Whole English Catalog - University at Buffalo
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Whole English Catalog
Fall 2021
English Department News
UB English is on Twitter!! Follow us: @UBEnglish
Look for us on Facebook at: University at Buffalo English Department
The UB Seminar is the entryway to your UB education. These are “big ideas” courses taught by our
most distinguished faculty in small seminar settings. Embracing broad concepts and grand challenges,
they encourage critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and reflective discussion from across the disci-
plines. The seminars are specifically designed to address the needs of incoming freshmen and transfer
students and to prepare them for the academic expectations of a world-class research university.
For much more information, please visit our website at: English.buffalo.edu
All English CL2 courses are now at the 300-level, same title as before.
Previous CL2 courses taken prior to Fall 2021 will still fulfill their
designated requirements.
*PLEASE NOTE: Re-taking a course with the same title/new number at the
300-level will result in replacing the grade received at the 200-level.
If you need help or have questions about your CL2 requirements, please contact
your academic advisor, or CAS Advising at 716-645-6883.
Did you know…
Employers in many diverse fields - including business, law, government, research, education, publishing,
human services, public relations, culture/entertainment, and journalism - LOVE to hire English majors
because of their
ability to read and write effectively and articulately
excellent verbal communication and listening skills
capacity to think critically and creatively
comprehensive knowledge of grammar and vocabulary
ability to weigh values and present persuasive arguments
PLUS, knowledge about literature allows for intelligent conversation at work, dinner, meetings and
functions. Go English Majors!!
Visit Career Services to look at potential career paths and
to help plan your future!
UB Career Services is the place on campus to help you explore how your English major connects to vari-
ous career paths. Meeting with a career counselor allows you to explore your interests and career options
while helping you take the necessary steps to reach your goal. You can also make a same-day appoint-
ment for a resume critique, cover letter assistance, or quick question on your job or internship search.
Call 645-2231 or stop by 259 Capen Hall to make an appointment.
UB Health and Wellness:
Mental health counseling
It’s normal to be stressed out when you’re a college stu-
dent. Whether you’re worried about your grades, your
friends or a personal crisis, we’re here to help you. Coun-
seling — also known as mental health counseling — is avail-
able at no cost to all undergraduate and graduate students
currently enrolled at UB.
What to expect...
When you go to counseling, you can expect to have open
and honest discussions with a trained counselor in a safe
environment. As you talk about your feelings, behaviors,
relationships, life experiences and circumstances, your
counselor will work with you to help you identify your
strengths, find resources, and begin a process of change
and growth. Ultimately, this process is designed to help you
make healthy choices and take appropriate actions, so you
can have more satisfying relationships and make greater
progress toward your life goals.
Participation in counseling is private and confidential as
permitted by law. In fact, counselors are under ethical and legal
obligations not to release confidential information.
University at Buffalo Counseling Services
University students typically encounter a great deal of stress (i.e., academic, social, family, work,
financial) during the course of their educational experience. While most students cope successfully
with the demands of college life, for some the pressures can become overwhelming and
unmanageable. Students in difficulty have a number of resources available to them. These include
close friends, relatives, clergy, and coaches. In fact, anyone who is seen as caring and trustworthy
may be a potential resource in time of trouble. The Counseling Services office is staffed by trained
mental-health professionals who can assist students in times of personal crisis.
Counseling Services provides same-day crisis appointments for students in crisis.
Please visit our website:
http://www.student-affairs.buffalo.edu/shs/ccenter/crisis.php
Telephone: North Campus: (716) 645-2720 South Campus: (716) 829-5800
Hours: Mo, Tu, Fri: 8:30am - 5:00pm After-Hours Care: For after-hours emergencies,
We, Th: 8:30am - 7:00pm an on-call counselor can be reached by calling
Counselors also available on South Campus (2nd Campus Police at 645-2222.
floor Michael Hall offices), Monday 8:30am - Additional emergency resources can be found
7pm, Tuesday-Friday 8:30 am - 5 pm. by going to our Crisis Intervention page.
Department of English - Fall 2021
199 UB Freshman Seminar: American Proletariat Fiction T Th 9:35 Holstun
199 UB Freshman Seminar: Imagining Other Minds MWF 4:10 Hubbard
199 UB Freshman Seminar: Imagining Other Minds MWF 5:20 Hubbard
199 UB Freshman Seminar: Me?! Language and the Self T Th 2:20 Mack
199 UB Freshman Seminar: Media CSI: 50 Shades of Fake News T Th 11:10 Barber
199 UB Freshman Seminar: Real Life: Telling Stories Creatively MWF 4:10 Tirado-Bramen
199 UB Freshman Seminar: The Writing of Food Politics MWF 9:10 Lavin
199 UB Freshman Seminar: Watching Television T Th 12:45 Schmid
193 Fundamentals of Journalism (JCP Pre-requisite) W (eve) 6:30 Galarneau
211 American Pluralism in Lit & Culture T Th 12:45 Dauber
232 British Writers 2 T Th 11:10 Eilenberg
241 American Writers 1 MWF 12:40 Lindquist
242 American Writers 2 MWF 3:00 Brown
251 Short Fiction T Th 9:35 Schmid
252 Poetry MWF 11:30 Eales
253 Novel T Th 12:40 Eales
256 Film Tuesday 3:55 REMOTE Shilina-Conte
263 Environmental Humanities MWF 11:30 Cox
264 Young Adult Literature T Th 3:55 Valente
271 African American Literature MWF 10:20 Thaggert
276 Literature and the Law MWF 9:10 Lowman
301 Criticism (Criticism/Theory) T Th 2:20 Ma
309 Shakespeare, Early Plays (E) T Th 2:20 Eilenberg
320 Romantic Movement (E) T Th 3:55 Matthew
333 American Literature to the Civil War T Th 9:35 Dauber
340 Life Writing MWF 12:40 Morris-Johnson
341 Studies in African American Literature (B) MWF 3:00 Thaggert
349 Literature of Migration ONLINE Conte
* Please note: All English CL-2 courses are now at the 300-level *
350 Intro Writing Poetry/Fiction (CW) CL2 Course MWF 10:20 Neely
