Below are descriptions of the courses at Penn State Altoona for the coming semester that can count to satisfy the requirements of the English major and minor, as well as the Writing and Digital Media minor. Many of them also fulfill the requirements of the Education major and the Multidisciplinary Studies major. Some fulfill general education and B.A. Humanities or Arts requirements. Or you might find them interesting enough to take as electives.
Fall 2023 Courses
ENGL 50: Introduction to Creative Writing (Murphy)
We will read and write short stories, poems, plays, and creative nonfiction. You’ll also develop skills in editing, writing concisely, and employing description and narrative that will help you with writing assignments in all of your classes. (A Gen Ed—Arts course.)
ENGL 50: Introduction to Creative Writing (Sherrill)
Two, count ’em two, genres here! We’ll dive first into the spooky world of poetry and swim right through into fiction writing. What’s the difference? Come and see. This class will be about the process of writing and about you producing poems and stories. I’ll challenge you and work you hard, but make sure you have fun as well. (A Gen Ed—Arts course.)
ENGL 50: Introduction to Creative Writing (Wesley)
This is a class where learning is fun, where you will work on your own writing in a circle of student writers, where the major text is your own work. The course will focus on two genres of the creative process: poetry and fiction writing. It is a student-centered workshop or seminar course that will both inspire you and help shape you into a better writer. The course should test your ability to make words do what no words have ever done before. You will be required to come up with your own original poetry and one short story while at the same time critiquing fellow students’ poetry. There will be immediate feedback, mentoring, and tutoring. You will have a new opportunity to see writing as craft and as art by carving up your own images, using all of the tools you need to write with the passion that makes good literature enjoyable. (A Gen Ed—Arts course.)
ENGL 83S: First Year Seminar (Petrulionis)
This class combines the university’s required first-year seminar, which is an introduction to being a college student and to Penn State, with a general introduction to literature and writing. Our theme is “Gen Z and the American Dream.” Through the semester, we will read, discuss, debate, and write on a variety of subjects related to this theme and to Gen Z’s place and possibilities in the twenty-first century United States, as compared to older definitions and promises of the “American Dream.” We will keep a lively pace, reading short stories, articles, and poems as well as the college’s common read, Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom. Along the way, we'll grapple with the skill set needed to negotiate being a college student today.
ENGL/INART/AFAM 141N: African American Read-in Engaged Learning Experience – Theme: Black Ecologies (Simpson)
Two credits, plus one in spring 2024. The spring course is only five weeks
Students will read and discuss African American nature writing, exploring various engagements with the natural world, from wilderness to environmental justice and climate change. This theme is as old as the 400-year African American literary tradition itself, so we will consider contemporary as well as historical works across a range of genres: poetry, fiction, essays, and memoir. Students will develop original scholarly and/or creative projects based on these materials for presentation at the February 2024 African American Read-In events on campus. Students will complete all three credits by also enrolling in the one-credit five-week spring course. As shapers of the program, class members will have a voice in designing and delivering the program as well as a stake in its overall success. Learn more on the Read-In website.
ENGL 142N/SC 142N: Science in Literature (Rotunno & Siegfried)
Approach great fiction and thought-provoking readings about current science as well as past thoughts! Join Drs. Rotunno and Siegfried for this interdomain course (GH & GN), entitled Science in Literature, that will explore scientific questions such as: how do we define “human?" What are the personal, political, and social responsibilities of a scientist? Should we use clones? Is your identity dictated by your genes? What can we learn from those termed “neurodivergent” or those born with “mutations,” and what exactly do we mean by those terms? Will Artificial Intelligence lead us to learn more about ourselves? And the big question, underlying the course itself: what can science and art learn from each other? (Does not fulfill inter-domain requirement for English majors but can count as English elective at any level. Cross-listed with SC 142N.)
ENGL 200: Introduction to Critical Reading (Stoyanoff)
This course is designed as an introduction, or “gateway,” to advanced literary studies at the beginning of the English major. You will learn about critical approaches that can be applied to any work of literature, including historicism, formalism, gender studies, queer theory, critical race theory, and Marxism, among others. We will practice applying several approaches to each work of literature on the syllabus and keep track of the interesting issues that emerge from these discussions. You will choose one of these issues to pursue further in a substantial research paper, and as you work on this project, we will cover the strategies and skills needed for research in English in class. We will then move into the conventions of writing essays and planning oral presentations that engage and contribute to the critical discourse surrounding a text or texts. You will also develop an oral presentation on your work and give it for the class in November. Through this class, you will gain tools to analyze literary texts more deeply and make informed, original arguments about them. For this iteration of this course, the primary texts through which we will engage theory and criticism include the Middle English poem Pearl (in Modern English), Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. (NOTE: This is a required course for the English major and is typically offered only in the fall semester.)
ENGL 209: Journal or Magazine Practicum—Hard Freight Literary Magazine (Murphy)
Have you always wanted to see your name on a masthead? Then join the staff of Hard Freight! This one-credit experiential course offers students hands-on experience in the development and production of the campus online literary magazine. Students will participate on editorial boards, in the advertising and marketing of the magazine, in the design of the online magazine, and in coffee-house events created to celebrate the artistic efforts of students on campus. (This is a hybrid course that meets sometimes in person, sometimes remotely. Students may take this course up to eight times in their career. Counts toward the Professional Writing minor and English major electives.)
