Undergraduate Course Description Booklet

An orientation to the English and film studies majors. Focuses on the transition from high school to college, campus resources, departmental expertise in English and film studies, and building community.

Aim: This course is designed to spark intellectual curiosity in first-year students, including possible English majors or minors, with a study of literary texts that have had profound social, historical, or cultural influence while also serving as examples of riveting, highly effective literature—texts which stay with a person for a lifetime. The class is designed around big ideas and small stakes: students will read texts from a diverse range of historical and global contexts and discuss how they impacted the history of philosophical, political, social, and literary thought as well as how such works create their own individual literary power. The assignments are designed to encourage discussion and reflection, to foster proficiency in significant terms and concepts from the literature and its historical context, and to build a sense of the historical development of major ideas and literary forms; there are minimal writing requirements. Note: all texts not originally in English are read in translation. 

Scope: Individual instructors will assign seven (or more) of texts from a designated list, all of which share qualities of intrigue and impact from all realms of the world and all ages, from works like The Book of Job, the Bhagavad Gita, the Analects of Confucius, King Lear, or Kafka’s Metamorphosis. The main idea is to put together seven (or more) very strong literary texts which will stretch students’ minds and spark excitement about other worlds, both temporally and globally. Ideally, texts would be new to students coming from high school. 

Note: English 151, including honors variations, are self-contained courses. They are not designed to be taken in any particular sequence.

This is a first-year English composition course that engages students in the study of written argument: developing an informed and committed stance on a topic, and using writing to share this stance with particular audiences for particular purposes. Students can expect to produce the equivalent of 25 double-spaced pages of polished prose (a minimum of three writing projects) during the semester.  This course is recommended for students who wish to improve their writing and reading skills through the study and practice of argument.

This course is intended for students who have had significant prior experience and success with English classes and/or contexts that require writing, revision and analysis. Admission is by invitation or application only.  Contact the Department of English Advisor for more information. This course shares the same focus and goals as English 151 and requires an equivalent amount of reading and writing.

This is a first-year English composition course that engages students in the study of written argument: developing an informed and committed stance on a topic, and using writing to share this stance with particular audiences for particular purposes. Students can expect to produce the equivalent of 25 double-spaced pages of polished prose (a minimum of three writing projects) during the semester.  This course is recommended for students who wish to improve their writing and reading skills through the study and practice of argument.

English 170 is an introductory creative writing course in the major genres of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students enrolled in this course will be expected to produce creative works in all of these genres and can expect to develop and practice the fundamental skills of these genres, including techniques in poetics, characterization, theme, structure, and narrative development. Through the reading of their own work and others, students will also develop the ability to respond to poetry, fiction, and essays analytically and imaginatively­, both orally and in writing­, in order to understand the context and significance of creative writing in today’s world.

General introduction for beginning students to the understanding and appreciation of the principal forms of literature: poetry, drama, and fiction

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities

NOTE: This course does not fulfill any part of the freshman composition requirement in the College of Arts and Sciences.

This course is intended to introduce first and second-year students to examination of reading, especially the reading of literature. In order to examine the process of reading, students can expect to explore literary works (poems, stories, essays, and drama), some works not usually considered literary, and the students’ own reading practices. The course will deal with such questions as how do we read, why do we read, and what is literature and what are its functions.

Further information unavailable at this time

Open only to English majors and minors.

The issues, perspectives, and methods of the discipline. The relationships among authors, texts, audiences, and contexts. Practice in imaginative and analytical approaches.

What exactly do English majors and minors study? And how? And why? At the simplest level, these questions are the motivation for this class. We will discuss the issues, perspectives, and methodologies of the disciplines that are part of English Studies, focusing on the three main branches present here at UNL: composition and rhetoric, creative writing, and literary and cultural studies, with their various subfields, such as—among many others—critical theory, digital humanities, ethnic studies, film studies, and women and gender studies. Much attention will be devoted to examples of interdisciplinary and intersectional work. Several English faculty members and graduate students will kindly visit our class during the semester to discuss the stakes, methodologies, difficulties, and rewards of their scholarly, teaching, and creative work, and to answer any question or curiosity we may have.