350 Intro Writing Poetry/Fiction (CW) CL2 Course MWF 11:30 Fang
350 Intro Writing Poetry/Fiction (CW) CL2 Course MWF 1:50 Green
350 Intro Writing Poetry/Fiction (CW) CL2 Course MWF 3:00 Johnson
350 Intro Writing Poetry/Fiction (CW) CL2 Course T Th 2:20 REMOTE McCaffery
350 Intro Writing Poetry/Fiction (CW) CL2 Course T Th 3:55 REMOTE Kim
351 Writing About the Environment CL2 Course MWF 9:10 McIntyre
351 Writing About the Environment CL2 Course MWF 11:30 McIntyre
351 Writing About the Environment CL2 Course T Th 8:00 Dickson
351 Writing About the Environment CL2 Course T Th 11:10 Dickson
352 Writing for Change CL2 Course MWF 8:00 TBA
352 Writing for Change CL2 Course MWF 1:50 Zielinski
352 Writing for Change CL2 Course T Th 9:35 Mack
352 Writing for Change CL2 Course T Th 2:20 TBA
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course MWF 8:00 Sully
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course MWF 10:20 Sully
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course MWF 12:40 Zielinski
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course MWF 1:50 Feero
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course MWF 4:10 Feero
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course T Th 8:00 Hensch
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course T Th 9:35 Hensch
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course T Th 12:45 Maitra
353 Technical Communication CL2 Course T Th 3:55 Maitra
354 Writing about Literature CL2 Course MWF 10:20 TBA
354 Writing about Literature CL2 Course MWF 12:40 TBA
355 Writing About Science CL2 Course MWF 9:10 TBA
355 Writing About Science CL2 Course MWF 11:30 TBA
355 Writing About Science CL2 Course T Th 11:10 McLaughlin
355 Writing About Science CL2 Course T Th 2:20 McLaughlin
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course MWF 8:00 Drury
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course MWF 9:10 Drury
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course MWF 11:30 Drury
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course MWF 12:40 Maxwell
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course MWF 4:10 Drury
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course T Th 8:00 TBA
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course T Th 9:35 TBA
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course T Th 2:20 Aleksandrowicz
356 Professional Writing CL2 Course T Th 3:55 Aleksandrowicz
357 How to Write Like a Journalist CL2 Course Th (eve) 6:30 Anzalone
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course MWF 8:00 Sanders
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course MWF 9:10 Sanders
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course MWF 10:20 Mitts
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course MWF 12:40 Mitts
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course MWF 1:50 Greer
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course MWF 3:00 Greer
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course T Th 8:00 Winnicki
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course T Th 9:35 Winnicki
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course T Th 11:10 Heister
358 Writing in the Health Sciences CL2 Course T Th 3:55 Heister
368 Modern & Contemporary Poetry (CW) T Th 12:45 REMOTE McCaffery
369 Literary Theory (Criticism/Theory OR Elective) T Th 11:10 Ma
370 Critical Race Theory (Criticism/Theory OR Breadth) T Th 12:45 Lim
374 Bible as Literature (E) M (eve) 6 :30 REMOTE Christian
377 Mythology (E) MWF 10:20 Schiff
379 Film Genres Thursday 3:55 REMOTE Shilina-Conte
380 New Media (JCP) MWF 11:30 Wasmoen
381 Film Directors (Off Campus) T (eve) 6:30 REMOTE Jackson
383 Studies in World Literature (B) T Th 12:45 Conte
390 Creative Writing Poetry (CW) T Th 12:45 Sharp
391 Creative Writing Fiction (CW) W (eve) 6:30 Milletti
394 Writing Workshop-Spectrum Writers AND Photographers (JCP) M 5:20 Parrino
397 Digital and Broadcast Journalism (JCP) M (eve) 6:30 Mc Shea
398 Ethics in Journalism (JCP) T (eve) 6:30 Andriatch
400 Department Honors Seminar MWF 9:10 Morris-Johnson
429 James Joyce T Th 11:10 Valente
431 Authors: Virginia Woolf & the Novel of Consciousness MWF 1:50 Hubbard
435 Advanced Creative Writing Fiction (CW) T Th 9:35 Anastasopoulos
Humanities Courses (HMN)
201 Intro to Digital Humanities MWF 1:50 Wasmoen
380 Writing Center Theory & Practice T Th 2:20 Huang
Compilation of Required Courses for the English Major
EARLY LITERATURE CRITICISM/THEORY BREADTH OF LITERARY STUDY
309 Shakespeare, Early Plays Eilenberg 301 Criticism Ma 341 Studies in African Amer. Lit Thaggert
320 Romantic Movement Matthew 369 Literary Theory Ma 370 Critical Race Theory Lim
374 Bible as Literature Christian 370 Critical Race Theory Lim 383 Studies in World Lit Conte
377 Mythology Schiff
UB Freshmen and Transfer Student Seminars
The UB Seminar is the entryway to your UB education. These are “big ideas” courses
taught by our most distinguished faculty in small seminar settings. Embracing broad
concepts and grand challenges, they encourage critical thinking, ethical reasoning,
and reflective discussion from across the disciplines. The seminars are specifically
designed to address the needs of incoming freshmen and transfer students and to
prepare them for the academic expectations of a world-class research university.
All entering freshmen and transfer students (domestic and international) coming to
UB with under 45 credits take a three-credit UB Seminar.
Having completed a three-credit UB Seminar, you will be able to:
Think critically using multiple modes of inquiry.
Analyze disciplinary content to identify contexts, learn fresh perspectives, and
debate and discuss problems in the field.
Understand and apply methods of close reading, note taking, analysis, and
synthesis.
Recognize and debate ethical issues and academic integrity in a variety of
settings.
Demonstrate proficiency in oral discourse and written communication.
Develop essential research and study skills, such as time management.
Use an ePortfolio for at least one assignment.
Understand the academic expectations pertaining to being a student at the
University at Buffalo and to higher learning at a research university.
199 UB Freshman Seminar, T Th, 9:35-10:50 , Reg. No. 20900
Professor James Holstun: American Proletariat Fiction
This will be a class about work and writing: about the life stories of working people from around the
world, and about the fiction that great modern authors have written about them.
