200-Level Courses

ENG 201: Strategies for Writing across Contexts

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101 and at least sophomore standing

Satisfies the following general education requirement(s): Writing Intensive

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): Counts towards the Analytical Writing concentration

Course typically offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

Course description: This course builds upon ENG 101’s introduction to postsecondary writing by developing students’ faculty with a range of strategies for tailoring rhetorical style and tone to a range of academic, transactional, and public genres.

ENG 205: Introduction to Creative Writing

Prerequisite: ENG 101 strongly recommended.

Satisfies the following general education requirement(s): Artistic and Creative Expression and Writing Intensive

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): May count towards the Creative Writing concentration; please refer to the English major checklist and consult with your advisor

Course typically offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

Course description: Offers students experience in writing in three major forms: autobiographical narrative, fiction, and poetry.

ENG 206: Descriptive & Narrative Writing

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101 or equivalent.

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Artistic and Creative Expression and Writing Intensive

Course typically offered: Not regularly offered

Course description: This course in descriptive and narrative writing will help students learn how to effectively capture personal experience in narrative form.  Using memoirs, as well as short stories, drama, journalism, and critical theory, students will closely analyze characters, motivation, conflict, setting, and dialogue.  Students will examine the ways in which writers craft their narratives to depict their personal ‘truth’ while creating appeal and suspense for their reading audience.  Weekly classes will focus on discussing the texts we read as well as having students compose personal narrative works of their own.

ENG 215: Theories and Practices of Writing

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101 or equivalent, declared English major

Course typically offered: Fall and Spring

Course description: This core course introduces students to theories of writing from the field of Writing Studies, which broadly examines how writing is produced, consumed, and circulated. It provides students with theories and tools to analyze and compose texts effectively in a variety of contexts., including spaces beyond the university (e.g., in employment, internships, volunteer spaces, etc.).

ENG 222: Reading Poems

Prerequisite: 3 Hours of English (above 101), English major, or instructor permission

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition, Artistic and Creative Expression and Writing Intensive

Course typically offered: Fall & Spring

Course description: This course, required of all English majors, focuses on helping students develop critical skills particularly suited to the interpretation and analysis of poetry. It is intended to prepare students to read and write about poems with intelligence and finesse. Readings will include poems from different eras in both traditional and innovative forms, and may cover a range of poetic practices and a variety of media: including, for example, poetry readings, little magazines and presses, digital texts, and poetic movements. By the end of this course students will be able to identify a variety of poetic devices, forms, tropes, and movements. They will also have read and/or listened to some of the most admired poems in the English language, know their authors, eras, and importance in the history of poetry. Evaluation will be based on quizzes, papers, and participation.

ENG 229: Topics in Literature

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English

Some courses satisfy the following general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

This course may be repeated for credit

Course typically offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

Recent topics: Apocalyptic Literature; Travelers and Madmen; Women Navigating Borders; Science Fiction; Scandalous Women ; Stephen King; Home (not so) Sweet Home; Vampires in Literature

Stephen King (Marks)

It would be an understatement to say that Stephen King is Maine’s most famous author. With over 50 novels and more than 200 short stories to his credit (providing the inspiration or basis for roughly 40 films and counting, and over 20 television series/mini-series), King is arguably the world’s most famous author. He is a past winner of the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award; is the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters; and in 2014 was awarded a National Medal of the Arts. Given the enormous amount of work to his credit, any attempt at a comprehensive overview of King’s writing would be impossible. Instead, this discussion-based course will look at selections from his bibliography that represent some of the more notable themes that come up throughout his works. Some areas that the course will look at may include (but aren’t limited to): the nature of good vs. evil, ghosts (real and/or psychological), his portrayal of adolescent characters, the autobiographical influences in his writing (including such issues as alcoholism/substance-abuse, his life as a writer, etc.), the “dark side” of small towns, and so on.

