Instruction and practice in the forms, styles, grammar, and analytical skills necessary for success in academic writing at the undergraduate level. Open to first-year and sophomore students recommended by the English Department. Open to other first-year students and sophomores only by permission of the instructor. May only be taken once for credit.

Focuses on writing the creative essay and might include other creative nonfiction forms as well (such as feature writing), all with an eye toward publication. Emphasis is placed upon studying professional nonfiction works and conceiving, composing, editing, critiquing, and re-writing student work. Prerequisite: W1 and LS

A poem, Robert Frost said, is “an arrest of disorder”—a verbal machine that helps us mediate the chaos of experience. Through poetry we distill thoughts, clarify emotions, and experience a payoff of pleasure and insight. This course teaches the craft of poetry through discussion of model poems, in-class exercises, peer workshops, and directed practice in writing both free and formal verse. It aims to develop students’ critical as well as creative voices. Prerequisite: W1 and LS

Directed writing of prose fiction. Workshop format, with theory of fiction and outside reading assignments. Prerequisite: W1 and LS

This course explores the writer's role as observer and narrator of social, political and environmental change. Using poems, fiction, and essays as models, students write their own works of real or imagined witness and revise a final piece in their genre of choice. Readings include works by Readings include works by Seamus Heaney, James Agee, Alice Walker, Jhumpa Lahiri, John McPhee, Mohsin Hamid, and Zadie Smith. Prerequisite: W1 and LS

A topics course in creative writing. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Recent section topics include Creative Writing: Nonfiction, Meaning in Contemporary American Poetry, Writer as Witness, Poetry of Place, Queer Poetry. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Prerequisites: W1 and LS

Murphy Tutorial Course

Directed writing of poetry, with close attention to technique, form, and voice. Students offer constructive criticism of one another’s work. Some outside reading required. Prerequisite: ENGC 303

Directed writing of short stories or novels, with close attention to technique, structure, and voice. Students offer constructive criticism of one another's work. Some outside reading required. Prerequisite: ENGC 304

This is a seminar in the craft of writing focusing on brief forms of prose and prose poetry. Writers study the aesthetic of flash fiction, micro-essays and prose poems, in an attempt to understand and utilize cross-pollination between genres. Students generate a chapbook size portfolio of hybrid genre work. Prerequisite: Any 300-level ENGC course

An advanced topics course in creative writing. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Recent section topics include Literary Hybrids, Fiction Writing and Publishing, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Non-fiction Essay, Non-fiction and Poetry. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Prerequisites: Senior standing or consent of instructor

Limited to senior English majors with a Creative Writing Emphasis, this seminar course focuses on independent writing projects. Departmental faculty and seminar members provide input and critiques as each student works toward a creative manuscript and a critical essay addressing narrative strategies or poetics. The project is defended orally. Students must have a second reader (not necessarily an English Department member); students must receive project idea approval by Fall Break of the senior year. The instructor and the second reader consult to determine the student’s grade.

Students interested in an internship in creative writing should contact the department chair or the film and media studies coordinator.

A basic introduction to the concepts and techniques of film analysis and criticism. For students in their first or second years of study.

This is an introductory course in the making of documentary, multi-media projects that foreground digital storytelling. Students learn to craft new and innovative multi-media projects across a broad spectrum of platforms, forms, and genres. Students are encouraged to draw on their own experiences and research interests as subject matter. Importantly, the course employs scaffolding exercises that seek to build fluency in core multi-media concepts and fundamental skills. As students develop, projects get progressively longer and more complex. We emphasize process, as students work individually and in groups, sharing their in-progress projects with an eye toward experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

This course features canonical films of world cinema, including national cinemas such as Soviet Montage, German Expressionism, Italian Neo-realism, Hollywood/American Independent, and additional world films of historical significance. In addition to studying significant films, people and movements of film history, this course also considers how and why certain films merit this canonical status. In this class, studying the history of cinema involves studying the history of questions about aesthetics, culture, and politics that inform and are created by film. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A study of 20th and 21st century theories of how and why film make meaning, how and why spectators create and absorb these meanings, and the changing conception of film within historical, cultural, aesthetic, and social contexts. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A study of non-fiction film in the context of ethical, ideological, socio-political, cultural, environmental, and aesthetic concerns. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A topics course in Film and Media Studies. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Recent section topics include Our Zombies/Ourselves, Global Mexican Filmmakers, Film & American History, Cinematic Lives. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A seminar course in Film and Media Studies. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Recent section topics include Cinematic Landscape, Landscape & Atmosphere, War, Cinema & Text. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Prerequisite: Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

Students interested in an internship in film studies should contact the department chair or the film and media studies coordinator.

