Writing Courses

English Writing Intensive Courses

The English Department offers more courses that satisfy the Intensive Writing 1 and Intensive Writing 2 Proficiencies than any other department on campus. Most students at PC take their Writing 1 course in the English Department, and a substantial number also take their Writing 2 courses here. Our writing courses — taught by both our Ordinary and Adjunct Faculty — are not primarily about grammar and mechanics; they are small-group seminars that use writing as a means of learning about a particular topic. Along the way, students develop skills in rhetoric and argumentation that they will apply to any discipline they choose to study. The courses for Fall 2026 are listed below.*

Writing 1 Courses

ENG101-001 | TRF 08:30AM-09:20AM | 1129 | PC Faculty
ENG101-012 | TRF 09:30AM-10:20AM | 1140 | PC Faculty

ENG101-002 | MWF 08:30AM-09:20AM | 1130 | Jenny Platz
ENG101-015 | MWF 09:30AM-10:20AM | 1143 | Jenny Platz
Digital Identity
Every day we encounter digital texts such as social media, YouTube, video games, Netflix shows, and films. Often, interaction with digital texts is unavoidable, as we spend ever-increasing amounts of time on our phones, tablets, or computers. With constant contact with the narratives of digital texts, how are our identities shaped and conflated with the digital media that surrounds us? How do we represent ourselves through digital media? How do others narrate their selves through digital texts? What are the social, cultural, and political implications of creating an online, and therefore public, story of the self? This class seeks to answer these questions through rhetorical examination, and writing about identity and digital media.

ENG101-003 | MWF 11:30AM-12:20PM | 1131 | Charles Clements
ENG101-010 | MWF 02:00PM-02:50PM | 1138 | Charles Clements
Technology, Science, and the Future
In this writing-focused course we will explore how technology impacts society. How much of the present is altered by our relationships to technology, and how does technology alter our hopes for the future? Is technology a neutral thing, or does it force us to use it in a certain way? Is AI something that is making us better, or slowly replacing our basic abilities? We will read a variety of short fiction, essays, and popular reportage to look at these questions and more while learning ways to craft our own opinions into persuasive and interesting academic papers.

ENG101-004 | MWF 10:30AM-11:20AM | 1132 | Shawn Flanagan
ENG101-013 | MWF 09:30AM-10:20AM | 1141 | Shawn Flanagan
Kaleidoscope: Reading and Writing about Current Events Across Media Genres
The media content of this course (print and video) will address issues related to social justice and social impacts of technology on our lives. As we discuss the class content and issues it presents which complicate our own understanding, experience, and worldview, we will also explore the rhetorical situation of these materials and how form informs content. Additionally, we will also explore some critical/theoretical lenses that to offer grounds for a richer interpretation of student selected cultural productions. This work will feed into various interactive writing and media projects, which include short essays, presentations, and on-line forums. These initial observational, reflective, and theoretical writings in the first half of the semester will give way to assignments that focus on academic research as a process and culminate in a final research project that includes both a presentation and research paper.

ENG101-005 | MW 11:30AM-12:45PM | 1133 | Christopher Lasasso
Planet, World, Self — Topics in Environmentalism
This course is designed to help you develop the academic writing and research skills you’ll need throughout college and beyond. Over the semester, you’ll learn how academic arguments work by examining ideas about audience, purpose, evidence, and style, and by challenging common assumptions about what “good” academic writing looks like. You’ll practice reading critically, joining scholarly conversations, and contributing your own ideas to ongoing debates through research based writing. Our readings and assignments focus on environmental issues and the way people argue about them. You’ll work with a variety of texts, including op eds, speeches, poetry, and policy debates, to explore the relationship between nature and society and the impact of human activity on the planet. Topics such as climate change, environmental disasters, pipelines, forest fires, and even Flat Earth movements will give you real world examples of how rhetoric shapes public understanding. These case studies will help you build confidence as a writer and researcher while learning to communicate effectively with different audiences.