With the help of a series of readings, we will reflect on the relationships among authors, texts, audiences, rhetorical situations, genres, canons, and contexts. In our discussions, activities, and varied writing assignments we will practice different imaginative, critical, and analytical approaches to work with language, culture, and literature. As a useful and unifying critical perspective across disciplines, the course will revolve around ideas and issues of representability and its limits. Some recurring questions that we will ask are: (how) can literature, various forms of writing, and artistic expressions represent the world, with all its beauty but also with all its complex problems and profound injustices? What/who is represented in this text, and why, and how? What type of language/s and discourse/s are in use? How does this representation relate to questions of race, sex, gender, class, and other cultural markers? What can new, provocative, powerful, and ethical ways be, to not simply write and comprehend what already is, but to fully re-imagine what is yet to be? These questions will provoke and stir old and new inner interrogations related to our individual contribution and motivations for operating within the world of English Studies and its myriad career paths.

Description: Selected readings in the novel and short story, mainly American, British, and European, from 1900 to the present.

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities

Examines the science fiction genre from its origins in the 18th century to its contemporary expression. Issues of technological modernity and consider how these are mediated through literary texts will be introduced.

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities

Reading and analysis of popular literature within historical, cultural, and literary contexts. May address literature from earlier periods or focus exclusively on contemporary works.

Aim: Comics are an alluring and increasingly popular, multi-modal story-telling medium and that is rich in meaning and discovery. This course combines literary and historical perspectives to investigate their long-form: the graphic novel. This will be an inter-disciplinary approach to the tropes and symbols utilized in both graphic memoir and fiction that teach readers something about themselves and/or the world around them. Students will be provided with the critical skills necessary to read and understand this deceptively complex medium, and will be exposed to a variety of artistic and storytelling approaches that touch on politics, sexuality, class, violence, and cultural and ethnic diversity. Meets ACE 5 requirements.

Teaching method: Class sessions will vary in format, featuring a mix of lecture, discussion, and small group work.

Requirements: Course work will include a variety of critical writing, presentations, and active participation in class discussions.

Tentative Reading List: selected works by Tom Hart, Derf Backderf, Lynda Barry, Emil Ferris, and others.

Note: Class taught via Canvas. On-Line course, Not Self-Paced. Computer, E-mail, Internet, required.

Introduction to writers and literary works associated with a particular place that would typically be defined by geographic factors rather than political boundaries and will vary from course to course, but will regularly include the North American Great Plains.

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities

Cross listed with WMNS 212

Introduction to variety of works by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writers. Significant literary, cultural, social, and historical issues and themes.

Cross listed with WMNS 215

Introduction to English literature written by women, studies in the cultural, social, and/or historical contexts.

NOTE: Class Taught via Canvas and not self-paced. Internet, email and computer required.

A study of the historical and cultural development of the genre of children’s literature.

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities

Stevenson-Sotolongo, P – 700, 701

English 216 will explore children’s literature from the early days of fairy tales and primers, to the Golden Age of nonsense poetry and fantastical fiction, to the modern era of realism . . . and everything in between. As a survey, 216 involves far more reading than writing, and as you read, you’ll be asked to pay particular attention to the role of historical context in both children’s literature and the conception of childhood itself. What did it mean to be a

child in 1850? 1950? And what did it mean to write for children of those eras? We’ll concern ourselves with the ways child labor, philosophies of education, religion, literacy, the rise of the middle class, and numerous social issues helped shape children’s literature. Most of all, we’ll read highly imaginative writing that engages, provokes, and transports.

A study of the historical and cultural development of the genre of young adult (YA) literature.

Course description: This course is part cultural history, literary history, and contemporary cultural analysis. We will read young adult novels (or YA adjacent novels) from the 1950s to 2021 alongside some essays exploring topics such as post truth, addictive technology usage, manipulative social media algorithms, and viral misinformation.

