The list below offers a representative sample of the courses you can expect in the study of writing at DePauw. From theoretical foundations to practical experiences, these courses provide a full range of educational opportunities at various levels of mastery. For more information about current course offerings or registration details, please consult the Office of the Registrar.
Winter or May Term off-campus course.
variable
Does your writing need clarity, polish and style? This course offers intensive practice in writing across a variety of genres on the subject of Global Englishes. Develop the power of your own writing as you examine the historical, literary, and ideological aspects of the English language. Emphasis is placed on themes such as colonization, globalization, education, and identity. Priority will be given to sophomore multilingual students, including international students and students for whom English was not the primary language spoken at home. International students must have completed or tested out of ENG 115. All students encouraged to apply. Course counts for W credit.
Arts and Humanities-or-Global Learning
1 course
A. The DePauw--Writers; B. The DePauw--Editors; C. Midwestern Review; D. Mirage , E. Eye on the World and F. the cauldron. Practical experience in writing for The DePauw (A&B), Midwestern Review (C), Mirage (D) , Eye on the World (E), and the cauldron (F). The DePauw writers (A) receive one-quarter activity credit per semester, and editors (B) receive one-half activity credit per semester. Midwestern Review, Mirage , Eye on the World and the cauldron staff members (C, D, E and F) receive one-quarter activity credit (Group 6) per semester. No academic credit is awarded toward the 31 courses required for graduation. Prerequisite: signature of The DePauw advisor required.
Signature of The DePauw advisor required
0 credit
This course strengthens the English language fluency of multilingual students (including international students, resident immigrants, and students whose language in the home was not English), developing their ability to write, speak, and read proficiently in a college-level academic environment. May not be counted toward a major in English. See Writing Program for details.
1 course
110A: AcademicEnglishSeminar I
Professor: Jeanne McGill
110B: AcademicEnglishSeminar I
Professor: Jeanne McGill
This course provides intermediate-level instruction in academic English for multilingual students (including international students, resident immigrants, and students whose language in the home was not English). It focuses on academic writing proficiency and critical thinking in preparation for the more advanced skills required in other college-level writing courses. English 115 may not be counted toward a major in English. See Writing Program for details.
1 course
115A: AcademicEnglishSeminarII
Professor: Tamara Stasik
115B: AcademicEnglishSeminarII
Professor: Tamara Stasik
115A: AcademicEnglishSeminarII
Professor: Tamara Stasik
115B: AcademicEnglishSeminarII
Professor: Jeanne McGill
This course reviews good writing strategies to prepare students for the level of reading, writing and critical thinking done in College Writing II. By means of short essay assignments, students build fluency and confidence in writing. May not be counted toward a major in English. See Writing Program for details.
1 course
120A: College Writing I
Professor: Andrea Sununu
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of reading and writing at the college level. Assignments focus on a variety of essay forms, including personal narrative and analytical argument, helping students to develop skills in critical thinking, interpretation, argumentation, and research documentation. Through the study of the writing process, students learn to generate essays for a variety of writing tasks across the curriculum. May not be counted toward a major in English. See Writing Program for details.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
130A: College Writing II
Professor: Deborah Geis
This course explores literature in translation across national and geographic boundaries. It focuses on fiction, drama, and poetry as a way of gaining a critical understanding of perspectives, voices, and aesthetics of people and places outside of the U.S. In engaging the reader's literary sensibilities, the course aims to develop students' self-reflection on cultural difference and their own globally-situated identities and responsibilities. Cross-listed with WLIT 105.
Arts and Humanities-or-Global Learning
1 course
141A: Reading World Lit
Professor: Amity Reading
141A: Reading World Literature
Professor: Amity Reading
An introduction to writing and reading fiction and poetry in a workshop setting using the work of contemporary poets and writers as models. May include some creative non-fiction and/or dramatic writing.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
149A: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Ronald Dye
149B: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Ivelisse Rodriguez
149C: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Gregory Schwipps
149D: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Christine White
149B: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Ronald Dye
149C: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Eugene Gloria
149D: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Gregory Schwipps
149E: Intro to Creative Wrtng
Professor: Christine White
This course explores literature as means of transforming language into art, looking closely at ways that writers explore the relationship between form, content and meaning. It focuses particularly on three primary literary genres, though it may also include a secondary emphasis on others, such as essay and film. The course might also consider adaptation and the way genres evolve over time. Students who have credit for ENG 151, Literature and Interpretation, may not take ENG 151, Reading Literature: Poetry, Fiction and Drama, for credit.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
151A: Reading Literature: Poetry, Fiction and Drama
Professor: Andrea Sununu
Designed to develop students' ability to understand and appreciate film as art and to acquaint them with a representative group of significant works and the characteristics of film as a type of literature.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
This course explores literature as a means of understanding difference across boundaries of race, nation, class, gender, or religion. It will feature literary works that foreground a variety of intercultural perspectives, including literature in translation and literature that thematizes difference.
