English Courses

1 credit ENGL 100
3 credits ENGL 130

ENGL 100, Section 1
MWF 9:05 – 9:55 a.m.
(must take concurrently with  ENGL 130, Section 3)

ENGL 100, Section 2
MWF 10:10 – 11 a.m.
(must take concurrently with  ENGL 130, Section 6)

ENGL 100, Section 3
MWF 11:15 – 12:05 p.m
(must take concurrently with  ENGL 130, Section 7)

ENGL 100, Section 4
MWF 11:15 – 12:05 p.m
(must take concurrently with  ENGL 130, Section 8)

ENGL 100HON, Section 5
MWF 12:20 – 1:10 p.m.
(must take concurrently with  ENGL 130HON, Section 32)

ENGL 100HON, Section 6
MWF 1:25 – 2:15 p.m.
(must take concurrently with  ENGL 130HON, Section 33)

ENGL 100, Section 7
MWF 2:30 – 3:20 p.m.
(must take concurrently with  ENGL 130, Section 16)

ENGL 100 Humanities Seminar in Self, Citizenship, and Community (1 cr)  is a required co-requisite to Cornerstone ENGL 130. This 4-week intensive Humanities seminar explores the question of what individuals owe their communities. We will explore this question through careful reading and discussion of essays and short stories. Writing assignments will encourage personal reflection by asking students to consider how the readings complicate typical understandings of self and society as they consider their own developing sense of self.
(August 24 – September 23)

ENGL 130 Composition II Writing for Public Audiences (3 cr) and its required co-requisite of ENGL 100 asks students to participate in writing, research, and collaboration necessary to solve a community problem. Students will use their experience with the public project to reflect on issues raised by the ENGL 100 seminar. These opportunities for reflection on self and society are connected to the development of leadership skills.
(September 25 – December 18)

Essential Studies

Communication (2)

3 credits

This course is designed to introduce students to—and to help them practice—the ways that people in a university setting write, read, and think. Through readings and writing assignments, students learn to analyze, synthesize, interpret, and evaluate ideas, information, situations, and texts. By the end of the course, students should:

• Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various contexts;
• Read a diverse range of texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and evidence, to patterns of organization, and to how these features function for different audiences and situations;
• Use strategies—such as interpretation, synthesis, response, and critique—to compose texts that integrate your ideas with those from our readings;
• Develop a writing project through multiple drafts;
• Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing;
• Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress;
• Reflect on the development of your composing practices and how those practices influence your writing and reading;
• Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising;
• Practice applying citation conventions systematically in your own work.

To promote these outcomes, the course will also engage students in a real, current, and on-going academic project. In the process, students engage in serious and sustained work, reading academic and popular essays, writing four or five formal papers, and working through many stages of drafting and revising.

Essential Studies

Communication (1)

3 credits

This course, which builds upon ENGL 110, gives students experience with genres and rhetorical situations beyond the academic classroom. In begins with a set of common readings on an important social issue to establish a context for the work of the class. Throughout the semester, students engage in a series of research tasks and writing projects that center on a collaboratively-authored project proposal or recommendation for a specific audience or community. Then, students use the knowledge gained through research and rhetorical awareness to produce documents that will help inform and persuade the public. By the end of the course, students should:

• Learn and use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts;
• Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes;
• Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure;
• Locate and evaluate (for credibility, sufficiency, accuracy, timeliness, bias and so on) primary and secondary research materials;
• Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes;
• Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress;
• Adapt composing processes for a variety of technologies and modalities to address a range of audiences;
• Gain experience negotiating variations in genre conventions;
• Learn common formats and/or design features for different kinds of texts;
• Practice applying citation conventions systematically in your own work.

Through all of its projects, the course builds students' ability to work rhetorically--to think carefully about the audience, purpose, persona, and genre, as well as the impact that writing can have in the community. Like ENGL 110, this course requires revision, peer review, group projects, and writing workshops.

To promote these outcomes, the course will also engage students in a real, current, and on-going academic project. In the process, students engage in serious and sustained work, reading academic and popular essays, writing four or five formal papers, and working through many stages of drafting and revising.