We will be reading:
Agnes Smedley, Daughter of Earth (US, 1929): autobiographical novel about Smedley’s life in the
country, mining towns, and New York City, sometimes called the founding US proletarian novel.
Kang Kyŏng-ae, From Wŏnso Pond (Korea, 1936): Korean peasants and house servants
under stress, and their flight to Seoul and Inchŏn.
William Attaway, Blood on the Forge (US, 1941): A novel of the Great migration: Black
rural Southern brothers and their flight to a Pennsylvania industrial town.
Sembène Ousmane, God’s Bits of Wood (Senegal, 1960): brilliant novel about women’s
work, labor organization, and a railway strike in late forties Senegal and Mali.
William Attaway Continued...
Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun (Palestine, 1961): on the quest for work by displaced Palestinians—a
brief epic of the Persian Gulf proletariat.
Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (US, 1992): the Great Buffalo Novel, about growing up a butch
working-class lesbian in the bars and factories of Western New York.
We’ll also be reading first-person non-fiction workers’ narratives in connection with each work. You’ll
be writing semiformal twice-a-week essays on the readings (5-10 minutes each), a five-page analysis
at mid-semester, and an expanded ten-page version at the end. Write me in August for the final
syllabus and information on buying inexpensive copies of the books. I’m happy to Zoom with you
before then if you want to talk more about the course: jamesholstun@hotmail.com.
199 UB Freshman Seminar, Professor Stacy Hubbard: Imagining Minds
Imagining Other Minds: Aliens, Animals, Autists and AI
2 sections available:
MWF, 4:10-5:00 , Reg. No. 17393 or MWF 5:20-6:10, Reg. No. 18421
This course asks the question, how can we imagine ways of perceiving, thinking and communicating that
differ radically from normative human consciousness and language? To what degree do normative
bodies and brains prevent us from grasping other forms of intelligence? And what role does narrative
play in allowing us to imagine ways of thinking outside the norm or even outside the human? In
exploring these questions, we will cull insights from fiction, film, animal studies, plant studies,
cognitive science, disability studies and computer science. We’ll consider how plants communicate
and socialize, why octopuses are so difficult for humans to relate to, whether an ocean planet might
have its own mind, how an autistic narrator opens up new dimensions of narrative space and time,
how aliens might choose to communicate with us, and whether it’s possible for humans to make
computers smarter than themselves. We’ll do a lot of reading, viewing, talking, researching and
writing. Students will learn to think about a complex question across
different disciplines, and will become familiar with library resources for
research and various genres for analysis and presentation: blogging,
analytical essays, Slidecasts, and oral presentations. In addition to discuss-
ing our readings, we’ll spend some time working on library skills, time
management, study skills and writing strategies, and getting familiar with
university resources. This course may be of interest to students of
literature (including science fiction), linguistics, animal behavior, biology,
computer science, cognitive science and psychology.
Readings include Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Ted ChIang’s “The
Lifecycle of Software Objects,” Paul Auster’s Timbuktu, and selections from Michael Berube’s The
Secret Life of Stories, Franz de Waal’s Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?,
Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus, Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, and short
readings by David Foster Wallace, Temple Grandin, Alan Turing, Nnedi Okorafor, Franz Kafka, and
others. We will also watch and discuss the films Her and Arrival.
199 UB Freshman Seminar, Tuesday/Thursday, 2:20-3:35
Reg. No. 18422, Professor Ruth Mack: Me?! Language and the Self
Explores ways that language—particularly figurative language such as metaphors—help construct our
sense of who we are in relation to other groups and categories of people. Are you described or
perceived as nurdy, cool, fat, thin, large, small, handsome, pretty, homely, black, brown, white,
quick, slow? What do these categories mean? Who influences definitions? How does lan-
Continued...
guage of popularity, weight, race, appearance, or other descriptive categories (whether essentializ-
ing or superficial) impact your life? Language can push us to think more inclusively about ourselves,
others, and all things in the world, but it can also carry embedded assumptions that influence our
perception and thought. Through reading journalism, literature, advertisements, and any other kind
of print that engages in description of people or human
behavior, students in this class will become more sensitive to
the politics of daily language use and the significance of
nuance in communication; they will develop finer strategies
for analyzing what they hear and read; and they will develop
strategies for constructing (more) adequate forms of
language use in response to important ideas of our time.
199 UB Freshman Seminar, Tuesday/Thursday, 11:10-12:25
Reg. No. 17392, Jamie Barber: CSI Media, 50 Shades of Fake News
Be a media detective. Learn to differentiate credible news sites from bad, fake news from real and
opinion from fact. Find out about the role and responsibility of journalism and why it should matter to
you. This class will ask questions about where information originates and the motivations of those
producing, spreading and sharing it. It will push you to consider your media diet and how it affects
your life and your understanding of the world. Bring your cellphone to class and get ready uncover
your own biases.
199 UB Freshman Seminar, MWF, 4:10-5:00 , Reg. No. 19295
Professor Carrie Tirado-Bramen: Real Life - Telling Stories Creatively
Our current moment marks a golden age of creative nonfiction. Some of the most dynamic and
innovative writing is happening in this genre – from memoirs and personal essays to travel writing
and investigative reporting. This genre also has a rich history and we will scratch the surface of a few
of its twentieth-century highlights from Virginia Woolf and John Hersey to James Baldwin and Roxane
Gay before moving on to contemporary examples. We will consider issues of ethics in telling true
stories, and what it means to write from "real life." We will also explore the meaning of “creative” in
discussing the genre of “creative nonfiction: does “creative” emphasize artistry and craft in addition
to truthfulness? What role does accuracy play? We will also discuss the elements of craft that creative
nonfiction borrows from fiction, including voice, description, point of view, story and dialogue. This
course will not be a creative writing workshop, but it will be a course that delves into this rich and
expansive genre as readers equipped with an analytical eye and a curious mind.
199 UB Freshman Seminar, MWF, 9:10-10:00, Reg. No. 20592
Professor Chad Lavin: The Writing of Food Politics
In recent years, the politics of food has become a focus of both academic and popular attention. In
this seminar, we will read one of the most influential food books of recent memory (Michael Pollan's,
The Omnivore's Dilemma), and a handful of essays that have helped determine how scholars,
pundits, citizens, and policymakers think about food. The aim of this class is not to examine how or
what we should eat, but rather how people think and write about the food system, and how discours-
es of food are implicated in specific organizations of power in modern society. These assigned texts
will open into discussions of a variety of concepts, such as humanity, property, labor, equality,
gender, responsibility, and death. Your assignments will ask you to explore how books and ideas get
“digested.”