ENGL 212: Introduction to Fiction Writing (Sherrill)
In this course we will identify and explore the fundamentals of fiction writing from the ground up: fear, hope, rage, lust, love, want, need, honesty, and dishonesty. Along the way, we’ll develop skills in narration, plot development, characterization, etc. Telling stories is one of the ways we carry our humanity from generation to generation. Creating compelling and entertaining stories is the artist’s challenge. This class is about art; the art of looking at the world around us and rendering that vision, with bravery and honesty, in words. (A Gen Ed – Arts course for non-English majors. Counts toward Professional Writing minor. Students interested in eventually taking a 400-level creative writing class must take one 200-level creative writing class first. Meets concurrently with ENGL 412.)
ENGL 234: Sports, Ethics, Literature (King)
What do your favorite athletes and competitions reveal about your worldview? How have sports shaped you into the person you are today? Is sport a mirror that reflects society? Can we use sport to imagine the world differently? This course asks these questions and enlists you to answer them by reading novels, poetry, and journalism and watching television, films, and documentaries about the importance of sports for individuals and communities in the U.S. and around the world—from immigrant communities playing weekend cricket in New York City to Friday night and Saturday afternoon football cultures in (fictional) Dillon, Texas, and (real) Penn State. Throughout the semester, you will respond to those visions about what sports means to others, but you will also have opportunities to speak and write about your own relationship to sports, as well. We will focus on how sport allows us to build and refine an ethical imagination, especially as depicted in literary texts across a variety of media and genres. This course will cover a wide range of athletic events, from football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and mixed martial arts to tennis, cricket, poker, dog sledding, and professional wrestling. (A Gen Ed – Humanities course)
ENGL 250: Peer Tutoring in Writing (King)
This course will start with theories of peer tutoring and practical writing and editing exercises designed to prepare students to get paid to work in Penn State Altoona’s Writing Commons. During the second half of the course, students will move into hands-on training experiences at the Writing Commons. The course is best suited for those students who want to get paid to work in the Writing Commons and have never worked there previously. (This course counts toward English major elective credits as well as toward the Professional Writing Minor. Instructor’s signature required for enrollment; email Professor King at [email protected])
ENGL 412: Advanced Fiction Writing (Sherrill)
This advanced fiction writing course will meet concurrently with ENGL 212. (Counts toward the English major 20th Century requirement and toward the Professional Writing minor. Students may take this course twice in their career. Prerequisite: at least one 200-level creative writing class. Instructor’s signature required for enrollment.)
ENGL 431: Black American Writers/Theme: African American Environmental Writing (Simpson)
Explorations of the human relationship to nature, environment, and place—whether wild, rural, or urban—have a longstanding presence in the African American literary tradition. Students will study key such texts in a range of genres alongside recent scholarship by Black environmental scholars in order to examine the interrelationships between culture and nature posited by Black American writers.
ENGL 434: Topics in American Literature—“American Dreams, American Nightmares” (Petrulionis)
The ideal of “American exceptionalism” has been with us at least since John Winthrop established the Puritans’ utopian vision of a “city upon a hill” in the early 17th century. By the 20th century, this notion transformed to historian James Truslow Adams’s claim in 1931 that the American dream is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In this seminar, we will investigate the development and importance of this concept through a variety of literary genres and lenses as we examine its centrality to American authorship. How have ideas about “the American dream” changed since the nation’s “founding?” Who was left out of the initial dream (and for how long), and how did their crusades for inclusion impact and transform the nature of the dream itself? When did one person’s dream (e.g., wealthy property owner, white gold prospector in north Georgia) become another’s nightmare (e.g., enslaved laborer, Cherokee native family whose land was taken, women who lacked custody rights to their children)? What, if anything, is unique (dare we still say exceptional?) about the American dream? For Gen Z, in the twenty-first century, is “climbing the corporate ladder” still synonymous with “achieving the American dream?” Or do we now find that the American dream is dead, as George Carlin proclaimed several decades ago? We will read a variety of genres and authors who have struggled to depict and to interrogate this essential American construct, including Benjamin Franklin, Henry Thoreau, Rebecca Harding Davis, Andrew Carnegie, Horatio Alger, Upton Sinclair, Harriet Jacobs, Edith Wharton, W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ta-Nehisi Coates, Langston Hughes, and Jose Antonio Vargas. (NOTE: This course meets concurrently with ENGL 487W. Students planning to graduate in fall 2023 or spring 2024 should take the ENGL 487W version.)
