English Minors

English Minor (also see "Design Your Minor" below)

Creative Writing Minor

Professional Writing Minor

Design Your English Minor (15 units)

Three Easy Steps:

1. Take either English 10600 First-Year Composition, English 10800 Accelerated First-Year Composition, or SCLA 10100 Transformative Texts (All three classes satisfy the “information literacy” and “written communication” categories of the university core)
2. Take four more 200-500-level English classes.
3. Earn Your Minor in English!

The Legendary Minor

English 21500 Inventing Languages
“Invented Languages” include linguistic systems created for fictional worlds, such as Dothraki (Game of Thrones), Na’vi (Avatar), Elvish (Lord of the Rings), and Klingon (Star Trek), as well as languages invented for communication by real speakers, such as Esperanto. In this course, you will study these linguistic systems, learn the foundational properties of natural human languages (such as sounds, words, grammar, meaning, cultural context, and historical change), and then construct your own rudimentary fantasy languages.

English 21700 Figures of Myth and Legend I: Monsters (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
This course traces specific monster case studies—e.g., dragons, werecreatures, or sea monsters—across a variety of genres and media from the ancient to the modern period. It explores the way monsters help us define and police the boundaries of what it means to be human, and provide a common language for crystallizing specific social, ethnic, and national practices.

English 21800 Figures of Myth and Legend II: Heroes and Villains (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
This class offers in-depth explorations of the larger-than-life leaders (on the side of good, and sometimes evil, too) who have become models for how we think of heroism, charisma, and what it means to seek and wield power over others.  From the chivalric Knights of the Round Table, to the frightening energy of the Viking comitatus bands, to roving pirates of the high seas, it will show that no models of mythic leadership come without their complications or admirable qualities.

English 21900 Figures of Myth and Legend III: Magic and Marvels (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
This course surveys stories of elves, fairies, wizards, witches, etc., and explores the allure of all things marvelous, strange, and magical. It considers how language itself constitutes a kind of magic; examines magic as technology and vice versa, since, as Arthur C. Clarke famously declared: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”; and seeks to understand how people across history have used stories of magic to reinforce (mystify) or upend (defamiliarize) the status quo.

American Literature

English 25000 Great American Books (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
This course examines the dynamic history of American literature and explores how canonical and contemporary books have shaped the landscape of the U.S. and the world.

English 35000 American Literature before 1865 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
A historically oriented survey of genres, authors, and texts from European colonization to the U.S. Civil War.

English 35100 American Literature after 1865 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
A historically oriented survey of genres, authors, and texts from the Civil War on.

British Literature

English 24900 Great British Books (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
This course examines the dynamic history of British literature and explores how canonical and contemporary texts shaped the cultural landscape of Britain, the British Empire, and the world.

English 24000 British Literature before 1789 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
A historically oriented survey of genres, authors, and texts from the medieval to the Romantic period.

English 24100 British Literature after 1789 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
A historically oriented survey of genres, authors, and texts from the Romantic period on.

English 38100 The British Novel (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
A survey of British novels ranging from the eighteenth- to the twenty-first centuries.

 Business

English 20200 Engaging English (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
This theme-based course introduces students to the field of English, and provides foundational liberal arts skills. It teaches, for instance, critical and creative thinking, reading, and writing using a variety of textual media. 

English 22400 Literature, Money, and Markets
This course explores the interconnections among markets, business and its management, and literature. It examines representations of traditional markets (industry, finance, and global trade) and alternative markets (the market in bodies, the black market and the digital marketplace economy). It also illustrates the business of thinking about business, and engages with alternative viewpoints about business practices, literature, and individual consciousness in the technodigital age.

English 34300 Labor and Literature
This course explores the interconnections among markets, business and its management, and literature. It examines representations of traditional markets (industry, finance, and global trade) and alternative markets (the market in bodies, the black market and the digital marketplace economy). It also illustrates the business of thinking about business, and engages with alternative viewpoints about business practices, literature, and individual consciousness in the technodigital age.

English 4200 Business Writing
Workplace writing in networked environments for management contexts. Emphasizes organizational context, project planning, document management, ethics, research, team writing. Typical genres include management memos, reports, letters, e-mail, resumes (print and online), and oral presentations.

Creativity & Technology

English 20500 Introduction to Creative Writing
Practice in writing short prose narratives and poetry for students who have finished composition and wish to develop their skills further.  Workshop criticism.  Pre-req.: English 106/108.

English 22300 Literature and Technology (fulfills UCC-Science, Technology, & Society)
This class addresses how technological innovation both enables and constrains creativity.  It also explores how technology has been represented in literature, and examines the relationship between literature and new media.

English 32200 Word, Image, Media (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
This course explores what images are, how they mean, and how they interact with literature, language, technology, and culture. From decoding advertising images to determining the truth of digital photography, this course will explore a broad range of ethical questions in a variety of contemporary contexts including new media, vision as information processing, and biometrics.

