Fall 2025 Undergraduate English Courses

01   TTH5   CAC  10535    LEVAO   MU-301 The course has two primary goals: 1.) To introduce students to the pleasures of reading and interpreting Shakespeare’s plays and 2.) To study and appreciate the ways in which modern filmmakers represent, interpret, and transform those plays. Rather than judge films for their fidelity to an original text, we will regard both literary work and film as imaginative creations that draw strength from each other, evoking our active participation as critical readers and...

01   MW4   CAC   10536   COIRO   MU-211 Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is an absorbing and astonishing Renaissance allegorical epic based on Arthurian legend. The Faerie Queene will feel familiar to readers of fantasy literature: there are dragons and magicians; knights doing battle, and maidens pursued (and some fighting back). Yet this engrossing poem will also initially feel strange because allegory is not our natural reading habit. We will use C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Spenser himself to...

90      MW5   10538   BUCKLEY  ONLINE  For almost three thousand years, tragedy has been esteemed as the highest form of western art, the one form in which the ecstasy and the suffering of the human condition find full expression. For the Greeks, tragedy constituted a link to the divine, and throughout the millennia that have followed tragedy has served as a privileged lens through which to confront problems of history, social change, personal suffering, and even the nature of the self. If, as Hamlet...

01     MTH2    CAC    10539  JACKSON    MU-211  Children’s and young-adult fiction have a surprising complexity. We will look closely at developmental themes, story arcs, genre, and style. We will examine models of psychology and explore the historical shifts that oversaw the invention of “childhood” as a life stage. We will no doubt revisit some of the stories that animated your formative years. Hopefully, you’ll discover that they are not the simple tales you remember, unencumbered by politics, ideology,...

01   TTH4    CAC   10540   MONTEZ   MU-114  

01   TF2   CAC   10541   EXTRA   HH-B6 This course is an introductory survey of comics and the graphic novel in the US from the 1940s to the present. We will read chronologically across genres—horror, crime, superhero comics, alternative/underground, poetry comics, feminist comics, graphic medicine, and more. Some of the questions that this course will address are: How do comics and graphic novels work? What techniques and strategies do comics artists use to produce meaning? How do we situate comics and...

01   CAC   TTH5  10542    SPELLMEYER     MU-213                            The first wave of environmental writers saw Nature as vast, sacred, and wild. But the second wave looked with mounting alarm as runaway technology and economic growth began to destroy the natural world itself. Today, in spite of much bad news, things are definitely looking up: a third wave of novelists, essayists, and poets are hard at work creating what they call “a new green civilization.” They ask us to reweave the damaged web of life by forging connections...

01    MTH2   CAC    10543        SCANLON       MU-210 The Culture of Sport Sport is one of the most visible and influential aspects of modern popular culture. This course will explore the cultural aspects of sport, focusing on basketball, cricket, soccer, American football, and track using literature, film, journalism, memoirs, along with a small selection of secondary material. Requirements: 2 4 pp. and 1 8 pp. papers.

02  CAC  TTH5   10544   SOTO  MU-111 Travel is one of the most powerful cultural, economic, and imaginative forces of our world today. The idea of travel captivates our imagination as the freedom of movement, opportunity, and pleasure; yet other forms of travel may be depleted by conditions of scarcity, exploitation, and other forms of severe constraint. In this class, we will explore multiple perspectives, modes, and experiences of travel by reading literary and cultural productions across time, from...

01 M 2,3 CAC  10571 BARTELS SC-103 02 MW4  CAC 10572 IANNINI SC-202 03 MTH1 CAC 10573 FRASIER SC-105  04 TF3  CAC  10574  GLISERMAN SC-116 05 MW7 CAC 10575 IBIRONKE SC-216  06 TTH5  CAC  10576  STERLING SC-115 07 MW5 CAC 10577 KERNAN SC-206  08 TTH7  CAC 10578 MATHES SC-215 09 MW6  CAC 10579 FRANK SC-204 10  TTH6  CAC 10580 FULTON SC-207 11 TF2 CAC  10581 LAM SC-205 12 TTH4 CAC 10582 BURES MU-301 14 W3F4 CAC 10584 YIN SC-101 15 TTH5 CAC 10585 LAWRENCE CI-203 Sections 01-90 This course provides an introduction to principal methods and materials in contemporary literary studies. In order to suggest some of the range of the field, ordinarily it includes close attention to works from at least...

01  CAC   MW5 10586   GOODLAD   ABE-4450       

01  TTH6    CAC    10557    SLOAN    MU-213 This course explores the 19th-century United States through the lens of the literature, lives, and legacies of four women named Harriet: Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In this course we will examine their varied relationships to and representations of slavery, abolition, freedom, and resistance. In addition to these prominent themes, we will also consider how things such as geography (North vs. South, urban vs. rural),...

