This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the interactions between the biotic, which is inclusive of people, and the physical components of the Earth system. Through lecture, analysis of scientific literature, and lab we address topics such as biodiversity, agriculture, water resources, atmospheric pollution and climate change, and renewable and non-renewable energy, linking central scientific concepts to local, regional, and global case studies.

This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the interactions between the biotic, which is inclusive of people, and the physical components of the Earth system. Through lecture, analysis of scientific literature, and lab we address topics such as biodiversity, agriculture, water resources, atmospheric pollution and climate change, and renewable and non-renewable energy, linking central scientific concepts to local, regional, and global case studies.

This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the interactions between the biotic, which is inclusive of people, and the physical components of the Earth system. Through lecture, analysis of scientific literature, and lab we address topics such as biodiversity, agriculture, water resources, atmospheric pollution and climate change, and renewable and non-renewable energy, linking central scientific concepts to local, regional, and global case studies.

In literary studies, form tends to refer to genre (sonnet, novel, epic), style (rhyme, meter), or figure (metaphor, chiasmus). But the term has a long history across disciplines in which it can refer to the abstract, shaping containers of material things. This advanced seminar explores theories of literary formalism within the broader context of cross-disciplinary formalisms in philosophy, social science, and STEM fields. Readings will be primarily theoretical with some literary texts to anchor our discussions.

This is a class about scale and scope, borders and boundaries. 

(Offered as ENGL 420 and THDA 420) (Before 1800) Interpretations of William Shakespeare’s plays often align with and reinforce hegemonic conceptions of whiteness. Yet for over two centuries that alignment has been contested by theatre artists from the Black diaspora, from Native or Indigenous nations, and from the diverse communities of latinidad. This course centers what one First Nations playwright calls BIPOC “takeovers” of Shakespeare’s work.

(Offered as ENGL 387 and FAMS ) As an industry in the business of making both entertainment and art, Hollywood is a fascinating case study to explore. This course will focus on how contemporary Hollywood works and how understanding its work can enable us also to understand how films “work.” Our first unit will begin by exploring the context of industrial and independent practices through six key examples, which will form the primary models for the course throughout the semester.

(Offered as ENGL 379 and FAMS 379) “I detect an accent…” Anyone who has heard this sentence has had to navigate the topography of voice, accent and identity that is our multilingual world. But what is an “accent”? What assumptions about speakers and listeners do we make when we “detect” accents—or when we perform them as writers, actors, and citizens? How, in other words, does the simple act of perceiving an accent allow us to “fix” and stabilize our sense of a speaker’s origins, education, affiliations, affects, preferences, and tendencies--even their tastes?

(Offered as ENGL 369 and FAMS 369) This course examines a variety of approaches to “world-making” in
cinema and scholarly debates about the aesthetic and political dimensions of cinematic worlds. We will begin
by exploring the imaginary worlds created within popular film genres such as fantasy, science fiction, and
animation. With the aid of readings from film and media studies, literary theory, cultural studies, and other
scholarly fields, we will consider how such imaginary worlds relate to—and diverge from—the political,

(Offered as ENGL 355 and AMST 364) Emily Dickinson’s poetry is rich in what she called “illocality.” Her writing characteristically dissolves images and refuses specificity of place or event, and yet no writer is more intimately connected to a particular place.