ENG - English

Advanced ESL reading and writing; study skills; vocabulary; sentence structure; writing of paragraphs and short essays to prepare students for college writing.

Development of writing skills with emphasis on instruction and practice in writing the college essay and the library research paper. Restricted to students with 59 or fewer credit hours. Students with 60 or more credit hours who are not exempted from ENG 107 take ENG 311.

This course invites students to approach the practice of reading literature as a vehicle for thinking through life’s larger questions and to cultivate fundamental habits of critical thinking, dialogue, and expression.  A writing-embedded course.

ENG 161 invites students to explore a buffet of food literature - novels, short stories, poems, cookbooks, films - to learn more about how we compose and shape individual and cultural identities. In collaboration with ENV 161, students will also explore our relationship to the natural world through how we cultivate and consume food.  Fulfills ENG 112 Core Requirement.

English 205 invites students to time travel to better understand our present and to intentionally shape their futures. In collaboration with History 205, students will identify and investigate essential social, political, intellectual “through lines” from the 18^th century to the present and explore the ways storytellers, poets, and essayists actively engaged, challenged, and influenced their cultural contexts.

This course provides English majors and other students with an introduction to literary research and theory, applying both to works of literature. It also provides students with an introduction to effective use of the academic library and of online resources as part of the research process. Required of English majors. Can be taken concurrently with a 300-level English course.

Survey of representative authors and texts from the medieval period through the 18th century, with special attention to British political and cultural history.

Survey of representative authors and texts from the 19th century through the present, with special attention to British political and cultural history.

Survey of representative authors and texts from the colonial days through the 19th century, with special attention to key historical, political, and cultural developments and their impact on literary production.

Survey of representative authors and texts from the 20th century through the present day, with special attention to key historical, political, and cultural developments and their impact on literary production.

Elements of poetry for poets who wish to receive guidance for their own work and who wish to read the work of both contemporary poets and fellow students; an opportunity for writing, reading, and discussing poetry and poetics.

Study of the aesthetics and techniques involved in the written dramatic form for video and film production. Emphasis upon writing, workshop critiques, and discussion of students’ screenplays.

Principles and techniques necessary to the short story writer. Analysis of professional fiction as well as guidance for original work of beginning and intermediate writers.

The writing and editing of various types of nonfiction essays in a workshop setting, plus an examination of the writing process itself and the reading of fine essays.

Study of relevant research and theory from composition, rhetoric, linguistics, and psychology applicable to practice. Intended for nominated Writing Assistants in training; others may join with instructor consent.

Introduction to Shakespeare's works including analysis and discussion of several of the comedies, histories, and tragedies with attention given to the cultural background and the interesting particulars of the Elizabethan theater.

Team taught with a professor from Philosophy or Theater to explore the literary, metaphysical, and/or performance aspects of Shakespeare’s plays. Involves the reading of four plays (three by the Bard and one non-Shakespearean), and attendance for four nights at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland seeing live performances. Taught first summer term. Fee: $350

Survey of representative plays within the Anglo-American literary tradition, with possible inclusions ranging from medieval drama to works by contemporary playwrights, with special attention to the genre's major features and preoccupations

A selection of novels, short story collections, and memoirs by Arab writers from the 20th-21st century, examined within their historical and cultural contexts. Topics include: religion, gender, war, Post-Colonialism, Pan-Arabism, forced migration, and Bedouin culture. Features authors from the Levant, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Study of classic authors and texts from France, Germany, Russia and Scandinavia including Lafayette, Laclos, Flaubert, Mann, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Ibsen among others, situating the texts within their specific cultural and historical contexts and highlighting gender and class as thematic concerns.

Intensive analysis of the key techniques, practitioners, and representative themes of English-language novels and short stories. Readings may focus solely on short fiction or the novel, or a combination of both genres.

Intensive practice in reading poetry in English across a wide range of genres, with attention paid to influential forms, themes, and historical developments in poetry from the beginnings of modern English to the present.

Intensive analysis of the methods, modes, and manipulations of nonfiction prose. Readings may draw from such nonfiction works as essays, memoirs, political documents, documentaries, and reportage to explore topics of truth and falsehood, representation and reality, medium and message.