Close readings of short narrative fiction from several cultural and linguistic traditions, through which students develop a vocabulary of technical and formal terms for the study of narrative.

What is poetry? How can it be valuable or useful to us, even if we don’t usually read or write it ourselves? In this class, students study and close-read many poems by many poets from many different backgrounds in an attempt to answer these questions. Students approach their analysis of poetry both critically and creatively, writing poems of their own to demonstrate understanding of the tools at poets’ disposal; memorizing and reciting a poem; writing two short papers (one analytical, one a work of creative criticism) exploring subjects of their interest; and writing a final reflection on the role of poetry in their life. This course strives to help students figure out what poetry can offer in 2026 that can’t be offered elsewhere.

Study of short novels and the films made from them that introduces students, via the practice of close reading, to the specifically literary and cinematic properties of each form. The course interrogates the idea that cinematic adaptations of literary works must necessarily be thought of in terms of success and failure, that is, in terms of fidelity.

This course invites you into an intensive study of creative nonfiction. We focus on the essay as a literary object, a communicative device, and a source of intellectual and aesthetic enjoyment. Together, we work to develop your understanding of how good essays work, from their conception in an author's experience of the world through the hard work of their development and the pleasure of their transmission to others. In the process, we devote sustained attention to your writing, working to cultivate your distinct perspective and to strengthen your ability to engage, interest, and persuade your audiences.

A study of the diverse genres within Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, read in Middle English.

Novels from the 1950s to the present that reflect Africa’s diverse cultures and history.

An examination of narrative, poetic, and cinematic responses to war from the Civil War to the present. The focus of the course varies, with three chief versions: a chronological survey of the entire span; an examination of a more limited period (even to one armed conflict); and an inquiry on the human body as an instrument and artifact of war. Not all authors are combatants/veterans/men/U.S. citizens.

An examination of crime fiction and non-fiction from the 1840’s to the present, including focuses on Poe’s early detective stories, Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes canon, the Golden Age of British detective fiction, the American “hard-boiled” detective genre, and police procedurals. Crime film offerings include film noir, Hitchcock’s canonical works, and neo-noir.

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved expresses memory’s frightening grip on former slaves through a ghost story. It’s a novel all about possession. Marginalized communities have often turned to speculative fiction—the supernatural, fantasy, science fiction, the surreal—to say what mainstream realism can’t, to challenge dominant narratives, and to tell a good story. Black writers have also used it to appreciate the African roots from which they were violently sundered. This course serves as an introduction to African American literature by studying its tradition of speculative fiction from the late 19th century to the 21st century in prose, poetry, and film.

A topics course in pre-1900 literary studies. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Recent section topics include The Essay, Literature and the Body, Reason vs. Desire in Literature, Digital Humanities. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught.

An examination of how literary and other representations have depicted their culture's relationship to the environment. The exact content varies from term to term, though the course studies various literary and representational forms, including some theoretical writing. While the course examines how writers have experienced, understood, and envisioned their environment and their place in it, related issues in the texts—such as character, gender, race, and economics—are also studied.

A topics course in post-1900 literary studies. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. . Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught.