Essential Studies

Communication (2)

J. Zerr
T/TH 9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
3 credits

How do babies learn language? What accounts for your ability to understand something you’ve never heard before? How are thought and language connected? Why do people swear? Why do people have accents? And who gets to decide what “proper grammar” is anyway?

These questions and more are part of our inquiry into language and the field of linguistics. Intro to Linguistics is a survey course designed to give you an overview of language as a system of communication. We will examine the structure of language, consider how people acquire and use language(s), and discuss language variety. As time allows, we will consider how language is encoded into writing systems and how literacy skills relate to language. We will consider examples from many different languages as we seek to understand how language works, however, English will provide the basis for most discussion and analysis.

Students interested in both the sciences and the humanities will find the subject matter appealing and relevant.  Students in this course are encouraged see the connections between linguistics and other fields of study. Students should expect to complete regular readings, homework, and quizzes.

Required Text: MindTap: An Introduction to Language (w/ MLA9E Updates), 11th Edition
Authors -  Victoria Fromkin/Robert Rodman/Nina Hyams, ISBN: 9781337559614
Format – MindTap English, 1 term (6 months) Instant Access for Fromkin/Rodman/Hyams' An Introduction to Language (ebook with digital homework platform)

C. Walker-Basu
Section 1: MWF 12:20 – 1:10 p.m.
Section 2: MWF 1:25 – 2:15 p.m.
3 credits

Writing is a muscle and good writers exercise regularly. ENGL 226 is an introductory course open to students of any major who are interested in exercising their writing muscles by reading, writing, and talking about reading and writing. The class will be discussion-based and focused on reading and writing assignments done both inside and outside of the classroom. Students will additionally be required to compose numerous, original creative works of their own, including short fiction and poetry. These works will be shared and critiqued in group workshops so that they may be revised as part of the student’s creative portfolio.

Essential Studies

Fine Arts

C. Henry
T/TH 9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
3 credits

Ecocriticism

English 227 introduces students to ecocriticism as a literary and critical framework, examining how literature represents nature, environmental concerns, and the relationship between humans and the natural world. Through close readings of literature, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, art and film, students will analyze how authors engage with environmental consciousness. Students will develop critical skills for interpreting text and develop an understanding of literature's capacity to address the world.

Essential Studies

Humanities; also cross-listed core curriculum in Environmental Studies.

Dr. Koleva
Section 1: MWF 9:05 – 9:55 a.m.
Section 2: MWF 12:20 – 1:10 p.m.
3 credits

Individualism and Self-Expression

In American culture, there is a deep-seated belief that fulfillment and well-being are products of individual effort and self-expression. In this ideological frame, strong individuality is instrumental to achieve the desired result. But what does it mean to have a strong individuality? Does the process of acquiring and expressing it require people to be individualists? Is the individualist a rebel, a freedom-fighter, a self-reliant winner, a leader in the making, a lawbreaker, a romantic loner, a self-centered opportunist or something else? How is the commitment to individuality and individualism shaping one’s sense of worth and relationship to social collectives such as families, communities, or society at large?

In this course, we will study how people of different social and cultural backgrounds perform under the cultural pressure of individualism and how they fare in terms of social realization and acceptance. We will think about how systems of privilege and oppression define specific acts of self-expression and open the door to categorization of people’s existence and worth.

We will use a mix of sources – literature, film, media publications, and others – to identify the current cultural assumptions about individuality and individualism, then, we will turn to specific experiences of being and becoming an individualist at different historical times, and we will think further about the influence of individualism and its cultural variants on us. 

Essential Studies

Humanities
Analyzing Worldviews

Dr. Wigard
MWF 11:15 a.m. – 12:05 p.m.
3 credits

This course will introduce students to various schools of thought and methodologies within the field of digital humanities (DH), which brings the application of computing to humanities questions, and in turn, uses the humanities to interrogate technology. We will do so through a combination of reading (and interrogating) one course textbook on DH; exploring several DH projects each week; and engaging in building our own individual and group DH projects themed around text analysis, mapping, and Large Language Models (LLMs).

