid-
eighteenth century. For non-majors, the course will investigate a wonderful variety of rich texts. Students will
have the opportunity to work on their analytical writing skills. For majors, this course will serve as an
introduction to the "pre-1800" period, including the Middle Ages (Beowulf, Chaucer, the Gawain poet), the
sixteenth century (Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare), the seventeenth century (Donne, Herbert, Cavendish,
Milton), and the eighteenth century (Defoe, Montagu, the age of satire).
Lit Pre-1800 Elective
Fulfills Intensive Writing Level II Proficiency
ENG 265 20th Century African American Literature Tuire Valkeakari
265 001 1155 TR 01:00-02:15 pm
An introduction to twentieth-century African American fiction, autobiography, drama, and poetry, with attention to
cultural and social contexts. Careful close readings of selected texts, as well as discussions of black literary movements’
and individual authors’ understandings of the role of literary art in society. Focus on race, class, and gender; literary
representations of black identity, resistance, and freedom; and dialogue between content and literary form. Writers
include Nella Larsen, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, and Anna Deavere Smith.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Fulfills Diversity Proficiency and Intensive Writing Level II Proficiency
Cross Listed with BLS 265 001 (1156)
Cross Listed with AMS 265 001 (1157)
ENG 279 Studies In Literature: Literature of Baseball John Scanlan
279 001 1158 TR 02:30 am-03:45 pm
Baseball has always been the writer’s sport. From its beginnings in the nineteenth century, baseball has
captured the attention of poets, novelists, biographers, journalists, historians, and academics. The game
figures prominently in American autobiographies and memoirs. The nineteenth-century American poet Walt
Whitman was a fan: “[I]t’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap,
go, fling of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our
constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.” Thomas Boswell, the
2Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
contemporary sportswriter, registers another explanation: “The passion for language and the telling detail is
what makes baseball the writer’s game.”
Because of their interest in all aspects of the game, American writers have generated a vast and varied
literature about baseball. To pay respect to this compelling body of work, and to introduce you to a healthy
range of baseball literature, I’ve interpreted the word literature broadly: for our purposes, it will encompass
fiction, poetry, autobiography, journalism, biography, and history, as well as film. We’ll approach this corpus
of material more or less by subject and in historical order. Many themes will recur: race, gambling, urban life,
statistics, and technology. A special emphasis will be placed on the many ballparks and baseball diamonds
where the game has been played, especially in cities.
But we will not restrict ourselves to topics prominent in major league baseball. The ways in which everyday
people experienced and thought about baseball will be a prominent feature of the course. Among the topics
we’ll address will be fathers and sons playing catch; fathers and daughters evaluating players on the Dodgers,
Red Sox, and other teams; mothers and sisters playing professional baseball during wartime; baseball in
internment camps and prisons; children playing ball in neighborhood fields and in the streets; the Negro
Leagues; women’s softball; office softball teams and “over 50” baseball leagues; and families journeying to
Cooperstown, New York, to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, to see the plaques of their childhood heroes
and to watch the aging members of the Hall in a parade during Induction Weekend. Our course aspires to
introduce us to baseball and its meanings in the broadest possible sense. Consequently, our own interest in
the game and our own participation in it, along with our memories of doing so, will constitute an essential
element of the course, both in our conversation and in our writing.
Should you wish to speak with me further about this course, don’t hesitate to send me an email
(hambone@providence.edu).
Fulfills Intensive Writing Level II Proficiency
Cross Listed with AMS 279 001 (1159)
ENG 301 Intermediate Writing
301 001 1160 TR 01:00 pm-02:15 pm PC English
301 002 1161 MWF 01:30 pm-02:20 pm PC English
301 003 1162 TWF 09:30 am-10:20 am PC English
301 004 1163 MWF 12:30 pm-01:20 pm PC English
301 005 1164 MR 08:30 am-09:45 am PC English
301 006 1165 MWF 11:30 pm-12:20 pm PC English
301 007 1166 TWF 10:30 am-11:20 am PC English
Emphasizes argumentative writing. Students will write and discuss essays in order to master the art of
persuasion. Considerable attention will also be given to matters of style and organization.
Prerequisite: Intensive Writing Level I Proficiency
Fulfills Intensive Writing Level II Proficiency
For additional details on the Writing Seminar courses, please visit https://english.providence.edu/writing-courses/.
3Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
ENG 311 Shakespeare: History and Comedies Raphael Shargel
311 001 1167 TR 04:00 pm-05:15 pm
The histories and comedies of William Shakespeare are some of the most profound, funny, and
fascinating works in the English canon. We will investigate Shakespeare’s radical visions of power,
warfare and familial discontent in plays like Richard III and Richard II. But the main focus this
semester will be upon the comedies, including early works like the raucous The Two Gentlemen of
Verona and the fantastic Midsummer Night's Dream; intrigue-laden "middle comedies" like Much Ado
About Nothing and Twelfth Night, which form the basis for romantic comedy through the present
day; and the magnificent “problem” comedies The Merchant of Venice and Measure for
Measure.
Lit Pre-1800 Elective
Cross Listed with TDF 311 001 (1168)
ENG 312 Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances Russell Hillier
312 001 1169 M 4:00-6:30 pm
This is the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy: a disgraced Roman general bent on avenging his wounded honor
and the injustices perpetrated against his family; a tyrannicide and assassin who is at the same time a sensitive
moral philosopher; a noble Moor, a grand poetic soul broken by his manipulative, brilliant, ruthless, and
strangely motivated tormentor; a rash king, reduced to a very foolish, fond old man and bound upon a wheel
of fire; a usurping Scottish “butcher and his fiend-like queen”; a fearless and savage Roman warrior who can
play the part of patriot, traitor, outcast, and mother’s boy; and a smiling philanthropist who is transformed
into a caustic, sneering misanthrope.
And this is the stuff of Shakespearean romance: the trials of a faithful princess, wronged by her father and her
betrothed, who awakens from a drug-induced stupor to find herself lying on a Welsh hill beside a headless
corpse; the jealous torment of a mad king who defies nature and the gods, while another character exits the
stage, pursued by a bear; and the vindication of an exiled magus with the power to wield thunderbolts, bedim
the sun, and summon the walking dead from their graves.
This class is devoted to exploring a variety of Shakespeare’s better and less known tragedies and romances (or
tragicomedies, or late plays). The course will allow students to range throughout Shakespeare’s tragic and
romantic cosmoses and to undertake research within the vast commentary tradition surrounding plays that
are familiar and less familiar to them. The class will also give students the opportunity to steep themselves in
some of the finest verse in the English language, composed to last, as Ben Jonson wrote of Shakespeare
himself, “not of an age, but for all time!”
Lit Pre-1800 Elective
Cross Listed with TDF 312 001 (1170)
ENG 313 Renaissance Drama Stephen Lynch
313 001 1171 TR 11:30 am-12:45 pm
Scythian megalomaniacs, royal sodomites, over-educated practitioners of the dark arts, sociopathic infidels, crossdressing
women, cut-off index fingers, men who think they are wolves (a common condition called “lycanthropy”), and all manner
of scoundrels and shysters. In other words, we’ll have a blast. We will read plays by Seneca, Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson,
Webster, Middleton, Beaumont and Fletcher, and we’ll read a few background texts such as Lucretius, Pico, Montaigne,
and Machiavelli. Not recommended for fans of Sparknotes.
Lit Pre-1800 Elective
Cross-listed with TDF 310 001 (1172)
4Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
ENG 322 Age of Johnson John Scanlan
322 001 1173 R 4:00-6:30 pm
According to the course catalogue, this “pre-1800” course addresses the British literature of the second half of
the eighteenth century. But obviously no single course can do justice to this enormously large corpus of
literature and learning. One must make choices. So this term, I’ve founded our course on a two basic
assumptions.
First, I assume that our course will focus on the Age of Johnson, rather than the Age of Johnson. In his own
time, Samuel Johnson was widely thought to be at the center of London’s literary scene, and in concentrating
on a number of Johnson’s works, the course pays respect to the spirit of this distant time. Nevertheless, our
course will emphasize the exciting variety and arresting, comic adventurousness of the writers of the second
half of the century. The Earl of Chesterfield’s startling letters to his nine-year-old (illegitimate) son on the
proper comportment of a young gentleman and the necessity of keeping up one’s German; William
Shenstone’s intriguing reflections on gardening (“Hedges, appearing as such, are universally bad”); William
Blake’s pugnacious scratchings in the margins of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses on Art (“The Great Bacon---
he is called: I call him the Little Bacon---says that Every thing must be done by experiment”): such stuff only
hints at the strength and individuality of each writer’s delight in his or her own views and perceptions. The late
eighteenth century has justifiably also been noted for the high quality of its non-fictional intellectual prose;
accordingly, we’ll spend a fair amount of time on essays, histories, biographies, editorial works, and journals.
