Upcoming Course Offerings

Art Spiegelman's Maus is a graphic novel that presents the story of Spiegelman interviewing his father about the Holocaust. While the story is true, Spiegelman's postmodern interpretation of his family's history presents all the characters as animals (the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats, etc.). The resulting text is difficult to categorize, but rich in thematic impact and literary merit. In this section of 303, students will become conversant in the strengths of the comic book/graphic novel medium, explore the unique aspects of Spiegelman's iconic work, and develop proficiency in applying secondary critical sources while engaging in literary analysis.

Art Spiegelman's Maus is a graphic novel that presents the story of Spiegelman interviewing his father about the Holocaust. While the story is true, Spiegelman's postmodern interpretation of his family's history presents all the characters as animals (the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats, etc.). The resulting text is difficult to categorize, but rich in thematic impact and literary merit. In this section of 303, students will become conversant in the strengths of the comic book/graphic novel medium, explore the unique aspects of Spiegelman's iconic work, and develop proficiency in applying secondary critical sources while engaging in literary analysis.

William Blake’s “prophetic” poems, more than any of his other works including the Songs of Innocence and Experience, have defied systematic interpretation for over two hundred years. How can we write meaningfully about such an eccentric body of work? Blake himself offered a note of reassurance: “I am happy to find a Great Majority of Fellow Mortals who can Elucidate My Visions,” he wrote. This suggests that the prophecies both demand and generously reward the intellectual labor of ‘elucidation.’ History seems to have born this suggestion out: generations of writers, including not only literary critics but Beat poets (Ginsberg), folk/rock artists (Dylan), metalheads (Bruce Dickinson), graphic artists (Moore), and fantasy novelists (Pullman), have found Blake’s prophecies, if not ‘lucid,’ then profoundly luminous for their writing. In this class, we’ll encounter some of the poet-artisan’s most challenging multimodal poems, including Milton: A Prophecy and the “continental prophecies,” alongside historical, critical, and methodological scholarship, plus more contemporary experiments in mixed media artistry. In all these encounters we will forfeit the struggle for interpretive mastery to cultivate a techne of critical elucidation in writing. In the process, we will consider how the methodical and down-to-earth pursuit of craft—be it Blake’s multimodal techne or our critical one—can generate imaginative energy and conviction and even moods of devotion.

This course provides an introduction to the writing, research, and analytical skills essential for literary studies. Using James Joyce’s Dubliners as our primary text, we will practice close reading, scholarly research, and academic argumentation. Joyce’s richly layered short stories provide an ideal landscape for developing critical approaches to literature, offering complex themes, symbolic structures, and stylistic innovations that invite rigorous analysis. Students will explore how writing functions within literary studies, how knowledge is shaped through ongoing scholarly conversations, and how to contribute effectively to these discussions. Through guided practice and revision, this course provides a strong foundation for producing analytical, research-driven essays in literary criticism.

Geoffrey Chaucer was a socially mobile royal bureaucrat in cosmopolitan London who witnessed the major crises of the late fourteenth century, including pandemic, war, and insurrection. In The Canterbury Tales, he imagined an eclectic group of pilgrims traveling from London to Canterbury entertaining themselves by telling stories. We will examine the intersections of political power, gender difference, and religious conversion and conquest in the lawyer’s tale about Roman Constance set adrift in rudderless boats after failed marriages in Syria and northern England. We will also compare and contrast Chaucer’s global fantasy with his sources and analogues. As we read literary criticism about the poem, we will learn basic conventions that professional critics employ, tools that we will then imitate and implement in our own literary criticism. As we write about “The Man of Law’s Tale,” we will become more attuned to the kinds of questions that literary critics ask, and we will begin to read with greater discernment and formulate more sophisticated conceptual claims about literary texts.

Considering rhetoric as a “distributed, material process of becoming” (Gries) and craft as a “material, process-oriented practice of making” (Gruwell), we come to some conclusions: craft is rhetoric and rhetoric is crafty. This course explores the intersection of craft and rhetoric, viewing both as interconnected processes of creation and communication. We’ll ask questions about traditional notions of craft by examining why women’s creative work has often been undervalued and labeled as “homespun,” while men’s creations are celebrated as Art. Through hands-on experiences in Special Collections and the Maker's Space, we’ll physically engage with rhetorical artifacts like quilts, swimsuits, needlework, scrapbooks, and digital craft platforms. Also, we’ll try our hand at creating our own handiworks, discovering how materials shape both the creator and the creation. No prior craft-y skills required! Join us as we uncover the ways rhetors use craft to achieve their rhetorical aims.

