English

Survey of World Literature I: Ancient
This course is a survey of world literature, in both Western and Asian cultures, from 1000 B.C. through the European Renaissance. Instruction covers major literary achievements within significant philosophical and religious traditions.

Survey of World Literature II: Modern
This course presents a survey of world literature from the 18th century to the present, highlighting major movements in the works of the Western canon. Further, it explores literature from Asia, the Middle East, and developing countries in order to understand the differences and similarities in cultural and social influences in writings from the non-western canon. The literature will be explored as individual works on their own merit and as part of their historical and cultural contexts.

Literary & Rhetorical Theory
This course functions as an introduction to upper-level coursework in literature and rhetoric. The course provides an initial survey of modern critical theories relevant for the study of English and advanced instruction in applying critical theories to research and writing.

English Language: History & Grammar
This course surveys the historical development of the English language from its Anglo-Saxon inception through its current proliferation in world communication. Furthermore, the course reviews the grammatical structure and application of English within communication contexts.

Survey of British Literature
This course is a survey of British literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present. It involves reading, analyzing, and interpreting significant texts within their historical, social, and cultural contexts.

Survey of American Literature
This course is a survey of American writers and the literary genres in which they worked: political prose, religious prose, novel, short story, poetry, and drama. Instruction gives special consideration to language usage on analytical, critical, and artistic levels.

Poetry Reading
Poetry Reading hones knowledgeable, close-examination skills for studying the poetic genre. This development broadens and deepens the reader’s interpretation in definition & approach, form, music, rhetoric, meaning, aesthetics, and oral interpretation, culminating in an informative survey for the collected works of two selected poets.

Creative Nonfiction Essays
This course is a composition course that builds on writing competencies developed in English 1013 and ENGL 1014. The course focuses primarily on analyzing and writing creative nonfiction, specifically the personal essay. Instruction and content emphasize the ways that writing can (and often should) be both personal and persuasive.

Advanced Composition
This course expands on and develops student writing for academic and professional contexts beyond the undergraduate degree. Instruction focuses on establishing proficiency in communicating with specified audiences, enhanced sophistication and style in presentation of ideas, and more effective incorporation of appropriate scholarly research.

Rhetoric of Prophetic Black Preachers
African American preaching was born out of protest and by virtue of such a birth its essential character is prophetic. Preaching, in general, is a kind of truth-telling and communication on behalf of God by man to humankind in a contextualized situation or event. However, telling the truth has not always been advantageous for Black preachers; nonetheless, preach they did and truth they told without fear. This course will explore this disadvantage historically; also, it will pursue discussions of Black preachers as spiritual rhetoricians who spoke truth to powers by proclaiming a certain kind of speech concerning God’s justice and mercy. Thus, the course will think of “prophetic” as a style and critical language practice more than through a theological lens, even though theology will, no doubt, emerge from the sermons. Students will read multiple texts from a myriad of Black preachers (male and female) of the 19th to 21st century, like Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Maria W. Stewart, Malcolm X, M.L. King, Jr., and Vahsti McKenzie.

19th Century Russian Writers
This course examines four nineteenth-century Russian novelists: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Instruction covers novel and short story genres within the Realism tradition. The course gives special emphasis to the spiritual experiences and psychological observations as presented by these authors.

20th Century British Writers: The Inklings
This course examines the lives and creative writing careers of three 20th century British novelists: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. Instruction covers the Inklings’ use of the fantasy genre and emphasizes the Christian themes developed in these writers’ works. Texts include selections for young adults and adolescents.

Shakespearean Tragedies
This course examines the ten tragedies by William Shakespeare. Instruction includes consideration of film and stage interpretation of these plays. From an overview reading, the discussion examines politics, love, and personal dilemma as presented in the tragedies.

Women Writers in World Literature
This course examines ways that female authors represent and respond to issues particular to women across time and cultures. Students analyze the way context (e.g. culture, history) influences women writers’ choices and concerns in their writings. More specifically, students pay particular attention to how sex, race, and class converge to shape female authored texts about finding a voice in patriarchal cultures, maternity, identity, and resistance. Additionally, students read appropriate works of Feminist/Gender theory and analyze how these theories can be applied to the primary texts for the course.

Technical & Professional Writing
This course involves advanced study of the principles and practices of technical and professional writing. It includes planning, organizing, and writing technical descriptions, instructions, proposals, and recommendation reports, as well as designing visual aids and editing. Assignments include individual and group projects and at least one complete technical report.

Creative Writing
This is a course on creative writing—creative nonfiction, poetry, prose, and drama—with concern for the relation of form to content, viewpoint, narrative, voice, audience, syntax, imagery, and diction.

Spiritual Formation & Creativity
Students are equipped with a biblical perspective on creativity, communication, and arts, and engage in the process of creativity from a Great Commission perspective. Students learn how to integrate and articulate the biblical foundations underlying creative endeavors, demonstrate the process of creativity, and develop the means to sustain creativity.

Journalism
Students engage in intensive, advanced writing and reporting practice for the development of non-fiction articles for magazines, newspapers, and other print and online publications, focusing on human interest writing. Topics include legal and ethical issues, freelance writing techniques, working with editors, multimedia additions for online features, and in-depth interviewing and reporting.