Arts and Humanities-or-Privilege, Power And Diversity
1 course
171A: Lit:Intercultural Perspectives
Professor: Deborah Geis
This course explores literature as a form of social engagement, with the potential to influence our thinking about aesthetic, ethical, or political questions. It considers imaginative writing as a motive force in history through studies of specific works intervening in specific contexts or, more generally, through an analysis of the strategies that writers use to articulate, clarify, and sometimes resolve social or ethical problems.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
This course explores literature as a response to scientific and technological change. It considers the ways that new scientific discoveries inspire new visions in literature and the ways, in turn, that imaginative writing inspires new approaches in science. It features literary works that contextualize past scientific and technological advances, interpret and critique changes happening in the present, and imagine the changes that might occur in the future.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
191A: Lit:Science,Nature&Tech
Professor: Harry Brown
An exploration of a literary theme with an emphasis on class discussion and participation, independent projects, historical and cultural awareness and writing. Recent courses have included Poetry of Song, Reading Las Vegas, War and Sex in Arthurian Legend, and Milestones: Four African-American Artists. Enrollment limited to first-year students. May be counted toward a major or minor.
1 course
197B: FYS:Story Maps: Dissecting the Structure of the One-Hour TV Pilot
Professor: Samuel Autman
197C: FYS:Alternative Autobiographies
Professor: Deborah Geis
197D: FYS:Writing Human, Writing Well
Professor: Lynn Ishikawa
197E: FYS:The Art of Living Well
Professor: Amity Reading
197F: FYS:Recasting Narratives
Professor: Christine White
197G: FYS:Queer Representation
Professor: Victoria Wiet
197H: FYS:On the Art of Obsession: An Introduction to Poetry
Professor: Eugene Gloria
An introduction to the art and craft of writing for newspapers, including story structure, research techniques, interviewing, note taking, ethics, libel and AP Style. Students will hone their writing and reporting skills by covering campus events, writing stories on deadline and following national and local media coverage.
1 course
232A: News Writing and Editing
Professor: Renee Thomas-Woods
A hybrid literature/creative writing topics course that both refines students' general analytical, interpretive, and academic writing skills and gives them experience in crafting their own short creative works in the genre. Sections may include Narrative Nation (digital forms of creative nonfiction and journalism), Songwriting, or Writing for Performance.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
245A: Tps:Nature Writing
Professor: Gregory Schwipps
This course explores the purpose and craft of writing about literature, refining the ability to recognize and communicate pattern and meaning in texts and culture. The course fosters the writing and research skills necessary for advanced literary study, including the Senior Seminar in Literature, and for participation in larger conversations in the field. Through major writing projects and peer workshops, students will practice a variety of approaches to writing and research, while also expanding methods of writing for a variety of audiences. Required for Literature majors. Not open for credit to students who have completed ENG 350.
Arts and Humanities
None
1 course
251A: Writing in Lit Studies
Professor: Victoria Wiet
An examination of children's literature, attending to its history, canon and audience - both children and adults - and to selected topics, such as storytelling and censorship. Establishing criteria for several genres, students read widely to judge poetry, realistic fiction, picture books, fantasy, etc. and to compile bibliographies. May be counted toward a major in English. Offered second semester.
1 course
252A: Children's Literature
Professor: Tamara Stasik
While refining students' general analytical and interpretive skills, this course offers intensive examination of specific issues in literature and culture, often those at the center of current critical interest. Recent sections have focused on The Gangster Film, Memoir and Sexuality, Quest for the Grail, and Native American Literature. Students may only count one ENG 255 that is a cross-listed Modern Language course toward the major or minor.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
255A: Tps:Literature and Pandemic
Professor: Harry Brown
255B: Tps:Medieval Tabloid
Professor: Amity Reading
255C: Tps:African American Cinema
Professor: Karin Wimbley
Reading African American cinema as a pivotal archive in African American cultural production, this course explores the diverse black aesthetic traditions that African American film has and continues to develop, explore, and shape. Specifically, the course will track how films produced, written, and/or directed by African Americans are situated in larger debates about the politics of race and representation.
