Examines the treatment of belief and disbelief in literature shaped by various Christian traditions and by a variety of social and literary contexts. Instructor may choose to focus on American, British, or contemporary literature.

Explores the issue of faith through the medium of film. Examines how belief and disbelief are expressed in culture through this dominant form of contemporary storytelling.

Fosters the vision and skills necessary for effective creative writing.

Explores poetry of all kinds as a means of expressing what it means to be human including especially the capacity for love.

Explores how the literary genres of fantasy and/or science fiction re-conceive the concerns of the present using imaginary worlds of space and time. Themes may include nature, technology, war, utopia/dystopia, and the conflicts of moral duty.

Prepares students for majoring in English with university-level practice in literary interpretive strategies, including close attention to craft as well as writing and academic research. Recommended especially for freshmen and sophomore students.

A study of poems, stories, plays, and essays written in English by women. The course will include classic as well as rediscovered women writers, and will examine the significant themes, the literary forms, and the social contexts of literature written by women.

Explores contemporary international literature written in English, with attention to the ways in which conditions of colonialism, migration, and globalization have re-shaped national identities and belonging.

Surveys the first three periods of English literary history: Old English, including the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf; Middle English, including Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; and English Renaissance, concluding with Milton's 17th-century Paradise Lost.

Continues the survey of English literary history, from the Enlightenment through to the end of Victoria's reign. Authors include satirists such as Swift and Wilde, poets such as Pope and Wordsworth, novelists such as Austen and Dickens. Typically offered: Winter.

Surveys major authors, themes, genres, and movements in American literature from the colonial era to the modern period, including intellectual and social contexts. Typically offered: Spring.

Orients students to the academic work and cultural landscape of the ensuing study abroad program. Addresses issues of cultural diversity and interpersonal behavior as well as practical matters such as finances, travel safety, and other appropriate topics.

A consideration of the role of the health care provider from a literary perspective. By reading, discussing, and writing about stories, novels, movies, and plays representing illness, suffering, and medical care, aspiring doctors and nurses will learn how to interact with patients with compassion, empathy, and humanity. Typically offered: Occasionally.

Explores diverse perspectives on gender and sexuality in literary texts, criticism, and theory. Typical topics include social constructions of masculinity and femininity (including methods of reinforcement and resistance); sexual identities; historically evolving conceptions of the body and desire; and representations of sex and gender in relation to various other identities, such as race, class, nationality, and religion.

Introduces students to the grammatical anatomy of the English language (parts of speech, phrases, clauses) as well as conventional mechanics and punctuation for standard American English. Students will practice deploying grammatical structures to create different stylistic effects, judging when to follow the “rules” and when to break them in order to craft sentences with clarity, grace, and precision.

Develops abilities associated with writing tasks in the professions, including reports, correspondence, proposals, and procedure manuals. Emphasizes role of persuasion in routine and special writing tasks. Also addresses visual design in the preparation of documents and the impact of digital technologies on writing in the professional workplace.

Introduces students to the practice of reading literary and cultural texts through a variety of interpretive lenses that deepen our understanding and appreciation for how literature works, and how it works on us. Using a small set of core texts (which may vary by instructor), the course explores how texts open themselves to us differently depending on a critic’s perspective and investigative approach. Critical methods applied may include psychological criticism, New Historicism, reader-response, social/Marxist theory, gender and feminist theory, race theory, postcolonialism, deconstruction, cultural criticism, eco-criticism, etc.

Moves students beyond the academic essay and shows them techniques for addressing an audience beyond the academy. Focuses on the exploratory, open-ended essay as a lens for examining topics chosen by students in consultation with the instructor. Typically offered: Spring.

Uses writing within specific cultural or ethnic contexts as a way to examine and explore those contexts, fostering understanding of cultural, racial, ethnic, or gender differences. Typically offered: Occasionally.

For English majors and others interested in exploring in greater depth the field of narrative studies, with particular attention paid to the relationship between the elements of storytelling, character, plot, time, setting, closure, etc., and their larger philosophical implications. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Refines skills and techniques necessary for the effective writing of short fiction. Students analyze the work of professional fiction writers from the perspective of apprentices to the craft.

