Fall 2022 Courses
Explore our course offerings for the Fall 2022 semester.
ENG
100-level Courses
ENG 101 - ACADEMIC WRITING AND RESEARCH (4 CREDITS)
Intensive instruction in academic writing and research. Basic principles of rhetoric and strategies for academic inquiry and argument. Instruction and practice in critical reading, including the generative and responsible use of print and electronic sources for academic research. Exploration of literate practices across a range of academic domains, laying the foundation for further writing development in college. Continued attention to grammar and conventions of standard written English. Most sections meet in computer classrooms. Successful completion of ENG 101 requires a grade of C- or better. This course satisfies the Introduction to Writing component of the General Education Program.
Prerequisite: A grade of C- or better in ENG 100 or placement via English department guidelines.
200-level Courses
ENG 202 - DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES IN WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 207 - STUDIES IN POETRY (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 209 - INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 210 - INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 214 - INTRODUCTION TO EDITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 219 - STUDIES IN GREAT WORKS OF NON-WESTERN LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Meredith G. Fosque
Traditional Non-Western Literature
Readings in traditional literature, in translation, from Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, China, Japan, and the Americas. Students will be introduced to the origins and flourishing of these oldest cultures through the oral and written stories, poems, essays and plays that have become the defining works of these societies. At the same time we will look at the geographical, historical, and philosophical contexts from which these texts arise. (Assignments will include brief Responses, a Presentation, two Papers, Quizzes, Midterm, and Final.)
ENG 223 - CONTEMPORARY WORLD LITERATURE I (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 232 - LITERATURE AND MEDICINE (3 CREDITS)
Lindsey Catherine Andrews PhD
This is an interdisciplinary course that fits broadly into the category of "Medical Humanities," which considers how humanistic, social science, and arts disciplines interact with the field of medicine. In this class, we will analyze the social aspects of medical knowledge by using literature—memoirs, fiction, and poetry—as a lens through which to understand diagnosis and treatment practices. Throughout the semester, we will examine aesthetic representation and linguistic play as means for unpacking the often hidden assumption that undergird medical knowledge and inform treatment practices. The texts we investigate will help us to understand how medical knowledge is produced, how treatment regimens are determined, and why social biases persist in medical practice. Perhaps most importantly, it will help us think about how and why the language we use around illness, pathology, disability, death and dying matters. The works we will read suggest that literature and art are not useful merely for historical insight, but they also offer crucial alternatives to dominant medical narratives. Although we will look at the long history of medical practice and the emergence of professional medicine, our texts will be drawn primarily from twentieth-century US authors. Authors may include: Carson McCullers, William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Octavia Butler, Virginia Woolf, Christina Crosby, Gayl Jones, Susanna Kaysen, Frank Bidart, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and William Burroughs.
ENG 246 - LITERATURE OF THE HOLOCAUST (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 248 - SURVEY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 251 - MAJOR BRITISH WRITERS (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 261 - ENGLISH LITERATURE I (3 CREDITS)
Professor Jim Knowles
This course is an introduction to English literature of the medieval and early modern periods, covering a 500-year period from the late twelfth century to the late seventeenth century. We will read a selection of major writers and texts from the Anglo-Norman period (Marie de France), the Middle English period (the Gawain poet, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe), the English Renaissance (Shakespeare), and the seventeenth century (Donne, Herbert, Milton). Our approach to reading and discussing these texts will be twofold. First, the aesthetic approach to reading asks us to recognize these poems and plays as works of art with transhistorical value and enduring appeal. Secondly, the historical approach to reading literature asks us to understand the same texts as cultural objects which are deeply embedded in the times, places, and circumstances of their creation. Part of our task will be to recognize how and when our own twenty-first-century moral and aesthetic impulses (what we find beautiful or moving or offensive) diverge from (or converge with) those of the writers we are studying. Over the course of the semester, students will acquire the necessary vocabulary and technical skills needed to analyze literary texts on their own terms and to situate texts within their original cultural contexts. For CHASS majors, fulfills Literature I requirement. Fulfills GEP Humanities credit (3 hours).
Paul Broyles
This course traverses the first thousand years of English literature (from the mid-7th century to 1667), taking in a wide variety of genres and charting major authors and key literary developments. From Beowulf’s reanimation of a fading heroic past to Margaret Cavendish’s dazzling sci-fi vision of another world, we will see how literature makes and remakes the world with its changing needs and dreams as it responds to upheavals like invasion, pandemic, and social transformation. We will examine the formal, aesthetic aspects that allow literary texts to resonate across time and move us even today; we will also place the works in their historical contexts, exploring how literary texts respond to their environments, and how they might help reshape society. As the semester progresses, we will develop vocabulary and technical skills that allow us to describe very precisely how literature does the things it does.
