A first course in the critical reading of selected English-language poets, which gives students exposure to significant poets, poetic styles, and literary and cultural contexts for poetry from across the tradition.  Attention will be given to prosody and poetic forms, and to different ways of reading poems.

Limited to 35 students.  Fall semester:  Professor Nelson.  Spring semester:  Professor Sofield.

A first course in writing fiction. Emphasis will be on experimentation as well as on developing skill and craft. Workshop (discussion) format.

Limited enrollment. Preregistration is not allowed. Please consult the Creative Writing Center website for information on admission to this course.  Fall semester:  Professor Douglas.  Spring semester:  Professor Frank.

We will study writers’ renderings of their own experiences (memoirs) and their analyses of society and its institutions (cultural criticism). Workshop format, with discussion of texts and of students’ experiments in the genre. Students must submit examples of their writing to the English office. Three class hours per week.

Limited to 12 students. Preregistration is not allowed. Please consult the Creative Writing Center website for information on admission to this course. Spring semester.  Professor Emeritus Townsend.

A first workshop in the writing of poetry. Class members will read and discuss each others’ work and will study the elements of prosody: the line, stanza forms, meter, free verse, and more. Open to anyone interested in writing poetry and learning about the rudiments of craft. Writing exercises weekly.

Limited enrollment. Preregistration is not allowed. Please consult the Creative Writing Center website for information on admission to this course.

Fall semester:  Writer-in-Residence Hall.  Spring semester:  Professor Sofield and Simpson Lecturer Wilbur.

Over the last thirty some years literary historians and critics have completely remade the field of American literature.  The important artistic contributions of women, of African Americans, of Latinos, of Asian Americans, and of Native Americans have received attention and appreciation.  In many instances long-forgotten texts have been uncovered and accepted as first-rate works of art.  Known but neglected artists have been reread, re-seen.  An important goal of this course is bringing what were once considered the classics together with the most important of the newer

(Offered as ENGL 180 and FAMS 110.)  A first course in reading films and writing about them. A varied selection of films for study and criticism, partly to illustrate the main elements of film language and partly to pose challenging texts for reading and writing. Frequent short papers. Two 80-minute class meetings and two screenings per week.

Limited to 25 students. Fall semester:  Visiting Professor Johnston.  Spring semester:  Visiting Lecturer Pritchett.

Students, as part of the work of the course, each week will tutor or lead discussions among a small group of students at Holyoke High School. The readings for the course will be essays, poems, autobiographies, and stories in which education and teaching figure centrally. Among these will be materials that focus directly on Holyoke and on one or another of the ethnic groups which have shaped its history. Students will write weekly and variously: critical essays, journal entries, ethnographies, etc.

A first course in reading fictional, dramatic, and lyric texts: stories, a major novel, one or more plays by Shakespeare, poems by Donne, Dickinson, Frost, and others.

Using a variety of texts–novels, essays, short stories–this course will work to develop the reading and writing of difficult prose, paying particular attention to the kinds of evidence and authority, logic and structure that produce strong  arguments.  The authors we study may include Peter Singer, Aravind Adiga, Willa Cather, Toni Morrison, George Orwell, Charles Johnson, James Baldwin, Alice Munro, William Carlos Williams.  This is an intensive writing course.  Frequent short papers will be assigned.

Independent Reading Course. Full course.

Admission with consent of the instructor.  Fall and spring semesters.