199 UB Freshman Seminar, T Th, 12:45–2:00 , Reg. No. 19998
Professor David Schmid: Watching Television
“Watching Television” explores the history and aesthetics of television genres from the beginning of
commercial television broadcasting in the post-World War II United States to the present day. The
class will focus on genres such as drama, soap opera, situation comedies, the western, science
fiction, and reality television, focusing on the beginnings of these genres, their maturation and
development, and the reasons for their eventual decline or remarkable persistence. Along the way,
we will discuss who watches television and why, how television shapes our view of the world and of
each other, how television provides a window on a society’s values, and how and why those values
change over time. Through watching and discussing examples of television genres, as well as
through reading both popular and academic discourses about television, students in this class will
become more sensitive to the formal and historical nuances of a medium it is easy to take for
granted. Students will also develop both strategies for analyzing what they hear and read and ways
of understanding how popular culture both reflects and influences our opinions about a wide range
of subjects, including race, gender, class, disability, social mobility, and Americanness.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attend class and participate in class discussion.
“Reflections”: brief informal written assignments of around 300 words reflecting on some
aspect of what we’ve watched and discussed in class.
A 4-page midterm paper related to some aspect of the course materials during the first
half of the semester.
7-page research essay on a subject chosen by you on some aspect of course reading and
discussion.
* * * *
193 Fundamentals of Journalism
Andrew Galarneau
Wednesdays (eve) 6:30-9:10
Reg. No. 15648
This course is a gateway into the Journalism Certificate program and teaches students to research, report and write
news and feature stories for print, broadcast and the web. It also provides an overview of American journalism
standards and an introduction to American media and press law.
Students learn to conduct interviews, use quotes, and write in Associated Press style. They also learn the im-
portance of accuracy, integrity and deadlines. Students analyze the merit and structure of good (and bad) news sto-
ries and focus on how journalists tell stories differently in print, radio, TV and on the web.
Students will have in-class quizzes and take-home writing exercises, designed to help them master the fundamen-
tals of news writing. Those include two stories that students will take from start to finish: shaping a story idea, iden-
tifying sources and interviewing them, crafting the material into final written form. In addition to a textbook, stu-
dents will read selected stories in class pertinent to class discussions.
This course is a Pre-requisite to the Journalism
Certificate Program.
211 American Pluralism in Lit & Culture
Professor Kenneth Dauber
T Th 12:45 - 2:00
Reg. No. 22220
The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the issue of “pluralism” in the United States, both its promises and its
problems, through literature mostly of the classic period of America, where pluralism is addressed not primarily as a
sociological or empirical matter, but as a fundamental question of the idea of American society. What keeps us, as a
nation, together? What do “we” have in common, and what separates us? What difference do differences themselves
make? Is there such a thing as an American “we”? In literature from the founding of the United States as an independent
country to its near break-up in a bloody Civil War, this was not a trivial question. Nor, as we shall see in the coda at the
end of the course--Harper Lee’s two novels--has it become any less vexing. The course takes no political stance. It is not
“liberal” or “conservative.” But it does attempt to give you the tools for understanding better what is at stake in your own
and others’ political proclivities, to give you terms and frames for understanding provided by some of the important
writers who were not philosophers or historians or academics of any sort, but who, because they saw themselves as
Americans concerned with the nature of America, had inevitably to deal with the issue. Works will include books by
Benjamin Franklin (inventor of “the American), Charles Brockden Brown (the “first” American novelist), J.F. Cooper
(inventor of the “western”), Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of the most popular novel produced in America until the
twentieth century, on slavery), Frederick Douglass (abolitionist, former slave), Hawthorne (on socialism and the relation
between men and women), and Harper Lee (whose second published novel considerably revises the portrait of race
relations she draws in “To Kill a Mockingbird”).
232 British Writers 2
Professor Susan Eilenberg
T Th 11:10 - 12:25
Reg. No. 21120
This course is designed as a survey of prose fiction and poetry written in England or English between the Romantic Period
and the present. We shall be reading fiction by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, and (possibly) Penelope
Fitzgerald, together with poems by Blake, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Thomas, Yeats, Auden, and Heaney. We shall
discuss representations of consciousness in the world and the work that genre and style do. We shall discuss too what
makes a poem a poem, what makes a novel a novel, and how a work lets you know how it wants to be read.
The written work for the course will consist of frequent, digitally shared annotations on the reading, two short essays, an
outline of a major scholar’s essay on an aspect of our reading, a midterm exam, a final analytical paper of medium length,
and a final exam.
241 American Writers 1
Andrew Lindquist
MWF 12:40 - 1:30
Reg. No. 17045
Last January, thousands of Americans (call them what you will: protestors, rioters, insurrectionists) stormed the capitol
building in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to forcibly bring to a halt the counting of votes in what they believed
(incorrectly) to be a fraudulent election. Many of you reading this may well have your own ideas about what this event
means and what the people who participated in it represent. But of critical importance is how these protestors-turned-
rioters-turned-insurrectionists perceived themselves. The rhetoric of
participants was steeped in appeals to “patriotism,” signaling a host of
conceptual touchstones central to liberal political theory: individual
rights, the demos as the source of political power, and the obligation of
the public to discard tyrannical governments—ideas that are seemingly
rooted in 18th-century documents like the Constitution and the Declara-
tion of Independence. Indeed, one participant, upon the breach of the
Capitol building, posted the following to his Facebook account:
“Freedom!!!!!!! It’s 1776, the American people have ears and eyes.” Yet
the gap in how this event is currently understood is startling: What
many have called an insurrection and a direct assault on the democratic
institutions of America others perceive as a refiguration of that most
fundamental of “patriotic” events, the American
Continued...Revolution. We might well ask ourselves: What does it mean to be “an American,” or, more broadly, to be “in America”?