Registration by application only: https://english.byu.edu/awards-contests-and-scholarships.

The Arthurian legend is one of the best-known medieval British narrative traditions, showing up in literature, music, visual arts, and more during the medieval period and beyond. But from its sixth-century beginnings through today, Arthurian tales of knights, quests, named weapons, and monstrous beasts have often relegated women to the margins. Despite the seeming equality of the Round Table, there are no seats for women, and when women do appear in the legend, they often do so in disturbing or problematic ways. This course aims to recover Arthurian women—women as characters in, as well as readers, authors, translators, and adaptors of the Arthurian Legend. Our study will begin with the roles of women in the legend’s creation and expansion during the medieval period, then turn to women’s roles in perpetuating the legend’s literary and artistic afterlife. From Marie de France’s twelfth-century Arthurian poems, to the medievalism of the Romantic and Victorian periods, up through recent modern adaptations into literature, music, visual art, and film, women have repeatedly made spaces for themselves at the Arthurian table.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 331R or ENGL 386R, but it will not count for both.

While the telling of tales has been with us almost as long as language itself, the short story as a stand-alone genre is still in its infancy, barely two hundred years old. That’s the first thing: the short story is young. The second thing: most lit courses largely ignore stories, instead concentrating on poetry or the novel. Third: short stories are chameleons: always changing, trying to keep pace with the Zeitgeist. These three factors make it an ideal object of study over time. In this course, then, I will eschew my usual practice of extreme focus and instead celebrate evolution, from Hawthorne in the 1830s to the rise of sudden fiction in the 1980s. In between we’ll encounter a whole host of isms: romanticism, realism, local color, the Gothic, naturalism, modernism, Southern fiction, BIPOC and feminist writing, magical realism, minimalism, maximalism, graphic stories, speculative fiction, and postmodernism. Prepare for a busy 14 weeks, with the animal in question morphing into something new on an almost weekly basis.

While Americans aren’t the ones who invented the novel, they have certainly developed it in many significant ways since their first forays into the genre. This class is equally a course in the literary histories of representative American novels and a practicum in how to read, analyze, research, and write persuasive critical arguments about them. We will read seven novels in total, starting with Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, published in 1798, and ending with Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, published in 1992. To help you to develop your own interpretive argument about one or more of these novels, we’ll also read selections of literary scholarship to accompany each of the primary texts.

In 2025, people are reading less, but storytelling isn't going to disappear any time soon. In this course, we look at how scholars, especially folklorists, can take advantage of the podcast to preserve and present stories for modern listeners. Students will become familiar with the exciting conglomeration of new journalism, folklore, and public scholarship that is taking shape in the current podcasting marketplace. (This course examines audio and visual podcasting.)

The idea is literary genetics: an investigation into the Greek and Roman DNA of English literature. The plan is to juxtapose readings of ancient and modern writers, e.g. Homer and James Joyce; Virgil and Milton, Horace and Wilfred Owen, Catullus and Robert Frost, Horace and Wilfred Owen. No knowledge of the ancient languages is required; you’ll be shown something of how Greek and Latin work, and how that has affected English. Be prepared for comparisons, close readings, and lots of in-class arguing.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 355 or ENGL 369R, but it will not count for both.

The core values of what the late historian David McCullough describes as “the American spirit”—ideas of individualism, equality, democracy, religious freedom, innovation, and so on — are manifest in various ways and to different degrees in what might be described as our national literature – a vast collection of texts written by people from diverse backgrounds from the pre-Columbian era to the present. In this course we will analyze the ways in which a cluster of contemporary American writers engage these “traditional” American values (many of which are also codified in the United States Constitution) in their twenty-first century texts and consider the ethical perspectives that orient and motivate the opinions, concerns, and positions expressed in their work.

The idea is literary genetics: an investigation into the Greek and Roman DNA of English literature. The plan is to juxtapose readings of ancient and modern writers, e.g. Homer and James Joyce; Virgil and Milton, Horace and Wilfred Owen, Catullus and Robert Frost, Horace and Wilfred Owen. No knowledge of the ancient languages is required; you’ll be shown something of how Greek and Latin work, and how that has affected English. Be prepared for comparisons, close readings, and lots of in-class arguing.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 355 or ENGL 369R, but it will not count for both.