255A: Tps:African American Women Playwrights
Professor: Deborah Geis
Many readers may be familiar with groundbreakers like Lorraine Hansberry, whose Raisin in the Sun has become part of the canon of Civil Rights era reading. But in the 1960s and 1970s, African American women playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy and Ntozake Shange were doing experiments with language and theatricality that had never been seen before. And from the 1980s into the present, we continue to witness important works by writers like Anna Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks (the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama), Lynn Nottage, and many others.
This course focuses primarily on works by these more recent playwrights, with specific attention to ways that race/racism and gender/sexuality-- as well as social class and professional marginalization--have affected their work and become integral to their plays. This is a course that will require active participation; since it is also a "W" class, students will do a variety of writing exercises and more formal papers.
255B: Tps:Poet, Seeker, Lover, Friend
Professor: Andrea Sununu
Drawing inspiration from Eudora Welty's aphorism "all serious daring starts from within," this course will analyze poetry, fiction, and drama while asking questions about the directions that even a "sheltered life" can take. Core poems will include the fourteenth-century poem Pearl, seventeenth-century poems of love and friendship by John Donne and Katherine Philips respectively, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, and Mary Jo Salter's "Elegies for Etsuko." We will also read Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing and The Winter's Tale, Jane Austen's Persuasion, Toni Morrison's Sula, Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, and Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. Four of your five papers will be analytical in focus; your penultimate paper will consist of a creative letter or monologue that incorporates research on secondary sources into your explication of poems by Donne, Philips, or Eliot.
255C: Tps:Viking Myths and Modern Myth-making
Professor: Amity Reading
This course introduces students to a wide range of texts from the Viking-Age North Sea region (ca. 793¿1300 CE), beginning with the first Norse territorial expansions into Anglo-Saxon England and ending with the widespread Christianization of Iceland and Norway. The course will include selections from Old English poetry, the Eddas (prose and poetic), Norse þattr, Icelandic sagas, Icelandic law, Arabic travel narratives, and various other documents that tell the story of cultural contact between the Viking peoples and their neighbors near and far. We will consider the act of encountering literature in translation, investigate the historical and etymological origins of the term Viking, and probe the assumptions behind pop culture representations of medieval Scandinavians. The course will also address the appropriation of Viking culture by modern special interest groups. What are the past and present myths surrounding Viking culture, and how can we begin to uncover the truth about this complex group of peoples?
European writing from about 1885, stressing new directions in fiction and poetry from Zola to contemporary writers.
Arts and Humanities-or-Global Learning
1 course
A study of African-American writing, including biographies, essays and polemics as well as drama, fiction and poetry.
Arts and Humanities-or-Privilege, Power And Diversity
1 course
Introduces students to the work of women writers and the importance of gender as a category of literary analysis. Issues covered may include: images of women in literature by women and men; impediments women writers have faced; women's writing in historical/social context; feminist literature; intersections of race, class and gender. May be repeated for credit with a different topic.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
264A: Women & Lit: Women Writers of the African Diaspora
Professor: Deborah Geis
In this course, we will focus on contemporary women writers of African descent, particularly their postcolonial experiences in the Caribbean, Latin America, the U.S., and the U.K. Our readings will cover a variety of genres, including fiction, memoir, drama, and poetry. Some of the authors we study may include Jamaica Kincaid, Edwige Danticat, Safiyah Sinclair, Helen Oyeyemi, Bernardine Evaristo, and recent performance poets. This is an interdisciplinary course that will require active reading and participation.
264B: Women & Lit: US Women's Autobiography
Professor: Karin Wimbley
This interdisciplinary course explores how American women narrate and represent their lives across media, including literature, film, and fine art. We will pay particular attention to women¿s autobiographical practices that employ both image and text to address the complexities of self-representation and the intersectionality of culture, memory, fiction, and history within these practices. Course themes include: definitions of national belonging; intertextuality and the construction of self; transformation and conversion narratives as social/political critique; and loss of innocence as a counter-hegemonic feminist strategy.
Since Asian American and Pacific Islander writing is typically presented from the perspective of race, our topics will focus on cultural identity, immigration experience, displacement, gender identities, and language. The goal of this class is not to suggest a cohesive tradition of Asian American communities, but rather to explore the different histories and origins of Asian American writers and how their backgrounds inform their work.