ENG 262 - ENGLISH LITERATURE II (3 CREDITS)
Jeremy Miller
In this course, we will read literature written in the last three hundred years from Britain and its empire to track the evolution of the British identity. The goal is to provide historical and theoretical context for some of the defining issues, including immigration, cultural liberalism, income inequality, and climate change, that Britons debated in the lead up to Brexit, Britain’s recent divorce from the European Union. Thus, we will start with Brexit before turning to the past and three major literary movements: Romanticism, the Victorian era, and Modernism/postmodernism. In these periods, we will engage with literature from within the traditional ‘canon,’ like William Wordsworth and Virginia Woolf, and outside it, such as Mary Prince, H.D., and Zadie Smith. The literature will help us to frame the significant economic, intellectual, and cultural events, including the French Revolution, British Imperialism, evolution, the Industrial Revolution, the two world wars, and globalization, that shaped Britain’s interactions with the world prior to Brexit. As we read, we will consider questions such as: Who is allowed to participate in debates about ‘Britishness’? What forms of knowledge (scientific, religious, and economic) influence them? How does Britain’s perception of the world and the world’s perception of Britain influence each other? Addressing these questions will require us to shift between conceptual scales and modes of reading to immerse ourselves in the uneasy, in between spaces of British literary history.
ENG 266 - AMERICAN LITERATURE II (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 275 - LITERATURE AND WAR (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 281 - INTRO TO CREATIVE NONFICTION (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 282 - INTRODUCTION TO FILM (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 287 - EXPLORATIONS IN CREATIVE WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 288 - FICTION WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 289 - POETRY WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 292 - WRITING ABOUT FILM (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
300-level Courses
ENG 300 - CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 305 - WOMEN AND LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 314 - TECHNICAL DOCUMENT DESIGN AND EDITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 315 - PHONETICS (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 316 - INTRODUCTION TO NEWS AND ARTICLE WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Christa Williams Gala
Learn how to write concise stories about events and people with a special focus on the tenets of media writing, including writing leads, establishing story angles, interviewing and research, quote gathering, editing and fact-checking. Students will learn the difference between writing for print and digital platforms and practice through writing their own stories, including articles and profiles. Regular quizzes on AP Style and current events will be given.
Paul Isom
This course is designed to develop and hone skills in fact gathering and writing. The student must demonstrate competence in collecting information and interpreting and communicating that information in news style. Special emphasis is given to news judgment and collecting information from primary and secondary sources; story structure, writing quality, proper grammar and spelling, editing and revising, speed with accuracy and clarity; and responsibility in reporting.
Maya L. Kapoor
Good journalism requires an almost acrobatic set of skills, from finding topics, to conducting interviews, to writing something that’s compelling and accurate — you know, that people actually want to read. At the same time, a functional democracy requires a public that’s informed and engaged. Journalism entertains, even as it speaks truth to power, bearing witness to the good and bad in society and seeking accountability. Lucky for us, journalism can also be rewarding and fun.
In the first half of the semester, we will focus on learning how to be effective reporters. We will develop skills needed for finding, reporting, writing, and fact-checking news stories. After spring break, we will focus on using those skills to produce the final project, a reported feature-length. In the second half of the semester, students also will lead class discussions of recent reportage.
Students will write several major assignments (along with drafts) during the semester, including the final project. In addition, short responses or assignments related to the day’s reading will be due on Moodle prior to class most Mondays and Wednesdays.
ENG 320 - ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF SPEECH (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 321 - SURVEY OF RHETORICAL THEORY (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 323 - WRITING IN THE RHETORICAL TRADITIONS
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 324 - MODERN ENGLISH SYNTAX (3 CREDITS)
Erik Thomas
Modern English Syntax examines the grammatical structure of English sentences. The course begins with discussions of what grammar means, including prescriptive and descriptive definitions. It moves on to lexical classes, or “parts of speech,” and numerous concepts related to them and how these categories operate in English. Much of the second half of the course explores the constituency of English sentences using a simplified form of X-bar syntax. This portion of the course offers students a means of understanding the more common constructions in English in a way that they can apply to their future writing and linguistic work. There is also a short foray into semantic roles such as agent and patient and into grammatical relations such as subject and direct object.
ENG 327 - LANGUAGE AND GENDER (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 328 - LANGUAGE AND WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 330 - SCREENWRITING (3 CREDITS)
Through lectures, film clips, screenplay examples, collaborative brainstorming, in-class written explorations of specific concepts, and sharing of students’ work we will explore the craft and art of screenwriting. Students will learn about structure, characterization, creating dynamic dialogue, subtext, subplots, theme, exposition, etc. utilizing established screenplay formats. The course will involve studying great films and scripts, participating in critiques, and the writing and revising of original material. Over the course, students will write scenes focusing on specific screenwriting elements, and share and critique these pieces. At the end of the semester the students should have a clear understanding of cinematic storytelling techniques and will have a work-in-progress screenplay.