Examines the literary essay, emphasizing contemporary authors such as Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez; "schools" such as the new journalists and the environmental essayists; and publications such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Special attention will be paid to students' development as writers of nonfiction. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Examines the elements of film storytelling in the context of literary studies, including theme, character, genre, plot, setting, and point-of-view. Pays close attention to the technology and craft of film-making as a means of exploring film's unique aesthetic power. Typically offered: Occasionally.

Examines the oral and written literatures of indigenous peoples in North America. Texts are typically from a variety of periods, tribal nations, geographical locations, and genres (ceremonial texts, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama). Topics may include Native identity and ways of being and knowing; language and oral traditions; the evolution of Native communities, technologies, and environments; stereotyping and prejudice; the struggle for Native sovereignty; and Native resistance to government policies of extermination, removal, land allotment and assimilation. Representative authors include William Apess, N. Scott Momaday, D’Arcy McNickle, James Welch, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Sherman Alexie, Tommy Orange, Thomas King.

This course introduces students to literature that engages the history of “race riots” in the United States, including uprisings of enslaved people, mob lynchings, attacks on Black-owned businesses, and protests against police brutality. Typical authors studied: Nat Turner, David Walker, Charles W. Chesnutt, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Anna Deavere Smith, Mat Johnson, and Claudia Rankine. We will also examine historical documents, recent events, popular culture artifacts, and social justice movements to contextualize these literary works.

Introduces students to African American literature from the nineteenth century to the present. Topics include slavery and resistance, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts movement, and black popular culture. We will read such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Lanston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Asian American literature and culture have always included multitudes of genres and experiences, from early 20th century poetry by Chinese migrants to Japanese American detective fiction, Vietnamese American memories of war, and more. We will see how texts like these and others invite us to reflect on, challenge, and complicate our understanding of Asian American experience and imagination.

Textual and cultural study of U.S. multiethnic literatures, such as Indigenous/Native American, African American, Asian American, Jewish American, and Latinx literatures. Paying close attention to the dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic class, immigrant status, regional culture, and religion, this course invites students to develop more complex understandings of what it means to be “American.”

Introduces students to English-language literature written by North American Latinos and Latinas. Topics include the legacy of Spanish colonialism, the dissemination of Mexican, Cuban, Puetro Rican, and Dominican cultures, the development of "Spanglish," and the controversy over immigration and the border. We will read such authors as Rudolfo Anaya, Richard Rodriguez, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and Junot Diaz. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Studies selected works of such British Romantic writers as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and the Shelleys. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Studies selected works from the age of Queen Victoria in Britain, including such authors as Dickens, the Brontes, G. Eliot, and Wilde. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Examines the work of a variety of authors from the continent of Africa in the light of colonialism and its aftermath. Focuses primarily on English-language writers such as Achebe, Coetzee, Dangarembga, Fugard, Gordimer, Adichie and Soyinka. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

This course explores how Middle Eastern and North African filmmakers and literary authors resist Western images and conceptions of these regions. Typical topics include the haunting impact of colonization on local cultures, landscapes, and histories; the intersection of various political identities; and remembrance as a radical act. Texts may include Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire; Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad; films from Iran, Israel/Palestine, Algeria, Tunisia. As part of this Ways of Engaging course, students will work with political/climate refugees, local speakers, or community projects in Seattle. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

This course will analyze protest narratives, ranging from popular and award-winning works like J. M. Coetzee's Age of Iron and Trevor Noah's Born a Crime to performances of AIDS survivors and state narratives intended to avoid civil war and attempt transitional justice. On-campus or study abroad. Typically offered: Occasionally.

Considers how literature and electronic texts create venues for political and social change in the historical region bordered by Morocco and Spain. Explores how texts, ideas, media and people circulate and cross trans-national borders in a time of historic change. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

This course examines the cultural history of US imperialism in Asia throughout the 20th century including but not limited to the Philippines, Hawai’i and Pacific Islands, Korea, and Viet Nam. In particular, we’ll highlight works by Asian American/Asian diasporic writers and artists as they negotiate these histories of domination and resistance and consider the legacies of empire for today.

