Fall 2026 Elective Course Descriptions
ENGL 135 | Literature & Medicine | MWF 11:00-11:50AM; 2:00-2:50PM | Lam
Description coming soon
ENGL 202 | Intro to Creative Writing | TR 2:30-3:45 and 4:00-5:15PM | Wood
In this course, you will write non-fiction, prose, drama, and poetry; while doing so, I will ask you to experiment with a wide variety of styles and approaches. You will also explore the craft and concerns of writers from diverse traditions through reading assignments and writing prompts. We will practice the pleasures of reading and writing as we read our class texts—both those we read from outside our classroom and those we write ourselves. Throughout, we’ll develop and honor our particular voices, experiences, and imaginations. This is not only a class on the craft of writing; it is also a location to learn about each other through our narratives and our processes of linguistic rhythm and meaning making.
This course’s emphasis, as an introductory creative writing course, will be on the exploration and development of writing skills. We will revise and polish, but much of your time will be spent producing bits of writing that you can then, after this course, use as fodder for further projects. Thus, you will be asked to do many exercises and share your work often with your peers throughout the course.
Attributes: Creative Perspectives, Humanities Elective, Writing Flag Core
ENGL 305 | Professional Writing | MWF 2:00-2:50PM | Gerding
Description coming soon
ENGL 309 | Creative Writing: Poetry | TR 10:00-11:15AM | Renzi
This course is designed to help expand your understanding of poetry—both in terms of your critical understanding of other poets’ works and in terms of your own development as a writer. As such, we will aim to build on your previous writing experience as we enhance both your excitement about language and your dedication to the craft of poetry. We will spend time reading both individual poems and book-length works by other poets, as one of the best ways to learn about poetry is to read widely. We will also spend time writing and developing your own poems through a series of assignments, workshops, and revisions. Emphasis will be placed on sharing your work often with your peers, at various stages of its development, and on providing meaningful critiques of your peers’ works as well.
Attributes: Creative Perspectives, Humanities Elective, Writing Flag Core
ENGL 310 | Creative Writing: Fiction | MWF 9:00-9:50AM | Bassett
This is a workshop in fiction, though “workshop” may be too small a word. We will read stories and novels privately, but also read them aloud together, and sometimes take them with us on long walks together.
We will watch films that comply with and disobey the rules of plot. We will hold salons where each person brings some oddity—an image, an anecdote, a clipping—to spark writing.
On certain days, class will convene outside, on a hill, a garden, a café, a church, a parking lot. We will practice listening as carefully as we write.
Each student will write stories and practice ways of seeing: how to recognize strangeness, how to sharpen attention, how to sit silently until silence yields something unexpected.
Our gatherings will be both serious and unserious, rigorous and mischievous. Expect assignments that ask you to move through the city, copy other writers (steal form!) write by hand in the dark, or compose with an ear to style (word-music).
Crying and clowning are equally welcome. Pensive contemplation and deep thinking, yes, but also loud laughter and light-mindedness.
The aim is not perfection, but the cultivation of your own peculiar practice of fiction, carried out in company, over the course of a semester that will be part study, part nonsense, part wandering.
Attributes: Creative Perspectives, Humanities Elective, Writing Flag Core
ENGL 317 | Writing Illness & Health | MWF 12:00-12:50PM | Wyett
In this course, we will study the concept of narrative medicine and apply it to intensive practice in creative nonfiction and personal writing. Emphasis will be placed on the ethical consequences of writing and interpreting one’s own health narrative and the stories of others in relationship to health and healing across class, culture, language, race, gender, and ability. This is an upper-level English course designed for Medical & Health Humanities, English, and Writing majors or minors. It is also accessible for students in other disciplines who are dedicated writers committed to expanding their writing abilities.
Prerequisites: Undergraduate level ENGL 101 Minimum grade of D or Undergraduate level ENGL115 Minimum grade of D.
Attributes: Core Curriculum: Creative Perspectives, Humanities Elective, Writing Flag Core, Solidarity & Kinship Flag (pending approval); English Major and Writing minor: Upper-level Writing Elective; Medical and Health Humanities Major and minor: MEHU minor elective, Narrative and Artistic Expression (MHNA), Upper Division Elective (MHUD), Upper-Level Seminar (MHSC)
ENGL 352 | African Literature | TR 4:00-5:15PM | Kamara
Description coming soon.
ENGL 365 | Performance Theory | TR 1:00-2:15PM | Renzi
Who Am I?/ Who Are You?: Social Performance, Body Politics, and Questions of Identity in Modern Drama/Performance
Beginning in the 1990s, humanities and social science scholars have increasingly attended to the central role that performance has in constructing individual identity, social collectives, and, indeed, the human understanding of reality itself. Though this so-called “performative turn” in academia is relatively recent, drama and performance has, for centuries, been exploring performance’s power to expand and challenge notions of one’s identity—including one’s attachment to nation, social circles, gender, race, sexuality, family, and memory. In this readings course, we will study a variety of canonical and avant-garde performance texts—from plays by William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde to visual works by sculptor-cum-film artist Matthew Barney and body artist Hannah Wilke to filmed documentation of drag shows and spoken word performance—along with key critical works in the burgeoning field of performance studies. In doing so, we will spend the semester investigating the multitude ways in which performance has answered and challenged the basic two-pronged question of one’s social identity: Who am I? Who are you? Emphasis in this course will be placed on acquiring a broad knowledge of performance texts in a wide range of media, as well as an introductory understanding of the critical questions performance studies engages.
Attributes: Solidarity & Kinship Flag, Gender & Diversity Studies, GDST Women and Gender Conc, Humanities Elective
ENGL 425 | Shakespeare | MWF 11:00-11:50am | O'Leary
This class introduces William Shakespeare’s works through the lens of performance studies, gender, and race. In addition to reading each of the major Shakespearean dramatic genres—tragedy, history, comedy, and romance—we hope to attend two performances at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and engage in on-campus events centering gender in performance. Throughout the class, we will consider not only the historical context of the works and their critical heritage, but also what it means to encounter them in theatrical productions today, and how we can enhance our appreciation of the texts through critical race and gender/sex theory and scholarship. In addition to spirited participation in class discussion and a presentation, students will write in a variety of forms, including Microsoft Teams, wikis, performance reviews, creative work, and research-driven essays. All of the coursework is designed to strengthen students’ critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. There is a $40 cost associated with this course, covering tickets to the two live performances. If this cost is prohibitive, students can be reimbursed.
Attributes: Humanities Elective, Solidarity & Kinship Flag (Pending); ENGL Major: British Literature Before 1800/Upper-level Elective; COST $40
ENGL 482 | Modern American Fiction | MWF 10:00-10:50AM | Herren
We will study various works of 20th and 21st century American fiction organized around the theme of “Teachers and Students.” Students will engage with these texts and with each other through class discussion, posts, essays, and a research paper.
Attributes: Humanities Elective; ENGL Majors: American Lit after 1900; Upper-level elective
ENGL 499 | Senior Seminar | MWF 1:00-1:50PM | Nix
Description coming soon.
Attributes: Humanities Elective