English courses for fall 2025
Dive into a wide array of topics, from classic and contemporary literature to creative and professional writing, as well as advanced studies in rhetoric and critical analysis! Our courses are designed to sharpen your reading, writing and analytical skills, while offering fresh perspectives on texts, language and storytelling. Whether you’re here to explore new literary horizons or to hone your craft, we’re excited to embark on this academic journey with you!
1000 level
ENG 1010: Basic Writing
All sections
English 1010 prepares students for English 1020 by building upon their diverse skills to help them become critical readers and effective writers at the college level. The main goals of the course are (1) to teach students to integrate reading and writing in basic academic genres; (2) to use a writing process that incorporates drafting, revising and editing for grammar and mechanics; and (3) to write according to the conventions of college writing, including documentation.
To achieve these goals, the course encourages students to read carefully; respond analytically and critically; and write in a variety of academic genres, including summary, response, analysis and argument for an academic audience.
ENG 1020: (BC) Introductory College Writing
All sections
In ENG 1020 you'll apply the Wayne State writing curriculum's core emphases of discourse community, genre, rhetorical situation and metacognition/reflection to written and multimedia works focused on specific audiences, such as your classmates, academic and professional audiences of various types or civic communities you might belong to or wish to influence in a particular way. While, as with all of the courses in the Wayne State required writing sequence, mechanical correctness and appropriate academic writing styles are key concerns, in ENG 1020 you'll also concentrate specifically on rhetoric (or persuasion) and argument as major objectives of many important kinds of writing you may be asked to produce. By focusing on rhetoric and on audience, assignments in ENG 1020 will require you to do two major types of work. In one type, you'll analyze a particular piece of argumentative discourse to determine how it succeeds (or fails) to appropriately impact its audience. In another type, you'll choose a particular issue and a relevant audience for that issue and then argue for a certain point or for a certain action to be taken by that audience. Work in 1020 often takes place through the following key writing tasks, several of which might serve as long-term projects in your 1020 course: genre and subgenre analyses, genre critiques, researched position arguments, rhetorical analyses, definition analyses and arguments, proposal arguments and reflective argument and portfolio.
2000 level
ENG 2200: (CI) Shakespeare: Writing about Texts
Ken Jackson
There is a reason Shakespeare is "Shakespeare." It was neither an accident nor conspiracy. Get off of X and social media and read a bit and see for yourself. Clear your mind. These texts have shaped a world and they can reshape yours. The historical distance can make "the bard" a bit intimidating. And, sure, people have used him to beat people over the heads with "high culture" or something. But, to quote Bob Dylan, that ain't me. We will read these plays to see how the human being works, operates – including you. I lecture at first because there is stuff you need to know. Then you talk. And write a bit. We watch performances and films. It is theater after all. And you should have fun.
ENG 2250: (CI) British Literature: Writing about Texts
Hilary Fox
In popular culture, medieval English literature is usually thought of as the "original" fantasy, the source of the worlds depicted in modern fantasy fiction, television and film, a realm of monsters, dragons, fairies, elves and demons. This class will introduce you to some of these sources in person, as well as to their historical, social and material contexts. As a focus for our discussion, we will look at the strange, the amazing and the monstrous—across texts both major and minor from a range of genres. Our possible texts will include: the enigmatic 'Wulf and Eadwacer,' 'Beowulf,' werewolf texts, ghost stories, romances like Marie de France's 'Bisclavret' and 'Lanval,' excerpts from Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales,' and more!
ENG 2390: (DEI, IC) Introduction to African-American Literature: Writing about Texts
All sections
Introduction to major themes and some major writers of African-American literature, emphasizing modern works. Reading and writing about representative poetry, fiction, essays and plays.
ENG 2420: (CI) Environmental Literature: Writing about Texts
Sarika Chandra
How do various writers understand the planetary environmental emergency and attempt to
reimagine our future? Centered on environment and ecology, we will aim to understand how climate catastrophe relates to race, gender, class, migration, health and labor. How do different writings explore the relationship between capitalism, imperialism, oil/energy, food/water, war, urban spaces, conservation and extinction? The course will analyze literature and film in relation to broader social processes. We will read theoretical and historical scholarship that will ground the discussion on ecological crisis. Reading may include the work of writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Timothy
Mitchell, Ken Saro Wiwa and Winona LaDuke. This is a discussion-based course; therefore, attendance is required.
