ENGLISH FALL 2025 COURSE OFFERINGS
ENGLISH FALL 2025 COURSE OFFERINGS
100 level courses
123. Intro to Fiction
Do you enjoy reading, watching, or listening to stories, but lack the words to describe why they appeal to you and how they work? This course is designed to increase your interpretive skills by exploring the way fiction writers utilize structure, character, point of view, and other essential elements to provoke and move their readers. We will also explore how fiction writers capture important social and cultural experiences with their works. Readings may include novels, novellas, short stories, flash fiction, and comics. Students may also be invited to try out some storytelling themselves. Fulfills HUM distribution.
200 Level Creative Writing Courses
209. Athlete Media Relations
PERMISSION ONLY COURSE. Internships in Sports Writing. This internship course is designed for students who are interested in gaining real-world experience writing about sports. Students will learn how to track statistics while covering a game, write game stories and feature stories, and will cap the semester with an in-depth piece that explores an issue that affects collegiate student-athletes here at St. Lawrence. Reading assignments will be primarily from The Athletic and The Best American Sports Writing series, and exemplary student work may be featured on the Saints Athletics website. The small-group setting allows for intensive peer group review and students should expect to participate in a collaborative editing process. The internship counts as a creative writing course and is completed in addition to the five courses required for the introductory level of the major.
241. Techniques of Fiction
NO SENIORS In this introductory course on the basics of writing prose fiction, we will read and analyze a variety of short stories with an eye toward becoming better fiction writers ourselves. By reading diverse authors, periods, and approaches to storytelling, we will become more adept at important techniques such as narrative form, characterization, and point of view. We will compose a series of short exercises that may be reviewed in workshop for possible inclusion in a portfolio of significantly revised and polished work.
242. Techniques of Poetry
Techniques of Poetry. An introductory study of prosody and poetics. Class attention is divided among student writing, theory and published models. Weekly writing assignments address a variety of technical issues connected with both traditional and experimental verse, while reading assignments providing examples to follow or possibilities for further study. Matters of voice, affect, intuition, chance and imagination are given as much attention as those analytic skills necessary for clear communication. All students are required to share their oral and written work for group discussion and critique.
243. Techniques of Creative Non-Fiction
Techniques of Creative Non-Fiction. In this introductory course on the basics of writing literary nonfiction, we will read and analyze a variety of examples of creative nonfiction, including memoirs and personal essays, with an eye toward becoming better nonfiction writers and readers ourselves. By encountering diverse authors, periods, and approaches to storytelling and sharing insights and knowledge about our personal encounters with the world around us, we will improve our application of various important techniques such as form, structure, persona, characterization, and voice. We will compose a series of short exercises that with revisions may become longer memoirs and personal essays to share with the class workshop, and assemble a final portfolio of revised and polished work. Fulfills ARTS Distribution.
244. Screenwriting
Techniques of Screenwriting. An introductory study of basic technical problems and formal concepts of screenwriting. The study of produced screenplays and formal film technique, along with writing scene exercises, builds toward the construction of a short (50-minute) script. Also offered as PCA-244 and DMF-244. Fulfills ARTS Distribution
200 Level Literature Courses
225. English Literature I
Survey of English Literature I. In this course, students will learn about the history of British literature from the 8th through the 17th centuries. The course invites students to explore developments in British literature through the lens of history and its relation to the development of the concept of the individual as well as competing philosophies of religious, political, and social life. Within this context, the course traces literary movements and the evolution of literary forms. It features a variety of drama, poetry, and some fiction and nonfiction from writers whose gender, class, and cultural outlook vary widely from historical era to era. Some of the texts we read are by famous authors like Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Milton; others are composed by less well-known and even anonymous authors. Some of the texts we read are in languages other than English, so we'll read those in translation, with the exception of Chaucer, whom we'll discover in his original middle English; others employ syntax that, though the same as our modern English, differs in exciting and beautiful ways. With each new text, students will gain a deeper appreciation of the volume, breadth, and variety of written work created in the British archipelago from the Medieval Period to the Restoration. Students contemplating graduate study in English are strongly recommended to take this course.