Arts and Humanities-or-Privilege, Power And Diversity
1 course
This course surveys a range of American Indian oral and written literatures within the context of Euro-American colonization, conflict, and assimilation. We will assess the problems facing early native writers working within an alien culture and examine the ways the more recent writers of the Native American Renaissance have redefined Indian identity as a compromise between traditional Native culture and contemporary American society. Reading may include creation myths and trickster stories, Native autobiographical writing, fiction, and poetry.
Arts and Humanities-or-Privilege, Power And Diversity
1 course
This course explores the way changes in media have influenced literature, focusing on narrative forms that combine verbal, visual, and digital representation, including film, television, interactive fiction, and social media. It will consider the possibilities that new technologies of representation have brought to the art of storytelling and could also explore critical questions of new media literacy, such as production, dissemination, and reception.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
This course surveys fiction, poetry, drama, essays, autobiography, and film by Latinx people in the United States with attention to the distinctions and similarities that have shaped the experiences and the cultural imagination among different communities, including Mexican Americans or Chicanos/as, Puerto Ricans or Nuyoricans, Cuban Americans, Dominicans, and other groups. Themes might include colonization and decolonization, exile and diaspora, bilingual aesthetics and orality, border narratives, immigration and citizenship, social justice, mestiza and Afro-Latinidad identity, and Latina feminisms and queer identities. Major writers might include Elizabeth Acevedo, Julia Alvarez, Gloria Anzaldua, Ana Castillo, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Denise Chavez, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Martin Espada, Maria Irene Fornes, Aracelia Girmay, Juan Felipe Herrera, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Jose Marti, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alberto Rios, and Jose Rivera.
Arts and Humanities-or-Privilege, Power And Diversity
1 course
268A: Latinx Literature
Professor: Ivelisse Rodriguez
This course introduces the work of LGBTQ+ writers (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other non-normative sexual identities) with attention to the major concepts and political issues that shape LGBTQ+ identities and cultural productions. Issues covered may include: LGBTQ+ writing in historical and social contexts; obstacles faced by LGBTQ+ writers; intersections of race, class, and nation; the relationship between aesthetic forms and queer subjectivity. Writers may include James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Jericho Brown, Emily Dickinson, Alexander Chee, Tony Kushner, Audre Lorde, Carmen Maria Machado, Adrienne Rich, William Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein, Ocean Vuong, Oscar Wilde, Jeannette Winterson, and Virginia Woolf.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
269A: LGBTQ+ Literature
Professor: Victoria Wiet
This course surveys works of representative British authors from Anglo-Saxon times through the Augustan period. It is designed for students wishing to acquaint themselves with this broad area of British letters.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
281A: British Writers I: Warrior, Lover, Pilgrim, Knight
Professor: Andrea Sununu
A continuation of the survey begun in ENG 281, this course begins with representative writers of the Romantic period and ends with contemporary British literature. ENG 281 is not a prerequisite for this course.
Arts and Humanities
ENG 281 is not a prerequisite for this course.
1 course
A study of representative American authors from the exploration of the New World to the present with attention to the literature of ethnic cultures.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
A workshop focused on the writing of short fiction using modern and contemporary short stories as models and inspiration. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
301A: Fiction Writing Workshop
Professor: Ivelisse Rodriguez
Topics in fiction writing with particular concentration on specific forms or other aspects of the genre using readings as models and inspiration. This might include the novella or the short-short story or techniques such as magical realism, meta-fiction, minimalism, etc., depending on the instructor. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
302A: Creative Writing II Fiction Tps: The Art of Revision
Professor: Ivelisse Rodriguez
To become a writer, you have to learn how to revise. The last step in the writing process is wrangling with yourself (your ego); getting out of the way; and realizing that revision is about giving your story the best life it can have. In this class, we will focus on creating a revision practice by making an honest list of what needs to be changed in your story. We will start by focusing on the macro and then the micro revisions through exercises that teach you how to take apart your story and put it back together.
You are expected to have a story you want to revise by the first day of class.