Post-truth is the idea that we are living in a society that can no longer tell the difference between what is true and what is not (or in which the “truth” is indeterminable or somehow irrelevant). Some believe this is because the idea of “truth” no longer has meaning for people and has been replaced by blind faith or allegiance to a particular ideology. The Oxford Dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

But is post truth really a new problem? What makes the problems we face today different from the past? How do we properly diagnose the problem so that we can explore the right solutions? The design this class considers the genre of young adult literature as uniquely capable of diagnosing what ails society while allowing us to imagine an array of strategies to fight back.

Sample reading list: M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002), Joyce Carol Oates’ Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (2003), J.D. Salinger’s George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Catcher in the Rye (1951), Julia Watt’s Quiver (2018), film The Social Dilemma (2020), film Behind the Curve (2018), Lee McIntyre’s Post Truth (2019), Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”

Introductory study of a representative sample of Shakespeare’s works. Films of dramatic performances may be shown.

Ace: ACE 5 Humanities

Major works by British authors of the Romantic and modernist centuries.

Ace: ACE 5 Humanities

Aim: This course will examine a wide range of representative major authors in British literature from the Romantics to the high modernists of the early twentieth century, focusing on the powerful aesthetic responses of these authors to the dizzyingly rapid social changes of the post-revolutionary world. Our presiding theme will be the Romantic and post-Romantic dilemma of recognizing, mourning, and accepting the loss of old certainties while celebrating the joys of, in Ezra Pound’s words, “making it new.” Representative works will come from a wide range of genres, including the novel, the short story, poetry (both lyric and narrative), drama, and children’s literature. Our aim will be both inward and outward; that is, we will practice close reading of the works in question while also placing them in the perspective of their intellectual, literary, and cultural history.

Teaching method: Lecture with discussions.

Requirements: Two midterms and a final, two short papers, quizzes. Midterms and final will be taken in the DLC, as will the two examination-essays (papers you write on a passage in a two-hour period); the brief quizzes will be taken in class.

Tentative Texts: Novels: Austen, Persuasion, Dickens, Great Expectations, Waugh, Decline and Fall, Woolf, To the Lighthouse; selected Romantic, Victorian and modernist poetry, including Eliot’s The Waste Land; representative children’s literature; Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.

PREQ: Good standing in the University Honors Program or by invitation.

Major works by British authors of the Romantic and Victorian periods and of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Ace: ACE 5 Humanities

Aim: This course will examine a wide range of representative major authors in British literature from the Romantics to the high modernists of the early twentieth century, focusing on the powerful aesthetic responses of these authors to the dizzyingly rapid social changes of the post-revolutionary world. Our presiding theme will be the Romantic and post-Romantic dilemma of recognizing, mourning, and accepting the loss of old certainties while celebrating the joys of, in Ezra Pound’s words, “making it new.” Representative works will come from a wide range of genres, including the novel, the short story, poetry (both lyric and narrative), drama, and children’s literature. Our aim will be both inward and outward; that is, we will practice close reading of the works in question while also placing them in the perspective of their intellectual, literary, and cultural history.

Teaching method: Lecture with discussions.

Requirements: Two midterms and a final, two short papers, quizzes. Midterms and final will be taken in the DLC, as will the two examination-essays (papers you write on a passage in a two-hour period); the brief quizzes will be taken in class.

Tentative Texts: Novels: Austen, Persuasion, Dickens, Great Expectations, Waugh, Decline and Fall, Woolf, To the Lighthouse; selected Romantic, Victorian and modernist poetry, including Eliot’s The Waste Land; representative children’s literature; Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.

Cross listed with ETHN 244

Representative African American works written since 1865, of various genres, studied in their social and historical contexts.