ENG101-006 | MW 05:30PM-06:45PM | 1134 | PC Faculty
ENG101-007 | MW 07:00PM-08:15PM | 1135 | PC Faculty

ENG101-008 | MW 11:30AM-12:45PM | 1136 | PC Faculty

ENG101-011 | MW 08:30AM-09:45AM | 1139 | Michael Burdon
Disentangling Knots: Subversive Argument in Comic, Absurd, and Nonsense Texts
In this course, we will consider subversion as a means of argument and write our own argumentative essays on the nature and function of subversion as a rhetorical strategy. Through various enigmatic and experimental works, we will examine how writers subvert audience expectations, and to what end. We will work together to discover meaning in both fiction and nonfiction designed to undermine meaning, and to determine how subversive texts destabilize the very systems they operate within.

ENG101-014 | TR 08:30AM-09:45AM | 1142 | PC Faculty

ENG101-016 | MWR 05:30PM-06:20PM | 1144 | PC Faculty
ENG101-017 | MWR 06:30PM-07:20PM | 1145 | PC Faculty

ENG175-001 | TR 10:00AM-11:15AM | 1148 | Stephen Lynch
Introduction to Literature
I am hoping to achieve a balance of breadth and depth by covering 6 authors, each for about 2-3 weeks. We will read short stories by Ray-mond Carver and Flanner O’Connor, poetry by Emily Dickenson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and plays by Shakespeare and August Wilson. Students will write at least one short informal paper each week, plus three longer more formal essays.

ENG175-002 | MW 11:30AM-12:45PM | 1149 | Michael Burdon
Literature of Escape
A.C. Benson tells us that “all the best stories in the world are but one story in reality, the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.” In this course, we will focus on the ubiquity of escape in literature, the capacity for literature to act as escape, and in turn the trappings of literature that we sometimes must escape from. We will read both escapist literature (genres such as fantasy, horror, and historical fiction) and literature that depicts escape as a means of expressing this most inescapable of desires—to be anywhere, anyone, anything else. Authors will include Irving, Thurber, Bierce, Borges, Kafka, and Cortazar, among others.

ENG175-003 | MW 01:00PM-02:15PM | 1150 | Christopher Lasasso
On Being Scared: Literature about Fear and Terror
What if we think of fear not as an instinctual response to the unknown but a way for writers to make sense of a number of different values and beliefs in fiction? For some writers, fear is physiological. It has an effect on the body that is felt, experienced, and often inexpressible. Other writers regard fear as psychological, where it is little more than a manifestation of that which is otherwise suppressed in society and culture. This course explores how ideas and representations of terror informed a wide range of writers, and how literature helped to reshape what it means to be afraid—of the self, the other, death, the dark, the unknown, and more. How does terror function in the realm of politics as opposed to faith? What interpretive tools and strategies are needed to reason with what often seems abjectly unreasonable? To answer these questions, this course will cover works about and concerned with fear, including texts by Montaigne, Shakespeare, Burke, Coleridge, Shelley, Kafka, Poe, del Toro, Serling, and more. This writing-focused course will provide students with an opportunity to explore a number of literary genres—poetry, drama, and film—and develop skills necessary for academic writing across disciplines. The course is designed with the goal of curating tools for reading, analyzing, and writing on literary concepts and ideas.

ENG175-004 | TR 11:30AM-12:45PM | 1151 | E.C. Osondu
Insiders, Outsiders, and Otherness
This course will explore questions related to the notions of being “outside” — racially, politically, sexually, etc. Readings will include a novel about modern India, a novel set in pre-colonial Nigeria, two short plays by Lynn Nottage and Terence McNally, and tons of short stories ranging from Hawthorne and Hemingway to Carver, Chekhov, Osondu, and O’Connor.