ENG 331 - COMMUNICATION FOR ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (3 CREDITS)
Prerequisite: Junior standing
This course is aimed primarily at students in engineering and other technological fields. Students may take only ONE of the following courses: ENG 331, ENG 332 or ENG 333. In this course, students become familiar with written communication in industrial and technical organizations. Students are encouraged to adapt writing assignments to their own work experience, professional goals, and major fields of study. Instruction covers all phases of the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, and critiquing other people's work). Emphasis is placed on organizing for the needs of technical and management readers; concise, clear expression; and the use of visual aids. Typical assignments include job application letters and resumes, progress reports, proposals, technical instructions, and at least one oral presentation.
ENG 332 - COMMUNICATION FOR BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT (3 CREDITS)
Prerequisite: Junior standing
This course (formerly ENG 221) is aimed primarily at students in business-, administration-, and management-related fields. Students may take only ONE of the following courses: ENG 331, ENG 332 or ENG 333. This course introduces students to the more important forms of writing used in business and public organizations. Students are encouraged to adapt writing assignments to their own work experience, professional goals, and major fields of study. Instruction covers all phases of the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, and critiquing other people's work). Emphasis is placed on organizing for the needs of a variety of readers; concise, clear expression; and the use of visual aids. Students practice writing tasks dealing with the routine problems and details common in a work environment and more specialized writing such as problem analyses and sales and administrative proposals. Each student also gives one or two oral presentations related to the written work.
ENG 333 - COMMUNICATION FOR SCIENCE AND RESEARCH (3 CREDITS)
Prerequisite: Junior standing
This course is aimed primarily at students who plan careers in scientific research. Students may take only ONE of the following courses: ENG 331, ENG 332, or 333. This course introduces students to the more important forms of writing used in scientific and research environments. The course explores the relationship between research and writing in problem formulation, interpretation of results, and support and acceptance of research. Students are encouraged to adapt writing assignments to their own work experience, professional goals, and major fields of study. Instruction covers all phases of the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, and critiquing other people's work). Emphasis is placed on organizing for the needs of a variety of readers; concise, clear expression; and the use of visual aids. Typical assignments include proposals, journal articles, and at least one oral presentation.
ENG 340 - Literature Art Society
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 362 - Studies in British Novel
Paul Fyfe
Writing (and) the Nineteenth-Century British Novel
In this course, we use the nineteenth century’s significant changes in media technologies to learn about the evolution of the novel as a genre. What difference does it make if authors use a quill, a pen, or a typewriter to write? How might publishing formats affect the stories authors imagine and the ways readers engage with them? What happens to the novel when communication gets increasingly technologized, or when literature collides with an emerging mass media? We will read works that highlight writing and reading practices, examine texts in different formats, and—whenever possible—practice with historical text and communications technologies. Authors include Austen, Gaskell, Braddon, Gissing, and Stoker.
ENG 364 - HISTORY OF FILM TO 1940 (3 CREDITS)
Josie Torres Barth
How did film evolve from an experimental technology—four-second, flickering pictures—to a major industry and the most influential cultural form in the world? This course will trace the early history of global film, including developments in production and exhibition technology, film form, and how audiences made meaning of this new medium. Our discussion will be animated by questions like the following: How did new forms of perception change viewers’ experience of the world and their relationship to others? How did early filmmakers and viewers establish a shared visual and narrative language? What technical, industrial, and cultural factors encouraged films to start telling stories? Who participated in this new public sphere, and who was excluded from it? Where did the concept of the “movie star” come from? How did these developments intersect with major world-historical events, such as war, revolution, decolonization, and the Great Depression? Through lectures, screenings, discussion, and a hands-on creative project, we will see how early film history sheds light on our own moment of industrial, technological, and social change.
ENG 375 - AFRICAN AMERICAN CINEMA (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 376 - SCIENCE FICTION (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 382 - FILM AND LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 388 - INTERMEDIATE FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 389 - INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 394 - STUDIES IN WORLD LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Catherine Mainland
Confinement and Escape
This course will explore the themes of confinement and escape in a range of literary works (written in or translated into English). Focusing mainly on Europe, Russia, and South Africa in the 20th century, we will examine artistic portrayals of ideas including: military occupation; imprisonment; apartheid; surveillance; and social restrictions based on class or gender. Our discussions will be informed by interdisciplinary frameworks, drawing on non-fiction fields such as history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology as we consider the ways in which literature can both engage with the global human experience and foster resilience and hope.
