Fall 2026
ENGL 10000-01 Exploring the Major
INSTRUCTOR: Alexis Becker
MEETING TIMES: W 11:00 - 11:50 AM
ENROLLMENT: 25 students per section
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course intends to assist scholars interested and/or majoring in Literatures in English (primarily those in their first or second year) with understanding and exploring opportunities available to them during their time at Ithaca College and after graduation. As part of this, you will learn about the mission of a liberal arts education and contemplate the purpose of college. You will also work to define your own purpose in coming to Ithaca College and choosing your major. Though the course is primarily discussion-based, current faculty members and students in the major will deliver guest presentations to introduce you to important information and connect you to useful resources. You will actively pursue knowledge of yourself, your educational options, extra-curricular and professional interests, and you will learn research, writing and decision-making strategies that will benefit you while in college and beyond. We will also dedicate time in class for your own questions to be discussed.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with the occasional context-setting lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: One 500-word personal reflection, and active participation in class discussions.
ENGL 11200-01, 02 INTRODUCTION TO SHORT STORY: THIS AMERICAN LIFE (LA)
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Hugh Egan
MEETING TIMES: MW 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM F 03:00 PM - 03:50 PM
ENROLLMENT: 25 students per section
PREREQUISITE: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will read a wide range of American short fiction, gathered loosely around the themes of childhood, adolescence, adult relationships, aging and death. In the course of our reading and discussion, we will traverse issues related to American identity, especially as they are inflected by race, ethnicity, and gender. We will also become familiar with formal elements of the short story, including point of view, plot, tone, and dialogue. Over the course of the term, we will read a combination of classic and contemporary American stories. We will end the term by reading Alexander Weinstein’s collection, Children of the New World.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Largely discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Two short essays (2 pages), two longer essays (5-6 pages), a mid-term, a final exam, and class participation. Grading will be A-F. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will be an important part of students’ final grades.
ENGL 11300 Introduction to Poetry
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Dan Breen
MEETING TIMES: T/Th 10:00 AM - 11:15 AM, M 09:00 AM - 09:50 AM
ENROLLMENT: 25 students per section
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: How does a poem produce meaning? What does poetry do with language? This course is an introduction to a) the constituent elements of poems and the vocabulary with which we can analyze them and b) the extraordinary variety and capaciousness of texts we call “poems.” The aim of this course is to arrive at a sense, both ample and precise, of what a poem is, what it does, how it does what it does, and, perhaps, why we should care.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Short writing assignments, recitations, poetic compositions, annotated poetry anthology, lively participation.
ENGL 18200 The Power of Injustice & the Injustice of Power
TOPIC: Life at the Margins in American Literature
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Derek Adams, Muller 304
MEETING TIMES: T/Th 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM
ENROLLMENT: 25 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Many individuals continue to feel as though they live at the margins of society, despite the “melting pot” rhetoric of inclusivity and acceptance that dominates narratives of American identity. While we commonly consider purposeful exclusion an act of injustice on the part of the powerful, we are often unaware of the way that subtle, hidden forms of power render particular groups and individuals powerless. American literature is one of the most widely utilized platforms for articulating the specific issues that arise in response to these forms of power. This course will use an array of American literary texts to explore the complexities of the life experiences of those who are forced by the powerful to live at the margins. We will read the work of Rebecca Harding Davis, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Junot Diaz, Adam Mansbach, ZZ Packer, and Tommy Orange.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with the occasional lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Students will closely examine course materials, actively engage in class discussions, write short textual analysis essays.
ENGL 18500-01, 02 Earth Works: Literature, Nature, and the Environment. (LA)
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom
MEETING TIMES: MW 03:00 PM - 04:40 PM, T/Th 03:00 PM - 04:40 PM
ENROLLMENT: 25 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
STUDENTS: Open to all students.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: What is the nature of nature? This class offers an exciting literary, cultural, and historical exploration into the idea of “nature” and the “natural.” While it may seem self-evident to us that nature is all of that stuff “out there” – trees, rocks, oceans, animals, you know what I mean – this class will explore how natural environments in literature are not simple, common-sense places, but are in fact dynamic cultural constructions that change over time. What do we actually mean by nature? How do we understand it as a place, as an object, or as a literary form? Might nature be nothing more than a unique human experience? As you can see, this class will raise many intriguing questions, and by examining the “eco-literature” embodied in novels, stories, poems, biographies, and non-fictions, our sense of the natural will be challenged, and hopefully, expanded. We will be helped on our journey by Thoreau, Wordsworth, Cather, Wolfe, Krakauer, Snyder – among many others.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/ limited lecture. The class is designed around focused discussions of primary works.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Active class participation, two short response papers, two 6 page analytical essays, Nature Log book, final Personal Meditation.