ENGL 441: Chaucer in Context (Stoyanoff)
Often, we study Chaucer in isolation, tacitly agreeing with the canonical establishment that he was exceptional in comparison to the rest of the authors of fourteenth-century England. It’s true that Chaucer writes some of the best poetry in Middle English, but his work was influenced by his contemporaries’ work, too. (And, of course, vice-versa.) This course will start with Chaucer’s texts—including The Knight’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Man of Law’s Tale, Troilus and Criseyde, etc.—but we will also read excerpts from John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the Pearl-Poet, anonymously-authored texts, and perhaps even a medieval biblical pageant or two! Studying Chaucer in context, then, will allow us to better understand the larger literary conversation of which his texts are a part and to then consider how currents and themes from the later Middle Ages resonate with the same or similar issues we face in our current cultural moment in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Students will be asked to engage primary texts in the original Middle English (with modernizations and glossing available) and to use multiple theoretical perspectives, including queer studies, disability studies, and gender studies.
ENGL 474: Issues in Rhetoric and Composition (King)
This course will start with theories of peer tutoring and practical writing and editing exercises designed to prepare students to get paid to work in Penn State Altoona’s Writing Commons. During the second half of the course, students will move into one-on-one research projects on an issue of your choice in rhetorical studies, writing (center) studies, and/or higher education. ENGL 474 is best suited for those students who want to explore the fields of rhetoric, composition, and writing (center) studies. This course is open to students who already work at the Writing Commons and other who receive permission of the instructor. (This course meets concurrently with ENGL 250. It counts toward English major elective credits as well as toward the Professional Writing Minor. Instructor’s signature required for enrollment; email Professor King at [email protected])
ENGL 487W: Senior Seminar in English—“American Dreams, American Nightmares” (Petrulionis)
The ideal of “American exceptionalism” has been with us at least since John Winthrop established the Puritans’ utopian vision of a “city upon a hill” in the early 17th century. By the 20th century, this notion transformed to historian James Truslow Adams’s claim in 1931 that the American dream is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In this seminar, we will investigate the development and importance of this concept through a variety of literary genres and lenses as we examine its centrality to American authorship. How have ideas about “the American dream” changed since the nation’s “founding?” Who was left out of the initial dream (and for how long), and how did their crusades for inclusion impact and transform the nature of the dream itself? When did one person’s dream (e.g., wealthy property owner, white gold prospector in north Georgia) become another’s nightmare (e.g., enslaved laborer, Cherokee native family whose land was taken, women who lacked custody rights to their children)? What, if anything, is unique (dare we still say exceptional?) about the American dream? For Gen Z, in the twenty-first century, is “climbing the corporate ladder” still synonymous with “achieving the American dream?” Or do we now find that the American dream is dead, as George Carlin proclaimed several decades ago? We will read a variety of genres and authors who have struggled to depict and to interrogate this essential American construct, including Benjamin Franklin, Henry Thoreau, Rebecca Harding Davis, Andrew Carnegie, Horatio Alger, Upton Sinclair, Harriet Jacobs, Edith Wharton, W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ta-Nehisi Coates, Langston Hughes, and Jose Antonio Vargas. (NOTE: ENGL 487W is a required course for senior English majors and is offered only in the fall semester, so students planning to graduate in 2023-24 must take it in fall 2023. In order to register, email Professor Petrulionus at [email protected] with your name, student ID number, and planned graduation semester/year. This course meets concurrently with ENGL 434.)
ENGL 490: Women Writers and their Worlds; Mode: Asynchronous WEB via the DLC (Whitney)
How did women writers, both classic and contemporary, depict the journey by which girls grow into adulthood? We’ll address this central question throughout the course, taking note of both connections and key differences between our writers. Some of our topics include career opportunities, social oppression, family relationships, sexual awakening or restriction, cross-racial differences, and violence against women. Our course texts include both classic novels, mythical figures (such as Mulan), and contemporary YA. How does an online asynchronous course work? If you’re new to this type of learning, asynchronous courses mean you do not meet in person, and do not have an assigned class period. Each week is a structured module, and during a typical week your tasks include independent reading, historical content with video, a writing composition on the weekly work, a discussion post and a quiz. The benefit of asynchronous learning is flexibility. You have freedom to arrange your time and environment to read and write when it is best for you. (NOTE: This course is by signature of the English Program Coordinator. Contact Erin Murphy at [email protected]. Limited seats available. Priority will be given to graduating English majors and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minors.)
ENGL 496: Topics in American Literature—Theme: Black Ecologies: (Simpson)
Two credits, plus one in spring 2024. The spring course is only five weeks.
Students interested in joining the African American Read-In Engaged Learning Course for 400-level course credit while completing an individual or small group project related to the theme are encouraged to contact Professor Simpson at [email protected]. Students enrolled in the independent study option will meet concurrently with ENGL 141N. Description: Students will read and discuss African American nature writing, exploring various engagements with the natural world, from wilderness to environmental justice and climate change. This theme is as old as the 400-year African American literary tradition itself, so we will consider contemporary as well as historical works across a range of genres: poetry, fiction, essays, and memoir. Students will complete all 3 credits by also enrolling in the 1-credit 5-week Spring AARI course, which concludes with the presentation of the AARI events in mid-February. As shapers of the program, class members will also have a voice in designing and delivering the program as well as a stake in its overall success. (Instructor signature required. Contact Professor Simpson at [email protected].)