Ace: ACE 9 Global/Diversity ACE 5 Humanities

AIM: In this course, we will use the framework of the “traditional” and “modern” epic performance to explore the theme of “Race, Slavery, and Epic Sensibility in the African-American Literary Imagination.” After starting with a traditional African epic and several scholarly articles to introduce us to the dynamics of the traditional African epic performance, we will explore how 19th and 20th-century African-American men and women write about, respond to, or somehow engage race and slavery in their creative endeavors. Students will not only read these authors, learn of the historical and literary periods in which they were writing, and discuss the dominant issues and themes confronting them, but also become more critical and creative readers and writers. Finally, in accordance with our efforts to appreciate the epic performance within an American context, we will on occasion discuss past and present cultural performances and artifacts — e.g., hip hop, sports and other commercials, R&B, spirituals, movie trailers pertaining to the epic and super heroes, news articles, sports articles/controversies.

TEACHING METHOD: This course will use a discussion-driven format supported by lectures that provide the relevant historical, literary, and biographical contexts. Some peer-group activities as well.

REQUIREMENTS: Graded: Several close reading essay(s); midterm exam (possibly); and, active class participation.

Tentative Reading List: excerpts from The Epic of Son-Jara (storyteller: Fa-Digi Sisoko; trans. John William Johnson; Victor Sejour’s “The Mulatto,” Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, selection from Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, Plessy v. Ferguson (U.S. Supreme Court case), W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, select poems by Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, Brown v. Board of Education (U.S. Supreme Court case), and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing

Cross listed with ETHN 245A

Description: Introduction to Asian American literature and relevant historical and cultural background.

ACE: ACE 9 Global/Diversity ACE 5 Humanities

Cross listed with ETHN 245N

Introduction to literature by Native American covering early and recent periods.

ACE: ACE 9 Global/Diversity ACE 5 Humanities

Aim: This course is a survey of Native American literatures, a body of texts of true diversity in both its great variety of genres and the variety of its historical & cultural contexts. The broad socio-historical scope notwithstanding, an appropriate emphasis will be placed upon the “Native American Renaissance” that began in the latter 1960’s. And so representative authors will include both pre-modern shamans & “matriarchs”—AND postmodern “warriors” & tricksters. The selections from the Trout anthology are, at times, teasingly brief; but, with the Sherman Alexie collection of short stories and the James Welch novel, they all ask the same question, ultimately: how can one “imagine a new language when the language of the enemy” seems to inevitably render the indigenous Other culturally inarticulate (Alexie)? At last, I hope you’ll agree that such a “new language” is now positively, even eloquently, articulate in contemporary Native American literature(s).

Teaching Method: Discussion, with some lecture and group work.

Requirements: Attendance & oral participation; in-class quizzes; approximately bi-weekly informal writing responses; one midterm exam; one final research paper

Required Reading List:

• Trout, ed.: Native American Literature: An Anthology (including readings from Sarah Winnemucca, Luther Standing Bear, Lame Deer, N. Scott Momaday, Vine Deloria, Jr., Leslie Marmon Silko, Linda Hogan, and Louise Erdrich)

(Note: this great collection is now out of print, though used copies are widely available; all assigned readings will also be available on Canvas.)

• Zitkala-Ša: American Indian Stories

• Sherman Alexie: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

• James Welch: The Death of Jim Loney

This course satisfies Student Learning Objective #7: Use knowledge, theories or methods appropriate to the arts to understand their context and significance.

This is an introductory course in fiction writing, designed to give you a basic mastery and understanding of various fictional techniques. You’ll learn how to put together a scene, how to create interesting and believable characters, how to write effective dialogue, how to build suspense, how to use setting to heighten atmosphere and mood. You’ll learn how to structure a story, and how to avoid plot clichés. You’ll learn how to revise. You’ll learn how to highlight your strengths and work on your weaknesses. Along the way, you’ll also practice the more general craft of prose-writing, because many of the technical aspects of fiction-writing (sentence construction, punctuation, and word usage, for example) apply to all the prose-writing you’ll do in your life at this university and in your life after college as well.