A Note: I do not expect you to have any prior computing experience, nor proficiency in coding. I will expect you to develop these skills both within and outside of class, independently of my lectures.

Essential Studies

Humanities
Digital Information Literacy

Dr. Kitzes
T/TH 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
3 credits

Our course title uses a lot of terms, and as we’ll see very quickly, each one of these terms comes with its own challenges. What makes a text? What about these terms “reading and writing?” Don’t we already know how to do that, or is there some special way that we need to learn? And what about that word “about” – I mean, what’s that about?

We’ll discuss these questions using a selection of poems, stories, novels, even a play. All of these are texts, and they all are generally thought of as being “literary” in some way. (Another tricky word!) There’s no reason we have to use literature. Technically, we could use a can of soda as an example of a text. (The people who design them are hardly any less creative or careful with their words than the people who write poems for a living.) But that’s part of a story about how English departments became English departments, how they took on the business of reading literature as one of their primary activities. We’ll spend time looking into that topic as well.

This course is not designed to be a survey of an historical period, nor an introduction to a genre (e.g. “Poetry”). By no means is this a “Great Books” course. The readings here offer you a sample of different types of literary texts, which is already a highly specialized class of all the things we could call texts. You are not expected to like everything – though hopefully you will like many and dislike only a few. You should have no trouble finding yourself engaged with all of them. Likewise, your writing assignments are designed to give you experience with different approaches to writing. Different assignments will ask you to work on specific techniques, make specific types of arguments, and engage both critical and creative parts of your mind. Because this course is designed to be an advanced writing course, we will emphasize writing as a process. Many assignments are designed in stages, with opportunities for revision along the way. It is always my hope to get people excited about literature. It is also my expectation that, over the course of the term, you will become more engaged as readers and writers.

This course will help students meet their state distribution requirements in Humanities and Advanced Communication (3 credits). In this class, you will develop your skills in thinking and reasoning, with emphases on both critical and creative thought processes. Our classroom discussions and assignments are designed to help you make more careful judgments about texts that you read. While everybody reads and writes on their own, we will treat reading and writing as skills, which develop with practice and reflection. This is a writing intensive class. In your assignments, you will learn to write with a clear sense purpose and to develop an awareness of varying audience conditions and expectations. You will have a chance to develop your skills in rhetoric, or the art of developing specific strategies to meet specific audience expectations, including conventions specific to our academic discipline. Rhetoric is a skill, which you can improve with practice. To that end, you will be expected to revise your writing on the basis of feedback from your instructor, as well as your peers. Finally, you will have frequent opportunity to reflect on what you are learning, to become aware of what you are doing well and to identify areas where you seek further room for improvement.

Essential Studies

Humanities
Advanced Communication

Dr. Kitzes
T/TH 9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
3 credits

Consider any of the key terms in the course title, and you come up with some key problems. What is “Literature”? What are the characteristics that distinguish literature as “English” – and what is “English” anyway, is it a language, a nation, a culture, some shorthand for something else? Finally, how do we organize our study of literature into something that looks like a “Survey”?

As it happens, these were the types of questions on the minds of the very people you’ll be learning about during the semester. All throughout our reading list, you’ll find writers who were determined to make something that they thought of as having lasting value – language that would endure like the mountains and the stars. They wondered what it would take to have, in the words of one of our poets, “The kingdome of own language”. As people became more conscious of history, the sense of a past, many came to regard literature as a guide, which would reveal the mysteries of bygone days.

You’ll read about these topics, but you’ll find them in some surprising packaging: in stories about knights and dragons, or about people who sell their souls to the Devil, or who discover new worlds – some in faraway lands, others coursing secretly right underneath our skin. You’ll read stories about love, many of them tragic, some violent, all of them wild. You’ll learn about about kings who believed they were vessels of God, and about people who believed that kings were ordinary men who could be killed like anybody else. You’ll develop a sense of the world we’ve grown into, a world consumed by the fruits of industry: coffee and sugar, silk and crinoline, porcelain, tobacco and rum.