ENG 395 - STUDIES IN RHETORIC AND DIGITAL MEDIA (3 CREDITS)
Matthew Jungsuk Howard
Digital Rhetoric and Media Sport Industries
Students in this course will learn about the ways media sport industries and the digital media technologies that support and enable sports play, broadcasts, fan interaction, and journalism serve rhetorical purposes that structure our societies through socio-cultural logics we absorb in our daily lives. Broadly speaking, the language we use to describe sports play, the way athletes, fans, and coaches are framed, and the way sports talk discourse works on radio, television, and online all present us with rhetorics governing the way bodies move throughout the world, which types of bodies (and bodily achievements) are most valuable, and which behaviors and moralities are laudable. Sports affect our rhetorics of time, of space, and of play in ways that express and construct socio-cultural power relations.
400-level Courses
ENG 400 - APPLIED CRITICISM (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 411 - RHETORICAL CRITICISM (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 416 - ADVANCED NEWS AND ARTICLE WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 420 - MAJOR AMERICAN AUTHOR (3 CREDITS)
Jennifer Nolan
F. Scott Fitzgerald & the Jazz Age
It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire
F. Scott Fitzgerald “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” 1931
Perhaps no other author’s work is more appropriate for reflecting on the Jazz Age than F. Scott Fitzgerald, who coined that term to describe the Roaring Twenties and chronicled, critiqued, and in many ways embodied the era. Though best known now as the author of The Great Gatsby (1925), Fitzgerald primarily published short fiction prolifically in well-paying popular magazines, which were essentially the streaming services of his era, and thus while we will revisit his most famous novel, most of our examination of his career will focus on the short stories and magazines that made him famous and paid for his lavish lifestyle. In addition to two exams, this class will provide students with the opportunity to work with magazines from the 1920s and engage, through guided research, with scholarly conversations about a Fitzgerald topic of their choosing for their final research project. By the end of this course, students will have a better understanding of the Jazz Age, its popular culture, and the processes through which F. Scott Fitzgerald and his writing both define and transcend modern understandings of this era.
ENG 421 - COMPUTER DOCUMENTATION DESIGN (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 422 - WRITING THEORY AND THE WRITING PROCESS (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 426 - ANALYZING STYLE (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 452 - MEDIEVAL BRITISH LITERATURE
Professor Jim Knowles
This course is an introduction to literature in Middle English, excluding Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. We will read a selection of major texts contemporary with Chaucer’s literary career, beginning with his other masterpiece, the historical romance of Troilus and Criseyde. From here we will move on to the works of the anonymous Pearl-poet, including the chivalric tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,and the dream-elegy called Pearl. The second half of the course will focus on religious writing in late medieval England, beginning with the allegorical dream-vision of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, then selections from the so-called “Middle English Mystics” (especially Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe), and concluding with the civic spectacle of the York Mystery plays (some of which we will perform in class at the end of term.) No prior knowledge of Middle English is required. Instruction (and practice) in how to read and interpret Middle English poetry and prose will be a major component of the course, but for some of the texts we will enlist the help of facing-page modern translations. For English majors, this course can fulfill the British Lit requirement and/or Pre-1800 requirement. Consult your advisor for specifics. For CHASS majors, fulfills Literature II requirement.
ENG 453 - 19TH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Anna Gibson
Victorian Sensation
In this course we will investigate a peculiar Victorian phenomenon: sensation. At the heart of our syllabus will be the genre from the 1860s and 70s that came to be known as “sensation fiction,” epitomized by novels like Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone. Full of intrigue adapted from popular trials and news, these page-turners focused on adultery, madness, theft, murder, or intrigue, and it is perhaps no surprise that they were some of the earliest detective stories. But while we focus on these fictional “sensation” stories and the public response that surrounded them, we will also investigate just what “sensation” in the Victorian era has to do with both bodily sensation and popular interest and excitement. We will consider Victorian psychology’s take on the relationship between mind and body and ask what light this can shine on the fiction we read, and we will discuss that way particular bodies were marked as racially “other,” unstable, or otherwise sensationally different. We will learn about sensations in the British media in the second half of the nineteenth century, which will take us from the excitement surrounding the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the rise of photography, and from coverage of the “Jack-the-Ripper” murders to the trial of Oscar Wilde at the end of the century. Our reading may include authors such as Emily Brontë, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and others. In addition to a final research project, you will take charge of “curating” a sensational event or object from the Victorian era.
ENG 455 - LITERACY IN U.S.