01  MW4   CAC   10558    KERNAN  MU-114 This course provides students with both exposure to some of the seminal texts of the and with the interpretive tools needed to situate those texts in their respective contemporary contexts: literary, political, and international. We will consider issues like: How did the contemporary politics and material conditions of production that surrounded the creation of Harlem Renaissance texts inform their aesthetics? How did Africa-American authors to the “triple...

01   CAC   TTH6   10559     MATHES   SC-214

01 TTH7   CAC     10560      OWENS     SC-216

01  TTH6     CAC   10561    OWENS    MU-301  

90      MW5   10538   BUCKLEY  ONLINE  For almost three thousand years, tragedy has been esteemed as the highest form of western art, the one form in which the ecstasy and the suffering of the human condition find full expression. For the Greeks, tragedy constituted a link to the divine, and throughout the millennia that have followed tragedy has served as a privileged lens through which to confront problems of history, social change, personal suffering, and even the nature of the self. If, as Hamlet...

01  CAC    TF3     10546    LEVAO    MU-111 This course will explore the first half of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, plays written by him during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, up until her death in 1603. Eight major works will represent the Folio's three genres of comedy, history, and tragedy and include some of the best-known, controversial, and fascinating works in English literature:  Romeo and Juliet, A The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two, Julius Caesar, Twelfth...

90    MW4  CAC     10550   BUCKLEY   ONLINE In this course we’ll survey the rich and varied dramatic literature of the nineteenth century, a period during which the stage was transformed first into a modern, popular institution and then into a radical countercultural art.  We’ll explore the many styles and modes of the era, including melodrama, romantic tragedy, realist and naturalist drama, and theater of the early avant-garde, and look at their relations to political and social change, their articulation...

01   By Arrangement   08135    Permission to add by Department Staff

The English Department Career Advising Initiative The Rutgers Department of English is excited to announce a new Career Advising Initiative to assist and support English undergraduate and graduate students in their career exploration endeavors. If you've ever wondered, or if friends and family have wondered, what you can do with a degree in English, we are here to help you address that question. There are so many possibilities. There are so many ways to apply your valuable research, writing,...

01       MW6   CAC   10554    IBIRONKE     MU-114  

01   CAC   TTH6   10562   SOTO   MU-211 In this course, we will read literature across the Americas and contemporary theory that addresses the complexity of migration and diaspora. These two terms connote experiences of movement and displacement motivated by an array of historical as well as social forces: political turmoil; social instability; familial ties; the promise of a better future elsewhere, to name a few. We will explore the literary representation of migration and diaspora with a focus on the...

01   MW65  CAC    10563    ROBOLIN   HH-B6 This upper-level course will examine 21st-century African literature across a wide generic, stylistic, linguistic, and geographic range. The works published in the last fifteen years include novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and memoirs in conventional and experimental forms. While we will predominantly study texts written in English, several will be translated. This very contemporary African literature covers a panoply of subjects and approaches, but we will...

01   TTH5   CAC   10564   ISAAC   MU-211  Violence and Asian American LiteratureViolence has the ability to destroy but also to recreate identities and subjects, both to tear away from and to stake claims to nations and places. How and why is violence a recurring theme in Asian American literature? From the Philippine-American War (1898) and the Pacific wars against Japan (1941), Korea (1950s) to the Vietnam War (1960s) and the War on Terror (2001) in the past century, conflicts in Asia have affected...

01   MW5   CAC   10569   CHOI    HC-S126 Race and Empire in the Transpacific This course explores the histories of empire that bind the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, focusing on how writers and artists have engaged with (neo)imperial violences. Through literary and cultural analysis, we will examine the workings of settler colonialism, labor exploitation, militarization, and racial capitalism as they have shaped categories of race, citizenship, and belonging in transpacific contexts. While...

01   MTH2   CAC   10545  SCANLON   MU-210   Romance was medieval culture’s most popular non-religious literary genre. It is probably also the medieval genre which has had the largest influence on subsequent history. There is almost no form of modern popular narrative, from the Western to science fiction to the soap opera, which does not draw in some way on the conventions of medieval romance. The most famous medieval romances are those of Arthur. This course will examine the Arthurian legends in some...

01    CAC    MW4   10550   BUCKLEY   ONLINE  In this course we will survey the rich and varied dramatic literature of the nineteenth century, a period during which the stage was transformed into a modern, popular institution. We’ll explore melodrama, realist drama, naturalist drama, and the varied works of the early dramatic avant-garde, looking at their relation to political and social change, shifting ideas of the world and its relation to the self, and changing forms of spectacle, entertainment, and...

