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 2024 are listed below.*
Writing 1 Courses
ENG 101-001 | MR 10:00-11:15 AM | 1063 | Mark Pedretti
College
Before you ever came to PC, you had an idea about what college would be like; whether you mean to or not, you have received multiple representations of college that mediate your actual experience. Through movies, television, public conversations, and political debates, “college” is an object of discourse as a much as a site which produces it. We will look at a number of representations of college from several of these domains, considering how they construct their purported object, and how that affects your experience. A guiding thread in our inquiry will be how the relation of college to economic structures, class, and modes of production regulates particular kinds of identity formation. Our primary object of analysis is the ultimately the language used to discuss college; as a result, we will be investigating the effects of these representations as much as the college experience itself.
ENG 101-002 | MWF 12:30-1:20 PM | 1064 | Stephen Kurczy
ENG 101-003 | MWF 1:30-2:20 PM | 1065 | Stephen Kurczy
Call of the Wild
The Wild West. The Final Frontier. The badlands, boondocks, and wastelands. From Homer’s The Odyssey to Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, the wild has long held a special place in language, mythology, and culture as somewhere beyond the boundaries of everyday life, full of wonder, terror, awe, mystery—and the potential for attaining a higher knowledge. But when all the world is mapped and everyone is always online, is anything still “wild”? Who, and what, is the wild for? This course will apply the skills of academic argumentation to analyze ideas around the wild, with discussion informed by diaries, speeches, photography, film, articles, and books such as Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire.
ENG 101-004 | TWF 9:30-10:20 AM | 1067 | Shawn Flanagan
ENG 101-005 | TWF 10:30-11:20 AM | 1075 | 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.
ENG 101-006 | MR 8:30-9:45 AM | 1085 | PC English Faculty
ENG 101-007 | MR 10:00-11:15 AM | 1086 | PC English Faculty
Writing Seminar
Catalog Description: Focuses on the creation of complex, analytic, well-supported arguments that matter in academic contexts. Students receive regular feedback on their writing, both from their peers and the instructor, and learn flexible strategies for revision. Assignments promote an awareness of stylistic conventions, rhetorical possibilities, and genuine inquiry.
ENG 101-008 | MWF 11:30-12:20 PM | 1087 | PC English Faculty
ENG 101-009 | MWF 12:30-1:20 PM | 1088 | PC English Faculty
Writing Seminar
Catalog Description: Focuses on the creation of complex, analytic, well-supported arguments that matter in academic contexts. Students receive regular feedback on their writing, both from their peers and the instructor, and learn flexible strategies for revision. Assignments promote an awareness of stylistic conventions, rhetorical possibilities, and genuine inquiry.
ENG 101-010 | MWF 1:30-2:20 PM | 1089 | Milena Radeva
ENG 101-011 | MWF 2:30-3:20 PM | 1090 | Milena Radeva
Philanthropy, Altruism, and the Gift
This course aims to develop your writing skills through a variety of writing and reading assignments, draft workshops, and class discussions. We will read a plethora of literary texts and popular essays on the topics of community, altruism, service, and democracy. We will discuss the very possibility of giving that philosopher Jacques Derrida questions in Given Time. We will ask what it means to give, what motivates donors, how philanthropy affects its beneficiaries, if private giving challenges the practices of democracy, and what is the place of the Catholic idea of caritas in modern welfare society. Finally, in this course, you will analyze arguments rhetorically, perfect your grammar, punctuation, paragraph coherence and sentence organization skills, use the resources in the library to write persuasive argumentative essays, and document your sources in the correct MLA citation style.
ENG 101-012 | TWF 8:30-9:20 AM | 1091 | Jenny Platz
ENG 101-013 | TWF 9:30-10:20 AM | 1092 | 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.
ENG 101-014 | MWF 11:30-12:20 PM | 1093 | Christopher Yates
ENG 101-015 | MWF 12:30-1:20 PM | 1094 | Christopher Yates
Living in Metaphor
Writing is an essential skill for success in college – but the specific conventions and expectations of academic writing are not always instinctive or obvious. And while we often think of academic writing as a solitary pursuit, writing is also a critically public act, which involves responding to the ideas of others, and sharing our own ideas with the public. In this course, we will examine writing samples across different genres and forms, paying attention both to the features that define strong writing across the disciplines, as well as the specific characteristics that define them. This course will help students to develop the skills, strategies, and practices necessary to ensure successful writing both in college, and professionally. We will examine a wide range of writing which engages with ongoing public conversations, from journalistic op-eds, satires, reviews, endorsements, essays, and short stories, sharpening our analytical tools, breaking down writing to its essential components and gaining the confidence to share our ideas with others. As a class, we will consider questions of organization, grammar, proof-reading, and research to better understand the composition of academic writing.