Chris Anson
At this moment, highly complex processes are at work as you read, interpret, and reflect on these words. On a basic level, you're making use of abilities that you have been practicing most of your life, through formal schooling, through family educational practices, through work-related experiences, through your own self-sponsored activities (including online interaction), and through daily routines. At a higher level, you bring to your reading tacit assumptions about the role of literacy in your development and in a society that demands higher literacy and uses it to establish criteria for your success. In a course that focuses on literacy, reading the very word literacy calls into play many beliefs about our class system, economic and political structures, educational institutions, cultures, and media.
In this course, we'll explore the personal functions of literacy but soon extend them to wider dimensions of literacy in our society and in our educational institutions, including questions such as these: What are the competing theories about how best to teach literacy? What actually happens when we read? How is technology affecting literacy? What’s the relationship between reading and writing? Why are 32 million Americans illiterate and why do 21% read below a 5th-grade level? How can we use literacy in the service of social justice? Projects include a literacy autoethnography, a literacy-focused teaching strategy, a “design-your-own” literacy inquiry, and posts to a discussion forum.
(Required for English majors with a concentration in teacher education. Contact Chris Anson at canson@ncsu.edu for further information. Professor Anson’s c.v. is at www.ansonica.net)
ENG 470 - AMERICAN LITERATURE, 20TH CENTURY AND BEYOND (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 488 - ADVANCED FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 489 - ADVANCED POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 491 - HONORS IN ENGLISH (3 CREDITS)
Dr. Jeffrey Reaser
How Language Mythology Perpetuates Inequality
It’s common knowledge that women talk more than men, that texting is ruining the language, and that TV is making us all sound the same. The problem with this common knowledge is that none of it is factual. We all watch the sun rise in the east and set in the west, but we no longer believe the various mythologies – like Helios driving a golden chariot across the sky – about the mechanism of this natural phenomenon. Instead, we have all come to understand that in order to understand celestial mechanics, one must study the topic rigorously. When it comes to language, however, we leave unexamined a surprising amount of mythology. Part of the reason for this is the fact that our linguistic competency is acquired, not learned, and so while we may be highly proficient in using it, we often have little knowledge about its workings. Furthermore, we don’t often consider what it means to approach language as a topic worthy of scientific investigation. Because of this, we ascribe expert status to people who seem to use the language expertly. As just one example, during the Senate Sub-Committee hearings on the 1996 Oakland Ebonics Program, the pro argument was presented by some of the most distinguished linguists in the country. The con argument was presented by a journalist and a preacher. The latter were considered to be equally as expert as the former. All these factors have resulted in language being a subject around which exists a tremendous amount of mythology. And because so many of these myths are have attained “common knowledge” status, shifting the narrative around them has been difficult. In this course, we will examine critically linguist beliefs in the public sphere through examining language debates, bestselling “trade” books on linguistic topics and other public science domains (media, the internet, etc.). Among our tasks will be to separate linguistic fact from linguistic fiction and to ask questions from critical theory such as, “who benefits from the persistence of linguistic mythology?” and “how is this mythology perpetuated?” Topics include: Where do language norms come from? Who gets to be a language authority? What does it mean for a word to be a “real word”? Why it is important to know that language variation and change are essential aspects of a healthy language? Are women really from Venus and men really from Mars? What is the impact of popular media on the language? How is texting impacting our language? Etc. This course does not assume your having linguistic training, but it does ask you to read with gusto and be vigilantly on the lookout for poor assumptions, wild generalizations, faulty logic, and other non-scientifically appropriate treatment of language.
ENG 492 - SPECIAL TOPICS IN FILM STYLES AND GENRES (3 CREDITS)
John Stadler
Post-Cinema: Digital Moving Images in 21st Century
In this class, we will interrogate the shift from the analog celluloid to born digital moving images from the turn of the 21st century to today. This inquiry will ask not just how this shift reshaped cinema at the level of production, distribution, and exhibition, but moreover, how that technological leap altered the aesthetic, ideological, and narrative meanings of modern moving images. As the “post” in post-cinema so loudly announces, we will ask what it means to move “beyond” or “after” cinema, and how that movement across boundaries comes to name a particular milieu, discourse, and experience of modern moving image spectatorship. How have digital technologies that were once not even deemed cinematic—the computer, the telephone, the video game—suddenly become central to if not indispensable from the very notion of moving images? How do theories of medium specificity, indexicality, remediation, spreadable media, gamification, transmediality, and affect help us better apprehend this moment in digital moving images, and what might they indicate will be the next, or post-post-cinema? The course will address key issues in recent film and media theory and encourages experimentation with methods of digital humanities, computational media art, and other creative practices.