01  MW5    CAC  10551    ANDERSON   MU-211  Wayward Women: The 19th Century HeroineRelying on both literary texts and cultural artifacts, this course will examine the complex relationships between 19th-century women and the worlds they inhabit. Our course material will take us across the wild English moors and through the heart of urban London, to colonial outposts in Jamaica and South Africa, and to the fantastical realms of children’s fiction. What happens when women choose to leave the paths that have...

01  TTH6    CAC    10557    SLOAN    MU-213 This course explores the 19th-century United States through the lens of the literature, lives, and legacies of four women named Harriet: Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In this course we will examine their varied relationships to and representations of slavery, abolition, freedom, and resistance. In addition to these prominent themes, we will also consider how things such as geography (North vs. South, urban vs. rural),...

01    T 2,3   CAC    10567     YOUSEF   ABE-2250 Eros and Psyche: Novels of Conflict and Desire Eros and Psyche personify conflicting aspects of human experience: impulse, desire, and the drive for pleasure on the one hand, mindfulness and spirituality on the other hand. In classical myth, the forces that keep them apart are ultimately overcome and Eros and Psyche are harmoniously united. In the “realism” of many nineteenth century novels, tensions between mind and body, desire and self-possession, impulse and...

01  CAC    TF3      10546    LEVAO    MU-111 This course will explore the first half of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, plays written by him during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, up until her death in 1603. Seven major works will represent the Folio's three genres of comedy, history, and tragedy and include some of the best-known, controversial, and fascinating works in English literature:  Romeo and Juliet, A The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Henry IV Part One,  Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet...

01      MW6     CAC  10547   COIRO    MU-211                  Reading Milton’s poetry is an exhilarating and deeply thought-provoking experience. The core of Milton’s poetics is the insistence that we, the readers, must decide what is right and wrong at every juncture. In this class we will take on that challenge. Milton rivals Shakespeare as foundational to English, American and global anglophone literature and history. In your other classes and for years to come, you will discover many and uncanny echoes of Milton in other...

01   CAC   TTH5   10548   BRONSTEIN   SC-206 Renaissance English writers used literary depictions of temptation and seduction to explore the nuances of human psychology, morality, and sexuality. This corpus of literature focuses on the mechanics of human error and desire, asking penetrating and even disturbing questions that are universally relevant to the human condition: Why do people make decisions that they know are bad for them, and what are the root causes of these self-destructive drives? Why do...

01  CAC    MTH1     10549     SILVER    MU-114         Poetry and the Public, from Manuscript to Print This course explores anglophone (English-language) poetry written between 1660 and 1800, the period sometimes called the Enlightenment. That period is the one associated with the emergence of modern science, and also with globalism, empire, and the modernization of industry. It also witnessed the emergence of a surprising range of poetic forms, when poetry went from a private genre, mostly written by hand and...

01   CAC    MTH1  22800    DATTA    MU-204 It is now commonplace to acknowledge the eighteenth century as a moment where our modern sense of the “global” takes shape. Through the course, we will track how British travel literature produced a taste for commodities like coffee and sugar, shaped scientific knowledge about things like nature and weather, and helped form institutions like museums, stock markets, and insurance companies. We shall read varied forms of writing — poetry, fiction, and travelogues with...

01    T 2,3   CAC    10567     YOUSEF   ABE-2250 Eros and Psyche: Novels of Conflict and Desire Eros and Psyche personify conflicting aspects of human experience: impulse, desire, and the drive for pleasure on the one hand, mindfulness and spirituality on the other hand. In classical myth, the forces that keep them apart are ultimately overcome and Eros and Psyche are harmoniously united. In the “realism” of many nineteenth century novels, tensions between mind and body, desire and self-possession, impulse and...

01  CAC   MW5   10567   GOLDSTONE   HC-S120 Research in Genre Fiction Crime, fantasy, romance...science fiction, Western, horror: for the last hundred years, most of the fiction people have read in English has been what is now called "genre fiction." And for most of the last hundred years, these categories of fiction have been largely ignored as features of literary history. Considered merely popular, juvenile, subliterary, genre fiction has only gradually become a subject of serious study in its own...

01   MW5   CAC   10569   CHOI    HC-S126 Race and Empire in the Transpacific This course explores the histories of empire that bind the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, focusing on how writers and artists have engaged with (neo)imperial violences. Through literary and cultural analysis, we will examine the workings of settler colonialism, labor exploitation, militarization, and racial capitalism as they have shaped categories of race, citizenship, and belonging in transpacific contexts. While...