Reporting for Mass Media
Students develop skills for clear and concise communication to mass audiences in a variety of written formats. Emphases include writing for print and electronic media, gathering accurate information, presenting a clear written message, and basic style for professional media writing. Students submit work to an online publication.

Writer’s Workshop
This course integrates stylistic development with production output. Instruction considers formal expression and offers students a chance to hone their skills in one of the following genres of writing: technical and professional, creative, or journalism.

Special Topics in Writing
This course offers advanced study and practice of one of the following genres of writing: technical and professional, creative, or journalism. Since the topics vary, students may repeat this course for credit.

Special Topics in Literature
This course allows for the study of a genre, author, or time period not already represented within current course offerings. Since the content of the course will vary, the course may be repeated for credit.

Literature & Theology of Grief
Grief presents both a theological and a practical problem. Theologically, grief seems to challenge the core of the Christian claim that Christ has overcome the conditions that produce grief, such as death, corruption, failure, shame, and loss. Grief would not seem to have to place within the church, because to grieve—to mourn a loss—challenges the truth of the gospel that Christians proclaim. At the same time, however, Christians and all humans continue to inhabit a world in which grief remains a universal experience, one that presents not only an intellectual problem but an existential one: how can we cope with something that is at once so common and so crippling? This course takes up these questions and proceeds from two closely related propositions: that theology provides categories and practices for addressing the problem of grief, and that literature offers us a framework for engaging the intersection between the problem of grief and the human, lived experience of it. Accordingly, we will use a critical reading of important literary, theoretical, and theological texts to begin the process of reflecting on the problems of grief and loss and to begin the process of imagining what response to grief might look like. We will frame this discussion throughout as an explicitly theological attempt to construct a vision of Christian faith and practice that emphasizes the priority of healing and wholeness.

Rhetoric of Prophetic Black Preachers
African American preaching was born out of protest and by virtue of such a birth, its essential character is prophetic. Preaching, in general, is a kind of truth-telling and communication on behalf of God by man to humankind in a contextualized situation or event. However, telling the truth has not always been advantageous for Black preachers; nonetheless, preach they did and truth they told without fear. This course will explore this disadvantage historically; also, it will pursue discussions of Black preachers as spiritual rhetoricians who spoke truth to powers by proclaiming a certain kind of speech concerning God’s justice and mercy. Thus, the course will think of “prophetic” as a style and critical language practice more than through a theological lens, even though theology will, no doubt, emerge from the sermons. Students will read multiple texts from a myriad of Black preachers (male and female) of the 19th to 21st century, like Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Maria W. Stewart, Malcolm X, M.L. King, Jr., and Vahsti McKenzie.

19th Century Russian Writers
This course examines four nineteenth-century Russian novelists: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Instruction covers novel and short story genres within the Realism tradition. The course gives special emphasis to the spiritual experiences and psychological observations as presented by these authors.

African Literature and Cultures
This course examines how African authors represent African culture and experiences across time and place. This is not to say, however, that these are monolithic representations. Rather, students analyze texts by men and women from four broad geographic areas (North, West, East, and South) and several individual countries to see how specific historical, cultural, colonial, linguistic, and religious influences shape African literary expressions.

Women Writers in World Literature
This course examines ways that female authors represent and respond to issues particular to women across time and cultures. Students analyze the way context (e.g. culture, history) influences women writers’ choices and concerns in their writings. More specifically, students pay particular attention to how sex, race, and class converge to shape female authored texts about finding a voice in patriarchal cultures, maternity, identity, and resistance. Additionally, students read appropriate works of Feminist/Gender theory and analyze how these theories can be applied to the primary texts for the course.

African American Literature
This course examines literature by African American authors in several genres—slave narratives, essays, poetry, drama, and fiction—written for a variety of audiences, including young adults and adolescents. Students situate each work within its historical and cultural contexts and, in so doing, develop a better understanding of the range and scope of issues that African American authors confront in representing the Black experience in literature.

Immigrant Literature
This course examines how immigrant authors represent immigrant experiences across time and place. Students analyze texts and films by men and women from several different primary cultures who are writing about first- as well as second-generation immigrant experiences to several countries. The texts included in the course explore the immigrant experience from a variety of perspectives, including young adult and adolescent. Additionally, students read appropriate works of theory and criticism, as well as analyze how these theories can be applied to the primary texts.

Special Topics in Literature
This course allows for the study of a genre, author, or time period not already represented within current course offerings. Since the content of the course will vary, the course may be repeated for credit.

Literature & Theology of Race
Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech more than 50 years ago, but the problem of racial relationships remains as troubling and divisive today as it was then. Deep-seated mistrust and antagonism between races continues to pervade our social landscape. This course proceeds from three closely related propositions: (1) that racial division contradicts the gospel, (2) that theology provides categories and practices for addressing the problem of racial division, and (3) that literature offers us a framework for engaging the intersection between racial division and the theological application of reconciliation. Accordingly, we will use a critical reading of important literary, theoretical, and theological texts to begin the process of reflecting on the problems of racial division and to begin the process of imagining what racial reconciliation might look like. We will frame this discussion throughout as an explicitly theological attempt to construct a vision of Christian faith and practice that emphasizes the priority of racial reconciliation.