Readers of Shakespeare love the dynamic women that populate his plays: witty Beatrice, bombastic Katherine, traumatized Ophelia, calculating Lady Macbeth, and resolute Hermione. However, scholars continue to debate the way in which Shakespeare represents women. Does he stage a liberating view of women as capable, autonomous individuals? Or does he reinforce the limiting view of women popular in his time as silent, object-like vessels? In this class, we will explore the ways in which Shakespeare either challenges or upholds (or perhaps a mix of both) early modern ideas about womanhood in context of religion, society, politics, medicine, genre, and the occult. Our texts will include As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Henry VIII, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, and Cymbeline.

NOTE: English Teaching majors should register for this class under ENGL 382-001.

Mark Twain’s writing captured the spirit of the Gilded Age like no other literary voice. This course will explore how Twain’s work represented the American experience and offered a template for other writers of the time to document the lives of their communities as regionalism flourished. Along with reading Twain’s major works, we will read short fiction by many contemporaries that were influenced by his example. Ultimately, our sampling will give us a new perspective on the ways literary culture worked to shape American identity after the Civil War.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 384R or ENGL 389R, but it will not count for both.

The period of the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (roughly 1640-1660) was an intellectual, spiritual, and artistic crucible that produced ideas foundational for the eventual founding of the United States, among other things. This course will study the varied ways that women participated in this potent cultural moment as poets, prophets, and political theorists. Writers we read will include Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, and others.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 386R or ENGL 396R, but it will not count for both.

The Arthurian legend is one of the best-known medieval British narrative traditions, showing up in literature, music, visual arts, and more during the medieval period and beyond. But from its sixth-century beginnings through today, Arthurian tales of knights, quests, named weapons, and monstrous beasts have often relegated women to the margins. Despite the seeming equality of the Round Table, there are no seats for women, and when women do appear in the legend, they often do so in disturbing or problematic ways. This course aims to recover Arthurian women—women as characters in, as well as readers, authors, translators, and adaptors of the Arthurian Legend. Our study will begin with the roles of women in the legend’s creation and expansion during the medieval period, then turn to women’s roles in perpetuating the legend’s literary and artistic afterlife. From Marie de France’s twelfth-century Arthurian poems, to the medievalism of the Romantic and Victorian periods, up through recent modern adaptations into literature, music, visual art, and film, women have repeatedly made spaces for themselves at the Arthurian table.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 331R or ENGL 386R, but it will not count for both.

This section of ENGL 387R will focus on “The Regency” (1811–1820), a sub-period within Britain’s Romantic Age that is arguably the single greatest decade in any nation’s literary history. Against a backdrop of war, global climate disasters, industrial unrest, and palace intrigue, British writers of the 1810s published an uninterrupted stream of masterpieces, including landmark novels (Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, Scott’s Waverley novels, etc.), poems (Byron’s romances and satires, Keats’s odes, Coleridge’s “mystery” poems), and essays (pioneering works by Hazlitt, Hunt, and Lamb). A fundamental goal of this course, then, will be deepening students’ knowledge and appreciation of the writers, works, and controversies of this “Golden Age” in British literature. Along the way, we will also interrogate the myth and reality of “Golden Ages,” comparing the Regency to other storied moments in world history and exploring the political, economic, intellectual, and cultural conditions required for periods of extraordinary creativity in the arts.

You probably don’t remember the very first story your mother told you, but I’ll bet you remember hundreds she read or related to you over the course of your childhood. Women have been creators of narratives for children for millennia. These stories colored our imaginations, taught us how to interpret the world, and shaped our identities. In this class, we’ll consider a few of the best-known stories written by women for children in Britain, from 1800 to the present. We’ll include, among these, literature by familiar authors like Beatrix Potter in the nineteenth century, Frances Hodgson Burnett in the twentieth, and J.K. Rowling in the twenty-first. But we’ll also spend time with lesser-known authors and unattributed texts like the chapbooks, alphabet primers, and nursery rhymes that taught generations of children how to read. We’ll pair our literary selections with notable essays by women discussing women’s literary theory from 1800 to the present, learning (as Virginia Woolf says) to think back through our mothers.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 387R or ENGL 396R, but it will not count for both.