Nathaniel Isaacson
Eastern Westerns
You have probably heard of "spaghetti westerns": films featuring cowboys in the American west that were produced in Italy (and sometimes Spain). But did you know that many of these films were inspired by Japanese samurai films, and Hong Kong Kung-fu movies, and vice-versa? Eastern / Westerns examines the trans-national flows of the western genre between East Asia, Hollywood, and back again. Course format features one film screening and one discussion section per week. Class meets Monday and Wednesday afternoons, 3:00-4:50 PM. Email Nathaniel Isaacson nkisacs@ncsu.edu for more details.
ENG 494 - SPECIAL TOPICS IN LINGUISTICS (3 CREDITS)
Robin Dodsworth
Language in Raleigh isn’t what it used to be. A few decades ago, most people who grew up in Raleigh sounded Southern, and their only native language was English. Then IBM and other research- and technology-focused companies in Research Triangle Park began to attract people to Raleigh from both inside and outside the South, creating a richly heterogeneous dialect contact setting that has (so far) led to the gradual loss of the traditional Southern dialect and the emergence of a new dialect with few, but not zero, regionally distinctive features. Yet the loss of the Southern dialect has happened unevenly across Raleigh; as we will see, social class, gender, geography, and ethnicity have all shaped language during the past several decades. At the same time, migration of Spanish speakers to the area has intensified, and many children growing up here natively speak both English and Spanish, and the Raleigh speech community gives us a remarkable opportunity to observe language change and new dialect emergence in action. In this course, we look closely at the ways in which language has changed in Raleigh and the surrounding region, including phonetic, phonological, lexical, and syntactic features of both English and Spanish. We centrally ask how Raleigh’s economic, cultural, and geographic landscape have both promoted linguistic change and maintained linguistic diversity within the community.
Most of the course will be data-intensive, meaning that we will use a lot of linguistic data and consider various ways of analyzing it to gain a picture of language variation and change. Our data will include some recordings in the Raleigh corpus, a large set of conversational interviews recorded with Raleigh natives. We will also read about, and study data from, nearby communities such as Durham, Hickory, and Chatham County.
Walt Wolfram
Variety In Language
Language variation description, theory, method and application; focus on regional, social, ethnic and gender varieties; sociolinguistic analysis, basic discourse analysis. Also listed as ENG 525.
Agnes Bolonyai
Discourse Analysis
Overview of major issues, theories, and research methods in contemporary discourse analysis. It explores how language as a form of social practice regulates social actions, relations and identities; how ways of speaking construct and are constructed by social order, cultural practice, and individual agency. Texts/discourses are analyzed to examine how speakers create meaning through formal linguistic choices; what the micro-organization of talk reveals about social order; how critical understanding of discourse helps to interpret complex processes of social life. Also listed as ENG 527.
500-level Courses
ENG 506 - VERBAL DATA ANALYSIS (3 CREDITS)
Jason Swarts
This course will offer instruction on and guided practice in a stepwise approach for studying verbal data that come from a variety of sources, including: written texts, interviews, meetings, instant message transcripts, emails, recordings, notes, and others. The methods taught in this class will be useful in academic research but also for research in areas like usability, teaching, and professional/technical writing.
Students will choose verbal data phenomena to study, create research questions, and plan a study to answer them. Students will also learn how to collect data; record it in a databook; prepare it for analysis; write a coding scheme; achieve coding reliability; analyze the data using descriptive statistical measures, and then report the findings in visually and verbally compelling ways. Throughout the semester, students will write exercises to demonstrate their understanding of the analytic methods; discuss similar research methods in published research, and present their work in progress.
Course Objectives
By the end of the semester students will be able to:
- ask field-relevant research questions;
- write research questions by which to investigate a verbal data phenomenon;
- design a study;
- develop a coding scheme to explain verbal data;
- test the integrity of a coding scheme with a second coder;
- analyze verbal data using a spreadsheet program;
- describe results statistically, and
- explain results and their significance to an audience of peers
ENG 508 - USABILITY STUDIES FOR TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION (3 CREDITS)
Douglas Walls
Our class examines the usability testing of design and web sites as well as a brief introduction to user experience (UX) studies. We will discuss the nature of design and usability, especially how they interact to make solutions easy or difficult to use for particular audiences. We will examine a variety of testing including inquiry based, qualitative, and quantitative testing methods. We will discuss the trade-offs among these various types of tests and will analyze which ones are most appropriate for various rhetorical and developmental situations. You will engage in multiple methods for conducting tests when time and funding preclude lab-based testing.
You will conduct several tests and studies on real world websites. Essential parts of the testing process, including planning, getting test subjects, preparing test materials, conducting the test, analyzing the data you collect, and reporting on results and recommendations will all be part of the class. The texts you will read extensively will concern the theories and concepts behind usability testing, the pragmatic practices that inform it, and the place of usability in larger discussions of user experience.