Contemporary nature writers and eco-poets can’t seem to stop writing about grief and hope. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass, “If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us weep for the world we are breaking apart so that we might love it back to wholeness again.” I agree that hope and despair are both necessary to navigating our climate-changed world. I also think that hope and despair are too big to hold every single day. So what do we do? What do we do every day? When we hear that the cocoa bean is on the brink of extinction and the Gulf Stream may collapse—what do we do? That same survey of contemporary nature writers and eco-poets would also unearth recurring themes like slowness and witness. What if the answer—or part of the answer—to despairing and hoping at the same time is to slow down and pay attention, over and over, again and again, day after day? What if we can make our attention into a discipline—a discipline that both manages our sorrow and encourages joy? As a required part of the tutorial, students participate in an off-site writing retreat from November 12-15 at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Literary Analysis is a joyful, collaborative exploration of the English major’s emphases: literary studies; film and media studies; and creative writing. We study a variety of texts and develop a shared language in an intense introduction to the major’s three learning goals of reading, writing, and self-authoring. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A reading of Chaucer's masterpiece as a work of comedy, tragedy, and romance. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

An examination of Shakespeare’s works. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

Fiction, drama, and poetry from the former British Empire, addressing the diversity of colonial legacies in the Caribbean, India, Africa, and Asia. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

The impact of social institutions on domestic happiness in novels from Defoe to Hardy. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A study of Romantic poetry, fiction, and criticism. The course is centered on careful reading of the literature, but also considers the connection of Romanticism to contemporary politics and culture. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

This course asks, What is modernism? We address that question by exploring texts from the era as artistic objects as well as framing that exploration in terms of the cultural moment they both responded to and helped create. We primarily study fiction and poetry, though other genres (film, drams, nonfiction) may receive consideration. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

In what ways does postmodern literature react against or further the modernist project, and how does the post-war period contribute to this process? Where has contemporary American literature taken us? We begin to answer these questions through the study of fiction and poetry, though other genres, including drama and literary theory, may receive consideration. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

The evolution of the Arthurian canon in English, from the 14th century to the present. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

Considers “theory” as an interdisciplinary enterprise that explores the meaning of signifying systems, in part by rejecting so-called common sense. Examines structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, postcolonial theory, feminism, and queer theory, among others. Intended for students of all disciplines. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

An introduction to a school of theoretical inquiry. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Recommended: ENGL 297. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A topics course in post-1900 literature. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A topics course in pre-1900 literature. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Recent section topics include Slavery in American Literature, American Renaissance and its Others, Sense and Sensation in 19th Century America, Literary Landscapes: Arkansas, Books: Reading in the Digital Age. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

This course aims to develop an appreciation and understanding of how Vietnam has been imagined in literature and film by Vietnamese, American, and European artists, within the context of Vietnamese history from the early 19th century to the present. Course material covers the spectrum of narrative expression by including prose fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and film. Prerequisite: Any 200-level ENGL/ENGF course

A study of Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. Prerequisite: Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

An examination of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette. Prerequisite: Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

A study of Achebe’s classic novels and short stories and of Soyinka’s masterworks of drama, autobiography, and fiction. Works include No Longer At Ease, A Man of the People, Death and the King’s Horseman, and Ake’. Prerequisite: Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

Toni Morrison and John Edgar Wideman are two of the most important Black U.S. writers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Both wrote experimental trilogies that range from slavery to their present, Morrison’s “Love Trilogy” and Wideman’s “Homewood Trilogy.” In this course, we immerse ourselves in these works and you produce a significant, personally meaningful writing project drawing on primary texts and secondary sources. Bring your interests and passions to bear. As this is a senior seminar, we are collectively responsible for class discussion and for advising and editing one another’s final projects

An in-depth study of Hemingway’s career, from In Our Time to his posthumously published The Garden of Eden. Literary criticism of Hemingway is also be a major subject of study. In addition to paper(s), students are expected to research the criticism and to lead class discussions based upon their research. Prerequisite: Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

An intensive topics course in pre-1900 literature. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

An intensive topics course in post-1900 literature. This course can be repeated for additional credits as long as the section topics are different. Consult the online course schedule for information about the topics currently scheduled to be taught. Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

This course taken during spring of the senior year focuses on independent research projects. Departmental faculty and other seminar members provide input and critiques as the student works toward a significant piece of original literary criticism. The project is presented/defended orally. Each student must have a second reader (advisor); the student must solicit the second reader and receive approval of the project early in the fall semester. The second reader does not necessarily need to be an English Department faculty member. The ENGL 497 instructor and the second reader consult to determine the student’s grade. This course is limited to senior English majors. Prerequisite: Any 300-level ENGL/ENGF course

Students interested in an internship in English should contact the department chair.