This course examines the rising preoccupation with the human mind in later-nineteenth-and early twentieth-century transatlantic literature. We will consider how and why artists separate themselves from scientific materialist conceptions of human nature, turning instead to the mystery of subjective conscious experience, from paranormal phenomena to cosmic epiphany. We will study major voices like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, and innovative philosophers of mind and metaphysics like William James and Henri Bergson, along with lesser-known early genre writers in cosmic horror like Algernon Blackwood and Harriet Spofford.

Mark Twain’s writing captured the spirit of the Gilded Age like no other literary voice. This course will explore how Twain’s work represented the American experience and offered a template for other writers of the time to document the lives of their communities as regionalism flourished. Along with reading Twain’s major works, we will read short fiction by many contemporaries that were influenced by his example. Ultimately, our sampling will give us a new perspective on the ways literary culture worked to shape American identity after the Civil War.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 384R or ENGL 389R, but it will not count for both.

Inscape: Journal of Creative Writing and Art is published every fall and winter semester on its shiny new website at inscape.byu.edu. The journal is managed and edited by graduate students in the creative writing MFA program and students in the art department. All staff members, either students enrolled in ENGL 394R or volunteers, learn the business and craft of editing and publishing through soliciting and evaluating creative writing and visual art submissions, content editing, and formatting pieces of writing. They also receive hands-on training and experience with web design and web editing, social media marketing, event planning, and writing contests. The staff uses Instagram, Facebook, Wordpress, Photoshop, Canva, and Monday.com for team assignments, as well as the submission platform Submittable. Experts in publishing, writing, visual art, editing, and marketing are guest presenters every Thursday evening.

Requirements: Students enrolled in ENGL 394R are required to create a professional portfolio that includes a resume and cover letter/letter of application for graduate school, a mock interview, a fleshed-out LinkedIn profile, a job networking experience, and stellar staff assignment participation. The Inscape internship is designed for students interested in careers in publishing, which makes it an exceptional opportunity for editing or creative writing minors. Inscape is the best student journal experience on campus—and it looks great on a resume.

In this section of English 394R, students will work with local government and other civic-minded organizations to improve urban design, public transportation, and community development. Students might, for instance, assist city planners in developing and writing one of the city’s neighborhood plans or help develop a culture of active transportation on campus. The course is designed to help students recognize that they can draw upon the competencies they have developed in their English, General Education, and other courses in their efforts to contribute in important ways to the communities to which they belong.

For IP&T 498R (taught together w/394) Design Thinking Minor.
Students in the Provo City Lab (IP&T 498R, Sec. 1) will work with local government and other civic-minded organizations to improve urban design, public transportation, and community development. Students might, for instance, assist city planners in developing and writing one of the city’s neighborhood plans or help develop a culture of active transportation on campus. The course is designed to help students recognize that the competencies of design thinking and other disciplines can help them to contribute in important ways to the communities to which they belong.

Students will work on the staff of the new national children’s literary magazine, Wild Honey. Staff members will be a part of each stage of magazine production: concept creation, acquisitions, writing, editing, art direction, designing, marketing, networking, and distribution. This is a great place to learn about the children’s book industry and gain valuable practical experience. Students will collaborate with writers and other publishing professionals both on and off campus.

You probably don’t remember the very first story your mother told you, but I’ll bet you remember hundreds she read or related to you over the course of your childhood. Women have been creators of narratives for children for millennia. These stories colored our imaginations, taught us how to interpret the world, and shaped our identities. In this class, we’ll consider a few of the best-known stories written by women for children in Britain, from 1800 to the present. We’ll include, among these, literature by familiar authors like Beatrix Potter in the nineteenth century, Frances Hodgson Burnett in the twentieth, and J.K. Rowling in the twenty-first. But we’ll also spend time with lesser-known authors and unattributed texts like the chapbooks, alphabet primers, and nursery rhymes that taught generations of children how to read. We’ll pair our literary selections with notable essays by women discussing women’s literary theory from 1800 to the present, learning (as Virginia Woolf says) to think back through our mothers.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 387R or ENGL 396R, but it will not count for both.