In addition, this course has a secondary theme which will be highlighted in our reading and writing assignments: the impact of metaphorical language on political thought and social reality. Melting pots, witch hunts, grassroots, strawmen, lame ducks, mudslingers, landslide victories, figureheads: the deeply figurative vocabulary which we use to discuss politics is well- stocked with both “live” and “dead” metaphors which we too often simply assume rather than pay attention to. Our language for discussing social issues is particularly rife with martial metaphors, from the “war on drugs,” to “fighting poverty,” to the “battle against obesity.” This course will look at a range of texts, from scholarly research to short stories, that consider the ways in which these metaphors shape, enrich, and limit public conversation and thought, including major works by George Orwell and Susan Sontag.
ENG 101-017 | MR 2:30-3:45 PM | 1096 | Rebecca Karni
Making Sense
How do literature, film, and other forms of “culture” create meaning? In this course we will explore this question by close reading, as well as thinking and writing critically about, examples from literature and film, as well as scholarly, journalistic, and other texts concerned in one way or other with meaning-making. In the process, you’ll be introduced to a number of rhetorical and critical strategies to formulate your own arguments about a variety of texts (including, among others, films and images). These strategies will include basic narratological and semiotic approaches.
ENG 101-018 | TWF 8:30-9:20 AM | 1097 | Katherine Nadeau
ENG 101-019 | TWF 10:30-11:20 AM | 1098 | Katherine Nadeau
Into the Darkness: A True Crime Exploration
In our culture today, the true crime genre has exploded in popularity; as a society, we are fascinated by true stories of crimes and their fictional retellings. In this class, we will explore this fascination. Where does it come from? What does it reveal about us? What lessons about society and human nature can we take from it? What does it reflect about, and how does it affect, our morals and values? These are just some of the questions we will explore together as we learn and practice the fundamentals of academic writing at the college level.
ENG 175-001 | MR 8:30-9:45 AM | 1103 | Bruce Graver
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.
ENG 175-002 | MR 10:00-11:15 AM | 1102 | Chun Ye
Introduction to Literature
This class introduces the major genres of literary expression: poetry, fiction, drama, and creative nonfiction. The literary texts we read for the class center upon issues of race, gender, sexuality, war, and migration and are written by a diversity of contemporary writers, including Joy Harjo, Ocean Vuong, Julie Otsuka, Ilya Kaminsky, David Henry Hwang, and Mira Jacob. 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.
ENG 175-003 | TWF 9:30-10:20 AM | 1168 | Stephanie Boeninger
Introduction to Literature
What relationship does our reading and discussion of literature have to our “real lives”? How does literature represent public events like wars or scientific discoveries? How does it deal with private events like falling in love or losing a loved one? How will “new” experiences like living through the pandemic and constructing a self on social media be expressed in literature?
ENG 175-004 | TR 11:30-12:45 PM | 1104 | 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.
ENG 175-005 | TR 2:30-3:45 PM | 1105 | Russell Hillier
ENG 175-006 | TR 1:00-2:15 PM | 1106 | 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.
ENG 175-007 | TR 11:30-12:45 PM | 1107 | Tuire Valkeakari
ENG 175-008 | TR 1:00-2:15 PM | 1108 | Tuire Valkeakari
Introduction to Literature
Philosopher Plato had little patience with what some ancients and not-so-ancients have called “the lies of the poets.” Why study such “lies,” literary texts, in an academic environment? Let’s find out. We will explore fiction, drama, and poetry, with a particular interest in what these genres are made of and how they work. We will mostly read American authors (e.g. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Julie Otsuka, and Toni Morrison), but two markedly transnational contemporary novelists—Michael Ondaatje and Kazuo Ishiguro—are also included. 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.
ENG 175-009 | TR 2:30-3:45 PM | 1109 | Emily Pittinos
ENG 175-010 | TR 4:00-5:15 PM | 1110 | Emily Pittinos
Queer as Folk: LGBTQ+ Literature
In this introduction to literature class, we will hone the skills necessary to enjoy and engage with contemporary poetry, nonfiction, plays, and fiction by reading the works of queer writers. In so doing, we will explore the breadth of human experience—its beauties, tensions, losses, loves—and the stuff of life that unites us all. Our LGBTQ+ readings will include works by Carmen Maria Machado, Tony Kushner, Maggie Millner, Ocean Vuong, Paul Tran, Carl Phillips, Eduardo C. Corral, and many others. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to read with engagement and discernment, discuss literature critically, and write analytically and with an awareness of scholarly conversations.
ENG 175-011 | TR 11:30-12:45 PM | 1111 | Raphael Shargel
ENG 175-012 | TR 1:00-2:15 PM | 1112 | 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.