English 41900 Multimedia Writing
Multimedia writing for networked contexts. Emphasizes principles, and practices of multimedia design, implementation, and publishing. Typical genres include Web sites, interactive media, digital video, visual presentations, visual argument, and user documentation.

English Language

English 22700 Elements Of Linguistics
 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Behavioral/Social Sciences)
A summary of what is known about human language, its structure, its universality, and its diversity; language in its social setting; language in relation to other aspects of human inquiry and knowledge.

English 32700 English Language I: History And Development

Introduction to the history of the English language, its sounds, inflections, words, and sentence structures, as well as cultural and historical events affecting this history, and the interplay between language and literature.

English 32800 English Language II: Structure And Meaning

The course examines the structure of American English and its dialects, with emphasis on syntax and semantics, including parts of speech, sentence structure, and meaning.

English 32900 English Language III: Sound And Form

The course explores the structure of American English and its dialects, with emphasis on phonology and morphology.

Future High School Teachers

English 20200 Engaging English (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
This theme-based course introduces students to the field of English, and provides foundational liberal arts skills. It teaches, for instance, critical and creative thinking, reading, and writing using a variety of textual media.

English 39100 Composition for English Teachers
Exploration of the theory, research, and pedagogy of teaching writing at the secondary level. Topics include the development of writing assignments and related activities, the study of writing process models, and the evaluation of student work in a variety of genres.

English 39200 Young Adult Literature
This course examines Young Adult literature as a genre crafted for adolescents.  Using both classic and contemporary novels, it explores how YA literature is defined, and what it offers to adolescent readers.  Subjects include: the commodification of adolescent life; representations of adolescents in literature; adolescence and race, social class, gender, and sexual orientation.

English 49200 Literature in Secondary Schools
This course focuses on the teaching of literature (including film, media, and visual images) in the secondary English classroom, with an emphasis on the diversity of literary works in terms of their authorship as well as the variety of digital and print texts.  To develop your understanding of both content and instruction, you will explore a wide range of topics related to the teaching and learning of literature, informed by theories of textual interpretation such as Reader Response.  From the perspective of teacher and student, you will reflect on the efficacy of specific teaching methods as well as issues involved in instructional planning to successfully teach diverse students.

Game Studies

English 28000 - Games, Narrative, Culture
This is an introduction to the field of game studies, and to games as narrative and cultural media. We will look at the stories games tell; the way their narrative elements or plot devices intersect with the culture around the games and gaming itself; and how all these things come together to affect game design, meaning, and play.

English 33000 Games and Diversity
This course looks critically at diversity in games, game development, and in the larger mainstream games community. Students will analyze and play games that relate to women, minorities, members of the LGBTQ community, and/or those who lack access because of disability.

English 33200 Games and UX
This course connects gamers and their experiences with games by developing ways to harvest gaming experiences for the improvement of games. We aim to prepare you to better understand gaming experiences, use those understandings to improve games in development, and be able to think and write critically about those experiences.

English 34500 Games and World Building
Every game designer and gamer knows that there is more to narrative than just words on a page and more to world building than images on a screen. This course looks at the ways that narrative worlds get built in games. We will begin by looking at the narrative elements in analog games that have been the foundation of many digital games and move on to look at the elements in digital games that come together to form the worlds.

Language and Culture

English 22700 Elements of Linguistics
 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Behavioral/Social Sciences)
A summary of what is known about human language, its structure, its universality, and its diversity; language in its social setting; language in relation to other aspects of human inquiry and knowledge.

English 22800 Language and Social Identity (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Behavioral/Social Sciences)
This course introduces linguistic diversity, including regional, cultural, and stylistic variation within a single language, code-switching in bilingual communities, and colonial, immigrant, Creole, indigenous, and sign languages. It also explores the role of language in supporting various types of social identity (e.g. age, gender, social class, race, ethnicity) as well power structures that enable discrimination against less powerful groups.

English 22900 Creole Languages and Cultures
This course introduces pidgin and creole languages by focusing on geography and some of their cultural manifestations such as music, food and literature. The course also presents a general view of the historical events that led to the formation of creole languages and to the development of the African diaspora.

English 56500 Sociolinguistics
An introduction to language in its social context, focusing on uses and users of language. Topics include: social class, ethnic group, gender, language attitudes, bilingualism, language contact, and dialects.

Literary Starter Kit

English 20500 Introduction To Creative Writing
Practice in writing short prose narratives and poetry for students who have finished composition and wish to expand into creative work. Workshop criticism and discussion of published writing.

English 23700 Introduction To Poetry (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
How to read poetry intelligently; function of diction, metrics, figures of speech, and theme; place of a poem in history, and uses of poetry.

English 23800 Introduction To Fiction (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
How to read fiction intelligently; promotes understanding and appreciation of the range, values, techniques, and meanings of fiction genres.

English 30100 Ways Of Reading
Introduction to literary theory and practice.  Close reading of and significant writing about selected literary texts informed by a variety of critical and/or theoretical perspectives.