Second, the British literature of the second half of the eighteenth century exhibits a fascination with the entire
subject of laughter and comedy. As Johnson once said to his younger friend Boswell, “You may laugh in as
many ways as you talk.” So we’ll spend a good deal of time considering the nature and function of laughter—
an important topic in the scholarship on the eighteenth century now. Overall, I’m hoping our course will reflect
not only the seriousness with which our writers confronted various topics, but also their high-spirited, robust
zest for conversation, ideas, and life itself.
Lit Pre-1800 Elective
ENG 359 Communications Internship By Arrangement
359 001 1175
Juniors and seniors may obtain internships at local businesses and agencies to develop and apply skills in
writing and analysis in the workplace. In addition to the 10-15 hours per week of supervised experience,
students must compose and fulfill a contractual learning agreement. Pass/Fail credit only
Department Chair Permission Required.
ENG 364 Modern American Fiction Margaret Reid
364 001 1176 MWF 01:30-02:20PM
Modern American Fiction will be a discussion-based class focused on American fiction from World War 1
through approximately 1950. We will study some of the major stylists of the era, such as Fitzgerald,
Hemingway, Faulkner, and Cather, and we will also attend to the emergence of new voices in American
literature, including the Harlem Renaissance, Proletariat, and Immigrant fiction. Our major focus will be on
novels, though some short stories will be included. Students will write papers, help lead discussions, and
contribute to SAKAI forum postings.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Cross Listed with AMS 364 001 (1177)
5Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
ENG 367 Modern British and American Poetry William Hogan
367 001 1178 MR 10:00 am-11:15 am
This course is a close reading of poets in the English-speaking world from about 1890 to 1940. Yeats, Eliot,
Frost, Pound, H.D., Stevens, and Moore are among the authors included. Topics pursued are the reactions of
Modernists to 19th Century style and subject, the underlying trends of dislocation and pessimism, and the
search for new values and expressions.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Fulfills Intensive Writing Level II Proficiency
ENG 373 U.S. Fiction Since 1960 Eric Bennett
373 001 1179 MR 10:00 am-11:15 pm
Novels and stories from the twentieth century are paired thematically with more recent work. Topics may
include rock stars, professional women, racism, war, dystopia, pop culture, depression, irony, tradition, and
charismatic lists. Both analytical writing and creative writing assignments are in the mix.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Cross Listed with AMS 373 001 (1180)
ENG 376 Toni Morrison Tuire Valkeakari
376 001 1183 M 04:00 pm-06:30 pm
This reading-intensive seminar examines seven of the eleven novels written by Toni Morrison, the 1993 Nobel
laureate in literature: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, and A Mercy. We analyze
Morrison’s dialogue with African American and American history, with a focus on individual and communal
trauma, memory, and healing. We study Morrison as a literary author who, while writing about history and
society, creates memorable portraits of individuals who are caught in swirls of social currents beyond their
immediate control and find themselves responding, willingly or unwillingly, to such vicissitudes. Morrison’s
multi-voiced and multilayered lyrical prose offers endless opportunities for discussions of literary style.
Selected, accessible Morrison scholarship will be read as well, with an emphasis on race, class, and gender and
on Morrison’s strategies as a creative writer.
Each weekly session will be run as a discussion, initiated by a student presentation and by discussion questions
posted on the course web site. The coursework will include two short essays and a final research paper.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Fulfills the Diversity Proficiency core requirement
Cross Listed with BLS 376 001 (1186)
Cross Listed with AMS 376 001 (1185)
Cross Listed with WGS 376 001 (1184)
ENG 380 Creative Writing: Fiction Epaphras C. Osondu
380 001 1187 T 02:30 pm-05:00 pm
This course helps students learn to write short stories. Exercises are designed to strengthen students’ skill in
rendering the elements of fiction. All work is discussed in a workshop situation. An anthology of short stories is
read along with students’ work. A folio of exercises, short stories, and revisions provides the basis for the
course grade.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Fine Arts Core Requirement
6Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
ENG 441 Studies in Lit Post-1800: Literary Non-Fiction Alison Espach
441 001 1188 T 04:00-06:30 pm
In this course, you will practice the art of writing true stories. You will learn how magazine-length literary
nonfiction is researched, written, revised, pitched, and published. You will read and write across genre
(memoir essay, travel and nature writing, literary journalism, and more), and participate in a writing workshop
that will help you become a better writer and editor. By the end of the semester, you will emerge with a
portfolio of your own literary nonfiction and the skills needed to pitch your work to an editor. This is a
practice-based course and extensive writing experience is not a requirement.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
ENG 481 SEMINAR Post-1800: Charles Dickens Elizabeth Bridgham
481 001 1189 T 02:30 pm-05:00 pm
This seminar focuses on the works of Charles Dickens in the context of the rapidly changing cultural landscape
of Victorian England. While Dickens is best known for his iconic novels, his influence in his own day stretched
far beyond the fiction that created his literary legacy. Dickens was a journalist, an editor, an activist, a
playwright and actor, a dashing public figure, and an international celebrity.