It is always my hope to get people excited about literature. It is also my expectation that, over the course of the term, you will become more thoughtful about what it means to read and write about literary texts.

Essential Studies

Humanities

Dr. Henry
T/TH 2 – 3:15 p.m.
3 credits

ENGL 306 deepens the study of fiction writing begun in ENGL 226. In this course, you will hone your craft by studying the short story in some of its historic and contemporary forms, including examples of mainstream literary fiction and genre fiction. Moreover, this course will introduce you to some of the key techniques used to create compelling characters, plots, and narrative structures in fiction. While expanding your knowledge of short-form fiction, you will also practice various creative methods and techniques through writing prompts, workshops, drafting exercises, and so on. In peer workshops, you will also develop your critical eye and learn how to apply editorial strategies to your own work. In addition to reading and writing short stories, you will also be introduced to “craft essays,” which explain literary techniques or probe pressing topics in editing, publishing, and literary citizenship. This course will offer you an encouraging and supportive environment in which to develop your voice and vision as a fiction writer; you will have opportunities to share your work both in class and during open mic nights scheduled throughout the semester. Prerequisite: ENGL 226 or instructor’s permission.

Dr. Kielmeyer
Section 1: T/TH 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Section 2: T/TH 2 – 3:15 p.m.
3 credits

How do we write what’s true? This course will serve as an introduction to the analysis and craft of creative nonfiction writing. We will explore a range of genres and mediums including memoirs, graphic memoirs, reviews, podcasts, documentaries, journalism, and the “essay.” We’ll learn what an essay even is. We'll ask questions about creativity, facts, and memory. We’ll work to understand how authors use rhetorical and creative strategies to write compelling nonfiction, then use what we learn about effective reading strategies to work through the process of crafting your own essays.

Through close readings and workshops, we will spend the semester trying to understand and recreate the tension between traditional creative writing strategies (plot, narrative, character development, conflict) and the accuracy that creative nonfiction writers must balance in order to maintain the distinction of nonfiction. We’ll talk about ethics, morals, truths, and lies. You will practice developing an eye for writing techniques and methods, while also testing out your own voices as memoirists and essayists. As readers and writers, you’ll do research on topics of your choice to help build confidence and authority in your ideas and perspectives. Ultimately, you’ll learn how to write what you know, using the techniques provided by creative nonfiction writers of today. 

Essential Studies

Fine Arts
Advanced Communication

Dr. Robison
MWF 1:25 – 2:15 p.m.
3 credits

Literature written for adolescents has been very popular: these books regularly show up on bestseller lists; critically-acclaimed authors are writing for this audience; and many adults are willing to identify themselves as avid fans of books written for teenagers.

Clearly, something is going on, and this is what we will explore in this class. What are these texts giving to their readers? What story, about growing up, about individuality, and about how we come to decide who we want to become, do these texts tell?

We will begin by reading a couple of novels that might best be categorized as children’s literature in to give us a working definition of Young Adult Literature. We will discuss some classic adolescent novels from the 1970s to further refine our definition of this genre before we move into a consideration of 21st-century young adult novels .

Essential Studies

Humanities
Diversity of Human Experience

Dr. Kersten
M/W 3 – 4:15 p.m.
3 credits

In this course, we will look at several complete collections of contemporary poetry and practice poetic forms, voice, and techniques through creative prompts and imitations. Students will read, write, and workshop their poetry. Authors to be studied include Natalie Diaz, Larry Levis, Juan Felipe Herrera, Diane Suess, and others. Repeatable to 6 credits.  Prerequisite: ENGL 226 or permission of instructor.

This course is approved for graduate credit.

Dr. Kersten
MWF 12:20 – 1:10 p.m.
3 credits

Writing the Body

Since the birth of the modern essay during the Renaissance, creative writers have used the body as a source of knowledge about the self. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, the so-called “father” of the essay, wrote about his kidney stones, distrust of doctors, and the relationship between the body and the soul. For Montaigne, corporeal experiences were part of learning what it means to be human as he experienced sickness and health, learned the proclivities of his particular body (“I cannot… sleep by day, eat snacks between meals, nor eat breakfast…”), and witnessed other bodies (see “Of a Monstrous Child”).

