ENGL 1320 – Interdisciplinary Writing – Writing For Social Change
As described by the Undergraduate Bulletin, English 1320 “fulfills the UCA Core requirement for Composition II. The course focuses on evaluating academic arguments and on writing papers that make an argument and that utilize scholarly sources. The course is thematic, with instructors choosing topics and choosing an interdisciplinary set of readings focused on that topic.”
The thematic focus for this course is Writing for Social Change, which means we will examine the relationships between research, writing, and engagement in various forms of advocacy. Throughout professional and academic fields, writers use language and research as tools for creating arguments that convince others to change policies, practices, and ways of thinking. This process requires writers to read about and understand the multiple perspectives about a complex problem, summarize the debate, formulate their contributions to the conversation, and recommend steps for moving forward.
ENGL 2390 – Introduction to Drama – Wicked: Wayward Women on the Stage
In this course, we will critically read, discuss, and write about the ways in which drama reflects, represents, and wrestles with complex ideas, emotions, and facets of the human experience. In the process, we will assess how different dramatists use the tools at their disposal to shape plays for different purposes. This semester, we will work to detect cultural assumptions that make it easy to dismiss certain characters as “wicked.” In particular, in what ways do the plays we study participate in conversations about gender and power? What challenges face the female characters we encounter? How might various performance approaches address women on stage who operate outside the bounds of social expectation? In this course, we will explore such questions through close reading, dynamic discussion, performance viewing, and more.
ENGL 4335 – Senior Seminar – Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Transnational Literature 
In this seminar, we will read a variety of texts that not only traverse national and cultural borders, but allow us to question literary and social ones, as well. Reading novels from authors such as Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Awkaeke Emezi (Nigeria), and Yuri Herrera (Mexico) alongside films like Uncut Gems, we will interrogate (often contradictory) notions of individual and cultural identity while also examining how these works confront historical and contemporary issues from a range of critical and interdisciplinary perspectives