226. English Literature II
Survey of English Literature II. In this course, students will learn about the history of British literature starting at about 1700 and extending into the twentieth century and beyond. The course invites students to explore developments in British literature through the lens of history and its relation to competing philosophies of political and social life. Within this context, the course traces literary movements and the evolution of literary forms. It features a variety of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry from writers of different social classes, genders, and cultural traditions. Some of the texts we read are by famous authors like Jane Austen or T. S. Eliot; others are composed by less well-known authors. Students contemplating graduate study in English are strongly recommended to take this course.
231. Adirondack Literature
This course explores the literary history of the Adirondacks in an effort to understand how natural and cultural forces have shaped a sense of place in this storied geographic region. In the fall of 2025, we will focus our attention on the “Indigenous Adirondacks”—that is, the story of Native peoples who have made the region a homeland for the past ten thousand years or more. We will read Haudenosaunee and Wabanaki creation stories, historical fiction and poetry by both Euro-American and Native American authors, and contemporary works of nonfiction that seek to recover a Native presence and perspective in the Adirondacks. We will encounter moments of intercultural contact, conflict, and cooperation; reflect on the brutal history of imperial conquest and settler colonialism; and learn about some longstanding efforts to reclaim Native sovereignty in the region. Because textual sources are limited, we will also turn to archaeological evidence, material culture, and Native art and craftwork to piece together this narrative of the Indigenous Adirondacks. To that end, this course involves THREE REQUIRED FRIDAY FIELD TRIPS to regional museums and cultural centers, the specific dates of which will be announced before the semester begins (they will likely occur in September and October). Students who cannot attend these Friday field trips must visit these locations on their own and complete additional make-up assignments. Please contact the instructor during open registration with questions and concerns. Also offered through Environmental Studies. Fulfills HUM and EL distribution.
238. American Literature II
These courses offer an overview of American literature from the early colonial era to the present, with selections from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Both courses invite students to view American literature through the lens of different historical and literary contexts and both feature writers who helped define the American literary canon. The courses examine the American literary imagination by focusing on a set of key issues that preoccupied the nation: colonial contact and resistance; slavery and abolition; women’s rights; environmental politics; the rise of capitalism; modern cities and travel; movements for social justice and equality; and the shifting relationship between self, community, nation, and world. ENG 237 covers writings from the colonial period to 1865; ENG 238 concentrates on literary texts from the Civil War until the early 21st century. Students can take the courses in any order. Fulfills HUM distribution.
General course description for ENG 250: Methods of Critical Analysis
This course introduces students to a range of scholarly methods used to interpret literary works. While each section may focus on a different theme or group of primary texts, all sections encourage students to recognize and to apply a variety of literary critical methods. In addition, students learn the citation and formatting conventions most commonly employed in the field of literary study. Topics vary according to instructor and semester, so please view specific sections to find the different section descriptions.
250-01. Shaking Up Shakespeare
In this section of Methods of Critical Analysis will begin with a preliminary unit on close reading, focusing on a few of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and then move into the requisite survey of the conceptual lenses, the “methods of critical analysis,” through which we will explore one tragedy, Hamlet, and one comedy, Twelfth Night.
250-02. Paradise Lost
In this section of Methods of Critical Analysis, we’ll read (most of) John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. While re relish the rich narrative and deeply textured verse, we’ll also trat Milton’s world-building remix of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve as an opportunity to try out some of the conceptual lenses contemporary literary critics employ. We’ll consider what the poem can tell us about attitudes towards gender, imperialism, and the environment in 17th century England – as well as whether and how the poem speaks to the present.
200 Level Special Topics (3,000-3,999)
3082. Growing Up Star Wars
200 Level, appropriate for First-year students. Anakin Skywalker. Padmé Amidala. Jin Erso. Han Solo. The names of STAR WARS characters infiltrate modern American culture. But have you thought about what it really means to grow up as a Jedi knight? Or to study at a political academy so that you can become queen by age fourteen? Or, more extreme still, to enlist for military service when you're not yet sixteen? The STAR WARS galaxy offers may routes to children and young adults to educate themselves in a chosen profession, exploring the positive and negative impacts that such an education can create for a society. In this way, STAR WARS participates in the genre of the bildungsroman, a story about the formative years shaping a person as they grow up. In this class, we will focus on the coming of age stories for characters in the STAR WARS galaxy, both reading novels and watching films, to emphasize how psychological, moral, ethical, and spiritual developments shape these characters on their journeys into maturity, on their journeys to becoming forces on their own planets and in the galaxy at large. On the way, we will also tackle questions of gender, race, equality, environmentalism, and age, studying how these issues contribute to the personalities that the STAR WARS universe creates. Weekly writing assignments, presentations, and a final project will comprise the majority of work for this class. Fulfills HUM distribution. Cross-listed with Education.