ENG175-005 | TR 04:00PM-05:15PM | 1152 | Russell Hillier
ENG175-006 | TR 05:30PM-06:45PM | 1153 | Russell Hillier
Introduction to Literature
Catalog Description: An investigation of the three main literary genres-poetry, fiction, and drama-with an emphasis on writing. Students completing this course should be able to read with engagement and discernment, discuss literature critically, and write analytically and with an awareness of scholarly conversations. Required for English majors.

ENG175-007 | TR 02:30PM-03:45PM | 1154 | Raphael Shargel
ENG175-008 | TR 04:00PM-05:15PM | 1155 | Raphael Shargel
Reading, Writing, and the Self
What’s the relationship between what you read and who you are? Does what you write reflect what makes you you? In this section, we’ll read, discuss, and write about texts that inspire us to think about identity: who we are, what we are, and why that matters.

ENG175-009 | MWF 01:00PM-01:50PM | 1156 | Shawn Flanagan
ENG175-010 | MWF 02:00PM-02:50PM | 1157 | Shawn Flanagan
Melody Across the Bars of Social Change: Marginalized American Voices
This course will read, discuss, and write about poetry, short fiction, plays, and the novel with an emphasis on minority writers whose content was written in response to moments of historical and social change. Over the course of the semester, students will practice close reading of literary works, develop a familiarity with literary terms and devices, as well as an awareness of scholarly conversations around works and genres presented. The writing assignments and activities aim to engage students in critical practices of literary analysis, as well as promote an appreciation of literary work.

ENG175-011 | TRF 09:30AM-10:20AM | 1158 | Elly Weybright
ENG175-012 | TRF 10:30AM-11:20AM | 1159 | Elly Weybright
Introduction to Literature
Catalog Description: An investigation of the three main literary genres-poetry, fiction, and drama-with an emphasis on writing. Students completing this course should be able to read with engagement and discernment, discuss literature critically, and write analytically and with an awareness of scholarly conversations. Required for English majors.

Writing 2 Courses

ENG301-001 | MW 05:30PM-06:45PM | 1165 | Leanne Oden
ENG301-002 | MW 07:00PM-08:15PM | 1166 | Leanne Oden
Life-Writing: Genre and Gender
What is life writing? A genre in which people write about real lives—their own or others’—through forms like diaries, journals, memoirs, and autobiographies. In this course, we will study life writing both by reading it closely and by practicing it ourselves. Rather than seeing diaries as simple records of daily events, we will explore them as tools that help writers reflect on their experiences while they are still living through them. By reading diaries written by authors, philosophers, and other thinkers, alongside our own experiments with the genre, we will consider life writing as a meaningful way of producing knowledge about the self and the world. We will also pay attention to questions of genre and gender, asking how certain kinds of lives come to seem more “worthy” of being written down than others. Throughout the semester, our discussions and assignments will return to core questions: What counts as a life worth recording? How do we write while we are still becoming who we are? Where do fact and interpretation overlap when we write about lived experience? And how might life writing challenge the limits that gender places on the genre?

ENG301-003 | TR 08:30PM-09:45PM | 1167 | Diane Beltran
ENG301-004 | TR 07.00PM-08:l5PM | 1168 | Diane Beltran
Writing in the Review Genre: Breaking the Tyranny of the Best
There is no best without a better, good, and even satisfactory. Yet, reviews of nearly every product, service, or experience see to offer the “best” as a starting point. How do we know then whether there is a “best” – or, for that matter – a “worst”? Simply, we learn how the review genre works to make an effective evaluation and judgement. What we will find this semester is that reading and writing in the genre of review requires that we understand concepts like activity theory, context, audience, medium, ethos, and evaluative judgement so that we don’t overstate or understate our reviews of products, services, or experiences. This course examines and practices reviews as a specialized genre, and will equip you with the thinking and writing skills to review responsibly and critically across print and digital environments. We’ll learn what makes a review helpful (or not), as well as how to respond to and write a variety reviews across discourse communities and contexts. By the end of the semester, you’ll be ready to write reviews that get read, and that do the work that a review is intended to do.