Examines aspects of the gothic literary tradition from its Romantic-era roots to current popular fascinations with the “monstrous,” such as vampires, zombies, or serial killers. Designed to thrill and terrify, gothic stories often feature wild and sublime landscapes, houses and minds haunted by the past, distressed maidens, mysterious deaths, doomed lovers, and tortured detectives. The course explores themes such as the emotional and intellectual purposes of horror and the grotesque, ethnic anxieties about cultural “others,” conflicts between scientific rationalism and the uncanny, and issues involving religious belief and the nature of evil. Course emphases may vary according to instructor.

Examines major American authors, themes, and literary movements of the nineteenth century. Topics may include the American renaissance, transcendentalism, American realism, sentimentalism, regionalism, and the Civil War. Typically offered: Occasionally.

Examines major American authors, themes, and literary movements of the twentieth century. Topics may include modernism, World War I, World War II, the Harlem renaissance, the Beat generation, Southern gothic, and Postmodernism. Typically offered: Occasionally.

Studies the major literary works, themes, and ideas of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien in the context of their lives, faith, and friendships. Examines themes such as the use of myth to explore problems of modernity, the relationship between Christian faith and art, as well as the debates over "literary" vs. "popular" fiction. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Studies the major authors and literary works of the early twentieth century modernist period. Authors may include T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, or James Joyce. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

Studies the emerging authors and literary works of the contemporary postmodern period. Authors and works will vary. (See English department website for a detailed description of this year's course specifics.) Typically offered: Alternate Years.

From creation stories to postapocalyptic climate fiction, literary art has long been a fundamental means of understanding our relationship to the natural world. Writers in different times and places have portrayed nature as pastoral or brutal, providential or indifferent, integral to humanity or alien to it, a revelation or a raw material. This course explores questions such as how literature shapes human approaches to the environment (e.g., through movements such as romanticism, transcendentalism, naturalism, regionalism); how a literary perspective on creation compares to lenses used by other disciplines (such as theology, philosophy, science, economics, politics and law); and what wisdom and hope literature can provide in the face of today’s planetary crises. Some typical topics include wilderness, primitivism, the sublime, technological determinism, indigenous knowledge, ecocriticism, and environmental justice. Course organization may vary by instructor (chronological, geographical, thematic) but will include authors from diverse backgrounds writing in a variety of genres (such as poetry, sacred texts, fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, and journalism).

A writing workshop for experienced writers of fiction. Also addresses such topics as fiction magazines, publishing houses, agents and editors, the submission process, and current trends in publishing. Typically offered: Alternate Years.

A writing workshop for experienced writers of creative nonfiction. Also addresses such topics as literary magazines, publishing houses, agents and editors, the submission process, and current trends in publishing. Typically offered: Occasionally.

Considers Shakespeare's comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances while studying his art and thought in relation to the Elizabethan background.

An in-depth study of the major works of British novelist Jane Austen, the author of "Pride and Prejudice".

An in-depth study of the major works of African American novelist Toni Morrison, the author of Beloved. Typically offered: Occasionally.

Examines the novel form in its historical varieties and contexts, including a close attention to the relationship between theory, craft, and meaning.

Examines the poetic form in its historical varieties and contexts, including a close attention to the relationship between theory, craft and meaning.

Examines the short story form in all its historical varieties and contexts, including a close attention to the central relationship between theory, craft and meaning.

Examines the essay form in all its historical varieties and contexts, including a close attention to the central relationship between theory, craft and meaning.

In this required senior capstone course, students will delve into particular literary works, authors, or themes and write a substantial research paper. Faculty and texts will vary from seminar to seminar on a rotating basis. Students will also have an opportunity to reflect upon and evaluate their learning and experience as English majors.

Independent Study Typically offered: Occasionally.

For advanced students who wish to assist as tutors, discussion leaders, and readers in lower-division English classes.

Applies writing skills in varied employment settings; possibilities include public relations offices, newspapers, and other informational services. Students may suggest their own internships in consultation with the faculty supervisor as long as writing skills are used and other internship criteria are met.

Applies writing skills in varied employment settings; possibilities include public relations offices, newspapers, and other informational services. Students may suggest their own internships in consultation with the faculty supervisor, as long as writing skills are used and other internship criteria are met.

Topics will vary.

Under the direction of the English faculty, qualified students bound for postgraduate study will design and complete a senior project: either an article-length scholarly paper or a substantial creative writing project.