ENGL 19412 Banned Books
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Jennifer Spitzer, Muller 305
MEETING TIMES: T/Th 01:00 PM - 02:40 PM
ENROLLMENT: 25 Students
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: There has been an explosion in book bans and challenges over the last decade, more than in any decade prior. In this course, we will read a range of 20th- and 21st-century texts that have been banned, challenged, and removed from libraries and classrooms. Our purpose is twofold: 1) to indulge the pleasurable act of reading “subversive” texts, and 2) to interrogate the forms and meanings of literary suppression in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will think about the unexpected effects of book challenges, how the banning of a book can become part of its value, how book bans can both promote and hinder a text’s circulation and reception, and how banning can turn authors into literary celebrities and defenders of free speech. (Authors may also be harassed and lose book sales when their books are challenged). We will discuss why YA literature and books that represent the experiences of marginalized communities are the most consistently challenged. We will consider the motivations for book bans, and the kinds of ideas and identities cast (or scapegoated) as dangerous. Finally, we will discuss book bans within the context of new laws limiting discussion of gender, sexuality, and race in U.S. schools. Authors include Alison Bechdel, Carmen Maria Machado, Toni Morrison, Ocean Vuong, and Maia Kobabe.
FORMAT: Discussion-oriented seminar with student presentations and some brief opening lectures.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Active class participation, in-class presentation, midterm exam, and final essay assignment.
ENGL 20100-01 APPROACHES TO LITERARY STUDY
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Chris Holmes
MEETING TIMES: M/W 01:00 PM - 02:15 PM F 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM
ENROLLMENT: 15 students per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in English.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: How and why do we read literature? How do we frame our interpretations of poems, novels, and short stories? Focusing on these foundational questions, this class introduces students to the diverse ways that critics and theorists interpret literary texts. It shows how the discipline of English has developed, and explores influential and emerging methods of literary analysis, from New Criticism to postcolonial theory, with an emphasis on the relationship between literature’s competing discourses of philosophy, history, politics, and science. In the process, it provides students with critical tools for examining literature and the world around them. A central goal of the class is to help students to become confident and sophisticated literary critics, and adept readers of interdisciplinary theoretical work. Readings include literary criticism and theory, and may include works by Hoagland, DeLillo, Eliot, Coetzee, Ishiguro, Faulkner, and others.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Largely discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Two 5 page essays, an in-class presentation, a midterm, and a longer final research project.
ENGL 21000 LITERATURE OF HORROR: THE WEIRD & EERIE
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Christopher Matusiak, Muller 326
MEETING TIMES: T/Th 10:00 - 11:40 AM
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
DESIGNATIONS: E20A
PREREQUISITES: One LA course. (F,O,S)
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Weird tales tell of strange encounters that defy logical norms of scientific rationality, natural and physical law, and other human systems of measure and understanding. By foregrounding the unknown (and unknowable), weird fiction exploits the anxiety that gathers at the limits of human perception and cognition, imagining zones of extreme experience where the everyday habits of selfhood and the illusions of anthropocentrism break down. Critic Mark Fisher has noted the kinship between ‘weird’ presences and ‘eerie’ absences; the agential causes behind both phenomena remain fundamentally obscure and mysterious, calling into question our modes of access to and relationship with ‘reality’ itself. 18th-century Gothic terror, 19th-century occult detection, and 20th-century pulp sci-fi, fantasy, and crime fiction are the most familiar traditions comprising modern Horror. But the premodern concept of ‘wyrd’ (cosmic fate or destiny) points to even more ancient roots in the genre of Tragedy and its concern with human responses to catastrophic personal and environmental change—familiar themes in our own moment of ‘global weirding’ (i.e., of pandemic disease, A.I. and other transformative technologies, perpetual climate emergency, ‘forever’ wars). Students will study short fiction by H.P. Lovecraft, J.G. Ballard, Clive Barker, Octavia E. Butler, Caitlin Kiernan, and Alyssa Wong; we will also read Jeff Vandermeer’s novel Annihilation (2014), explore the Backrooms and other digital liminal spaces; and view films by Denis Villeneuve, Jordan Peele, and Jane Schoenbrun.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: active class participation; black-box enigma’ exercise; reader-response journaling; take-home final exam.