Explorations in the themes, forms, and theories of satire, past and present, examining how great writers have turned malice and moral indignation into witty, funny, or biting fiction, poetry, and drama. Readings drawn from authors such as Orwell, Houellebecq, Heller, West, Voltaire, Swift, Atwood, Pope, Jonson, Horace, and Juvenal.

Investigating a century of imaginative synergy between the medium of film and the medium of literature, this course explores connections, divisions, and adaptations between these two vehicles for narrative and ideas. Readings and viewings will exemplify how history, genre, and artistic form influence the translations of pictures and words.

Study of the letter (epistle, postcard, telegram, text message, etc.) as a literary form, with special attention paid to literary networks, experiments in self-expression, and the spread of ideas, from 18th century Enlightenment Europe to the present day.

Examination of literary works that turns upon historical and political events. Emphasis given to the characteristics of fiction as opposed to the requirements of history and to fiction as a means of interpreting political events.

Study of the diverse literature from the Pacific Northwest region in light of global concerns, to become sharper readers of whatever spaces and places life takes us to live in. May include such authors as Ken Kesey, Norman Maclean, Annie Dillard, David James Duncan, Brian Doyle, Molly Gloss, Timothy Egan, Cheryl Strayed, and Renée Watson.

Study of British and American authors from the eighteenth century to today who have creatively considered and analyzed humans' relationship to and representation of the environment. Selected authors may include William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Michael Pollan.

Study of 20^th and 21^st century literary and theoretical texts by women foregrounding gender and feminism as critical lenses, with critical attention to intersecting categories of inquiry such as class, sexual identity, race, and ethnicity. (Gender & Women’s Studies Minor elective)

Most of the human population now lives in cities. Americans, in particular, saw their lives restructured around cities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through the varying formats of prose, poetry, and drama, this course explores questions of politics, power, identity, growth, individualism, and cooperation, which evolving configurations of urban space force us to ask.

A comparative study of representative works by American writers of African, Asian, Latin American, American Indian, and Jewish descent, within a historically situated understanding of issues, such as cultural continuity, immigration, assimilation, civil rights, and citizenship, affecting the lives of ethnic Americans.

Study of important works by African American writers, from the slave narratives of the nineteenth century to the prose, poetry, and drama of the twentieth century.

This survey of Irish fiction, drama, and poetry from 1900 to today explores issues of identity, nationalism, gender, history, and faith through works by heavyweights Joyce and Yeats, but also by Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Doyle, Colm Toibin, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Marina Carr, among others.

Research and development of an extended argument informed by critical debates; topics to rotate and may include "Chaucer," "Otherness in Early Modern English," and "British Modernism". May be repeated once for credit. English majors only or instructor permission.

Research and development of an extended argument informed by critical debates; topics to rotate and may include "American Romanticism," and "Naturalism and Dystopia." May be repeated once for credit. English majors only or instructor permission.

Research and development of an extended argument informed by critical debates; topics to rotate and may include "Telling/Retelling," "Economics & Ethics," and "Posthumanism." English majors only or instructor permission. 

Research and development of an extended argument informed by critical debates; topics to rotate and may include "Postcolonial Literature," "Indian Literature," and "Modern Chinese Literature." Restricted to English majors or with instructor permission.

Involves students in professional-level research by assisting faculty in research or creative projects. An opportunity for mentoring beyond the classroom and involvement in processes and procedures of research and publication. Work will vary, but could include researching primary and secondary materials, summarizing articles and books, compiling bibliographies, indexing, copy editing, manuscript preparation, and dissemination of manuscripts.

Academic internships are available for qualified students (3.0 G.P.A.; 3.25 G.P.A. in English). Internships provide English majors with job experience pertinent to the study of English. The internship may be taken for one to three credit hours, and the credit can apply to the English major. Students may receive an IP (In Progress) grade until the completion of their internship.

Research, study, or original work under the direction of a faculty member, applying and mastering all major skills (close reading, critical thinking, integration of sources, and persuasive writing) through the development of individual research project from portfolio of prior course assignments. English majors only.

Seminar course required of all majors, with emphasis on applying and mastering all major skills (close reading, critical thinking, integration of sources, and persuasive writing) through the development of individual research project from portfolio of prior course assignments. English majors only.