A workshop that gives students the opportunity to sharpen their skills as poets and exposes them to a wide range of contemporary poetry. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
The course provides a particular focus on poetic forms or sub-genres of poetry. These might include dramatic monologue and extended poetic projects such as sequences in a particular form or voice. Effort is made to broaden students reading knowledge of poetry. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
This course will focus on the art and craft of nonfiction with special attention to giving nonfiction the immediacy and liveliness of fiction. Forms explored may include profiles, travel writing, personal essays, reviews, memoir, nature writing or literary nonfiction. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
321A: Crtv Non-Fiction Wrkshp
Professor: Gregory Schwipps
321A: Crtv Non-Fiction Wrkshp
Professor: Staff
This course will explore a specific genre of nonfiction in depth. Class will operate as an advanced writing workshop that uses master works as models and inspiration. Offerings might include profiles, travel writing, personal essays, reviews, memoir, nature writing or literary nonfiction. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
322A: CWIINFTps: Hermit Crabs & Borrowed Forms: Harnessing the Power of Personal Narratives Using Familiar Forms
Professor: Samuel Autman
An upper-level reporting class for students who have taken News Writing and Editing or have written for a student publication. Students will analyze and discuss long-form, investigative journalism and write a series of in-depth news features. The course will address how to incorporate literary techniques in news writing.
1 course
An upper-level reporting class for students who have taken News Writing and Editing or have written for a student publication. Students will study specifics forms of journalistic writing. Offerings might include feature writing, profiles, investigative journalism, magazine feature writing, or reviews and criticism. Prerequisite: ENG 232 or permission of instructor.
ENG 232 or permission of instructor
1 course
An introduction to the process of playwriting. The course will explore dramatic action for the stage--working with character, setting, dialogue, tone and style--through writing workshop, discussion and selected readings. Students will write monologues, scenes, a ten-minute play and a one-act play. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
An introduction to the fundamentals of screenwriting, in theory and in practice. Students will explore story, character, dialogue and structure as relates to writing for film; learn the screenplay format; and participate in writing workshop and discussion. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
An upper level writing course that focuses on specific elements or forms within a genre of dramatic writing. Offerings might include The One Act Play, The Dramatic Monologue, The Short Film Script, Advanced Screenwriting or Advanced Playwriting. Prerequisite: ENG 149.
ENG 149
1 course
343A: Creative Writing II: Dramatic Tps:Adaptation
Professor: Christine White
An experimental writing workshop focused on crafting short creative adaptations. We will work with more traditional adaptation assignments but we will also include on-line, more video-centered formats. Both traditional as well as more exploratory writing assignments will help you identify a personal response to a preexisting story or work, mine what is most inspirational and useful to you, and craft an authentically new version--either in a completely new genre, or by fusing the original with a new genre. In addition to short stories, we may utilize true events/memoir, your own previous writing work, poetry, and film footage as source material for exercises and/or assignments. We are all adapting together in our fast-paced world, and in this class, we'll sometimes work collaboratively to create things one of us couldn't have created alone.
This forms course, required for the Writing major, asks students to read extensively in two genres in order to deepen their understanding of the craft of creative writing. Class discussion will focus on analysis of classic and contemporary texts and an examination of the decisions writers make in their particular genres (and forms within those genres) to create certain results. For the Writing major, ENG 349 should be taken prior to ENG 412, Senior Seminar; it may be taken concurrently with Creative Writing Workshops (ENG 301-343). (Please note: this course does not count for the upper-level literature course requirement for the Writing or Literature major.)
Arts and Humanities
1 course
349A: Form & Genre: Poetry and Fiction
Professor: Eugene Gloria
This course is designed to give majors in English and related fields a grasp of the most important theories, terms and traditions that shape contemporary literary studies. Recommended for both literature and writing majors, and especially for anyone considering graduate study in English.
1 course
This course introduces students to the literature composed in Anglo-Saxon England between roughly 700 CE - 1066 CE. We will learn the basics of Old English pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary so that we can begin translating texts right away, and we will also consider the act of translation as both a creative and intellectual process. We will cover the literary devices and themes that characterize Anglo-Saxon literature, and survey a range of representative genres, including poetry, letters, and historical accounts. Readings will be in both Old English and in translation, and may include the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Wife's Lament, and The Dream of the Rood.
Arts and Humanities-or-Global Learning
1 course
Realism and romance in selected major poems of Chaucer and his contemporaries studied in their medieval context.
1 course
A study of representative plays drawn from the histories, comedies, tragedies and late romances. Wide-ranging themes will include questions about gender relations and identity, both personal and national, and the conventions of Elizabethan performance.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
A study of major developments in prose and poetry in English literature between 1500 and 1660, an age of exploration both literal and figurative. In both canonical works (by Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Jonson, Herbert and Milton) and recently rediscovered poems by Lady Mary Wroth, Aemilia Lanyer and Katherine Philips, we will analyze the intersection of influences--Classical and Biblical, native and Continental, medieval and modern.