ENGL 21900 SHAKESPEARE
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Christopher Matusiak, Muller 326
MEETING TIMES: M/W 08:35 - 09:50 AM F 09:00 - 09:50 AM, M/W 12:00 - 01:15 PM F 12:00 - 12:50 PM, M 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM, T 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
DESIGNATIONS: CSA, DLIT, EP19, HM, TIDE, TIII
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Shakespeare was a poet of enormous talent and insightfulness, however because he wrote for audiences four centuries ago his elevated status in present-day education and culture are increasingly subject to critical and social reassessment. Why study Shakespeare now? Does he still ‘speak’ to 21st-century concerns? Do the plays have anything meaningful to teach us about political authoritarianism by a gerontological elite? The eruption of military conflict? Social and economic inequality? Environmental crises or technological transformation? We will work to answer such questions collectively; no prior knowledge of Shakespeare is necessary to succeed in the course, only intellectual enthusiasm, and a readiness to study three major plays intensively—The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, and The Tempest—both in Shakespeare’s contexts and our own.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: active class participation; reader-response journaling; take-home final exam.
ENGL 22000-01 BLACK WOMEN WRITERS
4 CREDITS
ICC ATTRIBUTE: Diversity
INSTRUCTOR: Derek Adams, 304 Muller
MEETING TIMES: M/W 02:00 - 03:40 PM
ENROLLMENT: 22
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Study of black women writers such as Hurston, Angelou, Morrison, and Walker.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with the occasional lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Students will closely examine course materials, complete reading quizzes, put together an in-class presentation, actively engage in class discussions, craft three short textual analysis essays, and complete a final exam.
ENGL 23200 MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
4 CREDITS
ICC DESIGNATION: Writing Intensive
INSTRUCTOR: Alexis Kellner Becker
ENROLLMENT: 22 students
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing; WRTG10600 or equivalent.
OBJECTIVES: This course provides a partial introduction to the huge range of literature written between c. 800 and c. 1500 CE, primarily in the British Isles. Who produced medieval literature? Who read it or listened to it? How did medieval writers wrestle with the social, economic, political, economic, and ecological problems of their time? How did they think about history? How did they tackle the question of what it means to be a person, a citizen, and/or a fictional character? This course will explore how imaginative literature in the Middle Ages created different kinds of human, nonhuman, and superhuman subjects, real and imaginary. How, we will ask, can this literature help us think through our own ideas about how to read and how to live? Readings may include Old English elegies and riddles, Icelandic saga, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Mabinogion, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Langland’s Piers Plowman, Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love, and Middle English lyric.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion, with some context-setting lectures.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Three 4-5-page essays, one short response paper, a term paper, and class participation. Grading will be A-F based on the above requirements. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will be an essential part of students’ final grades.
ENGL 24300 Television and the Global Novel
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Chris Holmes
MEETING TIMES: T/Th 01:00 - 02:15 PM W 03:00 - 03:50 PM, T/Th 10:00 - 11:15 AM W 09:00 - 09:50 AM
ENROLLMENT: 22 students
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing
OBJECTIVES: This course will examine ways in which prestige television has drawn from the form and content of the contemporary global novel. We will watch examples of tv series which adapt novels, steal from novel ideas and forms, and compete with novels for our attention, and as examples of cultural capital. We will also be reading novels that have been adapted to television, as well as novels that borrow from the cinematic forms and spectacles of 21st century television. Series and novels will likely include: Severance, Giri and Haji, The Wire, Normal People, and Station Eleven.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion, with some context-setting lectures.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Two 4-5-page essays, a final paper, and class participation. Grading will be A-F based on the above requirements. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will be an essential part of students’ final grades.
LNGS 25000-ENGL 25000 Translation: The Art of Disguise
4 CREDITS
ICC DESIGNATIONS: Inquiry, Imagination, Innovation; World of Systems; Writing Intensive
INSTRUCTOR: Marella Feltrin-Morris
MEETING TIMES: M/W 02:00- 03:15 F 02:00 - 02:50
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Examines the role of translation within the broader context of comparative literature. Drawing from representative texts spanning across centuries, students will discuss concepts of
interpretation, faithfulness, loss and gain, negotiation, colonization, cannibalization and ethics.