Contemporary writers and thinkers have used the body as a way not only to explore the self but also to examine how forces of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and disability, among other considerations, act upon the body and the self. Or, as Ta-Nehisi Coates says in Between the World and Me, “You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” This course explores the intersection between literature and the body. Moving thematically, we will analyze how writers and texts use particular genres and forms to document and interrogate their embodied experiences and the questions their experiences reflect about the human condition. Along the way, we will consider the relationship between sub-genre and content. How does memoir uniquely speak to our embodied experiences? How can fiction chronicle illness? What forms arise when documenting experiences (such as pain) that often surpass language? Students will read diverse texts, write their own critical pieces, and share their work with their classmates in small and large groups. Throughout this, we will continually revisit how our personal embodied experiences link to larger questions and issues of the human condition. 

Essential Studies

Capstone

This course is approved for graduate credit.

Dr. Alberts
M/W 1:25 – 2:40 p.m.
3 credits

In 2010, Matthew Kirschenbaum asked "What is Digital Humanities and What's it Doing in English Departments?" By the time he asked those questions, as he makes clear, essays like his were "already genre pieces." In fact, formerly known as "humanities computing," DH traces its origins back to 1949 and Father Busa, who worked with Thomas Watson founder of IBM. Simply put, the fact is that humanities scholars have been working with computing and digital methods since the invention of computers.

Over 75 years later, it is more or less expected that students and scholars in the humanities will have some knowledge of digital methods and related scholarship, as the field of digital humanities continues to mature and advance, preparing people for possible careers inside and outside academe that may or may not involve teaching. This class will involve a brief overview of the history and field of DH. However, it will primarily be focused on expanding collections freely available through the Chester Fritz Library’s Scholarly Commons, such as the William Langer Papers or the Usher Burdick Collection.

As students in this course, you will learn how develop and process a scholarly/education digital collection from start to finish, including:

• archival research
• introductions to copyright law and ethical issues surrounding digital collections
• database management (bepress, UND's Scholarly Commons)
• basic HTML/web design
• Web ArcGIS mapping
• the creation of technical documentation

Our class will involve some face-to-face, in real-life, hands-on work in the Special Collections Department at the Chester Fritz Library.

There aren't any prerequisites for this class. It is open to all majors. All levels of computer knowledge are welcome. It is a required class for the undergraduate Certificates in Writing and Editing and the Indigenous Digital Humanities and Cultural Collections Care.

Essential Studies

Digital Information Literacy

This course is approved for graduate credit.

Dr. Sauer
T/TH 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
3 credits

This course explores the origins and structure of the English language as it evolved from its earliest roots through the present day. It examines the contextual historical, social, and cultural events that shaped the language. This course is recommended for all prospective English teachers.

This course is approved for graduate credit.

Dr. Wolfe
M/W 1:25 – 2:40 p.m.
2 credits

This course will explore a variety of issues within the field of English studies, from the history and contours of the discipline to the rhetoric of literary criticism, from the skills involved in literary research to activities associated with professionalization in the field.

Dr. Donehower
Fridays 1:30 – 3 p.m.
1 credit

English 501L is the required practicum for new Graduate Teaching Assistants in English. We meet weekly to discuss and plan our lessons for teaching first-year composition for the coming week. We also practice grading and giving feedback to student writing. S/U grading.

Dr. Wolfe
T/TH 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
3 credits

This course is designed to explore some of the key theoretical and critical developments of the past fifty years, which should, in turn, help you better understand and situate your own work. We’ll begin by reading an overview of some of those developments (Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory) before moving on to closer examination of prominent interchanges that highlight interesting points of contestation in contemporary critical and theoretical fields: a selection from the series of texts that developed out of Jacques Lacan’s “Seminar on the ‘Purloined Letter’” and Jacques Derrida’s subsequent critique of Lacan; and some of the debates surrounding Stephen Greenblatt’s “Invisible Bullets” essay and the practice of New Historical criticism.