ENG 2430: (CI) Digital Literacies: Writing about Texts
Olagbreno Oladipo
We are living in one of the most interesting times in human history! Unprecedented advancements in digital technologies are shaping how we think, what we see, become, and do. This class focuses on some of the realities and challenges of digital communication and their effects on literacy. A few questions that will guide our conversations and writings/activities are: What is digital literacy in an age of unprecedented technological advancements? What does “algorithmic/digital audience” mean? What are deepfakes? How do we spot them? How do we leverage rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) in digital communication? While we attempt to answer these questions, we shall apply the knowledge acquired to select service-learning projects in Detroit. We will meet mostly in-person on Mondays and asynchronous or synchronous on Wednesdays—subject to our schedule for service-learning projects. Readings for this class will include images, research articles, opinion pieces, podcasts, and other digital artifacts.
ENG 2720: (CI) Basic Concepts in Linguistics
Irina Monich
This course introduces linguistics—the study of the nature and complexity of human language. It covers fundamental concepts and analytical tools used by linguists to understand how language structures sounds (phonetics and phonology), words (morphology), and sentences (syntax). Additional topics include meaning (semantics), language variation and change, language acquisition in children, and the relationship between language and the brain.
ENG 2800: (CI) Foundations of Creative Writing
Caroline Maun
This course will introduce you to three genres of creative writing: poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. We will read examples of each genre and we’ll consider what it is like to professionalize creatively, sustain creative practices, engage constructively with work in progress and be supportive members of a creative community. Students produce a portfolio of material that includes polished work for submission to publication venues and/or award competitions. Students will write a reflective statement that can be used as a basis for an artist’s statement. Weekly writing assignments, journaling and productive and supportive participation in small-group workshops are required.
ENG 2800: (CI) Foundations of Creative Writing
Chris Tysh
Whether prose or poetry, imaginative writing is removed from ordinary channels of communication. This space is what we call the "poetic." The present course should be viewed as an introduction to some of the most innovative writing in English. Emphasis will be laid upon various conventions governing literary production. The goal is to develop a certain competency in the reading and writing of an imaginative text. Prose works by Charles Baxter, Mary Gaitskill, Jamaica Kincaid, Joan Silber, Richad Wright and poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, Terrance Hayes, Frank O’Hara, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Kevin Young and others will acquaint students with a basic repertoire of interpretive operations and language moves necessary to the reading and writing of modern texts. The class will read short stories, poems and a memoir, which will be the basis for students’ own writing. The format of the class will be a combination of lecture and discussion. English department learning outcomes: Successful students in this course will be able to: (1) Compose original work of creative writing. (2) Critique the work of peers in workshop and in writing. (3) Revise and edit early drafts in response to criticism. Requirements: attendance, preparedness, participation, ten weekly assignments (one page) and a final manuscript (15 pages minimum).
3000 level
ENG 3010: (IC) Intermediate Writing
All sections
Building on students' diverse skills, ENG 3010 prepares students for reading, research and writing in the disciplines and professions, particularly for writing intensive courses in the majors. To do so, it asks students to consider how research and writing are fundamentally shaped by the disciplinary and professional communities using them. Students analyze the kinds of texts, evidence and writing conventions used in their own disciplinary or professional communities and consider how these items differ across communities. Thus students achieve key composition objectives: (1) learn how the goals and expectations of specific communities shape texts and their functions; (2) learn how writing constructs knowledge in the disciplines and professions and (3) develop a sustained research project that analyzes or undertakes writing in a discipline or profession.
ENG 3020: (IC) Writing and Community
All sections
ENG 3020 satisfies the intermediate composition (IC) requirement. It combines advanced research writing techniques with community-based activities with local community organizations. In addition to coursework, the course requires community-based work outside of normal class time distributed across the semester. Satisfies the honors college service-learning requirement.
ENG 3050: (IC) Technical Communication I: Reports
Joe Torok
Students in this in-person course learn the essentials of technical communication genres (application materials, instructions, multi-part research reports) with an attention to document design and accessibility, usability testing, information design, ethics, cultural analysis and rhetorical analysis including audiences, exigencies and contexts.
ENG 3100 - Introduction to Literary Studies
Barrett Watten
“The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it,” wrote a famous cultural critic. In this introductory class, we will seek to understand how the interpretation of a work of art (literary, visual, cinematic) is world-changing itself. To do so, we will focus on the intellectual tradition of Critical Theory as a project that addresses how “what we live” in the modern and global world intersects with our selected works of literature, pairing texts from multiple genres where reading can “go deep” to explore basic ideas of the Critical Theory tradition. Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Žižek, Judith Butler, Martin Jay, and Fred Moten, as representative critical thinkers, will provide a framework for the course. Literary and artistic works will range from the canonical to the highly experimental: a nineteenth-century novel or a novel of global migration; poetry from Whitman to the avant-garde; key films from Hitchcock to global noir. Each week we will explore a new pairing of interpretation and text; there will be online responses, a series of short papers, and open class discussion to bring together our texts and approaches.
ENG 3110: English Literature to 1700
Ken Jackson
Self-conscious? Wondering all the time how to read people and how they read you? Anxious about all that? Maybe exhausted? You should be. The whole course of Anglo-American culture has worked for a long time to make you this way. A fast and fun look at Brit lit from some of its earliest moments to the modern day should give you a better sense of how you got how you are: and how you can manage it better. Briefly, we spend a lot of time watching other people (and they spend time watching us), often imitating and shaping our manners and habits to suit the norm or what seems to be the top of the social pyramid (you will recall the agony of jr. high or high school). Who we "are" is often a performative version of our more "inner" selves and we perform or act to compete in society (this makes us all slightly nuts, disconnected from our inner being). We do that, I will try to show, because European aristocracy did that and our sharpest artists recorded it. We learned our manners from them. Along the way, I hope, too, to provide a decent introduction to British lit and major historical developments informing American life. But what I really want this course to do is help you live your life.
ENG 3210: (CL) Public Humanities (The Motown & Global Learning Community)
M. L. Liebler
This exciting course invites students to dive into civic literacy through the lens of public humanities, showcasing various humanities disciplines like art, music, poetry, fiction, essays and film. In the first part of our journey, students will discover how short pieces from a selected humanities field beautifully illustrate essential concepts connected to civic life in the United States, including democracy, civic participation, civic conflict and cooperation and the history of political institutions. Moving into the second part of the semester, we will examine a case study focusing on citizenship and marginalization in civic life, highlighting how works from different humanities areas connect to our modern understanding of these themes. Finally, in the last section of the course, students will become practitioners of public humanities through an engaging and fun community learning experience, where they'll actively contribute to civic discussions. This class will feature many surprise guest speakers, artists and a few local field trips to experience Public Humanities firsthand. Students in this course will receive a preference to participate (if desired) in our annual Spring Break Study Abroad in England. The U.K. Study Abroad trip is optional and not required to enroll in this class.
ENG 3250: Professional Editing
Ruth Boeder
ENG 3250 serves as a substantive introduction to technical and professional editing practices used in the workplace. The course provides an overview of copy editing and comprehensive editing practices while also engaging with emerging concerns related to ethics and globalized practices. Major projects, including a client project, are designed to help students prepare themselves to provide professional editing services. Even for those who will not be employed solely as editors, experience with editing work can be very valuable.
ENG 3820: The Craft of Prose
Donovan Hohn
In this course, through reading and practice, students will gain increasing mastery of the essential techniques of literary prose, both fiction and nonfiction. Each week we will turn our attention to a different element of craft—imagery, scene-building, dialogue, narrative distance, setting, characterization, plot, point-of-view, narrative time, nonfiction forms, subtext. We will read, respond to and otherwise learn from an aesthetically eclectic selection of stories and essays, most but not all of them published in the last several decades. For guidance, we will also read a pair of craft books, Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext and Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story. Weekly creative writing exercises will help build skills. Twice, students will revise one of their exercises into something approaching a final draft. Twice, they will write short analytical essays about one of our readings in which they examine closely one element of craft. Twice, I will administer a quiz in which I will ask students to apply the concepts we’ve been studying to passages of fiction and nonfiction. Using the workshop method, we will practice responding to one another’s efforts with editorial rigor, precision and sympathy. By the end of the semester each student in the course will have written between 15 and 30 pages of original work. Prerequisites: English 2800: Foundations of Creative Writing or an equivalent introductory creative writing course taken at another accredited college or university.
4000 level
ENG 4850: Undergraduate Research Colloquium
Hilary Fox
This semester, students in ENG 4850 will use the general concept of monsters and monstrosities as a focus through which to explore texts and materials from time periods and cultural contexts of particular interest to them within the realm of English literature and cultural studies. We will look at a variety of primary and secondary sources to acquire an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts that shaped European ideas of humanity and monstrosity, "self" and "other", "center" and "margin." Written work will introduce students to the practice of close reading, assessing secondary sources, using library databases and resources and developing arguments from textual evidence.
5000 level
ENG 5070: Topics in Film and Media: This Class is Haunted: the Gothic, Horror and Haunting across Media
Chera Kee
Exploring the role of haunting in Gothic and horror, this course sets out to consider haunting from several different perspectives: haunting in folklore, haunted people, haunted houses, haunted histories, haunted technologies, even the soundscapes of haunting. We will ask how haunting is manifest in gothic and horror texts, as well as in real life and how haunting shapes our perceptions of spaces and other peoples. Throughout the course, students will engage in creative-critical research, completing both traditional and creative projects during the semester. Using locations in metro Detroit as test subjects, for our final projects, we will interrogate how place and space inform haunting and in particular, how we might imagine Detroit as a gothic/haunted space. This is a hybrid course, with some meetings in person and some conducted synchronously online. Meets with ENG 7054.
