What is the novel and how did it begin? Why did it develop at a specific moment in history and what counted as fiction before that time? What makes one novel literature and another trash? In this course we explore the early decades of the novel to better understand prose fiction and how it came to be a dominant genre in English literature. Readings can include works by Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Frances Burney, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen (including selected cinematic adaptations), and more.

This course focuses on selected literary movements and their relationships to American culture up through 1900. Authors studied may include Susanna Rowson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Jacobs, and Henry James. Topics may include American imperialism, slavery and abolition, the rise of the historical novel, Sentimentalism, Romanticism, and the emergence of psychological realism. Open to students from any major. Provides ENG Major Elective credit and ENG minor credit.

A course investigating contrasting traditions of American poetry from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Several poets are examined within historical and literary contexts, and their poems examined in detail through close reading, with attention paid in particular to stylistic/formal characteristics. Poets studied may include Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and others. Open to students from any major. Provides ENG Major Elective credit and ENG minor credit.

A chronological survey of narrative film (primarily American) from World War II to the present, concentrating on both canonical films (such as Hitchcock's Vertigo) and often overlooked examples of cult, low budget, and independent film. Many paradigms of the major genres are included: musical, film noir, gangster, screwball comedy, horror and science fiction, western, and more. This survey also examines more idiosyncratic work of auteur directors (Nicholas Ray, Jane Campion), films capturing a specific sociopolitical moment (e.g.

This course explores the relationship between two creative traditions, literature and film, focusing on film adaptations of literary works for the screen. Subjects can include the adaptation of works by a particular writer such as Shakespeare or Jane Austen, or it may range more widely among the thousands of innovative cinematic reinventions of literary texts, e.g. Richardson's Tom Jones, Altman's Short Cuts.

Since the 1940's "literary theory" has emerged as a vibrant and vital aspect of literary studies. The term covers a wide range of formal, historical, and critical approaches to literature and culture that have changed the ways we read. This course investigates selected trends and schools of modern literary theory in diverse texts and contexts.

For undergraduate majors in English with high standing. Students pursue an independent course of study, tutorial, or directed project under the guidance of a faculty member, with appropriate assessment and grading (e.g., term paper(s), examinations, final project). Projects are generally proposed and arranged by students themselves, reflecting individual interests and goals. Limited enrollment. Prerequisites: ENG major with a major GPA of 3.0 or above; prior permission of faculty advisor and ENG chairperson; approved Learning Contract. May be repeated to a maximum of 6 credits.

For undergraduate majors in English with high standing. Students pursue an independent course of study, tutorial, or directed project under the guidance of a faculty member, with appropriate assessment and grading (e.g., term paper(s), examinations, final project). Projects are generally proposed and arranged by students themselves, reflecting individual interests and goals. Limited enrollment. Prerequisites: ENG major with a major GPA of 3.0 or above; prior permission of faculty advisor and ENG chairperson; approved Learning Contract. May be repeated to a maximum of 6 credits.

For undergraduate majors in English with high standing. Students pursue an independent course of study, tutorial, or directed project under the guidance of a faculty member, with appropriate assessment and grading (e.g., term paper(s), examinations, final project). Projects are generally proposed and arranged by students themselves, reflecting individual interests and goals. Limited enrollment. Prerequisites: ENG major with a major GPA of 3.0 or above; prior permission of faculty advisor and ENG chairperson; approved Learning Contract. May be repeated to a maximum of 6 credits.

The Department of English internship is available for qualified students to receive academic credit toward the Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science in English through applied and practical experience with a variety of private and public entities, including but not limited to the University Press of Kentucky. The student will identify a field-, community-based, practical or applied educational experience and locate a sponsor to host their internship, which will be supervised by both a responsible person on site and by an English Dept. faculty member.