Explores the figure of the translator, both in theoretical and literary works, and approaches the
field of translation from the perspective of practicing translators and translated authors.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Basic reading proficiency in a language other than English
ENGLISH 26300 Jewish Stories of the Americas: Literature and Film of Migration, Diaspora, and Identity
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Annette Levine
MEETING TIMES: T/Th 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines issues of migration, diaspora, and identity throughout the Americas in literature and film. Class preparation and discussion will explore narrative styles and storytelling technique prevalent in Jewish literary and cultural studies. Prerequisites: One course in the Liberal Arts. (IRR)
ENGL 29700 Professional Development: Graphic Novels (may be taken up to 6 times)
2 CREDITS (you may also take this class for a lesser number of credits)
INSTRUCTOR: Katharine Kittredge, Muller 317, Ext. 4- 1575
MEETING TIMES: M/W 04:00 PM - 04:50 PM
ENROLLMENT: 25
PREREQUISITES: none
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This is a course that gives you professional experience and an opportunity to do community service as part of your coursework on the IC Campus. You do not need to have an extensive background in comics or graphic novels to take this class, although most of our projects are comics or manga based. We do a mix of writing reviews, editing a national newsletter, giving informative presentations, and doing kids' programs in local libraries. We also play a substantial role at ITHACON.
For more information, see https://www.ithaca.edu/graphic-novel-advisory-board
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion, collaboration, independent work and planning, prepping (this involves much sorting of crayons and stickers) and coordinating events for kids.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: You must submit two to three reviews of graphic novels or manga of your choice. There will be 2-3 events for kids either on weekends (Saturday) or in the afternoons.
ENGL 31100-01 DRAMATIC LITERATURE I
4 CREDITS
ICC DESIGNATION: Writing Intensive
INSTRUCTOR: Dan Breen, 302 Muller, ext. 4-1014
MEETING TIMES: T/Th 01:00 - 02:15 PM
ENROLLMENT: 20 students per section
PREREQUISITE: Any three courses in English, history of the theater, or introduction to the theater.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: “Comedy” and “tragedy” are ancient categories, invoked originally to describe different kinds of dramatic composition. Though this distinction remains a convenient (and relevant) one for contemporary readers and audiences, it is also the case that these seemingly simple, seemingly antithetical terms convey a range of emotion and experience that is not always easily divisible. Tragic—or potentially tragic—situations often arise in comedy, and there are moments in most tragedies at which the plays seem as though they might begin to move in more optimistic or affirming directions. This course will begin with the hypothesis that the terms “comedy” and “tragedy” describe actions taken by dramatic characters in response to crisis, and the specific consequences of those actions. As such, we will attempt to locate “comedy” and “tragedy” within fundamental elements of human experience, and examine the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of each. We will read a selection of plays from the Classical, Renaissance English, and Restoration traditions including Sophocles’ Ajax, Plautus’ Pseudolus, Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II and Aphra Behn’s The Feigned Courtesans.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion, with some context-setting lectures.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Two 5-7-page essays, a short (2-3 pages) response paper, a take-home final exam, and class participation. Grading will be A-F. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will be an important part of students’ final grades.
ENGL 31900 Great American Writers before 1890
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Jeong Yeon Lee
MEETING TIMES: M/W 02:00 - 03:40 PM
ENROLLMENT: 22 students per section
PREREQUISITE: 3 courses in ENGL, WRGT, or ICSM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we will approach American literature before 1890 as a series of overlapping and constitutive contestations. Who counts as an American? What are the rights and protections afforded by citizenship? How and why are gender and sexuality related? Who qualifies as a good immigrant? What is gender? What is race? Reading across a range of genres including poetry, sermons, pamphlets, speeches, autobiographies, and short stories, we will track the beliefs, theories, and arguments that shape so much of our present-day common sense. Rather than treating historical figures as relics frozen in time, we will engage with them as real people who made decisions plagued by all the doubts, insecurities, and uncertainty we experience today. In so doing, we will experience some of the dynamism of early American literature and learn how to interrogate how and why we know what we know.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Largely discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Attendance and participation, short writing assignments, final paper.
ENGL 353001 Otherness in Young Adult Lit: Race, Gender and Identity
4 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Katharine Kittredge, Muller 317
ENROLLMENT: 25 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
MEETING TIMES: MW 02:00 - 03:40 PM
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course offers a focused consideration of the role that children’s media has played in fostering systemic racism in our culture, and the hope it offers for dismantling racism and promoting empathy and understanding. The course will begin by looking at images from the late nineteenth century, and then consider progressive texts from the late twentieth century and the twenty-first century. The texts include books for young children (5-7 years old), books for middle grade readers, texts for Young Adults, and graphic novels. Throughout the semester we will also be looking at the critical response to children’s literature both in the academic community and in the popular press. Texts include Brown Girl Dreaming, The Poet X and Gender Queer.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with the occasional lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Students will closely examine course materials, actively engage in class discussions, write short textual analysis essays.