Though some of you may want to become professional writers, I know that’s not the goal for everyone here. Whatever your level of talent, expertise, background, whatever your future ambitions, you can gain from this course. Even if you never write another story in your life after this semester, if you do the work of the course you’ll come away with a better understanding of and more respect for good fiction, because you’ll understand the process from the inside out; you’ll have lived for a while as a writer.

Ace: ACE 7 Arts

Stevenson-Sotolongo, P – 700

This is a workshop style class that will introduce you to the art and craft of fiction writing. In it, you’ll study the nuts and bolts of the short story through writing practice, abundant feedback, and a good deal of mindful reading. Writing is a serious affair, and improving it requires hard work, but the journey can be both fun and rewarding. You’ll learn to identify fiction’s moving parts, come to understand their function in narrative, and honor the unique creative inheritances each of us brings to the class. Just be prepared to share your writing with peers as well as to revise it extensively.

Introduction to the writing of poetry. Emphasis on student writing within context of theory and criticism.

ACE: ACE 7 Arts

By passing this course, you will fulfill ACE Learning Outcome 1: “Write texts, in various forms, with an identified purpose, that respond to particular audience needs, incorporate research or existing knowledge, and use applicable documentation and appropriate conventions of formal and structure.”

In this class, we will spend the majority of our time looking at the ways in which individuals use the written and spoken word to take up issues important to them and to engage in meaningful community conversations. Drawing on our experience as members of and contributors to multiple community conversations, we will explore what motivates us to speak and write about issues important to us.

Throughout the class, as you study and write about issues important to you, you’ll develop three writing projects through which you will 1) research and analyze how writing is used in a particular community in order to participate in community conversations; 2) represent a conflict and compose an argument around an issue of importance to community members; 3) advocate for issues important to you and other stakeholders in a particular community conversation.

By passing this course, you will fulfill ACE Learning Outcome 1: “Write texts, in various forms, with an identified purpose, that respond to particular audience needs, incorporate research or existing knowledge, and use applicable documentation and appropriate conventions of formal and structure.”

In this class, we will spend the majority of our time looking at the ways in which individuals use the written and spoken word to take up issues important to them and to engage in meaningful community conversations. Drawing on our experience as members of and contributors to multiple community conversations, we will explore what motivates us to speak and write about issues important to us.

Throughout the class, as you study and write about issues important to you, you’ll develop three writing projects through which you will 1) research and analyze how writing is used in a particular community in order to participate in community conversations; 2) represent a conflict and compose an argument around an issue of importance to community members; 3) advocate for issues important to you and other stakeholders in a particular community conversation.

Major authors, themes, and intellectual trends in American literature from the beginnings to 1865. Works from the Colonial, Early National, and Romantic periods.

Major authors, themes, and intellectual trends in American literature from 1865 to the present. Works from the Realist, Modernist, and Contemporary periods.

Nature and function of rhetorical theory as applied to English Studies. Selected important ancient and modern rhetorical theories and is not intended as a general historical survey.

Ace: ACE 8 Civic/Ethics/Stewardship ACE 5 Humanities

This course is intended to introduce students to selected ancient and modern rhetorical theories in order to analyze how persuasion works in contemporary culture. (It’s not a historical survey of rhetoric, and no prior experience with the study of rhetoric is assumed.) Our work for the course is organized with the following questions in mind: How have ideas about persuasion and argument changed across time and cultures? How might we account for shifts in valued styles of argument? What does it mean to participate ethically in an argument? How can studying different theories of persuasion help us navigate arguments we encounter in our current lives and relationships? This course is certified as ACE 8 and ACE 5.

This discussion/activity-centered course will have weekly readings available via CANVAS. Informal writing will also be required most weeks. While I do not anticipate using exams, there will be 2 major course projects. If you have any additional questions, please contact me at dminter1@unl.edu.

Cross listed with HIST 277

Description: Introduction to some of the major implications of computer technologies to the humanities; examination of the historical influence of new technologies on how we think of ourselves, both individually and collectively; how we interact socially and politically; how we determine public and private spaces in an increasingly connected world; and how we can use computer technologies to produce, preserve, and study cultural materials.

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities