Undergraduate
Course Offerings
For course descriptions, see the University of South Florida catalog. For individual section descriptions of our course offerings, view the course bulletin and the flyers below.
To request a permit into a closed or restricted course, contact your advisor for more information.
SPRING 2025 flyers & Descriptions
Creative Writing
CRW 3013: Intro to Creative Writing
The introduction to creative writing is a course for any student who wishes to learn how to build a healthy creative process. In this welcoming course, you will learn how to generate new writing, how to deal with doubt and procrastination, and how to revise and edit creative writing effectively. You’ll experiment with fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and memoir, working from weekly prompts. You will read and respond to published work by diverse, lively contemporary authors, and bring your drafts to small peer groups for review.
This course can be substituted for any one Form and Technique requirement.
CRW 3013: Intro to Creative Writing
A study of short narrative forms such as anecdotes, tales, character sketch, incident, monologue, epistolary story, and short story as they have been used in the development of fiction and as they exist today.
CRW 3013: Intro to Creative Writing
A study of short narrative forms such as anecdotes, tales, character sketch, incident, monologue, epistolary story, and short story as they have been used in the development of fiction and as they exist today.
CRW 3013: Intro to Creative Writing
A study of short narrative forms such as anecdotes, tales, character sketch, incident, monologue, epistolary story, and short story as they have been used in the development of fiction and as they exist today.
CRW 3111: Form & Technique of Fiction
In this course, students will examine the elements of the short story including plot, character, language, setting, and voice. We will wrestle with ideas of what a story ought to do and will write daily exercises experimenting with various techniques and tropes. Our discussions will be anchored by a mix of craft advice and single-author story collections. Students will write four focused exercises, one complete story, and one intensive revision. Toward the end of the semester, we will workshop student stories
CRW 3111: Form & Technique of Fiction
Looking to become a stronger, more established storyteller through a wide range of fiction? Form and Technique of Fiction is a craft course that focuses on generating original work and studying established fiction writers. You’ll learn how different elements of fiction (scene, summary, dialogue) work together, and you will practice narrative techniques (imagery, tension, characterization) used to create effective writing. The forms and techniques presented in this course will enhance your writing skills across the board. If you choose to continue as a storyteller, you’ll have an excellent foundation.
This course serves as a pre-requisite for Fiction I and II and Nonfiction I and II.
CRW 3111: Form & Technique of Fiction
How do we utilize surprising details in our writing? How can we continue to craft original work, whether it's realistic or science fiction?
All writing makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. In this craft class, we will explore the essential elements that make up short fiction. Through analysis, reading, and quick-paced writing experiments, we'll think outside of the box to condense and heighten the stakes of our stories. This course is open to all writers regardless of genre or experience!
CRW 3111: Form & Technique of Fiction
A study of short narrative forms such as anecdotes, tales, character sketch, incident, monologue, epistolary story, and short story as they have been used in the development of fiction and as they exist today
CRW 3112: Fiction I
In this course, we will aim to improve our skills as readers and writers of fiction. Through close readings of published short stories, we will examine the choices made by the authors and experiment with a wide variety of techniques and styles in our own work. This class is first and foremost a workshop, meaning you will be reading the stories of your fellow students and then thoughtfully and constructively providing feedback on their work via both class discussion and written critique. Above all, the course aims to provide a rigorous and nurturing environment in which the primary goal is to make our writing better.
CRW 3112: Fiction I
Our objective in this course is to begin reading like writers and writing like readers. You will be doing close readings of published short stories to examine the different techniques fiction writers have at their disposal. We will look at stylistic choices and the technical movement of fiction. This course also has a workshop component in which you will be reading the stories of other students and providing constructive feedback. Above all else, our goal is to improve as writers.
CRW 3121: Fiction II
A fiction workshop that provides individual and peer guidance for the student's writing and which encourages the development of critical skills
CRW 3121: Fiction II
Fiction writing, like any art, involves submersion. This workshop is designed to allow time to create original work and to collaborate with other writers to identify each piece’s challenges and direction in weekly workshop sessions. We’ll read the work of contemporary writers and practice their techniques in exercises, and discuss essays on craft that include scene, urgency, setting, modulation, style and revision.
CRW 3121: Fiction II
A fiction workshop that provides individual and peer guidance for the student's writing and which encourages the development of critical skills
CRW 3211: Form & Technique of Nonfiction
In this course, we will read multiple forms of nonfiction—from flash memoir to the craft essay, from place writing to list narrative. Using the techniques of fiction, you will write true stories from your life while developing a personal style and voice. We will dive into memoir, essay, researched essay, micro-memoir, braided essays, nature writing, and writing about place. WE WILL EXAMINE MENTOR TEXTS from Cheryl Strayed, Ross Gay, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Lidia Yuknavitch to name a few, and mine these texts for their successful writing strategies.
CRW 3212: Nonfiction I
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera,” wrote documentary photographer Dorothea Lange.
In this section of Nonfiction I: Writing Stories with Photographs, we’ll use cameras and photographs to teach us how to craft our scenes with vivid details, zoom in on our characters and settings, and frame our stories effectively. Like a photograph, a good story is as much about what you decide to include within the frame as what you leave out of it. In creative nonfiction, writers use craft techniques from fiction and poetry to write true stories, so writers from all genres are encouraged to sign up for this creative writing course.
CRW 3221: Nonfiction II
“I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.”—Jodie Foster.
Think about your life and the subjects you hold dear. Think about how these subjects are informed by your experiences and the information you have about them. This is the essence of creative nonfiction: viewpoints filtered through the lens of your own personal experience or illuminated by curiosity and research. How do we tell the truth when our sense of the truth is always changing? By constantly reflecting on the complexity of the characters in all our stories. In this class we will study the works of other writers to see how they write themselves into the story. We will work towards developing a compelling narrative voice which will transform our stories and experiences into art.
CRW 3311: Form & Technique of Poetry
An examination of the techniques employed in fixed forms from the couplet through the sonnet to such various forms as the Rondel, ballad, villanelle, sestina, etc. Principles in the narrative, dramatic, and lyric modes are also explored.
CRW 3311: Form & Technique of Poetry
An examination of the techniques employed in fixed forms from the couplet through the sonnet to such various forms as the Rondel, ballad, villanelle, sestina, etc. Principles in the narrative, dramatic, and lyric modes are also explored.
CRW 3311: Form & Technique of Poetry
Form and Technique of Poetry focuses on generating original work by the course participants and the study of work of established poets. You’ll learn the history of various poetic forms (sonnet, ghazal, villanelle, etc.) and practice core writing techniques (imagery, metaphor, sound, etc.) used to create effective poetry. The forms and techniques presented in this course will enhance your writing skills across the board. If you choose to continue as a poet/creative writer, you’ll have an excellent foundation. This course serves as a pre-requisite for Poetry I and Nonfiction I.
In this course, you will become:
1) a more clear, concise writer
2) better able to detect nuance in complex texts
3) increasingly comfortable tolerating ambiguity, holding contradiction, and discerning subtle layers of meaning
Each week you will read and analyze published poems, and you will write original poetry in order to practice techniques. All are welcome in this supportive, introductory creative writing course. No prior poetry experience is expected or required.
CRW 3312: Poetry I
An introduction to poetry writing utilizing writing exercises employing poetic language and devices; the exercises progress to the writing of both rhymed and unrhymed metrical and non-metrical forms
CRW 3312: Poetry I
An introduction to poetry writing utilizing writing exercises employing poetic language and devices; the exercises progress to the writing of both rhymed and unrhymed metrical and non-metrical forms
CRW 3321: Poetry II
Poetry II is an advanced poetry workshop. This course will build on your foundational knowledge of poetry. The course is divided in two parts that will run concurrently. In the first part, we will study craft elements (form, image, and voice) with examples from craft text. In the other, we will workshop the poems of class participants. Our conversations around the poems of established poets will be practice for class workshops. In our discussion of class texts, we will examine the influence of personal and social events on writing. Through this course students will see that our lives and times are material enough for poetry, and we will enjoy the pleasures of reading and writing poetry together.
CRW 4930: Writing for Animation
The focus of the course will be governed by student demand and instructor interest. Topics to be covered may include writing literary essays, writing in mixed genres, and utilizing popular conventions in serious works. May be taken twice for credit with different topics
CRW 4930: Playwriting
This course will introduce the art of playwriting to students who would like to see their work on national or local stages. Taught by Assistant Professor of Instruction Mark E. Leib, whose play “When the Righteous Triumph” will appear at Tampa’s Straz Center for the Performing Arts in March, 2025, the course will show students how to use dialogue and stage directions to create characters involved in conflict, cooperation, love and hate, social issues, and moral problems. The professor will show videos of famous plays in order to illustrate concepts covered by the course, and students will have an opportunity to hear their plays acted in class. Whether you’re a writer of stories, novels, or movies, the art of playwriting will help you develop excellent dialogue and moving plots. Next stop: Broadway.
CRW 4930: Writing Speculative Fiction
In this writing workshop we will focus on speculative fiction—literature that includes literary fiction with fantastical elements, hard science fiction, epic fantasy, ghost stories, horror, folk and fairy tales, slipstream, magical realism and modern mythmaking. We will examine the structures and parameters of the genres, subgenres, and cross genres that represent this literature through close reading of contemporary novels and short stories by exciting new voices. As a workshop, the focus will be on the production of original fiction. This course will allow you to explore the magical and strange, to ask, “What if?” and invent alternatives, and to research markets for publication of your work.
CRW 4930: Poetry & the Archive
CRW 4930: Flash Nonfiction
Discover the art of flash nonfiction—short, vivid, impactful true stories drawn from real life.
This course teaches you to craft concise and powerful narratives, providing excellent training for a wide variety of applications in professional and creative spheres. No previous nonfiction experience required.
Flash Nonfiction utilizes techniques from fiction writing (plot, setting, characterization, scene, dialogue) and combined with basic poetic strategies (sound work, pattern, image, metaphor, form) to create lively, original stories that just so happen to be completely true.
You will emerge from this class a better writer, a more skillful storyteller, with a greater appreciation for the sound and flow of words.
Course Structure Each week, we will read example flash pieces and you will receive a writing prompt (usually there are multiple options). You’ll get feedback on each piece and you’ll learn new techniques for revision that actually work!
CRW 4930: Writing the Novel
In this course, students will endeavor to draft a novel. The class will focus on intensive, marathon writing with weekly word count goals. Students will begin by choosing a model novel as their guiding star, articulating what techniques they want to borrow and what elements they will make new. We will look at ways authors organize and outline such a big project, borrowing some useful tricks from screenwriting. Through discussion, we will express the difficulties of novel writing and try to help one another find a path when we get lost. Later in the course, we will workshop partial drafts. Mostly, we will write.
English (General)
ENG 3014: Intro to Literary Methodology
In this iteration of ENG 3014 you will:
1) learn the basics of literary research using the USF Libraries resources.
2) read, research, and discuss The Nickel Boys (2019) by Colson Whitehead.
3) choose a Professionalization Project that allows you to explore the world of work
with an English degree (informational interview; company or graduate program analysis;
30 job ads analysis, customized resume/cover letter).
4) learn how to leverage Generative AI tools used for personal and professional purposes.
ENG 3674: Film & Culture
Students will be introduced to key concepts and techniques of Film Studies, including the history of film; an examination of film genres; an overview of foreign cinema; and the study of issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality.
ENG 4013: Literary Criticism
This course could be subtitled, "Everything you ever wanted to know about literary interpretation but were afraid to ask." In this course, we will have a chance to explore significant questions, issues, and problems of literary interpretation through close readings of theoretical and critical texts that have shaped contemporary approaches to literature and applications of these readings to relevant literary examples. This course will be engaging and stimulating for anyone who studies literature because it provides the opportunity to discuss and reflect on important questions about literary interpretation, meaning, perspective, and relevance that any reader or teacher of literature faces today. We’ll learn through readings, discussions, activity assignments (with writing, research, and creative options), reading comprehension quizzes, two essay tests, and an individual project.
ENG 4907: Writing/Consulting: Theory & Practice
This course will introduce students to both writing consultation practices and research into writing processes including the nature of academic writing, writing in the disciplines, and how writers from diverse populations may approach writing differently. This course will also focus on professional development and best practices of writing consultation through working directly with other people (in pairs and small groups).
LIN 4671: Traditional Grammar English
Make the invisible visible! In this course, we will explore the English language, demystify grammar rules (that might have been haunting you), and become more confident and effective writers. Over the semester, you’ll be able to identify parts of words/sentences and apply linguistic terminology to analyze the structure of English. You know what? You as an English speaker already have this knowledge in your mind—now, let’s make it shine.
Literature
AML 3032: American Literature 1860 to 1912
This course provides an in-depth exploration of American literature from the period of 1860 to 1912, a time of profound social, cultural, and literary transformation. Students will engage with an array of literary works, including novels, short stories, essays, and poetry, in order to understand the evolution of American literature during this era. The course will examine how literature both reflected and influenced shifts in society, politics, and artistic movements that characterized the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
AML 3032: American Literature 1860 to 1912
A survey of American literature from 1860-1912, when realism was a major aesthetic movement. We'll study such greats as Twain, Wharton, Du Bois, Whitman, and Dickinson.
AML 3604: African American Literature
"Quiet as it's kept,” Frances Smith Foster writes, “black women have been recording and influencing American history since their earliest arrival upon these shores” (Written by Herself). Early African American women writers touched on a range of issues that we still talk about today: romance and relationships, gender and labor, sentimentalism and domesticity, and social and political activism, to name a few. In this class, we will read some of these early recordings and think about how they influenced and continue to influence American history and American literature. Our readings of literary texts will be supplemented by art, film, and television.
AML 3641: Native American Literature & Film
A survey of Native American literature and films written and produced from the 1960s to the present. It will emphasize the cultural and political contexts out of which these productions emerge by analyzing political cartoons, articles, discourses, etc.
AML 4931 & LIT 6934: Anthologizing Florida Literature
This course introduces students to the process of creating a literary anthology, drawing on the work of Florida Literature (2 volumes) edited by Julie Buckner Armstrong, Thomas Hallock, and Benjamin Brothers and forthcoming with University Press of Florida. The book collects a sampling of literary texts written from and about Florida. The editors intend for it to be a definitive volume of the state’s literary production. Its focus will therefore be multi-genre, including poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction prose. It will cover a long literary history, from sixteenth-century European exploration to the present. And, perhaps most important, the book will reflect the rich, multicultural heritage of a state that sits at the intersection of multiple literary traditions, including those of the U.S. South, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Black Atlantic. Students in this course will “test-drive” the anthology draft to evaluate its selections, pedagogical uses, and reader appeal.
AML 4933: Studies in American Literature & Culture
This course examines a particular topic or theme, varying with individual selection, in the American literary tradition.
ENL 3016: Studies in 17th & 18th Century British Literature, The Golden Age of Piracy
The “Golden Age of Piracy,” a period of time from roughly the 1650’s through 1730’s, has left an indelible mark on literature and popular culture: from the 17th and 18th centuries through today, pirates have been both romanticized and vilified in tales that alternately celebrate and condemn their sense of adventure, opportunism, and lawlessness. Piracy in the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans arose at the same time as British and European colonial expansion in the Americas and Caribbean, connecting piracy with larger conversations around maritime exploration and imperial greed in this era. In this course, we’ll examine cultural representations of this Golden Age of piracy from their immediate context in the late 17th and early 18th centuries alongside later works of historical fiction, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and the HBO TV series Our Flag Means Death, set during the same time period. Along the way, we’ll meet iconic pirates like Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet, and Anne Bonny, and we’ll explore how pirates have become rich cultural figures for critiquing historical representations of gender, sexuality, race, and colonialism.
ENL 3273: British Literature 1900 to 1945
A survey of British literature from 1900 through World War II, when modernist experimentation reigned. We'll read such titans as Woolf, Yeats, Shaw, Joyce, and Eliot.
ENL 3333: Shakespeare
This course will survey selected poetry and plays by William Shakespeare, including an introduction to Shakespeare's writing process; the relationship between his scripts and their performance and publication history; original and modern staging practices; and the adaptation of his plays as films. Our approach to this work will be informed by the major critical issues driving Shakespeare studies today, including sex, gender, sexuality, and race. Student assignments may include both traditional work, such as quizzes, close readings, and research writing, and/or more creative opportunities, such as performances or short films.
To enroll, students must be able to attend this course in person on the Sarasota campus.
ENL 4311: Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales has long been central to canons of English literature. Many have celebrated it for its inclusivity: characters include men and women from all classes; Christians, Jews, and Muslims; even a man who eludes heteronormativity. Yet stereotypes abound, including racist and misogynistic tropes. Chaucer’s text simultaneously offers a literary bounty and poses problems for readers.
Patience Agbabi’s 2014 Telling Tales also offers a cornucopia of characters in a rich variety of forms. Her work demonstrates both how Chaucer can speak to us today and how a gifted poet can rethink imbalances in a medieval text. She creates her own memorable characters and narratives while picking up themes from Chaucer and continuing his play with form, genre, and words.
In this course, you will learn to read Middle English, become familiar with several different genres and forms of medieval literature, and learn about life in later medieval England. You also will encounter a contemporary British poet with a very different vision of England and see how poetry can give voice to many different figures and experiences. The course will culminate in a research project with options for a creative project, a traditional research essay, a website, or a podcast.
No prior experience with Middle English is needed.
LIT 2000: Intro to Literature, Aesthetics of American Gothic Literature
The American Gothic literary canon is rife with hauntings, paranoia, perversion, and familial dissolution, among other assorted hardships and miseries. The authors who have shaped this genre hail from Revolutionary-era New England, the twentieth-century South, and the contemporary Midwest. The past two-plus centuries have given rise to distinct, regional interpretations of the Gothic. This class explores the development of American Gothic literature from its colonial roots up to its modern manifestations with the goal of distinguishing the defining aesthetic traits of the Gothic across each of these time periods and geographic locales, culminating in a firm understanding of each of these particular Gothic subgenres as well as their impact on our contemporary perspective of the genre as a whole and how these works inform our understanding of the cultural practices of these distinct periods and regions
LIT 2000: Intro to Literature, Apocalyptic Narratives
This individual section of LIT 2000 is dedicated to "Apocalyptic Narratives of Plague and Pandemic: Death, Disease, Contagion, and Confinement” in literature. Themes of disease, death, fear, pestilence, and plague have dominated literature for centuries. Plague arrived in Europe in 1347, and by 1400 this “Black Death” had diminished Europe’s total population by at least half. These events produced an array of pestilence narratives which helped to establish the cannon of plague literature. These narratives reveal how outbreaks of catastrophic disease have affected humankind throughout history. They reflect our longstanding cultural and literary fascination with the idea of diseases and pandemics, real or imagined. This course examines popular apocalyptic narratives of death, fear, plague, contagion, and confinement to discover what feeds humanity’s everlasting obsession and fear of pandemic, death, and disease. We will use our course readings to evaluate what is plaguing our minds and what contemporary societal issues and “illnesses" keep ravaging our communities and our lives.
LIT 2000: Intro to Literature, Literature of War
Throughout time war has profoundly shaped the history of mankind reminding us of the fragility of our existence. In an attempt to make sense of this conflict, writers like Ernest Hemingway, Homer, and William Shakespeare, among others, have given us their interpretation of war as depicted in their works. Through the study of fiction, poetry, and drama this course will explore certain ways in which these authors have dealt with the theme of war in their respective time periods.
LIT 2000: Intro to Literature, A Journey Through the Anothropocene
Artists have long provided a means through which to experience the beautiful, disastrous, and complex relationships that humans share with the environment. In this class we will be exploring how literature is influenced by a time period’s perception of the environment in order to track and explore how we got to our current ecological epoch called the Anthropocene. For each work, we will ask ourselves: how does world-building influence or create our perceptions of nature, and how have humans affected climate and relationships with nature? Can literature lead us in finding out our responsibilities to the environment? We will read “classics” such as poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charlotte Bronte’s famous novel Jane Eyre to see how nature was perceived in the long 18th century. We will also read Postcolonial works by Jean Rhys, Aime Cesaire, Jamaica Kincaid, and Ursula Le Guin as we investigate the concept of “world-making” in the context of climate disaster. We will consider alternative futures in which environmental collapse prefaces not merely ruin, but new ways of being in the world.
LIT 2000: Intro to Literature, Failed Literature & Literature of Failure
What makes a piece of art stand the test of time? In this course, we will strive to
answer
questions such as: Why do we value certain works of art over others? And why do some
succeed
while others fail? Inspired by the Museum of Bad Art and Jack Halberstam’s discussions
on
Queer Failure, this class will explore both art that fails to be considered “art”
and art that
captures failure. Examining depictions of failure in literature, poetry, art, film,
music, and other
various forms of media will help us create an archive of eccentricity, one that broadens
our
conception of both art and success across cultures. In these failures, where can we
find success?
Ultimately, what does it mean to succeed?
LIT 2000: Intro to Literature, Women & Crime
In this literature course, Women and Crime, we will explore the complex intersections of gender, crime, monstrosity, and horror as portrayed in the works of writers like Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl, Louise Erdrich, Gillian Flynn, and Toni Morrison. Through novels, short stories, poems, films, and songs, we’ll examine how societal perceptions of horror, monstrosity, and criminality are shaped by gender, asking questions like: Who defines a monster? How are women represented as both victims and perpetrators in the horror genre? We’ll investigate how each author challenges or reinforces these ideas, and analyze the broader implications of their portrayals on our cultural understandings of fear, morality, and power.
LIT 2000: Intro to Literature
This course will cover a broad range of Irish writing through the genres of prose, poetry, and drama, including film and song lyrics.
LIT 3301: Cultural Studies & Pop Arts
Calling all mad women, heartbreak princes, and tortured poets! In this course, we’ll do a close and critical study of the current cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. Often praised as one of the greatest songwriters, Swift takes her artistic heritage not just from other musicians but from major literary figures: William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson, and more. Together, we’ll explore the cultural history behind Swift’s career, and we’ll interpret her lyrics as poetry, using a range of approaches. We’ll also consider Swift as a performer and self-marketer: how does she fashion herself as a writer, musician, and cultural icon through both art and public life?