To really understand our current political and social climate, we would do well to look back into our national past and
come to terms with how questions of nation, belonging, and revolution (highly contested issues in the 18th and 19th
centuries) circulated in the early American imaginary.
This course will do just that, broadly covering the period from the American to the outbreak of the Civil War. By
examining the literary works of well-known authors like James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, and Herman Melville, we will immerse ourselves in messiness and ambivalence that defined the responses to the
questions posed at the end of the previous paragraph. From its political inception, we will see, America has been
ambiguous. Indeed, we will also explore how ideas of Indigeneity and “Indianness,” as well as the social and economic
centrality of chattel slavery, gave shape and contour to a uniquely American consciousness. As such, we will spend a great
deal of time examining African-American authors like Martin Delany, Phillis Wheatley, and William Wells Brown, as
well as Indigenous writers and interlocutors like Joseph Brant (Mohawk), Samson Occom (Mohegan), and William Apess
(Pequot). Together, these texts give us a critical understanding of how Anglo-Saxon, Indigenous, and Black literary
traditions operated as a staging ground in which these communities articulated and negotiated their positions alongside and
within the emergent American nation, reformulating, in the process, the meaning of “American.”
242 American Writers 2
Zack Brown
MWF 3:00 - 3:50
Reg. No. 19999
In this course we will study post-Civil War US literature from 1865-present. The historical period covered by this course
was one of great change and upheaval: it begins at the end of the US Civil War and moves through the failings of
Reconstruction and the racist violence that followed, the beginnings of the US Empire with the Spanish-American War,
and the 20th century’s world wars, pandemics, genocides, fascism, the specter of nuclear oblivion, the rise and fall of the
Soviet Union, and the rise of neoliberalism. It was also a period of great social struggle and progress: the Civil Rights
movement, women’s liberation, labor rights movements, and LGBTQ+ rights movements, among others.
Our studies in this course will consider how writers responded to, critiqued, or celebrated these changes through
literature. What is literature’s role in a period of such extended change, violence, and contradictory progress? What is the
purpose of writing in moments of upheaval, change, or even chaos? And how might we apply the answers to these
questions in our own time, with its own great changes, including climate change, crises of capitalism, and the current
pandemic? We will attempt to answer these questions through close study of writers such as Charles Chesnutt, Edith
Wharton, Richard Wright, Truman Nelson, Octavia Butler, and Toni Morrison.
251 Short Fiction
Professor David Schmid
T Th 9:35 - 10:50
Reg. No. 22221
The purpose of this class is to introduce you to the genre of short fiction. We will read a wide variety of authors who write
about an extraordinary range of subjects. Throughout the semester, our discussions of the genre will have a dual focus. We
will be attentive to the formal characteristics of the short story, such as character development, plotting, and point of view,
and we will also examine what these stories have to tell us about the cultures that produce them. By the end of the semester,
I hope that we will all have a better understanding of what short fiction does, how it does it, and what it can do that no other
literary genre can.
Course Texts
Our main text will be The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, Shorter 8th Edition, edited by Richard
Bausch & R.V. Cassill. Although the emphasis of this class is on breadth of coverage, I also want us to
study one author in more depth. To this end, we will also read Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber.
Course Requirements
Completion of all reading and writing assignments (reading notes throughout the semester, two 5-7 page
papers, and one final assignment). Participation in class discussion.252 Poetry
Simon Eales
MWF 11:30 - 12:20
Reg. No. 20000
This course will cover a long history of English-language poetry, thinking through how poetry responds to the social and
political contexts in which it is produced. We will ask how poetry of different periods confronts increasingly oppressive
working conditions, racism, gender inequality, and many other social justice issues, and what kind of liberatory force
these poems had and maybe still have. With particular attention to what kind of differences inhere in poetry and prose and
their history in relation to one another, we will pay attention to formal properties of poetry and think through how
historical trends in form respond to changes in politics, culture, and language.
The course will begin with a brief history of poetic form in the English language and some early British poets, but we will
spend the majority of the course looking at major American poets and poetic movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Poets and texts covered will include Anglo-Saxon epic poetry, the anti-colonial 18th C. poetry of Robert Burns, Walt
Whitman’s 19th “Song of Myself,” the anti-capitalist early 20th C. poetry of Lola Ridge and Carl Sandburg, and various
modern and contemporary poets from movements as varied as the Beats, confessionalism, deep image, and Language
poetry. We will focus most especially on African American poetry, including slave songs, Frances Harper’s post-Civil
War epic on Biblical slave rebellion, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s realist dialect poems, and 20th C. poets of the Harlem
Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement.
Assignments will include two essays, alongside weekly writing assignments that emphasize the importance of continuous
application of effort in reading and analysis. Opportunities to respond to course materials creatively and try different
poetic forms will also be offered.
253 Novel
Simon Eales
MWF 12:40 - 1:30
Reg. No. 24727
"The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words" — Ursula Le Guin.
This course is an introduction to the genre of the novel. While many other introductions to this literary form follow the
Anglo-American literary canon, we will not be limiting ourselves to a single tradition, time period, or geographical region.
As literary theorist Rosa Mucignat's explains, the novel has "always flourished in a multilingual, cross-cultural traffic of
ideas." Building on this insight, we will examine the novel as a technology that has undergone persistent innovation
around the world from the seventeenth century to today.
We will be guided by some fundamental questions as we read six important examples of the genre: why this novel at this
point in time, at this place in the world? How is this novel used as a connective or disruptive device between cultures?
And what does this novel reveal as only a novel can? We will presume that novelists invite readers like us into new
worlds. We will subsequently investigate how they make this invitation and how they convince us to remain there.
The texts we will read in their entirety are: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (England, 1688); Leo Tolstoy's Hadji Murat (Russia,
1912); Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (United States, 1937); Miguel Ángel Asturias' Men of Maize
(Guatemala, 1949); Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (India, 1997); and Abdulrazak Gurnah's Afterlives
(Tanzania/UK, 2020). In these books we should expect to find themes of colonialism, identity, love, and magic. We'll
come across beautiful landscapes and cutting-edge experiments with language. Assessment will involve a long and a short
essay and two quizzes.256 Film
Professor Tanya Shilina-Conte
Tuesdays 3:55 - 6:35 REMOTE
Reg. No. 19047
Film: Color and the Moving Image
A feast for the eyes, this class will take you on an over-the-rainbow tour of color theory and history in film studies.