ENG351-001 | TR 2:30PM-3:45 | 2757 | Elly Weybright
Romantic Age in England
From semester to semester, Romantic Age has different thematic emphases, such as Romanticism and Nature, Romantic Representations of Women, Romanticism and Revolution, and Romantic Ballad and Song. The reading list may include Austen, Baillie, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Scott, Mary and Percy Shelley, Wollstonecraft, and Wordsworth.
Lit Post-1800 Elective; UG Core: Intensive Writing II

ENG357-001 | TR 10:00AM-11:15AM | 2703 | Stephanie Boeninger
Modern Drama
In this course, we will trace the major developments in modern European drama, beginning with the “social problem play” developed by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in the 1880’s, and ending with the darkly menacing plays of Harold Pinter in the 1960’s, which balance precariously between realism and absurdism. We will read plays by playwrights who tried to bring theatre as close to “real life” as possible, and by playwrights who sought to shatter audience expectations with bizarre innovations in acting, staging, and theatrical language. Along the way, we will ask ourselves some of the questions that modern playwrights and theatre audiences have struggled with:
   *Should theatre strive merely to entertain, or should it encourage audiences to think about contemporary issues?
   *Should plays attempt to uncover the truth about difficult issues and human problems, or should they take the position that all reality is illusory, all human life merely a performance?
   *Should plays make sense? Are traditional plots important or is it better to use surprising, non-traditional—even nonsensical—methods to try to affect audiences emotionally or viscerally?
   *Should stage sets try to look as much as possible like the places they are trying to represent, or should they reveal that they are stages and props?
   *Should actors try to “become” their characters, or should they distance themselves from their characters and think analytically about them?
Fulfills Intensive Writing II Proficiency; Lit Post-1800 Elective; Cross-listed with TDF 357 001 (2759).

ENG367-001 | TR 8:30AM-9:45AM | 2709 | William Hogan
Modern British and American Poetry
An introduction to poetry in English from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s, including major figures and movements in the United States, England, Ireland, and Anglophone countries around the world. We will pay special attention to poetic form and meaning and to themes of artistic experimentation, alienation and war, religious questioning, technology, race and colonialism. Poets studied vary somewhat from semester to semester, but commonly include WB Yeats, GM Hopkins, Robert Frost, TS Eliot, H.D., Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Melvin Tolson, and Elizabeth Bishop.
Fulfills Lit Post-1800 Elective; UG Core: Intensive Writing II.

ENG390-001 | MW 10:00AM-11:15AM | 2710 | John Scanlan
Law and Literature
The focus of our attention will be the relations between law and literature, two of the most compelling ways of understanding the world. Although we’ll discuss a wide range of subjects and writers, I expect some important questions will arise again and again, albeit in slightly different formulations. What are the similarities and differences in the way lawyers and writers think about the law? If some writers register critiques of one or more aspects of the law, on what grounds do they do so? Are their critiques in line with lawyers’ critiques? Are their critiques convincing? What areas of law most engage our writers? Why? Which writers, if any, hold views on justice or other social issues that actually influence the legal reality? Why, in the end, have writers been so fascinated by the law? And do films replicate, more or less, writers’ interests and predispositions? Students’ writing will be an important dimension of this class. As things now stand, I’m planning on having everyone write two short papers, one long final paper, and handful of brief, in-class writings. There will be no in-class final examination. This course is open to all students, including those who have never taken a single class in the Department of English. The course has only two “prerequisites”: a willingness to argue as carefully and as strongly as possible, and a desire to improve your ability to “see things from the other side.” Should you wish to speak with me further about this course, don’t hesitate to send me an email (hambone@providence.edu).
Lit Post-1800 Elective; Lit Pre-1800 Elective; Cross listed with HON 481 001 (1260)

* Schedule and instructors subject to change.