Medicine & Healthcare

English 20900 Introduction to Medical Humanities
Introduction to Medical Humanities engages with the variety of approaches to studying medicine from a humanities perspective.  These include: history, communication, narrative bioethics, sociology, philosophy, literary studies, and the arts. Students read and create projects within multiple genres and modes of analysis including written texts as well as multimodal forms of research.

English 22600 Narrative Medicine (fulfills UCC-Science, Technology, & Society)
“Narrative medicine” encompasses stories about the interior lives of doctors and medical professionals, the complexities of medicine past and present, and health-care for patients and their families.  Ultimately, this course emphasizes the essential role of storytelling in the face of medical crisis and uses stories about illness to explore the human condition.

English 42200 Writing for the Health and Human Sciences
This course applies rhetorical principles to writing in health, hospitality, nutrition, nursing and related fields in the Health and Human Sciences.  Learning objectives include familiarity with: the best practices and procedures for documenting patient care; adapting medical language and requirements for a non-specialist audience; composing and delivering policies or new procedures to colleagues or co-workers, including in-services, grants, and office memos; and practical strategies for improving your resume, conduct, and online presence in the healthcare industry.

English 43900 Topics in Disability Studies
This class explores the cultural, social, and political meanings and effects of disability in relation to literature or rhetoric.

Multi-Ethnic Literatures

English 25700 Literature Of Black America

This class surveys literature written by black American authors. It pays close attention to the history of black literature and its historical context, as well as to major works by black writers.

English 35200 Native American Literature

This course explores literature by Native American authors in a variety of genres—novels, short stories, poetry, and autobiography—using literary analysis, as well as historical, legal, and ethnographic materials.

English 35200 Asian American Literature
This course explores Asian American literature, covering issues such as immigration, identity, class, and gender.

English 36600 Postcolonial Literatures

This course examines the literature, film, and theory that emerged in colonized countries during and after Western rule.

Popular Fiction

English 36700 Mystery and Detective Fiction (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
An introduction to the detective genre, examining its origins, its characteristics, and its intersections with empiricism, forensic science, race, class, gender, sex, and empire.

ENGL 37300 Science Fiction And Fantasy
 (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
Representative works of science fiction and fantasy examined in relation to both mainstream and popular literature. Emphasis is on technique, theme, and form.

English 38900 Literature for Children (fulfills UCC-Humanities-Human Cultures)
This course surveys eighteenth, nineteenth-century, and early-twentieth-century literature for children, including the so-called "golden age" of children's myth, fairy tales, and fantasy, as well as domestic fiction for girls and adventure books for boys.

English 39200 Young Adult Literature
This course examines Young Adult literature as a genre crafted for adolescents.  Using both classic and contemporary novels, it explores how YA literature is defined, and what it offers to adolescent readers.  Subjects include: the commodification of adolescent life; representations of adolescents in literature; adolescence and race, social class, gender, and sexual orientation.

Science & Society

English 23400 Ecological Literature (fulfills UCC-Science, Technology, & Society)
Literary study of nature writing; writing from the natural sciences; and canonical poetry, fiction, and essays through an ecological lens. Introduces students to ecocritical thought and environmental literary history.

English 34100 Topics In Science, Literature, And Culture
This course focuses on issues in and representation of science and technology in various texts, including literature, film, science, and theory. May be repeated for credit only under a different topic.

English 37300 Science Fiction And Fantasy (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)

Representative works of science fiction and fantasy examined in relation to both mainstream and popular literature. Emphasis is on technique, theme, and form.

English 43400 Science Writing
Science writing is a professional writing workshop that teaches students how to write in medical and scientific fields. Students will learn the genres and conventions that are used by medical writers and science writers, as well as editors in these fields.

Teaching English as a Second Language

English 22700 Elements Of Linguistics
 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Behavioral/Social Sciences)
A summary of what is known about human language, its structure, its universality, and its diversity; language in its social setting; language in relation to other aspects of human inquiry and knowledge.

English 49000 Worksite Internship Practicum in Teaching ESL
This course facilitates the transition between an English undergraduate degree and the workplace or professional life. The course has two components: a professor-guided component and a practicum component in a chosen area.

English 51600 Teaching English As A Second Language: Theoretical Foundations

This class surveys theories of learning and teaching English as a second/foreign/international language. Its focus is on current theories and their implications for practice.

English 51800 Teaching English As A Second Language: Principles And Practices

This class focuses on issues and principles in ESL/EFL program development. Its emphasis is on practical application of theory in a variety of English learning and teaching contexts in the U.S. and abroad.

World Literature

English 26600 World Literature to 1700 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
World literature in translation. A comparative and chronological survey of the masterpieces of Eastern and Western literature.

English 26700 World Literature after 1700 (fulfills UCC-Human Cultures-Humanities)
World literature in translation. A comparative and chronological survey of the masterpieces of Eastern and Western literature.

English 36600 Postcolonial Literatures
A study of Third World Literature, film, and theory that emerged during and after Western rule.

English 46600 Cultural Encounters
A study of cross-cultural works that address the encounters of the First and the Third worlds and the subsequent reshaping of history and culture in both contexts.



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