Spring 2025 Elective Course Descriptions

 ENGL 305- Professional Writing 

ENGL 305-03	17919	Professional Writing	MWF	1:00-1:50	Maffetone	Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115  Humanities Elective, Immersive Learning Experience, Oral Communication Flag, Writing Flag Core
ENGL 305-02	11026	Professional Writing	MWF	2:00-2:50	Maffetone	Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115  Humanities Elective, Immersive Learning Experience, Oral Communication Flag, Writing Flag Core

This course offers extensive practice in professional writing, communication, and oral presentation. We will examine rhetorical choices - such as audience, purpose, and style - within a variety of genres, including professional emails, memos, cover letters, resumes, reports, and proposals. In addition, students will make inquiries into the types of writing used in their disciplines, exploring the genres utilized in their future professions. This course encourages the types of collaboration used extensively in the workplace today, thus students will be asked to work together to create and present projects for workplace or public audiences. 

ENGL 307-Humanities Internship 

ENGL 307-02

11027

Humanities Internship

TR

4:00-5:15

Gerding

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115  xl CLAS 307, FREN 307, GERM 307, HIST 307; Humanities Elective

 

ENGL 313-Novel Writing 

ENGL 313-01

17668

Novel Writing

MWF

11:00-11:50

Bassett

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115  Creative Perspectives, Humanities Elective, Writing Flag Core; Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Classifications: Senior Junior

 

 318-CREATIVE NON-FICTION 

15803

Creative Nonfiction

TR

1:00-2:15

Wyett

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115   Creative Perspectives, Humanities Elective, Writing Flag Core; Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Classifications: Senior Junior

The main goal of ENGL 318: Creative Nonfiction is to provide a supportive environment in which you can read and write examples of the hybrid genre called creative nonfiction. Our focus in this course will be on how to tell an “authentic” story informed by creativity, critical thinking, and research. We will grapple with the ethical issues raised by this broad, sometimes unruly genre: How do we speak the “truth” and still express creativity in nonfiction? Whose stories are we allowed to tell? What stories must be told? What is the best way to tell those stories? Why is research necessary (and how can we use it without boring our readers)? We will analyze forms such as the personal essay, memoir, nature writing, travel writing, historical writing, and social/cultural commentary. Expect to read a lot in this course, write at every class meeting, and explore the techniques used to produce thoughtful and engaging creative nonfiction. Students should be comfortable sharing their work with others at various stages in the writing process.  

 

321-HISTORY OF THE ENLGISH LANGUAGE 

11029

Hist of the English Language

TR

11:30-12:45

Steckl

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115   Humanities Elective; Service Learning; Quantitative Reason Flag Full

Students will explore how the salmagundi that is the English language originated and how it grew into a language of global communication. While we will give due diligence to the historical origins of English, we will primarily focus on phonetics and sociolinguistics, examining how and why people came to sound the way they sound and say the things they say based on location, socioeconomic status, race, gender, age, education, and physiology, to name a few.This is a service-learning course, so students will be working in groups with their peers to help local elementary school students hone their reading and math skills. This will not only allow us to observe how children master the intricacies and oddities of the English language and weird math rules, but it will help us improve learning outcomes for our community and allow us to practice the Ignatian principle of service rooted in justice and love.The course carries the QR. In courses with the QR flag, you will practice making sense of quantitative information and interpreting this information in the context of the course material. One of the goals of the QR-flagged course is to lead students towards carefully and precisely presenting quantitative information as well as inferences that such information permits, within the broader disciplinary context. A portion of the course will be devoted to your reading, communicating, and reasoning with quantitative information, as such information provides an oft-neglected perspective and can lead to conclusions which otherwise might not have been possible. The insights gained from the quantitative aspects, in concert with other perspectives, will help you form a more rigorous and robust understanding of the broader course topic(s). 

  

ENGL 337 Theories and Research in Writing 

ENGL 337-01

15922

Theories and Research in Writing

M

4:15-6:45

Frey

xl 537; Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115  Humanities Elective, Quantitative Reason Flag Full, Writing Flag Core

 

ENGL 537-02

14084

Theories and Research in Writing

M

4:15-6:45

Frey

xl-337

 This course offers an overview of the history, theory, and practice of writing studies. By exploring the history of rhetoric as primarily the art of oratory, through its transition to composition via print culture, students will understand the complex interplay between speaking, thinking, and writing and how these relationships inform the way we think about composition today. Students will also gain knowledge of the major theories of teaching writing, including current-traditional, expressivism, cognitive/behavioral, and social construcivist approaches. These theories will then be applied to practical aspects of teaching and research in writing studies. Additionally, students will be introduced to scholarly research in composition studies, which includes developing literacy in both qualitative and quantitative methods. Note: this course counts for the Quantitative Reasoning Flag in the Core Curriculum. It also counts for the Writing Minor. 

 

ENGL 348-01 LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT  

ENGL 348-01

17920

Lit & the Environment

MWF

10:00-10:50

Ottum

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115  Humanities Elective; Environ Science/Studies Elect

 

In this course we’ll read recently published fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction that deals in one way or another with “the environment,” broadly construed. While anthropogenic climate change will emerge as a key theme, we’ll also explore how today’s literature engages with topics such as climate justice, environmental activism, and species extinction. Along the way, we’ll ask big questions about the relationship of literature to politics and culture. Literary criticism and theory will help to frame our inquiry.

 

You don’t have to be a tree-hugger, animal-lover, or hippie to take this course, although tree-huggers, animal-lovers and hippies are welcome. You do need to be a dedicated, courageous reader—there will be a lot reading, and some of it will be weird, long, and/or challenging in other ways. You’ll also need to speak regularly in class discussion and be open to a variety of perspectives. Unsure if this course is right for you? Contact the instructor (Lisa Ottum ottuml@xavier.edu) and we can discuss whether it’s a good fit.

 

  

460-LOVE, SEX, GENDER: VICTORIAN POETRY 

12322

Love, Sex, Gender: Vict Poetry

MWF

12:00-12:50

Renzi

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115   Humanities Elective, Gender & Diversity Studies

You may have heard the rumors—that the Victorians were all prudishness and chastity. Far from it! In fact, the major Victorian poets (as well as quite a few minor ones) all treat the interrelated subjects of love, sex and gender. This course will put these poets into conversation with one another and use scholarship and primary archival texts on gender and sexuality in the Victorian era to contextualize and deepen our understanding of these poems. We will treat longer poetic sequences/series, including Browning’s The Ring and the Book (a true crime long poem!), Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, C. Rosetti’s Goblin Market, D. Rosetti’s House of Life, and  George Meredith’s Modern Love, as well as shorter works by Hopkins, Wilde, Siddal, Arnold, Webster, and Mew. Also approved elective for Gender and Diversity major/minor. 

Fulfills British Literature Post-1800 requirement.  

 

 

 

485-WEIRD 19TH CENTURY (formerly “American Gothic Literature”) 

17921

Weird 19th Century

TR

2:30-3:45

Windon

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 or ENGL 115   Humanities Elective

 

War-ending circle dances, Oujia boards that commune with the dead, conjure spells that turn people into animals, and theories of a hollow earth with another inhabitable one inside of it are just some of the religious and scientific beliefs of the nineteenth century that we will encounter in this course, in addition to the classics of the gothic genre. We’ll use them to contemplate the unbridgeable divide that sometimes appears to separate our experiences from the experiences of others.  

Fulfills American Literature Pre-1900 requirement.