The period of the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (roughly 1640-1660) was an intellectual, spiritual, and artistic crucible that produced ideas foundational for the eventual founding of the United States, among other things. This course will study the varied ways that women participated in this potent cultural moment as poets, prophets, and political theorists. Writers we read will include Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, and others.

Note: Students can register for this class as either ENGL 386R or ENGL 396R, but it will not count for both.

ENGL 399R section 001 is a BYU Online class. This course will be conducted in the Canvas LMS.

NEW! Creative Writing Professional Practices: Preparation for professional opportunities in creative writing, including editing, publishing, and teaching (This is a 1.0-credit first-block course.)

This section of “Studies in Literary Theory and Criticism” will focus on the rise, fall, and potential resurgence of aesthetic and evaluative criticism, modes of interpretation concerned primarily with assessing and appreciating the beauty, artistry, and comparative achievement of works of literature. Through most of literary history, the critic was defined first and foremost as an arbiter of taste whose principal task, as famously summarized by Matthew Arnold, was to point readers toward “the best that is known and thought in the world.” But in the waning decades of the twentieth century, a wave of influential critics revolted again the notion that some poems, plays, and novels are objectively better than others and the assumption that professors—and, to a lesser extent, students—of literature are better equipped than others to judge the success or failure of literary works. In these critics’ wake, aesthetic and evaluative approaches have been consigned to the margins of academic criticism, being replaced by modes more concerned with history and politics than artistry and beauty. Of late, however, the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction, with numerous important books and essays arguing that, as compelling historicist and political readings can be, they often fail to account for the aspects of certain books that make them so meaningful in our lives. These latest entries in the ongoing debates over aesthetic and evaluative criticism are where this section of ENGL 450 will end up; but, before getting there, we’ll spend the first half of the semester exploring foundational essays from earlier eras concerning the wisdom or folly of trying to define the qualities of great works of art.

This capstone course will look at scholarship on religious and regional folklore, focusing on Latter-day Saints as the primary example. “Mormon folklore” has been well-represented in the field. There is a long history of Latter-day Saint folklorists, and topics like The Three Nephites and J. Golden Kimball stories are known outside our community. Students will select and investigate their own topic in this area using scholarly, archival, and ethnographic methods. The primary assignment will be to produce a publication-ready academic article. Students will workshop their papers and present their research in class.

This capstone invites you to see your rhetorical education—whether through the English major or the Professional Writing and Communication minor—as preparation for practicing persuasive peacemaking. We’ll survey scholarship from multiple disciplines (rhetoric, writing, political science, psychology, peace and conflict studies) and religious traditions to collectively theorize rhetoric as an art of peacemaking. We’ll analyze case studies of persuasive peacemakers, from women Nobel Peace Prize laureates to Mormon Women for Ethical Government. You’ll apply what you learn to one of two options for your capstone project: an extended seminar paper that makes an original contribution to the capstone’s scholarly conversations, or a substantial multimodal project relevant to capstone content and your academic, professional, or personal goals. Either project should demonstrate professional, ethical, rhetorically effective communication and should be fit to include in a portfolio of work for academic or professional purposes.

In an 1835 letter to an editor who found one of his pieces a bit too disturbing, Edgar Allan Poe responded, “To be appreciated you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.” Both literary scholarship and popular culture demonstrate that Poe has been read consistently from the mid-1800s until now, although the appreciation came a bit later. In this course, we will read a lot of Poe. The “now” will become apparent in at least three ways. First, what do Poe’s works say, for better and for worse, about pressing issues of our times, including pandemics, race relations, gender, climate change, and populism? We will read works by Poe that address each of these subjects and many others. Second, what can Poe tell us about fear, terror, horror, and other emotions that many of us are experiencing in 2025? When it comes to creating and maintaining these feelings in a piece of literature, Poe’s “theory of effect” is as relevant now as ever. We will examine this theory, see how Poe put it into practice, and discuss how other authors and artists still use his techniques today. Third, what are scholars saying about Poe in current Poe scholarship? The scholarship is vast and varied and comes from multiple theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. Students will occasionally choose and read contemporary Poe scholarship that fits their own interests while the class will explore several pieces of current and historical Poe scholarship as a group. In short, we will read a large amount of Poe’s fictional corpus (while dabbling in his poetry and his literary criticism), and we will spend significant time and energy discovering how scholars and artists have responded to (and continue to respond to) Poe.