Gender in Fable, Fairy, and Folk Tales (Tkacs)

This class will examine some favorite childhood stories and the original tales that inspired them. Students will evaluate the ways in which representation influences the uptake of traditional gender roles through class discussion, examination of course texts. Students will identify and articulate the ways in which these forms of literature contribute to reinforcing gender roles and the ways in which modern retellings are impacting this influence. Students will critique social institutions, organizations, and practices in relation to these media and will demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which the cultural influences in these stories alter the presentation of gender norms.

ENG 235: Literature & the Modern World

Course description: An examination of the modern sensibility as it has manifested itself in 20th century literature. Some attention also to the history, music, visual arts, social thought, and science of the contemporary epoch.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of literature or permission

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition, Artistic and Creative Expression and Ethics

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): 200-level course

Course typically offered: Not regularly offered

ENG 236: Canadian Literature

Course Description: A survey of Canadian literature from 1850 to the present. Interpretation and analysis of the poetry and prose of major literary figures. Some examination of the impact of British and American models upon the tradition of Canadian literature.

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101; 3 hours of English

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Cultural Diversity and International Perspectives, Artistic and Creative Expression and Ethics

Course typically offered: Every year

ENG 238: Nature & Literature

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English

Course description: Looks at the many different ways people have looked at nature and examines the philosophies and values which inform humans’ interactions with their environment. Authors will be drawn from traditional literary figures, American nature writers, environmentalists and especially, authors from Maine. Assignment may include field experience.

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Ethics

Course typically offered: Not regularly offered

ENG 243: Topics in Multicultural Literature

Course Description: Topics will vary, including such titles as Ethnicity and Race in American Literature; Caribbean Literature; Third World Literature; and other topics in African, Asian, Francophone, Native American, Chicano and ethnic literatures in the English language.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition, Cultural Diversity and International Perspectives and Ethics

Course typically offered: Variable

ENG 244: Writers of Maine

Course description: An exploration of the varied nature of the Maine experience as exemplified by writers of fiction, poetry, essays, and other creative genres.

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101 or permission of instructor

Satisfies the general education requirement(s):  Western Cultural Tradition, Artistic and Creative Expression and Ethics

Course typically offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

ENG 245: American Short Fiction

Course description: A study of genre, form, and theme in representative works of American short fiction from Irving to the present.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition, Artistic and Creative Expression and Ethics

Course typically offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

ENG 246: American Women’s Literature

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English

Course description: A survey of the main traditions and writers in American women’s literature from the origins to the present.

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition, Cultural Diversity and International Perspectives and Ethics

Course typically offered: Alternate years

ENG 249: American Sports, Literature, and Film

Course description: Uses readings in fiction, poetry, drama, essays and films to explore social, humanistic, ethical and aesthetic issues in sports and its literature. Examines ways writers capture physical action and the role of sports in various genres and media.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Ethics and Artistic and Creative Expression

Course typically offered: Spring, even years

Recent offerings:

ENG 253: Shakespeare – Selected Plays

Course description: A study of ten to twelve plays, selected to represent the range of Shakespeare’s achievement as a playwright. Recommended for non-majors. Not open to students who have taken ENG 453.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of literature or permission

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition, Artistic and Creative Expression and Ethics

Course typically offered: Every year

ENG 256: British Women’s Literature

Course description: A survey of British women writers and their traditions from the origins to the present.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of college literature or permission

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition and Cultural Diversity and International Perspectives

Course typically offered: Alternate years

ENG 271: The Act of Interpretation (A core course in the major) 

Course description: An introduction to critical theory. Study of individual critics or schools of literary theory. Application of these interpretative strategies to literary texts.

Prerequisite(s): ENG 170

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition and Writing Intensive

Course typically offered: Fall & Spring

ENG 280: Introduction to Film

Course description: A survey of the history of motion pictures and an exploration of the rhetoric of film, designed to give students with no prior film study an integrated approach to understanding the moving image and how it functions.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English or permission of the instructor

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Social Context and Institutions and Artistic and Creative Expression

Course typically offered: Variable