3085. Narrative Medicine
200 Level - Appropriate for FY students. How do doctors utilize literary methods like "narrative analysis" and "close reading" in their diagnostic practices? How might literary descriptions of pain, disability, and vulnerability sensitize the physician and instill empathy and compassion as parts of professional competency? How might characterological constructions of different bodies and psychic states expand our understanding of the human condition? Can creative writing really be a medical instrument, as Dr. Jay Baruch argues? How do you "honor" the stories of illness, as Dr. Rita Charon suggests? We will explore topics like patient perspective, historically shifting meanings of illness, structural racism in medical practice, stigma and social norms, healthcare activism, and media representations of health and wellness by analyzing literature, film, and critical essays. Students will also participate in weekly "narrative medicine workshops" to practice skills in observation, evaluation, and storytelling. Lastly, students will reflect on the forms and genres of contemporary medical writing to try their hand at it. Fulfills HUM distribution. May count toward the Public Health major.
3121. Letters as Literature
Dear students, dear writers, dear essayists-dear ones: Epistolary writing is letter writing, as in written correspondence. In this course, through reading and writing assignments, we will investigate the epistolary essay as a borrowed form – a soliloquy, a collaboration, a protest, a confession-and a tradition in its own right. We will write postcard essays and open letters, send fan letters and mail art, keep pen pals and hope a message in a bottle washes up on our shores. We may encounter diarists and crosshatched letters, witnesses and correspondents, letters that should be written but never sent, and the uncertainty of any letter reaching its destination or getting a reply. We will work with intimacy, distance, the “I,” and the second person to ask: Who do we write to? Which is to say, we will write our way into a new understanding of the impact of epistolary essay in particular, and the impulse to essay generally. Featuring site visits to places like the post office, the campus mail room, and library Special Collections & Archives.
300 Level Creative Writing Courses
308. Advanced Creative Non-Fiction
CW: Advanced Creative Non-Fiction Writing. Building upon the techniques that we acquired in ENG-243, Techniques of Creative Nonfiction, we will seek to deepen our exploration of writing, reading, and analyzing literary essays by reading a diverse range of authors who challenge basic approaches to writing memoirs and literary essays. We will focus on more nuanced concerns, such as style,voice, narrative stance, and structure, and we may experiment with forms and sub-genres such as the lyric essay, the segmented essay, and other hybrid forms. We will also read theory and criticism on creative nonfiction so as to better understand the possibilities this genre offers writers. In a workshop setting, we will analyze our own work in depth with an eye toward deep, comprehensive revision. Preparing the final portfolio will allow us to learn how to line -edit our prose as well as how to critically situate our own work within the genre. Prerequisite: ENG-243.
300 Level Literature Courses
315. Chaucer
What do you think of when you hear the word “medieval”? King Arthur, Lady Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot? Magic, faeries, and monsters? Bubonic plague? Game of Thrones? All of these answers are right – to certain extents – but would you have guessed that the Middle Ages also left us with the University system and the liberal arts curriculum, cathedrals, and those nativity plays you may have performed in during elementary school? People in the medieval period were smart, innovative, socially and culturally aware, and had a deep sense of piety that they expressed through creative and devotional outlets, one of which was literature. Topics for this course will vary and will be arranged thematically, but will consistently foreground questions about identity formation, prejudices, gender, sexuality, religion, and politics as we interrogate the literature of our medieval past, a literature that thought of itself as modern and cutting edge. Examples of texts and authors you may encounter in this course could include but are not limited to epics like Beowulf, The Tain, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Old English maxims and riddles; Middle English lyrics; civic and touring drama; saints’ lives; romances like Marie’s Lais and Malory’s Morte D’Arthur; John Gower’s Confession of Love; William Langland’s Piers Plowman; and mystical writings by Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Ricard Rolle, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. Pre-requisites: any two introductory English classes. Fulfills HUM distribution. Also offered through European Studies.