“There never was a silent film,” Irving Thalberg famously declared, and just as with sound, color has accompanied
cinema since its inception. Early filmmakers employed applied processes such as hand painting, stenciling, tinting and
toning, long before the advent of such photographic color film systems as Technicolor and Eastmancolor.
First, we will examine color in the context of media
technology development, ranging from the suppression
of color in film history to the digital archiving, restora-
tion, and preservation of films in the post-cinematic age.
After a brief historical overview of cinematic color, we
will concentrate on its role in different cultures and
aesthetic traditions of representation. We will analyze the
color palettes of individual directors, tackle the concept
of synesthesia, and consider color’s ability to create
cross-communication among the senses, including
hearing, smell, and touch. Topics for discussion and
writing assignments for this class will also link the role
of color in contemporary media to such sociopolitical
aspects as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, environ-
ment, and censorship.
From the point of view of visual literacy studies, color is central to our experience of media and comprises an important
aspect of film narrative. As an integral part of the mise-en-scène, it intersects with other elements of cinematic construc-
tion such as lightning, camera work, sound, framing, and editing. Focusing on the role of color in cinema, this course
will introduce students to film terminology, deepen their understanding of cinema as an art form, help them to learn skills
and methods of film analysis, and sharpen their ability to generate and articulate critical responses to films through a
series of writing assignments.
263 Environmental Humanities
Brent Cox
MWF 11:30 - 12:20
Reg. No. 21123
“The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni”
“Everything is connected to everything else.”
The First Law of Ecology, Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle
“In an era marked by climate change, rapid urbanization, and new geographies of resource scarcity, Environmental Studies
has emerged as an important scholarly arena for engaging pressing questions in an interdisciplinary way,” write the editors
of Environment and Society: A Reader (2017). In this course we will survey the Environmental Humanities, with an
emphasis on how interdisciplinarity, interconnection, and entanglement, that is, how the ecological idea that “everything is
connected to everything else” has shaped the literary, philosophical, and aesthetic practices broadly understood as “the
humanities.” Our goal is to get a sense of the major issues in the field of Environmental Humanities, and to answer the
question, “What can literature, poetry, art, and philosophy contribute to the Environmental Sciences?”
Poets, artists, and philosophers have always contemplated the relationship between humans and the natural world, with
one enduring example being Shelley’s lines written in the Vale of Chamouni. Indeed, some of our basic aesthetic concepts,
like beauty and sublimity, relate directly to our experience of nature, and therefore cannot be thought without also
thinking, and perhaps re-thinking, our conception of “nature” and the “environment.” So we will have to examine these
concepts just as closely as we must examine our ideas about “culture.” Environmentally-minded literary activity remains
one of our richest inheritances, and it also happens to be, not accidentally, one of the most incredible sites of
Continued...experimentation in literary and aesthetic form.
Students will be required to write weekly reading responses, a mid-semester 4-5 page essay, and a final 8-page essay that
demonstrates understanding of how environmental science and humanistic inquiry can inform each other in mutualistic
symbiosis.
Our syllabus will be composed of readings across many literary forms, including poetry, fiction, philosophy, and the es-
say. We will also examine ecologically minded interdisciplinary and multi-media artworks, including paintings, installa-
tions, “happenings,” ecoart, film/documentary, and collective research programs that typify some of the most exciting
contemporary work in the Environmental Humanities. Along with readings from major recent anthologies in the Environ-
mental Humanities, some authors and artists under consideration might include: ]Matsuo Bashō, Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Ursula K. Le Guin, ecopoetics
journal, Susan Howe, Jordan Abel, Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge, Cecilia Vicuña, Nathaniel Mackey, Ana Mendiata, Kim Stan-
ley Robinson, The Harrison Studio, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Agnes Denis, Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton,
Lynn Margulis, Sky Hopinka, Kevin Jerome Everson, Metahaven, The Otolith Group, Karen Barad, Reza Negarestani,
Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler.
264 Young Adult Literature
Professor Joseph Valente
T Th 3:55 - 5:10
Reg. No. 19048
In this course, we will be looking at the recently popular genre of fiction known as the young adult novel. We will
examine the kinds of narrative and symbolic techniques that such novels use to advance the challenge, refute or reinforce,
existing cultural assumptions and ideologies. We will further explore how the representation of youthful growth and
development intersect with cultural models of masculinity and femininity, with constructs of race and ethnicity, with
issues of disability and sexual preference, and with the various social pressures encumbering young lives, such as body
shaming. We will begin with novels from the mid-twentieth century origins of the young adult genre and rapidly move
into the contemporary era.
271 African American Literature
Professor Miriam Thaggert
MWF 10:20 - 11:10
Reg. No. 20282
African American Literature Before 1900
This survey course draws upon The 1619 Project, published by the New York Times in 2019, which tells the story of the
nation through the experiences of those who were enslaved in the U.S. and Caribbean. You will have the opportunity to
read both classic and little-known slave narratives such as The Narrative of Harriet Tubman and The Narrative of Henry
“Box” Brown and we will seek to understand why slavery still impacts twenty-first century American life and culture.
We will also discuss the distinctions between male and female slave narratives, the African American’s transition from
slavery to nominal freedom, early versions of the African American novel; the origins of various racial stereotypes; and
early film representations of the Black image. There will be a significant focus on the writings of Charles Chesnutt, one
of the most prolific early African American writers and an author who wrote in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Read-
ings will be supplemented by films, photography, and audio recordings. Class requirements include quizzes, class partici-
pation, discussion questions, and two papers.
276 Literature and the Law
Nicole Lowman
MWF 9:10 - 10:00
Reg. No. 22223
“And we hate po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure.” —Kendrick Lamar, “Alright,” 2015.
“The projects in Harlem are hated. They are hated almost as much as policemen, and this is saying a great deal. And they
are hated for the same reason: both reveal, unbearably, the real attitude of the white world, no matter how many liberal
speeches are made, no matter how many lofty editorials are written, no matter how many civil rights commissions are set
up.” —James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,” 1960.
