An introduction to the study of films as narrative art and cultural documents. The course involves viewing and analyzing films from different genres and investigating a unified theme or set of topics. Students will learn how to view films closely, how to relate films to their contexts, and how to employ the basic terms and concepts of film analysis. Attention will be paid to student writing, particularly to devising a thesis, crafting an argument, and learning how to use supporting evidence. Viewing films outside of class is required.

An introduction to the rich traditions of women's writing, focusing on some important issues and representative examples. Students will read canonical and non-canonical works, discuss continuities and differences among women writers, and master some of the concepts of gender studies. Attention will be paid to student writing, particularly to devising a thesis, crafting an argument, and learning how to use supporting evidence. See departmental listings for different offerings per semester. Offers UK Core credit for Intellectual Inquiry in the Humanities.

A course covering medieval English literature from around the years 1350-1450 and centering on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400), particularly his early dream-visions and The Canterbury Tales. Other authors and texts may include William Langland's Piers Plowman; the poetry of John Gower; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the works of the Pearl-Poet; Thomas Hoccleve; Margery Kempe; anonymous romances and Arthurian narratives; and more. Topics include courtly love and chivalry; Christian spirituality; women and gender roles; feudal politics and rebellion.

This course provides a selective encounter with the poetry of the British tradition. Texts and topics may be drawn from the later Renaissance (16th c.) up through the present day, exploring the depth, history, and continued vitality of British poetry. Particular attention is paid to the formal aspects and skills of reading poetry in different periods and styles.

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.

A course on Modernist Literature: British, Irish and American writing from the first half of the twentieth century. Virginia Woolf once tried to explain modernism by claiming, "on or about December 1910, human character changed." Much of the writing of the period might be read as an attempt to record and understand that change. Texts include the fiction, poetry, drama, and essays from writers such as Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Gertrude Stein.

This course focuses on selected literary movements and their relationships to American culture since 1900. Authors studied may include Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, and others. Topics may include the literatures of World War I, the Cold War, the Beat Generation, the New Social Movements of the 1960's, Postmodernism, and more. Open to students from any major. Provides ENG Major Elective credit and ENG minor credit.

A course exploring the rich literary heritage of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the greater Appalachian region, surveying its local history and diversity as well as its wider significance for American art.

Between 1910 and 1930 more than one million African Americans migrated from the rural South to the urban North. This course focuses on the development of African-American migration narratives from the slave era to the contemporary moment. It examines literary, musical, artistic, and journalistic representations of the Great Migrations that capture the experiences of African-Americana as they moved not only from the South to the North, but also from the South to the Midwest and the West in pursuit of better economic opportunities and political freedom.

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.