English Courses
Introduction to rhetorical strategies, critical reading and thinking skills, composing processes, sentence-level conventions, and reflection skills needed to participate successfully in the University of Alabama discourse community. Intended for native speakers of English. Grades are reported as A, B, C, or NC (No Credit). A grade of C- or higher is required as a prerequisite for advancing to another English course at The University of Alabama. Offered each semester and in summer school. EN 101 does not apply as credit to the English major or minor.
Continuation of students’ practice in rhetorical strategies, critical reading and thinking skills, composing processes, sentence-level conventions, and reflection skills. The course also emphasizes university-level research and source usage techniques. Intended for native speakers of English. Grades are reported as A, B, C, or NC (No Credit). A grade of C- or higher is required as a prerequisite for advancing to another English course at The University of Alabama. Offered each semester and in summer school. EN 102 does not apply as credit to the English major or minor.
This is an accelerated freshman composition course that is open to students with minimum scores of 28 ACT Composite or 1350 SAT, or minimum ACT English scores of 30 or SAT verbal scores of 730. With the appropriate qualifying scores and the completion of EN 103 with a grade of C- or higher, placement credit is awarded for EN 101 and the general education requirement for freshman composition is completed. Covers rhetorical strategies, critical reading and thinking skills, composing processes, sentence-level conventions, reflection skills, as well as university-level research and source usage techniques. Course themes are determined by each instructor. Grades are reported as A, B, C, or NC (No Credit). A grade of C- is required as a prerequisite for advancing to another English course at The University of Alabama. EN 103 does not apply as credit to the English major or minor.
For students in Blount Scholars Program. Covers rhetorical strategies, critical reading and thinking skills, composing processes, sentence-level conventions, reflection skills, as well as university-level research and source usage techniques. Grades are reported as “A,” “B,” “C,” or “NC” (“No Credit”). This course substitutes for either EN 103 Advanced Composition or EN 101 Freshman Composition I. Students who qualify for EN 103 (see EN 103 description above) are awarded an additional 3 hours of composition placement credit with a grade of “pass” upon successful completion of EN 104. Other students receive the same credit if they earn a grade of “A-” or higher. Students who earn a grade lower than “A-” are required to take three additional hours of freshman composition, generally EN 102. Students who have credit for EN 101 and EN 102 either from another institution or through AP or IB placement do not take EN 104. EN 104 does not apply as credit to the English major or minor.
Introduction to rhetorical strategies, critical reading and thinking skills, composing processes, sentence-level conventions, and reflection skills needed to participate successfully in the University of Alabama discourse community. Intended and required for international students who are non-native speakers of English. Exempted for transfer students who have earned a “C” or better grade in a face-to-face, university-level composition course at the 101 level (ESL courses do not qualify). International students who have graduated from a U.S. high school have the option to take either this course or EN 101. Grades are reported as A, B, C, or NC (No Credit). A grade of C- or higher is required as a prerequisite for advancing to another English course at The University of Alabama. Offered each semester.
Continuation of students’ practice in rhetorical strategies, critical reading and thinking skills, composing processes, sentence-level conventions, and reflection skills. The course also emphasizes university-level research and source usage techniques. Intended and required for international students who are non-native speakers of English. Exempted for transfer students who have earned a “C” or better grade in a face-to-face, university-level composition course at the 102 level (ESL courses do not qualify). International students who have graduated from a U.S. high school have the option to take either this course or EN 102. Grades are reported as A, B, C, or NC (No Credit). A grade of C- or higher is required as a prerequisite for advancing to another English course at The University of Alabama. Offered each semester.
Introduction to the craft of imaginative writing, the landscape of contemporary literature, and the writer as artist. Students will engage UA’s literary arts culture and regularly attend readings and author events.
This course will introduce students to the wide-ranging discipline of linguistics that incorporates aspects of both the humanities and the social sciences. Students will explore the elements from which languages are composed, examine differences across languages, and see how linguistic data and methods are brought to bear on real-world issues in the realms of psychology, literary studies, sociology, education, and the judicial system. Language will be presented as a constantly changing phenomenon that is embedded in culture and steeped in ideology.
Survey of African American literature from its earliest expressions to 1935. The course material includes spirituals, slave narratives, poetry, drama, autobiography, fiction, and nonfiction.
Honors survey of African American literature from its earliest expressions to 1935. The course material includes spirituals, slave narratives, poetry, drama, autobiography, fiction, and nonfiction.
Honors survey of African American literature from 1935 to the present. The course material includes poetry, drama, autobiography, fiction, and nonfiction.
An introduction for English majors to the methods employed in the discipline of English. Students will be exposed to the fundamental issues of critical reading, interpretation, and writing, especially to the use of critical methods in the study of primary texts. Readings will include a selection of texts in the traditional categories of poetry, drama, and prose, as well as the genre of the critical essay. There may also be investigations into other genres and media.
Study of basic principles of writing fiction. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of forms.
Study of basic principles of writing poetry. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of poetic forms.
Study of the basic principles of writing creative nonfiction. Reading and assigned writing experiments in a broad range of forms of the genre.