331. American Romanticism
This version of ENG 331 will take an alternative view of American Romanticism by highlighting the influence of Native peoples on antebellum American literature. Our reading list will include works by both Euro-American and Indigenous American authors. We will discuss the ideology of romantic primitivism as evident in the tropes of the "vanishing Indian" and "ecological Indian"; we will study the histories (and ongoing legacies) of European colonialism and U.S. imperial conquest; we will examine instances of assimilation, acculturation, resistance, and removal; and we will attend to the practices of cultural adaptation and resilience that Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor refers to as "survivance." We may also make connections to contemporary efforts to reclaim and/or defend Indigenous sovereignty over Native lands and consider recent efforts to recover Indigenous wisdom in response to the converging crises of our time.
364. J.R.R. Tolkien
This course explores the endlessly alluring world of Middle-earth, which J. R. R. Tolkien was developing throughout the sixty years of his adulthood. Our real-world contexts for this exploration might include his work as a 20th-century scholar of medieval languages and literatures, his service as a lieutenant his during World War I, and his love of the natural world, while our literary contexts might include his translations or rewritings of Anglo-Saxon epic, medieval romance, Norse myth, and Arthurian legend. Certainly, we will be reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and selections from Tolkien’s scholarship and short fiction. Pre-requisites: any two introductory English courses. Fulfills HUM distribution.
300 Level Projects For Juniors
389, 390. Projects for Juniors
Student-initiated projects involving significant study and writing carried out through frequent conferences with a faculty sponsor. These projects are completed in addition to the five courses required for the advanced level of the major. Prerequisites: junior standing, a 3.4 GPA in English, and approval by the departmental Honors/Independent Projects committee. Proposals must be submitted to the committee by March 1 of the semester preceding the beginning of fall projects, and by November 1 of the semester preceding spring projects.
300 Level Special Topics (4,000-4,999)
4069. Writing with AI
This course examines the role of generative AI (GAI) in contemporary writing practices, equipping students with skills to critically evaluate and ethically use GAI tools in their writing processes. Students will develop proficiency in analyzing AI-generated text, crafting effective prompts, and making informed decisions about GAI integration across academic, professional, and creative writing contexts. First-year students welcome!
Senior year experiences
450. Virginia Woolf
SENIORS/ENGLISH MAJORS ONLY. “The thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity,” observes Virginia Woolf of a moth flailing and dying on the windowsill. Woolf is many things: a towering figure of early feminism; one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century whose pioneering representations of transgender identity, disability, and trauma from a century ago are still second to none; a radical innovator of stream-of-consciousness narration and other prose techniques; a consummate literary critic, publisher and translator; and an incorrigibly witty diarist. But above all, Woolf observes, imbues with feeling and sensibility the mere existence of things, giving language and honoring the “little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpected in the dark” that compose ordinary life. In this senior seminar, we will read Woolf’s major novels (Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves) and essays (selections from A Room of One’s Own and The Common Reader), reveling in her gorgeous sentences but never losing sight of the pathos that sustains beauty. Alongside, we’ll learn about the Bloomsbury Group and London’s cultural scene in the interwar years.In this seminar course, topics vary depending on the instructor and semester. Please view specific sections to find the different section descriptions. Pre-requisite: ENG 250.
489, 490. SYE: Projects for Seniors
Projects for Seniors. Student-initiated projects involving significant study and writing carried out through frequent conferences with a faculty sponsor. These projects are completed in addition to the five courses required for the advanced level of the major. Prerequisites: senior standing, a 3.4 GPA in English, and approval by the departmental Honors/Independent Projects committee. English majors who complete a senior project will earn the Honors in English designation if, at the conclusion of the semester they complete their project, their English GPA (including the project grade) is at least 3.7. Proposals for fall projects must be submitted to the committee by March 1 of the semester preceding the beginning of fall projects, and by November 1 of the semester preceding the beginning of spring projects.