While our primary focus will be the intensive reading of several Dickens novels, we will supplement the long
fiction with short pieces from Dickens’s journalism and with an investigation of contemporary social issues on
which the fiction comments.
Fulfills Oral Proficiency Core Requirement
Lit Post-1800 Elective
ENG 481 SEMINAR Post-1800: Women’s Experimental Fiction Alexander Moffett
481 002 1190 TWF 09:30 am-10:20 am
In this class, we will be reading a number of challenging prose texts by female authors. That adjective
"challenging" has two different aspects. On one hand, these stories and novels all show a spirit of stylistic or
generic innovation. They play with and subvert the conventions of prose fiction, often eschewing conventions
of narrative technique or style or even grammar. Consequently, they can be difficult for first time readers, but
we won’t let this difficulty deter us! We will take these narratives as challenges and study the ways in which
their experiments push the boundaries of what was considered possible in prose fictions. And these novels are
also challenging in another sense, inasmuch, as they are about difficult topics. These narratives chronicle
mental illness, isolation, sexuality, violence, trauma, and political and personal struggle in a patriarchal world.
As we read the fiction, we will be discussing these topics, and the historical contexts that helped shape them.
It's the hypothesis of this class that these two kinds of difficulty influence and shape one another and that the
experimental forms these women shape for their narratives perhaps better provide a foundation for discussing
difficult issues than a conventional narrative might. And as we test this hypothesis, we will be experiencing the
pleasure of reading some classic authors like Virginia Woolf and Nella Larsen, as well as of discovering some
that are much less widely known, such as May Sinclair, Anna Kavan, and others.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Cross Listed with WGS 470 001 (1191)
7Department of English
Spring 2022 Course Offerings
ENG 481 SEMINAR Post-1800: Literature of Spiritual Crisis Suzanne Fournier
481 003 1192 M 02:30 pm-05:00 pm
This course will examine a wide range of texts that pursue the common theme of the individual in spiritual
crisis. Our reading will consist of modern and contemporary fiction, and several films too. Seminar discussions
will focus on the protagonist confronting the extremes of human experience and explore her or his relation to
the world beyond the self. Our texts will be drawn from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Waugh’s
Brideshead Revisited, Greene’s The Power and the Glory, O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away, Endo’s Silence,
Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Robinson’s Gilead, McCarthy’s The Road, and short stories by Updike,
Solzhenitsyn, and Klay.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
American Studies Seminar
ENG 488 Seminar: Poetry Capstone Chun Ye
488 001 1193 F 02:30 pm-05:00 pm
Builds on the craft skills acquired in ENG 381 in a smaller class with an intense focus on revision and critical
reading. Students are encouraged to write more extensively while also concentrating with greater
sophistication on applying ideas about prosody, form, and subject matter. Culminates in a final portfolio of
nine polished poems.
Prerequisite: ENG 381
ENG 489 Seminar: Fiction Capstone Epaphras Osondu
489 001 1194 R 02:30 pm-05:00 pm
An advanced writing workshop, building on skills acquired in earlier English and Creative Writing courses. In
addition to reading a selection of short fiction, students are expected to write and workshop their own short
stories. At the end of the course, students submit a bound volume of their short stories prefaced with brief
scholarly introduction.
Prerequisite: ENG 380
ENG 490 001 (1195) Independent Study Staff
Department Chair Permission Required.
ENG 492 001 (1196) Publishing and Producing Alembic Staff
Department Chair Permission Required.
ENG 499 001 (1197) Senior Thesis Staff
Designed for seniors wishing to undertake a significant research project. Students work with a faculty
advisor who will guide them from the planning stages of the thesis to its completion. A written
proposal must be approved by a faculty advisor and department chair before registering. The thesis
will be evaluated by the advisor and a second reader. Department Chair Permission Required.
Lit Post-1800 Elective
Prerequisite: ENG 400
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