ENG 511 - THEORY AND RESEARCH IN COMPOSITION (3 CREDITS)
Casie Fedukovich
ENG 511 provides an introduction to foundational theories and research in the field of composition studies. We will focus on the dynamic, and sometimes competing, nature of these theories, keeping in mind the historical and political contexts in which they emerged. The goal of the course is to examine assumptions underlying theory and research and to explore implications for the teaching and practice of writing.
ENG 512 - THEORY AND RESEARCH IN PROFESSIONAL WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 513 - EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN COMPOSITION (3 CREDITS)
Professor Chris Anson
ENG 513/798 offers an introduction to basic principles of research design and to a range of qualitative and quantitative methods used to study writing processes, products, and contexts. Recommended for students who have had at least one prior graduate course in composition or technical communication, the course examines the empirical methods cited in the professional literatures of these fields.
The course is intended to help students (1) develop a basic understanding of research design needed for reading and evaluating published research in composition and related fields; and (2) assess the goals and limitations of various methods in order to select methods and designs appropriate to their own research questions.
Coursework includes data analysis projects and design critiques, a brief presentation of a specific method, and a research proposal, including a review of relevant prior research. Requirements will differ for master’s and doctoral students. Doctoral students should register for the affiliated ENG 798 section.
ENG 513/798 satisfies the following requirements in departmental programs:
- M.A. Concentration in Composition & Rhetoric: Research Methods or Rhet/Comp elective
- M.S. Technical Communication: Theory & Methods elective
- Ph.D. Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media: Quantitative or Qualitative Methods option (depending on the focus of projects), or may be taken as an elective.
Students in other programs are welcome to join us. Contact Chris Anson at canson@ncsu.edu for further information. Professor Anson’s c.v. is at www.ansonica.net
ENG 517 - ADVANCED TECHNICAL WRITING, EDITING AND DOCUMENT DESIGN (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 520 - SCIENCE WRITING FOR THE MEDIA (3 CREDITS)
Maya L. Kapoor
This course will introduce students to science writing, with different forms, approaches, and goals in mind. Science writing can be an intriguing puzzle, where the writer’s work is to find engaging ways to interest audiences in complex or arcane topics, using tools such as narrative structure, voice, character, or scene. At the same time, science writing often tackles topics that are both high-stakes and politically contested: the coronavirus pandemic, human-caused climate change, lead pollution in drinking water, the extinction crisis, and more. Right now, science communications in general — along with journalism itself — faces a reckoning about which stories, sources, voices, and audiences matter. This is an exciting time to think deeply and critically about what you write, to whom, and why.
Above all, science writing is a craft, and we will focus on compelling storytelling in class. We will have regular discussions of current science writing. Students will also lead discussions of selections from The Best American Science and Nature Essays (2021). Additionally, students will produce several major writing assignments (as well as drafts along the way), with an emphasis on developing practical skills necessary for compelling and timely science storytelling.
ENG 525 - VARIETY IN LANGUAGE (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 527 - DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 528 - SOCIOPHONETICS (3 CREDITS)
Erik Thomas
Sociophonetics involves the application of modern phonetics methods, both acoustic and
perceptual, to issues in language variation and issues in phonetics for which language variation is useful. After an overview of general issues, the class moves into techniques used in speech perception experiments and techniques used for acoustic measurement of consonants, vowels, prosody, and voice quality. The latter part of the course examines how the various methods can be applied to address theoretical issues in the cognition of language, sound change, and sociolinguistics.
ENG 539 - SEMINAR IN WORLD LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Elaine Orr
This course will focus on literary narratives (fiction and nonfiction) from a number of global locations to help us understand human rights, justice, and ethics. What does it mean not to have access to education, health care, free speech, reproductive freedom, freedom from violence, for example? Students will have an opportunity to help shape the course by making presentations on the historical and cultural contexts for and critical responses to the books we read.
There isn’t a theoretical framework for the course though we may refer to some contemporary theories in our discussion. If and as we employ them, we’ll define terms for general use. The framework is The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Clapman’s Introduction, the cultural/historical/biographical presentations you make, and the what we define as arising from the texts themselves.
Authors/books include Jenny Erpenbeck, Louise Erdrich, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Jose Saramago, Ta-Nahisi Coates, Refuge Tales, Great Britain: Comma Press, Andrew Clapham, Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction, among others.