Study of various practical applications for creative-writing-related skills and techniques, including arts programming, teaching, and literary publishing.
Study and practice in methods of exposition, explanation and explication, logic and persuasion, definition and analogy, analysis and evaluation. Enrollment is limited to 15. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
Topics vary from semester to semester; examples are legal writing, writing about the social sciences and reading and writing in cyberspace. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours.
Topics vary from semester to semester and may include courses offered by other departments. May be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours.
An introduction to the history, theory and practice of Writing Centers. Students completing the course can apply for positions on the Writing Center staff.
Focuses on principles and practices of technical writing, including audience analysis, organization and planning, information design and style, usability testing, and collaborative writing. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
Introduction to the study of language, including subjects such as language acquisition, variation, and origins. The system of sounds, syntax, and meaning are illustrated in English and other languages. Prerequisite for EN 423, EN 424, EN 425, EN 466.
A study of English grammar integrating principles from linguistic theory with structural approaches to grammar. The course includes a focus on the expectations of grammatical usage in different contexts and an understanding of how to apply this knowledge in a pedagogical setting. This course is a prerequisite for EN 423, EN 424, EN 425, EN 466.
Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies. A reading list and a draft syllabus are required. Please see the departmental website for more information. EN 329 may be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours.
Examines works of the Old and Middle English Periods, the formative years of British literature. Works from pre-conquest England may include Beowulf, Bede's History of the English Church, and poems from the Exeter and Vercelli manuscripts. The major works from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, William Langland's Piers Plowman, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and the Canterbury Tales.
A cross-genre survey of the literature of the Elizabethan period. Authors may include Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, Aemilia Lanyer, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare.
An introduction to Shakespeare's plays and poems. Elizabethan customs, politics, history, and philosophies are examined in relation to his works.
A cross-genre survey of literature in English from 1603 to 1660. Authors may include John Donne, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, John Webster, Lady Mary Wroth, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, and Andrew Marvell.
An introduction to Milton's English poetry along with the history, politics, aesthetics, philosophy, and theology of seventeenth-century England. Typically devotes approximately half the semester to a close reading of Paradise Lost.
A cross-genre survey of American literature from its beginnings to 1900. Authors may include Mary Rowlandson, Cotton Mather, Phillis Wheatley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Henry James, and Mark Twain.
A survey of developments in British fiction from its beginnings to 1900. Authors may include Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot.
Limited to a maximum of three authors. Attention to the national literatures of Britain and America, and to different genres of prose, drama, and poetry, will vary from semester to semester. Authors may include John Milton, Alexander Pope, Jane Austen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, and Emily Dickinson.
A cross-genre survey of English literature during the period 1660-1800. Authors may include John Locke, John Bunyan, Mary Astell, Jonathan Swift, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Samuel Johnson, Hester Thrale, and James Boswell.
A cross-genre survey of British Romantic writers such as William Blake, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley.
A survey of the genres, authors, and issues in British literature, 1832-1900. Authors may include Thomas Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and Oscar Wilde.
A cross-genre survey of African American literature, historical events, and critical movements. Authors may include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, Langston Hughes, and Toni Morrison.
A cross-genre survey of major literary figures, critical movements, historical events, and significant texts since the Second World War in America. Authors may include Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, Sam Shepherd, Adrienne Rich, and John Ashbery.
A cross-genre survey of major literary figures, critical movements, historical events, and significant texts within the first half of the twentieth century in Britain. Authors may include Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, and T. S. Eliot.
A cross-genre survey of major literary figures, critical movements, historical events, and significant texts since the Second World War in England. Authors may include Samuel Beckett, W. H. Auden, Doris Lessing, Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter, and Jeanette Winterson.
A survey of the major American, British, European and African plays from the 19th and 20th centuries. Authors may include Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Ntozake Shange, Oscar Wilde, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, August Strindberg, Anton Chekhov, Wole Soyinka and Athol Fugard.
A survey of American fiction (novels and short stories) written in the 20th century. Authors may include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko.
A survey of major authors and trends in modern poetry in America, Britain, and the larger Anglophone world, as poetry in English became an international phenomenon. Attention will be paid to modernist and post-modernist poetry movements, American regionalisms, war poetry, and the poetry of neocolonial experiences.
A cross-genre survey of tragic literature that may begin with the classical tragedians and proceed through the present. This course, like tragedy itself, will focus on the individual confronting the larger forces of society, god, or fate. This course considers changing conceptions of the tragic whether in fiction, poetry, or drama.
A survey of British and American literature written by and/or about women. Authors may include a cross-genre range from Anne Bradstreet and Fanny Burney to Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich.
This course will examine the various ways writing is involved in the legal profession. Subjects may include but are not limited to written legal claims, written materials required during stages of litigation, and how to construct other forms of legal argumentation in writing. The course will include significant writing analysis, grammar reviews, and legal writing exercises. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. Student writing will be graded and commented upon and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs other course requirements.
This course will study a subgenre of nonfiction writing that seeks to communicate challenging, complex, and nuanced facts and ideas in clear, engaging prose. While learning to evaluate and synthesize the claims of scientists and intellectuals across various domains, students will produce data-rich essays and articles aimed at being accessible and enjoyable to a broad, lay public. Writing proficiency within this discipline is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. Student writing will be graded and commented upon and become part of the assigned grade. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper division student in the discipline will not be given a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs other course requirements.
This course develops the interdisciplinary writing and rhetorical skills necessary to create compelling content and effective strategic communications useful in any type of workplace, whether corporate, nonprofit, or entrepreneurial. Students will learn best-practice and collaborative approaches to an array of situations encountered in the course of doing business—from data-rich analysis to storytelling that moves—tailored to engage both general and industry-specific audiences. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. This course’s written assignments require coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose. These assignments will require students to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
This course explores the history and aesthetics of print design, applied specifically to the techniques and practices of book publishing. Utilizing industry standard software, students will gain facility and experience with every step of the publishing process, from copyediting to layout to production and distribution, as well as learn about current industry challenges and trends.
This course teaches research skills and methods and research-based writing in literary studies. This course is required for any student who wishes be eligible for departmental honors through subsequent enrollment in EN 499. The course is, however, open to all students who meet the pre-requisites and will be useful for those wishing to develop their skills in research-based writing. The course covers locating, evaluating, and integrating research materials into literary critical writing, as well as the entire process of writing a research-based paper. A grade of B or higher in this course is required for students who wish to apply for admission into EN 499.
Required of students wishing to write an English Honors thesis in Creative Writing. This course is a required for students wishing to write an English Honors creative writing thesis in a subsequent semester. Students should enroll in this course no later than spring of their junior year. Admission to the course is competitive: students should apply to the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program director prior to pre-registration. Additional seats may be open by application to students who have completed at least two creative writing courses. Students will study sustained creative projects such as poetry chapbooks, novellas, story or essay collections, and other long-form works, and plan and begin their own substantial creative writing projects. The course will also include professionalization in the field of creative writing, covering topics such as how to approach publishing and editing, how to submit creative writing for publication, how to apply to graduate school, how to prepare for careers in writing, and how to identify and connect to resources in the field. During the course, students will develop a proposal for their EN 498 project that includes a reading list, project description, and process description.
Covers selected topics in English that vary from year to year. Topics are most likely to be thematic and to cut across conventional divisions of literary period and literary form. Required for departmental honors.
Senior Seminar.
Special topics in Creative Writing. Focus may be on poetry, fiction, nonfiction or a combination. Students produce imaginative writing and read related texts. May be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours.
Designed for advanced English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues involving comparative literatures and/or cultural studies. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course. EN 411 may be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours.
Designed for advanced English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues in American literature. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course. EN 422 may be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours.
Prerequisite: Enrollment only by previous arrangement with a specific instructor and with the permission of the director of undergraduate English studies. EN 429 may be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours.
An on- or off-campus training position in which students use the skills they have gained as English majors and enhance their employment opportunities after graduation. Interns work approximately 10 hours a week, holding responsible positions with, among others, Alabama Heritage, Alabama Alumni Magazine, and the Tuscaloosa Public Defender's Office. Apply to the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of English. Please see the departmental website for the application form and further details. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours.
Provides an overview of the field of composition studies: teaching writing, history of the discipline, and discussion of professional issues in rhetoric and composition.
Designed for advanced English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues in British literature. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course. EN 433 can be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours.
Designed for advanced English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues involving literary criticism and critical theory. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course. This course may be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours.
Designed for advanced English majors, a special topics course that focuses on the process of writing. The forms this writing may take include, but are not limited to, film, creative non-fiction, autobiography, and local color. May be repeated a maximum of 9 hours. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
Designed for English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues in linguistics. A frequent topic is language and culture. This course may be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
Designed for advanced English majors, a special topics course that focuses on issues in genre criticism. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course. This course may be repeated for a maximum of 9 hours.
Designed for the advanced English major, a special topics course that focuses on issues in African American literature. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.
The Creative Writing Honors Thesis is an individualized class that culminates in a complete, long-form piece of creative writing such as a poetry chapbook, novella, essay collection, short story collection, or extended creative non-fiction piece of publishable quality, approximately 30-60 pages. A student who completes this course with a grade of A or A- and who meets GPA requirements will be awarded Departmental Honors with a creative emphasis. Each student enrolled will work individually with a faculty mentor. Students must submit a proposal to the Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing by a designated date and have that proposal be approved by the Undergraduate Creative Writing committee.
The Senior Thesis is an individualized, directed readings class that culminates in a thesis. The thesis is a research-based work making an original analytical claim in the fields of literary studies, linguistics, or rhetoric and composition. Students enrolled will work individually with a faculty mentor. A student who completes this course with a grade of A or A- and who meets GPA requirements will be awarded Departmental Honors. To enroll students must submit a research proposal to the Departmental Honors Coordinator before the end of the previous semester, and that proposal must be approved by the Honors Committee. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.