LIT 3353: Literature, Race & Ethnicity
While this course is primarily focused on Race and Ethnicity, it will also center around the concept of talking back. In so much of the literature that is assigned throughout our lives, we often only get one side of a story. And frequently, that side is the societally dominant side. In this class, we will explore the story from more marginalized perspectives and occasionally view the same story from more than one marginalized voice. This, of course, means that we will be examining literature from as many racial and ethnic sides as possible which include Black, Indigenous, Asian, South, and Central American, as well as white. We will seek to re-center our thinking about race and ethnicity to encompass multiple voices as we explore literature and some film from the distant past into the very modern present. Possible works include authors and creators such as Sherman Alexie, Langston Hughes, William Shakespeare, Spike Lee, Li-Young Lee, Walt Whitman, Alejandro Morales, and Toni Morrison
LIT 3353: Literature, Race, & Ethnicity
Literature, Race, and Ethnicity explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, and diverse literary and other cultural texts. Students interpret how identities are formed in marginalized groups and engage in assignments involving ethics, empathy, and the Tampa Bay community. LIT 3353, a three-credit-hour course, satisfies the Cultural-Critical Studies requirement for the Literature concentration of the English major and the Ethical Reasoning and Civic Engagement (ERCE) requirement for General Education. Prerequisites: ENC 1101 and ENC 1102 with a minimum grade of C.
LIT 3451: Literature and the Occult
An introduction to the occult tradition as a major ingredient in English, Continental, American, and Multicultural literature. Focuses on values/ethics, race/ethnicity and gender; thinking and writing skills.
LIT 4386: British and American Literature by Women
Transatlantic Concerns- This course will take a transatlantic approach to women’s literature. Students will examine texts that contain rich historical, racial, cultural, and socio-economic concerns between the United States, Europe, and Africa. Historical events, such as the Transatlantic slave trade and immigration to the US by European immigrants, would be the main focus.
LIT 4930: 20th Century Russian Lit in English
The content of the course will be governed by student demand and instructor interest. It will examine in depth a recurring literary theme or the work of a small group of writers. Special courses in writing may also be offered under this title. May be taken twice for credit with different topics.
Professional & Technical Communications
ENC 2210: Technical Writing
Effective presentation of technical and semi-technical information.
Will not count toward the English major.
ENC 3250: Professional Writing
Why does an email at a tech startup feel different from a memo in a law firm? What makes a presentation in a creative agency stand out from one in a healthcare organization? The answer is in the distinct norms and cultures of each organization. Through interactive lectures, case studies, and hands-on projects, you will learn to analyze and engage in any organization more effectively, crafting messages that resonate with others
ENC 3376: Multimodal Composition
Are you a fan of video games? Digital art? Do you enjoy writing/composing digitally? Do you want to expand your skillset and learn how to compose in a digital medium?
ENC 3376: Multimodal Composition is a hybrid three credit hour composition course that aims to teach how rhetoric and composition function in digitally mediated environments. In this course, you’ll work to transform a piece of existing writing, from a print form into a digital form that you want it to be in
ENC 3416: Artifical Intelligence
In this course we develop critical strategies for analyzing the way texts actively create, prohibit, and transform relationships within creative, civic, and professional environments. We will explore theories of rhetoric that reveal how communities engage local, regional, and global contexts to effectively communicate and achieve their intentions. This course teaches techniques for writing effective prose through the process of workshopping, critiquing, and revising your writing alongside peers and the instructor. All assignments provide students with the writing skills necessary to create a final evidence-based multi-modal digital text that will explore, through time-tested rhetorical strategies and concepts, your own place within a selected social environment.
ENC 4260: Technical/Professional Capstone
This portfolio-based capstone course allows students to further develop and demonstrate mastery and integration of the skills, principles, and knowledge gained from their professional and technical communication coursework.
Prerequisite(s): ENC 3242.
ENC 4940: Professional Internship
This class consists of supervised professional work-and-learning experience under the direction of a University faculty member and an employee of a participating firm. Ten to 12 hours per week of student time is expected during a standard 16-week semester, while 13 to 16 hours per week is expected during a 10-week Summer C semester.
Internships are available for all students in the Department of English or any other program in the School of the Humanities, including Communication, History, Humanities & Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and World Languages.
Enrollment is contingent upon the availability of suitable internship sponsors based upon the student’s academic and career goals. Students are placed according to specific academic and experiential qualifications, including GPA, courses taken, previous employment history, recommendations, and interviews with the Director of Internships and a representative of the prospective internship sponsor. This internship course may be repeated one time with approval of the internship coordinator and the department chair.