ENG 550 - BRITISH ROMANTIC PERIOD (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 551- CHAUCER (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 575 - SOUTHERN WRITERS (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 582 - STUDIES IN LITERATURE (3 CREDITS)
Margaret Simon
Graphic Literature: A Global Perspective
This course will offer a survey of contemporary global graphic literature (graphic novels, comics). We will explore the ways different cultures have theorized the interplay of text and image, we will consider the social position of graphic literature within various traditions, and we will work to better understand different traditions in the graphic novel through both traditional reading and hands-on experimentation. We will read a mixture of literary and interdisciplinary texts to consider how novelists, journalists, and researchers are using the possibilities of text and image to interpret complex and sometimes controversial information and even to explore their own roles as authors. The cartoonist Will Eisner has written that “stereotype is an essential tool in the language of graphic storytelling.” We will evaluate this statement, coming to understand how an artist’s visual “voice” shapes our perception of the characters and social conditions a work conveys. We will also explore the role visual storytelling has in processing and conveying traumatic experience, both collective and individual, and how comics and the creative fan cultures they inspire can build and sustain community. While the course is a survey, we will attend particularly to comics that undertake a complex and intersectional relationship with race, class, gender, and disability. *Please note that the final reading list for this course will be determined by books' availability in English translation as well as consideration of price and ease of access.*
Anne Baker
Nation, Identity, and Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
In this course we will read a variety of novels and short stories that address the construction of national identity in the nineteenth-century United States. We will consider how narratives of the period represent issues such as race, slavery, religion, westward expansion, and shifting gender roles as they participate in or problematize the development of a “national” culture. Authors will include: Hawthorne, Melville, Brown, Stowe, Twain, and James, along with a few theoretical readings about nationhood by Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, and others.
ENG 585 - STUDIES IN FILM (3 CREDITS)
Josie Torres Barth
Horror Film
Horror, a genre named for an affect, is most successful when it evokes a visceral reaction in its viewers. This course will interrogate horrifying figures, situations, and spaces—as well as the bodily reactions they inspire—in order to determine what they can tell us about the genre’s larger social role. We will investigate subgenres such as the monster movie, gothic horror, the slasher, the found-footage film, and so-called “elevated” or “art” horror, asking questions such as the following: What can the horror evoked by the transgression of established boundaries of race, class, gender, sexuality, and the human body tell us about what a society values, and who or what they see as in need of protection? What are the politics of monstrosity? Amidst the genre’s many historical changes, how can we account for the centrality of the socio-cultural construct of “the family” to horror films? What social, cultural, and industrial factors have encouraged horror film cycles? How have cultural perceptions of the horror genre and its audiences changed over the course of the past century, and what factors have led to its contemporary legitimation? How have generic frameworks and tropes taken shape over the form’s history, and how do they continue to haunt modern audiences?
ENG 587 - INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN ENGLISH (3 CREDITS)
Dr. Marsha Gordon
Methods and Theories in Media Studies
This seminar will explore key theoretical and methodological issues in media studies. We will discuss approaches, paradigms, and discourses about media landscapes and objects to prepare students to engage in various forms of research and writing. Topics will include historiography, archival methods, media archaeology, approaches to nontheatrical media, cultural hierarchy and taste, formalism and aesthetics, feminist and critical race theory, star studies, and analyses of media institutions. We will engage with an array of media, from broadcast television and cinema to streaming technologies and social networks. This course is appropriate for any MA or MFA student interested in engaging with film and media during their studies. A series of assignments due over the course of the semester will ask students to explore a variety of methodologies and to try on different critical voices, likely including an archival research project, a video essay, a theoretical critique, and a social media archeology assignment.
ENG 588 - FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 589 - POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 590 - STUDIES IN CREATIVE WRITING (3 CREDITS)
Cadwell Turnbull
Often traditional narratives focus on single protagonists or a group of closely related individuals. But how can narrative be expanded to include networks of people or explore the places where individual stories might intersect? Novels and other creative mediums have experimented with this form of narrative. Sometimes called mosaics, the form prioritizes communities over single actors and often centers around moments of change. Using written and visual stories as examples, this course will explore the benefits and limits of mosaic narrative. The course will also be a special workshop in which the class will collectively experiment with a mosaic narrative of their own creation.
ENG 592 - SPECIAL TOPICS IN FILM STYLES AND GENRES (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
600-level Courses
ENG 624 - TEACHING COLLEGE COMPOSITION (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 636 - DIRECTED READINGS
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 669 - LITERATURE, METHODS, AND THE PROFESSION (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 676 - MASTER'S PROJECT IN ENGLISH (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
ENG 695 - MASTER'S THESIS RESEARCH
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
700-level Courses
ENG 798 - SPECIAL TOPICS IN ENGLISH STUDIES (3 CREDITS)
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.
800-level Courses
ENG 810 - DIRECTED READINGS IN ENGLISH STUDIES
Visit the NC State University online course catalog for the general course description for this course.