For our purposes, “the law” will involve how legal policy is enacted and enforced by state agents and vigilantes. We’ll
begin with the beginnings of policing in United States—slave patrols—and continue our survey to the
Continued...present day, reading, watching, and analyzing novels, essays, documentary films, and hip hop music. We’ll be particularly
interested in rhetorical representations of crime and criminals and how race is included in or erased from that rhetoric.
We will address a series of questions this semester, including: How do we identify a “crime”? How have U.S. legal docu-
ments conceived of race and criminality? In what ways has that changed? How have literature, film, and music responded
to these legal conceptions?
Primary texts might include:
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me
Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give
Toni Morrison’s Beloved
Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions
essays by James Baldwin, Malcom X, Angela Davis, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro
Ava DuVernay’s 13th and Selma
music by Kendrick Lamar, Killer Mike, Childish Gambino, Jay-Z, and The Notorious B. I. G.
student suggestions
To provide legal, historical and cultural contexts for our primary texts, we will also look at excerpts from the U.S. Consti-
tution, the Fugitive Slave Act, FBI documents, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and Alex Vitale’s The End of
Policing.
301 Criticism
Professor Ming-Qian Ma
T Th 2:20 - 3:35
Reg. No. 14674
Designed as a survey class, English 301 is intended to introduce students to literary criticism of the 20th-Century, with an
emphasis on the post-1960s period. Chronological in approach, it will study the representative texts of various schools of
criticism, focusing on the basic terms, concepts, and methodologies. The goals of this course are 1) to learn and
understand the principles and paradigms of each kind of criticism; 2) to become critically aware of not only the
ramifications but also the limitations of literary theory; 3) to rethink and question such notions as “innocent reading” or
“purely spontaneous response”; and 4) to learn a range of interpretative methods.
Class requirements include regular attendance, active participation in class discussions, quizzes, response papers to
readings, and a 6-8 page term paper at end of the course.
The primary texts for the course are:
Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd. Edition. Edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Blackwell, 2004.
(ISBN: 1-4051-0696-4)
Billy Budd and Other Tales, by Herman Melville, with a new introduction by Joyce Carlos Oates. Signet Classic, 1998.
(ISBN: 0-451-52687-2)
(Supplementary reading materials in criticism will be distributed when needed.)
309 Shakespeare, Early Plays
Professor Susan Eilenberg
T Th 2:20 - 3:35
Reg. No. 19052
This course will be devoted to a reading of some of the poems and plays Shakespeare
wrote in the earlier part of his career. We shall look at some of the sonnets; a number of
comedies, including The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Much Ado About
Nothing; and one of the so-called problem plays, Measure for Measure. As we read, we
shall trace the emergence of the uneasy problem of identity (including gender identity) and
its increasingly rich relation to ideas of justice, imagination, nature, and art.
I could tell you how good, how rich, how enthralling all this material is, but surely every-
one reading this description knows that already. Students will write two informal respons-
es to their reading, a midterm exam, an outline of a major scholar’s essay, a term paper of medium length, and a final ex-
am. They will also write and digitally share (by means of Perusall) their comments on each session’s reading.
This course satisfies an Early Literature requirement.320 Romantic Movement
Professor Patricia Matthew
T Th 3:55 - 5:10
Reg. No. 24752
Description TBA
This course satisfies an Early Literature requirement.
333 American Literature to the Civil War
Professor Kenneth Dauber
T Th 9:35 - 10:50
Reg. No. 22224
We will study the major writers of the classic period of American literature. This is the period in which Americans were
coming to terms with their new nation, asking questions about who they were, what their future might bring, and what the
shape of their culture ought to be, questions perennially relevant. Authors will include Benjamin Franklin (the creator of
the “American dream”), James Fenimore Cooper (inventor of the Western and its mythic outcast hero), Ralph Waldo
Emerson (the father of American philosophy), Edgar Allan Poe (inventor of the mystery story), Harriet Beecher Stowe
(author of the most popular novel in America until well into the twentieth century), Frederick Douglass (slave and leading
abolitionist), Nathaniel Hawthorne (descendent of a judge at the Salem witch trials who takes the measure of America’s
immigrant origins), and Herman Melville (author of what is, arguably, “the great American novel”). What do these
writers think about the proper relation of selves to community, of what “democracy” might mean in politics and in
writing? What holds a nation of immigrants together? Does “sentiment” or “reason” bind us? What is the role of
skepticism? And, most importantly, what constitutes the “Americanness” of American writing?
340 Life Writing
Professor Nicole Morris-Johnson
*Formerly ENG 354 MWF 12:40 - 1:30
Reg. No. 22225
21st-Century African American Memoir
Contemporary African American memoirists inherit a tradition that dates back to the narrative of emancipation and the
key motifs featured therein: self-creation and self-emancipation. These points of focus remain central even as the scope of
Black life writing expands through the 19th and 20th centuries to include the use of life writing as a form of protection and
as a means for reflecting on one’s journey to becoming an artist. How, through its public theorizing of the interior lives of
Black folks, does 21st-century life-writing continue these legacies?
Taking seriously Imani Perry’s warning that “…in the current landscape, when Black life is so varied and complex, no
memoir can stand as a singular representation of Black life,” students in ENG 354 will examine a range of 21st-century
Black memoir and life writing. Engaging authors such as Saidiya Hartman, Ta-Nehesi Coates, Kiese Laymon, and Roxane
Gay, participants in this course will explore a variety of snapshots of contemporary Black life. Students will consider how
life writers navigate the formal challenges that, as Hazel Carby suggests, “traditional narratives like memoirs or autobiog-
raphy” present, such as lacking the capacity to encompass the complicated stories that BIPOC have both inherited and in-
habited -- this in part because these forms “impose conventions of unity, and the stories we need to explore and expose
are, by their very nature, fragmented.” Students will also consider how contemporary reflections of Black lives found in
memoir are influenced by and/or differ from the methods of constructing and presenting the self in today’s social media
culture.341 Studies in African American Lit
Professor Miriam Thaggert
MWF 3:00 - 3:50
Reg. No. 20283
Topics in African American Literature: Literature and Social Justice
Exploring different forms of autobiographical expression, including poetry, narrative prose, digital media, scrapbooks,
diaries or journals, and photography, this class will introduce you to the theories that define the genre of autobiography.