01   MTH2   CAC  10592   ROBOLIN     HC-S126   Born 100 years ago, Martinican-born psychiatrist, writer, and activist Frantz Fanon became among the 20th century’s major thinkers. Known as the “theorist of the African Revolution,” Fanon would become a forceful advocate of Algerian (and, more generally, African) independence as the colony waged battle to expel French colonizers. In his short 36 years of life, Fanon became hugely influential on other thinkers and activists in his wake: Stokley Carmichael &...

01   TH 4,5    CAC   10593     PRICE   HC-S-126 Histories of the Book This course studies how the written word travels through time and across media. What is a book? How do you make one? What rules have different cultures developed about when to share, sell, preserve, censor or pulp? How did the books on our shelves or our cloud storage get there, and how do we ensure that what we write today will survive into the future (do we want it to)? What light can artifacts from different times and places shed on...

01    CAC   TTH5   10587     GROGAN     SC-221 What is Close Reading If you’ve ever taken an English class or written a literature essay, you’ve likely been asked to do some close reading—the practice of paying close attention to a text so that something surprising, new, or counterintuitive is revealed. But what exactly is close reading, where did it come from, and why does it matter? This class is a history and experiment in the method that is central to the English Major. We’ll read major critics and...

01  CAC  MW5    10586   GOODLAD   ABE-4450    

01  TF1   CAC   10588  GLISERMAN   SC-103 Literature and Psychology explores the emotional relationships between text and reader, and within the text. One central thematic focus of the course, in addition to emotions, will be trauma–an experience of maximal emotions and disruption. Whether we read to escape, to discover, or even to fulfill requirements, we have a purpose, a motive, and more than likely some expectations. Moreover, we have a number of years of existence during which time we have...

01  TTH5   CAC  10590  MONTEZ   SC-119

01   MTH2   CAC  10592   ROBOLIN     HC-S126   Born 100 years ago, Martinican-born psychiatrist, writer, and activist Frantz Fanon became among the 20th century’s major thinkers. Known as the “theorist of the African Revolution,” Fanon would become a forceful advocate of Algerian (and, more generally, African) independence as the colony waged battle to expel French colonizers. In his short 36 years of life, Fanon became hugely influential on other thinkers and activists in his wake: Stokley Carmichael &...

01  TTH4  CAC  09612  LAWRENCE  MU-213 This course the same as 01:195:351:01; 01:595:350:01; 01:940:356:01 The Literatures of the Americas This course offers a comparative study of the literatures of the Americas from the nineteenth century to the present. We will read a range of novels, stories, essays and poems written in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, a number of which were originally published in Spanish. Beginning with nineteenth-century expressions of cultural autonomy...

01  TTH4  CAC  10552  GROGAN  MU-211 This course surveys the varied landscape of American poetry written from the end of the Second World War until the present day. We’ll read poetry against the backdrop social unrest and economic crisis that has characterised the period since the mid-twentieth century. Across the semester we’ll investigate questions of the individual and the collective; identity and nation; poetic form and experimentation; and environment, urbanity, and land. Assessment will be...

01   CAC   MW4    10553  GOLDSTONE    MU-213  This course tells two stories about the revolutionary period in twentieth-century literature in English beginning around 1890 and running to the start of the Second World War in 1945. The first story is the story of the modernist breakthrough, when radical innovators transformed how the novel could be written: we will read writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner for their singular experiments in form and content. The second story is the...

01  CAC     MW6    10554   IBIRONKE     MU-211

01  CAC   MTH3     10555    JACKSON      MU-301   Welcome to Advanced Fantasy. (No prior course or knowledge is required.)  If you like fantasy—magic, the dark occult, sci-fi crossovers, and even the surreal—this is the right course.  We will cover twentieth- and twentieth-first century fantasy novels and short stories, including Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures, Brandon Sanderson’s Emperor’s Soul, Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, and Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword.  No doubt some will be familiar to you. Among...

02   MTH2    CAC    10556   SIEGEL   SC-205   The core of this course will be a thorough reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses. We will end with some of Dubliners and also read Portrait of the Artist, but the key project will be to make our way through what is probably the most rewardingly difficult text of the twentieth century—and without question one of its most influential. In my experience this is a very enjoyable course for students, but it does require serious commitment, as Ulysses is extremely dense and...

01  CAC   MW5   10567   GOLDSTONE   HC-S120 Research in Genre Fiction Crime, fantasy, romance...science fiction, Western, horror: for the last hundred years, most of the fiction people have read in English has been what is now called "genre fiction." And for most of the last hundred years, these categories of fiction have been largely ignored as features of literary history. Considered merely popular, juvenile, subliterary, genre fiction has only gradually become a subject of serious study in its own...