1 course
363A: Renaissance or Early Modern British Literature: Heart and Muse, Pipe and Trumpet
Professor: Andrea Sununu
A revolutionary who wrote against censorship and in defense of divorce, whose poetry made a mark on future generations of writers, Milton redefined heroism in his epic, Paradise Lost. We will study his major poems and selected prose, analyzing his transformation of every genre he touched: sonnet, pastoral elegy, masque, epic and tragedy.
1 course
An in-depth survey of literary genres (including poetry, satire, the periodical essay, the gothic, and the novel) from 1660-1800 and their relationship to nationalism, gender, empire, and the cultural and political practices of the English Enlightenment.
1 course
Focuses on English poetry from approximately 1790-1830, along with related works of fiction, criticism and philosophy. Writers often studied include Blake, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and Keats.
1 course
366A: The Romantic Period: Empire & Sexuality
Professor: Victoria Wiet
Romanticism (1770-1850) was one of the most innovative periods in European literature, setting the stage for modern literature by transforming the conventions of lyric poetry and perfecting the form of the novel. It also coincided with the height of competition between Europe's major empires. This course will examine how the context of empire shaped the central tenets of modern sexuality in the West--companionate marriage, compulsory heterosexuality, and racially endogamous coupling--and how writers during the Romantic period used poetry, fiction, and travel writing to express the danger and allure of varieties of sexuality deemed as "other." We will also engage writers from the colonies who bore witness to how colonization impacted the ordering of intimate and domestic life in their native lands. Organized around the geographic centers of imperial expansion and contestation, our readings will span canonical authors from the Romantic period like Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo; women writers such as Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Jane Austen, and Claire de Duras; colonial writers such as Rifa'a at-Tahtawi, Henry Ferozio, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, and Ignace Dau; and key texts in postcolonial theory and Black feminist thought.
Focuses on writers who worked in the last 70 years of the 19th century. Writers often studied include Dickens, Carlyle, George Eliot, Tennyson, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
1 course
British novelists, poets and dramatists of the first half of the 20th century, including Conrad, Joyce, Yeats, Lawrence and Woolf.
1 course
British and postcolonial writers from the mid-20th century to the present. Writers may include Rushdie, Gordimer, Larkin, Amis and Heaney.
1 course
A study of literature from the American Revolution through "the American Renaissance," when the writing of American authors first achieved an international reputation. Writers might include Jefferson, Franklin, Cooper, Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Melville, Jacobs, Whitman and Dickinson.
1 course
371A: American Literature: Revolution and Renaissance
Professor: Harry Brown
A study of the literary culture between the Civil War and World War I, including considerations of realism, regionalism and naturalism as well as works of nonfiction. Writers might include Twain, James, Jewett, Crane, DuBois, Chesnutt, Dreiser, Wharton and Cather.
1 course
A study of literature written in the first half of the 20th century and the main philosophical, social and aesthetic issues that shaped it. Writers might include Faulkner, Hemingway, Eliot, Williams, Dos Passos, Moore, Hurston, Hughes, and Wright.
1 course
A study of literature since the end of World War II, including that of minority writers, and the main philosophical, social and aesthetic issues that shaped it. Writers might include Warren, Nabokov, Bishop, Roth, Morrison, Rich, Pynchon, Erdrich, Kingston and Cisneros.
1 course
Designed for English majors and/or students with some background in Women's Studies. Topics will provide opportunities for in-depth analysis of women writers and gender literary analysis. Issues covered may include: images of women in literature; women's writing in historical/social context; feminist literature theory and literary criticism; intersections of race, class and gender; formation of the literary canon. May be repeated for credit with a different topic.
Privilege, Power And Diversity
1 course
In-depth study of one or more writers. Examples include Joyce, Morrison, Samuel Johnson, and Henry James.
1 course
Study of works drawn from a specific literary genre or subgenre. Examples include Confessional Poetry, The Early Novel and Revenge Tragedy.
1 course
A study of the relations between literature and culture, with a specific thematic focus. Examples include Literature and Law, American Gothic, and Drugs, Literature and Culturet.