The class takes its title from one of the more significant autobiographies recently published, Michelle Obama’s Becoming
(2018). Beginning with that text and considering the personal and narrative choices that influenced the final book, we will
continue to explore the memoirs and life writings of African Americans in different historical periods. What shaped the
African American autobiographical tradition? What aesthetic questions does a writer consider when crafting a life story?
Likely texts include: Gwendolyn Brooks, Report From Part One; Langston Hughes, The Big Sea; Malcolm X, The Autobi-
ography of Malcolm X, and Angela Davis, Autobiography. In addition to quizzes, short responses, and a paper, you will
have the option to create a final autobiographical project or complete a final paper.
This course satisfies a Breadth of Literary Study Requirement.
349 Literature of Migration
Professor Joseph Conte
*Formerly ENG 350
ONLINE COURSE
Reg. No. 22226
The path of immigration into the United States extends from the halls of Ellis Island to the globalized migration of the
twenty-first century. First-generation immigrants are often driven to these shores by the blight of poverty or the sting of
religious or political persecution; hope to make for themselves a fabled but often factitious “better life”; and are riven
between the desire to retain old-world customs and language and the appeal of new-world comforts and technological
advances. Second-generation immigrants face the duality of a national identity—striving to become recognized as “real
Americans”—and an ethnic heritage that they wish to honor and sustain but which marks them as always an “other.” Here
we encounter the hyphenated status of the preponderance of “natural born” American citizens. The third-generation
descendent will have only indirect or acquired familiarity with his or her ethnic heritage; the loss of bilingualism or at best
a second language acquired in school; and frequently a multiethnic identity resulting from the complex scrabble of
American life in a mobile, suburban, and professionalized surrounding.
We will view films and read a selection of both fiction and memoir that reflect the
immigrant experience in this country. Jacob Riis documents the penury and hardship of
tenement life among the newly arrived underclass in How the Other Half Lives (1890).
Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers (1925) treats the conflict between a devout,
old-world Jewish father and a daughter who wishes to be a modern independent woman.
We’ll want to compare Yezierska’s immigrant experience of 1900 with the Soviet-era
migration of Russian Jews to New York in Gary Shteyngart’s comic autobiography
Little Failure (2014). Mount Allegro (1989), Jerre Mangione’s memoir of growing up in
the Sicilian enclave of Rochester, NY, portrays ethnicity that is insular, protective of its
“imported from Italy” values, and yet desperate to find recognition as an authentic
version of “Americanness.” The film Big Night (1996), directed by Campbell Scott and
Stanley Tucci, serves up Italian food with abbondanza, “rich abundance,” but not a
single Mafioso. In his long career as an English teacher and barroom raconteur, Frank
McCourt preserved the harrowing story of his youth in Limerick, Ireland and New York
for Angela’s Ashes (1997) and ‘Tis (1999); like so many immigrant families, the McCourts re-emigrated between
transatlantic failures. We’ll screen the film adaptation of Angela’s Ashes, directed by Alan Parker, and read the second
volume of his autobiography. Junot Díaz, in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), follows the “Ghetto Nerd,” his
voluptuous sister and hot-tempered mother between urban-industrial Paterson, New Jersey and their Dominican homeland.
Finally, we’ll view the docufiction film, Who Is Dayani Cristal? starring Gael García Bernal and directed by Marc
Silver, which retraces the journey made by a migrant laborer whose desiccated body was found in Arizona’s forbidding
Sonora Desert.
As this is an exclusively online course, our discussion of these books and films will take place in the UB Learns
environment. Writing assignments on ethnicity, identity and migration will be shared and critiqued among class members
in the UB Learns discussion boards throughout the semester.All English CL2 courses are now at the 300-level, same title as before.
Previous CL2 courses taken prior to Fall 2021 will still fulfill their
designated requirements.
*PLEASE NOTE: Re-taking a course with the same title/new number at the
300-level will result in replacing the grade received at the 200-level.
If you need help or have questions about your CL2 requirements, please contact
your academic advisor, or CAS Advising at 716-645-6883.
350 Intro to Poetry/Fiction
CL2 Course
6 Sections Available
Julianne Neely Dana Fang Michael Green
MWF 10:20 - 11:10 MWF 11:30 - 12:20 MWF 1:50 - 2:40
Reg. No. 20060 Reg. No. 19306 Reg. No. 15733
Blair Johnson Professor Stephen McCaffery Professor Myung Mi Kim
MWF 3:00 - 3:50 T Th 2:20 - 3:35 - REMOTE T Th 3:55 - 5:10 - REMOTE
Reg. No. 24377 Reg. No. 18040 Reg. No. 21258
Vladimir Nabokov once reflected that “a writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”
This introductory course is specifically designed for beginning writers who would like to take the first steps towards
exploring the craft of poetry and fiction. Students will be introduced to the fundamental vocabulary and basic techniques
of each genre. Throughout the semester, the class will also be presented with a diverse group of readings to study and
emulate in order to kindle our own imaginative strategies. No prior writing experience is necessary.
Through a series of linked exercises and related readings, ENG 207 will introduce students to fundamental elements of the
craft of writing poetry and fiction. We will study differing modes of narration (the benefits of using a 1st person or a 3rd
person narrator when telling a story, or how an unreliable narrator is useful in the creation of plot). We will examine
character development (why both “round” and “flat” characters are essential to any story), as well as narrative voice
(creating “tone” and “mood” through description and exposition), and think about “minimal” and “maximal” plot
developments. We will consider the differences between closed and open forms of poetry. The use of sound and rhythm.
We will try our hand at figurative language and consider how imagery is conveyed through our choice of words. We will
study prosody and the practice of the line.
Selected readings will expose you to a variety of poetic forms, fictional styles and narrative models. Assigned exercises
will give you the space to practice and experiment with unfamiliar forms. Students will also be given the opportunity to
meet with visiting poets and fiction writers at Poetics Plus and Exhibit X readings on campus and in downtown Buffalo.
It may come as no surprise that Nabokov also noted that he has “rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever
published.” This introductory course is designed to be the first step on the long journey of literary practice.You can also read
