English 110

Winter 2024
ENGLISH 110 COURSE Topics - Main Campus

 *This list is updated once topics are known.*

11304  ENGL 110-002  Topic: Love Stories

S. Bandopadhyay    MWF    12:30-1:20pm   CL 408

Love, one of the most intense and wonderful joys of life, has remained an elusive concept. Some identifies it as an emotion, some as a phenomenon, while others as a cultural practice. In this course we will read some of the most famous short stories written on the theme of love, as well as a play that has gained worldwide attention as an iconic narrative about a tragic love story among two young lovers from two feuding families. We will spend the semester discussing how we experience love and how it impacts our life.

11305  ENGL 110-003  Topic: Prison Writing

J. Demers    TR    2:30-3:45pm   CL 408

This course examines over a dozen prison-produced texts including poetry, essays, correspondence, memoirs, television adaptaions, and podcasts. As we read these texts, we will focus on the politics of writing, speech, and information flow to consider how different forms of discourse affect our understanding and treatment of not only individuals, but entire populations or people.

11306  ENGL 110-004  Topic: Sympathy for the Devil

J. Hillabold    MWF    1:30-2:20pm   CL 408

This course will focus on four novels about supernatural male protagonists by women authors. Each central character in these novels is described (often by himself) as a “monster” or a “devil,” and each has a secret which would make him socially unacceptable if widely known, yet each of them undercuts the traditional role of the villain as a stereotyped embodiment of evil. These characters emerge as both exotic and sympathetic for the human reader. The four novels will be discussed in terms of traditional obstacles to the publication of work by women, and the current boom in women’s writing and speculative fiction. You will be encouraged to develop and apply your own writing skills to an analysis of the novels.

13273   ENGL 110-500   Topic: Military Masculinities

J. Gieni       T    8:30-11:15am Off Campus

For centuries, warfare has been seen as a rite of passage and proving ground, whereby boys become men by performing their patriotic duty. However, for many soldiers, the realities of warfare and constraints of a patriarchal-military system prove to be traumatic and destructive. Whether referred to as “shellshock,” “soldier’s heart” “nervous disorder” “combat fatigue” “hysteria” or PTSD – the effects of war are apparent in the lives of soldiers who exhibit symptoms that range from nightmares to violent aggression, from nervous tics to the “thousand yard stare.” In this course, we will discuss literary and cinematic narratives that represent the interconnections between war trauma and hegemonic masculinity in novels by Timothy Findley, Chang-rae Lee, Roy Scranton and Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket.

11313/11314  ENGL 110-992/993  Topic: Literature of Cyberculture

C. Gbekorbu-Matters - CRN 11313 ENGL 110-992   M   5:30-8:15pm   REMOTE
C. Gbekorbu-Matters - CRN 11314 ENGL 110-993   T   7:00-9:45pm   REMOTE

There is a curse that goes “May you live in interesting times.” With rapid and interesting developments in genetic engineering, robotics, information technology, and nanotechnology (GRIN technologies), humanity may in fact be cursed. Genetic engineering allows us to mix traits of various species from organisms that would not otherwise exist in nature while robotics frees us from monotonous or dangerous tasks that we would rather not perform. Information technology (the Web and its various helper technologies) grant us access to vast stores of data and information that were unimaginable only a few generations ago, while nanotechnology allows us to manipulate matter itself at a fundamental level and physically alter the world around us with exacting precision. This course will examine some of the effects these technologies may have on humanity. In addition, the course will continue to build upon the essay-writing skills developed in English 100.

11308  ENGL 110-994  Topic: Graphic Novels

M. Wincherauk    T    6:00-8:45pm   CL 408

From teen dramas to memoirs, graphic novels have become a significant force in literature over the past three decades. While initially only seen as nothing more than juvenile entertainment during the days of comic strips and comic books, graphic novels have grown as an art form since the likes of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alan Moore’s Watchmen were published in the 1980s. In this course you will learn how to read and analyze different styles of graphic novels and understand how they went from a niche genre to popular literature over the past 40 years.