Our goal will not be to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of “theory” (an impossible task in any case), but to dig in to these contested issues, to think about what is at stake in the practice of theory and criticism, and to deepen our understanding of some of the most pressing questions of the past few decades in English Studies.

Dr. Donehower
T/TH 2 – 3:15 p.m.
3 credits

Literacy Studies: The Forces that Shape Reading and Writing

Literacy studies, a subfield of composition and rhetoric studies in the United States, investigates the factors outside of classrooms that shape humans’ literacy development and beliefs. What was originally called the “new” literacy studies grew out of the recognition that different cultural groups have different ideas about what should be read and written, how to read and write, and why reading and writing are valuable practices. Literacy studies researchers have been particularly interested in the ways mismatches between cultural literacy beliefs and practices and those promoted by schooling can create difficulties for students in literacy classrooms.

This course serves as an introduction to literacy studies and its relationship to composition and rhetoric. We will read seminal scholars in the field, including Shirley Brice Heath, Brian Street, James Paul Gee, Harvey Graff, and Deborah Brandt. We will also read ethnographic studies of people’s literacy development. There are many options to choose from in this latter category; we’ll decide in the first week of class, based on student interests, what these pieces will be.

For the course paper, we’ll follow in this ethnographic tradition by writing analyses of our own or other’s literacy development. Instead of a paper composed at the end of the semester, we will work on these projects from week to week, starting with the very first week of class. This will let us incorporate relevant analytical concepts from scholars as we read them. For students needing a writing sample to apply to Ph.D. programs in composition and rhetoric, this “write-along” structure should produce a good sample in time for fall 2026 Ph.D. applications.

Dr. Sauer
Thursdays 4:30 – 7 p.m.
3 credits

Medieval Hagiography and Hagio-Romance

This class will focus on the literature of hagiography—that is, the literature of saints’ lives. Keeping in mind the character of medieval hagiographic literature as a literary genre that combines edification and entertainment, we will assess both the specific and universal components of the portrayal of holy perfection: why this need to commemorate the holy heroes and heroines of the Christian tradition? what narrative strategies do storytellers employ to confirm their protagonists' perfection? what is the instructive merit and purpose of those Lives with respect to their intended audiences? what do those Lives tell us about the fears and expectations of their public during this particular period of medieval history? and to what extent does the saintly protagonist differ from the secular heroes and heroines? Towards that end, we will also explore several texts that are putatively secular in nature, yet are modeled after hagiographies, such as King Horn, Sir Isumbras, and Barlam and Josaphat. Note: This class is not a class analyzing personal belief structures.

Dr. Wigard
M/W 4:30 – 5:45 p.m.
3 credits

Studies in Graphic Narratives

This course examines the history, culture, function, and form of the medium we call "comics." Students will discover how the connective tissue between text and image, visual and narrative, generates an infinitely rich literary medium that includes newspaper comic strips, graphic novels, personal graphic memoirs, and webtoons. Together, we will explore how cartoonists visually and narratively represent gender, race, ethnicity, belonging, nationality, identity, and more. While the course will have an emphasis on US , we will touch on various global and regional traditions of comics including the European bande dessinée, Japanese manga, South Asian graphic narratives, and more. Sample graphic narratives include but are not limited to: My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris, Ducks by Kate Beaton, Wake by Rebecca Hall, Shubeik lubeik by Dīnā Muhammed, and Come Home, Indio by Jim Terry.

At the same time, we will learn the theories, machinations, and structures that undergird academic attention to comics: visual rhetoric and semiotics; historical and cultural studies; print technologies; formalist critique; rigorous close reading; digital humanities and physical archives; etc. As one instance, students can expect to read two formative texts in comics studies: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, a textbook in the form of a comic, alongside Unflattening by Nick Sousanis, the first graphic narrative-as-dissertation. Each uses the medium of comics to advance critical and theoretical arguments while also advocating for alternative modes of scholarship.

Lastly, students can expect this course to be an introduction into the academic field known as comics studies, so assignments will reflect common scholarly outcomes including but not limited to: academic book review; conference-style paper; seminar essay approximating an academic journal; and an actionable lesson plan.