Introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. Covers major movements in modern literary/critical theory, from Matthew Arnold through new criticism to contemporary postmodern frameworks. Required for all English majors.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

This course introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. We’ll begin with some basic questions about literary texts: How can we understand documents from the past? What is the critic’s role? How do words become literature? Classical and formalist approaches will help us with key concepts. We’ll also consider “theory” as a body of thought that has broadened our sense of what texts can tell us and what influences their production. We’ll pay particular attention to the movement known as structuralism. Our readings show how literary studies can overlap other disciplines and change our thinking; we’ll emphasize practical exercises and putting ideas in our own words. 

Taught by Paul Neimann.

Some 2,400 years ago Plato worried the great tragedies he loved would need to be banned for his ideal Republic to function properly. The question of the role of poetry, broadly understood, has been debated ever since. Indeed, the COVID-19 era has once again highlighted the importance of literature and the arts. In this course, we shall enter into this conversation by studying modern and contemporary works from a wide range of fields in order to debate why literature matters to us individually and collectively and what studying it involves.

Works by such authors as Plato, Kant, Marx, Arnold, Saussure, Freud, Benjamin, Althusser, JFK, Derrida, Foucault, Sontag, hooks, Said, Lowe, and Piketty

Taught by Catherine Labio.

This course is intended to introduce students to the most influential theoretical/critical movements that have shaped literary studies since 1945. Organized as a survey, the course will work towards a breadth of coverage, rather than undertaking in-depth analyses of any particular school or practice. We will examine works of new criticism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, and poststructuralism; media studies, postcolonialism, and posthumanism; and gender, racial, and queer theory. The emphasis of this course is to provide a foundation for further theoretical and literary inquiry.

Taught by Jason Gladstone.

This course will examine the major literary theory paradigms of the post-World War II era, including Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, race theory, body theory, and reader-response. We shall do readings of particular texts based on these theoretical paradigms. Class grade will be determined through exams, papers, presentations, and attendance. There will be two or three mandatory evening film screenings.

Taught by Mark Winokur.

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Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

This course treats analysis as a creative act. It assumes that analysis makes it possible to enjoy literature in unexpected ways and that worthwhile analysis stems from creative excitement and enjoyment.

It is divided equally between poetry and prose. In both parts we study short works: short poems and, in the prose section, short stories and essays. The relative shortness of the readings enables us to consider a wide variety of authors and styles while exploring each work in depth. And the works we study do reward detailed attention. Authors include standard figures such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Eudora Welty, and Scott Fitzgerald; experimental writers such as E. E. Cummings, Tom Wolfe, and Sesshu Foster; and writers from traditionally marginalized groups: people of color, people of unconventional sexuality, and people of physical disability, a group that includes such writers as James Baldwin, Louise Erdrich, Judy Grahn, Audre Lorde, and Nancy Mairs.

In addition to traditional topics such as diction and form, the poetry section explores the relation between poetry and music, including rap and popular song. The prose section adds concepts especially suited to the study prose and includes both fiction and nonfiction. Both parts involve short exercises in creative writing as a way of  understanding the relation between analysis and creativity. We also look at what’s happening with poetry and prose right now, including electronic literature as presented on the web. The overall goal is to acquire new ways of understanding creativity, including your own.

The instructor: Professor Ed Rivers writes on modern literature and has won five awards for teaching, including the University’s highest, the President’s Teaching Scholar award.

Texts:  A custom-designed course pack costing about $20.00 in the UMC plus short texts available online at no cost.

Requirements (subject to change):  Two short tests, a mid-term, various in-class exercises, and a final paper. 

Taught by Ed Rivers.

This course is designed for students in the English major and aims to cultivate in students the practice of reading and writing about literary texts. We will cover the basic concepts and vocabularies of literary criticism, and familiarize ourselves with the central genres of literature—poetry, drama, and the novel—and the specific methods involved in analyzing them. We will ask not just what the meaning of a literary work is, but how meaning is conveyed, and why it is conveyed in such a way. In other words, we will look at the formal elements of a text and the way they interact with, reinforce, or subvert a text’s thematic content. Texts we will likely use include Eaven Boland and Mark Strand's The Making of a Poem; William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus; Brian Friel's Translations, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Nella Larsen's Passing.

Taught by Janice Ho.

In ENGL 2102, Literary Analysis, we will read, discuss, and write about a variety of literary genres and forms:  poetry, drama, and fiction.  In all our reading and work together, we will focus on the crucial ability to analyze closely a piece of literature:  how does a good writer use character, setting, and action to create meaning?  How does her or his choice of language work?  What makes a literary work endure for centuries? We will study poetry in many of its forms (song, sonnet, ballad, dramatic monologue, free verse, lyric) as well as many of its themes (youth, age, love, death, war, nature).  We will also read drama by Shakespeare, short stories (D. H. Lawrence, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Ursula LeGuin),  and a Dickens novel.