1 course
393A: LitCulture&HistAdvTps: The Beat Generation
Professor: Deborah Geis
The "Beat Generation" marks a literary and cultural period from the early fifties to the mid-sixties in which rebellion against mainstream American postwar family values was beginning to surface. This interdisciplinary course looks at the literature of this era in its cultural and political contexts, and examines the impact upon subsequent writers and artists. Some of the authors we'll cover will include "canonical" Beat writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Black Beat writers LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Ted Joans, and Bob Kaufman; rebel women Diane DiPrima, Joyce Johnson, Anne Waldman, and Hettie Jones. We will also see some Beat-era films (and representations of "beatniks" in the popular culture of the period) and hear some Beat-era music.
Since this course also fulfills DePauw's "S" requirement, students in this class will be expected to participate actively in speaking and listening activities that will include presentations, performances of texts, and discussions in various modes, both formal and informal.
Study of a specific topic within contemporary literary theory. Examples include The Rise and Fall of Deconstruction, Theories of the Avant Garde, and Film Theory.
1 course
Study of works in world literature emphasizing a global context. Examples include The Bildungsroman, Representations of the Artist, The Global Avant-Garde, The Great Novel, and Global Science Fiction.
Arts and Humanities-or-Global Learning
1 course
An intensive exploration of Irish culture and authors from a literary perspective. Topics might include medieval Irish literature, James Joyce, modern Irish drama, Irish mythology, the Gaelic revival, Irish poets, the "troubles" and postcolonialism, and Irish film.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
This course offers the intensive exploration of a particular period, author, or genre in African American and/or global Black literature. Examples might include The Harlem Renaissance, Toni Morrison, South African Literature, Black Autobiography.
Arts and Humanities
1 course
398A: AdvTps:Horror and Speculative Films from the Black Diaspora
Professor: Karin Wimbley
This course explores horror and speculative films emerging from black filmmaking traditions across the globe. Specifically, we will track how Black filmmakers use horror and speculative films to explore the lived experiences of African and African-descended people, critique systems of wealth and power, ponder the meaning of life and death, and complicate static notions of what it means to be black in the world. Course films include (but are not limited to) Mati Diop's Atlantics (Senegal, 2019), Mbithi Masya's Kati Kati (Kenya/Germany, 2016), Jean Luc Herbulot's Saloum (Senegal, 2021), Nia DaCosta, Candyman (US, 2021), and Jordan Peele's Get Out (US, 2017).
Independent writing under tutorial supervision designed for seniors wishing to develop or complete one of the longer forms. Prerequisites: senior classification, the successful completion of three courses in writing above the freshman level, and permission of instructor and chair of the department. Prior to registration, the student must present to the chairman of the department a written statement of the project countersigned by the instructor who will serve as tutor.
Senior classification, the successful completion of three courses in writing above the freshman level, and permission of instructor and chair of the department.
1 course
401A: Independent Writing
Professor: Ronald Dye
401B: Independent Writing
Professor: Renee Thomas-Woods
This is an advanced creative writing workshop in which students design their own independent projects under the guidance of the instructor. Seminars generally explore a specific genre in depth. Prerequisite: senior classification and the successful completion of three courses in writing above the 100 level, two at the 300 level.
Senior classification and the successful completion of three courses in writing above the 100 level, two at the 300 level.
1 course
412A: Seminar in Writing
Professor: Eugene Gloria
412B: Seminar in Writing
Professor: Gregory Schwipps
Concentrated study of a topic in literary studies. Prerequisite: two 300- or 400-level courses in literature. Required of majors in English with emphasis on literature. May be repeated once for credit.
Two 300- or 400-level courses in literature. Required of majors in English with emphasis on literature.
1 course
451A: Seminar in Literature (1900-present)
Professor: Karin Wimbley
Directed studies, with individual conferences or seminars, centered on a specific project arranged with the instructor and including the writing of papers. Prerequisite: senior classification and permission of instructor and chairman of department. Students seeking permission to take the course must present previous to registration to the department chair a written statement of the project countersigned by the instructor who will direct it.
Senior classification and permission of instructor and chairman of department.
1/2-1 course
460A: Independent Reading: Early Insular Literature
Professor: Amity Reading
460A: Ind Study:The Novel in World Literature
Professor: Amity Reading
460B: Readings in Literature
Professor: Andrea Sununu
Leveraging the resources of the Creative School, the English writing major at DePauw is housed in the Department of English. This department provides students with the written and verbal communication skills to be engaged members of society in any professional path they choose.
