Fall 2026 Undergraduate English Courses

01   MTH2   CAC   12135   EVANS   MU-213 American Literature: The Basics In the aftermath of the summer’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, this course provides students with the opportunity to reflect on how that strange and unruly collection of fictional and poetic works now known as “American literature” helped shape the country’s evolving national identity. How did fiction come to define so many of the self-evident truths the nation tells about itself?  There will be a...

01   TF3   CAC   12136   KING   MU-212 In Introduction to the Novel we will explore the characteristics of the novel form and ask why this genre has dominated our literary culture for over two centuries and how our texts seek to both critique and entertain. The syllabus will include works by Jane Austen, Richard Yates, Tayari Jones, Gillian Flynn, and Taylor Jenkins Reid, and the course requirements will include two papers, an in-class exam, in-class reading responses, and active participation in class...

01   MTH2   CAC   12137   SPELLMEYER   MU-115 With the rise of mass-market magazines catering to busy working people, short stories started in the Nineteenth Century as chapters taken from a longer work--a novel or novella. Very quickly, though, they became a genre of their own. And now this accidental genre has become the quintessentially modern form—the literary art of the “turning point”--presenting a world in which a single day or even a single hour can completely change your life. As we’ll see, the...

01  CAC    12138   MTH3     JACKSON  ABE-1180 The Aesthetics and Psychology of Fear We read gothic literature for pleasure, for the thrill it gives us, for the spine-tingling suspense that builds to a sudden—often deeply—unsettling crescendo.  No sooner do we recover from one fright, but we feel the narrative tension mounting again.  Aside from this pleasure, what is gothic literature about?  Why, for instance, the focus on a protagonist’s fear, anxiety, and helplessness?  What draws us to the idea of dark...

01     MTH1    CAC    12139    POWELL    MU-204