Taught by John Stevenson.

This course provides students with a broad familiarity with literary genres and literary terms, and it trains students in the practices of literary criticism and research.  Students will learn to analyze prose and poetry with appropriate strategies, including close reading.  The primary application for these newly acquired skills will be classroom discussion and written assignments, both informal and formal, and students will leave the course prepared to join the ranks of English majors.

Taught by Penny Kelsey.

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Introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. Covers major movements in modern literary/critical theory, from Matthew Arnold through new criticism to contemporary postmodern frameworks. Required for all English majors.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

Section 001:

This course will examine the major literary theory paradigms of the post-World War II era, including Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, race theory, body theory, and reader-response. We shall do readings of particular texts based on these theoretical paradigms. Class grade will be determined through exams, papers, presentations, and attendance.

Taught by Dr. Mark Winokur.

Section 002:

Theory is an essential component of the discipline of literary studies today. It informs not only how we understand and interpret literary texts in all of their dimensions, but also how we relate them as well as our own critical practices to issues of wider political, social, and cultural concern. In its many, often interrelated traditions, it provides a foundation for what we do as critics and helps us constructively imagine how to best engage with our world. This course provides a survey of literary and critical theory from its 19th century origins to the present. After an introductory unit in which we explore the term "theory" and its impact on literary studies over the last 40 years, when then turn in more detail to three of its most important and influential traditions – Marxism, Psychoanalysis, and Deconstruction. In units dedicated to these traditions, and with reference to a range of primary theoretical and literary / cultural texts, we explore their origins, development, and contemporary deployment in literary studies. We conclude with a unit on more recent developments, including: critical race theory, gender and sexuality studies, environmental studies, and the digital humanities. Course assignments include: regular contributions to class discussions; a presentation; a midterm essay (2,000 words); and a final essay (4-5,000 words).

Taught by Dr. Karim Mattar.

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Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

Section 001 and 002:

This course teaches how to analyze poetry and prose. It assumes some experience with literary analysis but not advanced knowledge. It is divided about equally between poetry and prose. The poetry half explores, among other things, the relation between poetry and music, including rap and popular song. The prose half includes both fiction and nonfiction. Both halves include exercises in creative writing. The goal is to acquire both analytical skill and new ways of understanding creativity, including your own.

Texts:  A custom-designed course pack costing about $15.00 in the UMC plus various no-cost texts online. 

Requirements (subject to change):  Two short tests, a mid-term, some short papers and exercises, and a final paper. For further information contact the instructor: ed.rivers@colorado.edu.

Reading List: Authors studied include Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, A. E. Housman, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, E. E. cummings, Louise Erdrich, Nancy Mairs, Diane Oliver, Mary Oliver, John Updike, Tom Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemmingway.

Taught by Dr. Ed Rivers.

Section 003:

Develops the skills of seeing, hearing, noticing, and describing that are the foundation of literary study. We all have feelings about what we like and don’t like, but can you articulate precisely what it is about that book, that song, that film, that makes it amazing and sets it apart from everything else? Doing so imparts the ability to understand and evaluate complexity in a broad range of fields, making the study of English excellent preparation for any further study and any future life. The course also provides introductory knowledge of the grammar and history of English, the mechanics of academic writing, the scansion of poetic meter, and the traditional periods and genres of literature in English.

Reading List: Arrival (film), short stories by George Saunders, Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie, Zadie Smith.

Taught by Dr. Tiffany Beechy.

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Introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. Covers major movements in modern literary/critical theory, from Matthew Arnold through new criticism to contemporary postmodern frameworks. Required for all English majors.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

Off

Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

Off

By Tiffany Beechy

Develops the skills of seeing, hearing, noticing, and describing that are the foundation of literary study. We all have feelings about what we like and don’t like, but can you articulate precisely what it is aboutthatbook,thatsong,thatfilm, that makes it amazing and sets it apart from everything else? Doing so imparts the ability to understand and evaluate complexity in a broad range of fields, making the study of English excellent preparation for any further study and any future life. The course also provides introductory knowledge of the grammar and history of English, the mechanics of academic writing, the scansion of poetic meter, and the traditional periods and genres of literature in English.

Off

Introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. Covers major movements in modern literary/critical theory, from Matthew Arnold through new criticism to contemporary postmodern frameworks. Required for all English majors.

Off

Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Off

This section of literary analysis will inquire into “who tells the story”—what happens when who narrates what—to work through the central goals of the course: to refine close reading and critical analysis skills via formal, cultural, historical, and comparative analyses as well as scholarly research. And to read some great authors: Henry James, Mary Shelley, Toni Morrison, and more.

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