ENG 175-013 | MWF 12:30-1:20 PM | 1113 | Olga Limnios
ENG 175-014 | MWF 1:30-2:20 PM | 1114 | Olga Limnios
Lab Lit: Fiction about Science and the Science of Writing It
It is part of human nature to think in binary—on/off, either/or, right or wrong. Academic disciplines and, in more general terms, spheres of human inquiry are often presented in opposition to each other. One is either a scientist or a scholar; one’s work is either fact or fiction, and if one writes about science, it is either popularization or science fiction. But for a long time there has existed a third, albeit less known and less critically acclaimed, option. This course is dedicated to illuminating this genre using the critical insight of experts who are familiar with both science and literature and through engaging with primary sources—novels, plays, and poetry about scientists.
Writing 2 Courses
ENG 301-001 | MWF 1:30-2:20 PM | 1118 | Shawn Flanagan
ENG 301-002 | MWF 2:30-3:20 PM | 1119 | Shawn Flanagan
Writing the Event: From Reportage to Report
What do a college student, a scientist, and anthropologist have in common? How about a journalist, a social worker, a manager, a marketer? Chances are they have all created reports. To that point, this class will focus on the genre of the report, some of its variations and remixes. Along the way, we will complete a number of short assignments geared to develop our rhetorical reading skills and composition practices informed by an awareness of rhetorical situation and other textual elements. Additionally, these activities (readings, writings, and discussions) will culminate in a well-researched event report on a topic of the student’s choosing and presentation of it in another medium.
ENG 301-003 | MR 10:00-11:15 AM | 1120 | Michael Burdon
ENG 301-004 | MR 2:30-3:45 PM | 1121 | Michael Burdon
Preserving Presence: The Journal as Genre
Published journals, diaries, and notebooks provide us with unique portraits of private individuals within the public sphere. This class will focus on the intersections of our private and public selves as we explore the observations, reflections, and anxieties within the journals of writers such as Aldo Leopold and Joan Didion. Do these texts hold “meaning only for [their] maker,” as Didion purports, or do works of ostensibly private signification reveal something otherwise missing from public discourse? Along the way, we will be keeping our own journals as a means of practicing the rhetorical and creative strategies employed in the works that we analyze, writing with an eye on both ourselves and the world around us.
ENG 301-005 | M 4:00 – 6:30 PM | 2552 | Stephen Kurczy
Business Journalism
“Follow the money,” whispers a shadowy political insider in the film All the President’s Men, in a line that would become a credo for business journalism. To follow the money, however, one must understand and convey how money flows from the Federal Reserve to Wall Street, from bonds to Bitcoins, from to private investors to political campaigns. This class teaches how to turn that information into a journalistic article with interviews, financial research, and on-the-ground reporting. Past students have seen their work published in The Cowl and The Providence Journal.
ENG 351-001 | TR 1:00-2:15 PM | 1125 | Bruce Graver
Romantic Age in England
We will focus on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein this semester, exploring first its background in the Gothic literature of the late 18th century, and looking as well at the scientific discoveries that she knew and that gave her the impetus to write, as a teenager, the greatest and most influential horror novel ever written. We will also give some attention to stage adaptations of the novel, as these were the ways most people knew her novel—just as today more people are aware of the film adaptations than have actually read the book. Some of the works to be considered include a Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (Radcliffe is the mother of Gothic fiction), the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the psychological dramas of Joanna Baillie, Walter Scott’s The Bridal of Triermain, and other spine-tinglers of the Romantic era. I’m thinking we’ll need to think hard about Halloween as well.
ENG 377-001 | TWF 10:30-11:20AM | 1129 | Stephanie Boeninger
Special Topics: Irish Drama
Prior to the late 19th century, many educated Europeans would have considered Ireland little more than an uneducated and backwards colonial outpost of the British Empire. Playwrights delighted in mocking the uncouth Irish, so much that the “stage Irishman” became a wildly popular comic figure on the British and American stage. Drunken, fiery-tempered, and full of blarney, the stage Irishman became a popular and enduring stereotype of what it meant to be Irish. Despite, or perhaps in part as a result of, these negative stereotypes, the tiny island of Ireland has become home to one of the world’s most vibrant theatrical cultures. This course will examine how Irish playwrights of the 20th and 21st centuries have created their own versions of Irishness: sometimes by accepting (or cashing in on) the popular stereotype and sometimes by challenging it. We will read a wide selection of plays by authors ranging from the well-known figures of the Irish Literary Revival—W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J.M. Synge—to popular playwrights of the present day like Martin McDonagh (of Banshees of Inesherin fame), Christina Reid, and Jez Butterworth. Along the way we will examine the relationship between representations of national identity and nationalism, both during the years when Ireland was fighting for its status as an independent nation and more recently in the violent years of the Northern Irish Troubles.
*Courses, instructors, and schedules are subject to change.