ENG/LIN/PSY 5360: Child Language Acquisition
Natalia Rakhlin
Despite its complexity and abstractness, young children acquire language without conscious effort or explicit training in a span of a few years. This amazing feat is unique to humans and is unmatched by any other species or artificial intelligence. The course will present a comprehensive introduction to the study of child language acquisition. We will discuss some of the most important issues in this field. We will talk about what children accomplish linguistically at various ages and discuss competing theoretical approaches to explaining how children acquire linguistic knowledge in different domains. We will focus on the acquisition of the sound inventory, word meanings and sentence structure. We will look at some of the methods used to collect and analyze child language data. Students will have an opportunity to learn about methods for analyzing child language and to apply them in hands-on exercises.
ENG 5530: Topics in Poetry: Language Writing and Beyond
Barrett Watten
The course will provide a unique opportunity to encounter, question, and comprehend one of the significant literary movements of the past fifty years: Language writing. Originating in San Francisco and New York in the 1970s, Language writing overturned conventional assumptions about poetry as a vehicle for lyric expression, rethinking the politics of poetry from the perspective of the materials of language. Key figures of the movement, including your instructor, have continued to be highly productive in the decades after 2000; we will chart the movement in its origins, development, and influence or reaction as it continues. We will not ignore the many controversies that attended Language writing, nor its claims to a politics, nor its development of a poetics. We will position the movement in relation to the “turn to language” in linguistics and philosophy (Saussure, Jakobson, and Lakoff; Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida), as well as artistic movements that influenced Language writing (from Dada and Futurism to John Cage and Conceptual art), and Language writing’s influence on later avant-gardes (Flarf, Conceptual Writing) and poets of color. There will two short papers and a final paper; online responses and class discussion; and an opportunity for a creative portfolio and/or the possibility of writing your own poetics.
ENG 5695: Publishing Practicum
Joe Torok
Students in this hybrid course form an editorial team to review, select, edit and publish essays for volume three of the Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research. Topics covered in this class include editorial policies and practices, digital and print publishing, graphic design, intellectual property, communication with authors, event marketing/promotion and other topics as determined by student interest.
ENG 5700: Introduction to Linguistic Theory
Ljiljana Progovac
This course is an introduction to the formal, scientific study of human language, the purpose of which is to account for our unconscious knowledge of language rules. It is concerned with three primary linguistic levels of structure: the level of sounds (phonetics and phonology), the level of words (morphology) and the level of phrases and sentences (syntax). Furthermore, we will examine how meaning is computed at these different levels (semantics), incorporating some basic notions of logic and philosophy. In addition, we will introduce the main approaches to language acquisition by children, incorporating some basic developmental milestones, intersecting with those studied in psychology. Classes will consist of lectures, discussions and problem-solving sessions involving a wide sample of languages, cutting across a variety of cultures. This class is required of all linguistics M.A. students and linguistics graduate certificate students and can also be taken by linguistics majors and minors instead of LIN 2720.
ENG 5740/LIN 5300: Syntax
Ljiljana Progovac
The course examines the structure of phrases and sentences using the framework of one of the most recent approaches to syntax, the Minimalist Program. The goal of the theory is not only to discover various subconscious principles and rules that make up the grammar of all human languages but also to express these rules in the most economical terms possible. Instead of just observing the grammatical phenomena on the surface, this approach tries to understand the inner workings of language, at a deeper, more abstract level. Classes will consist of lectures, discussions and problem-solving sessions involving English and other languages. This class is required of all linguistics majors, minors and M.A. students.
ENG/LIN 5770: Sociolinguistics
Walter Edwards
The main concern of sociolinguistics is the correlation of language use with social and cultural constructions including social class, social networks, ethnicity and gender. This course is principally about these correlations. Students will study how sociolinguists measure and codify language variation and discover, analyze and report patterns of linguistic correlations with social variables. These systematic correlations provide sociolinguistic explanations that give insights into the way language behavior helps to define cultures. Sociolinguistics is also concerned with how varieties of the "same" language differ from region to region and from country to country; and with how new languages, including pidgins and creoles, are created because of contact between groups speaking mutually unintelligible languages. The internet provides people across the globe with tools and programs to communicate in many ways that resemble speech and writing, thus making it a domain for sociolinguistic inquiry. Accordingly, the course will also briefly discuss the languages of the internet. Specifically, it will examine the linguistic characteristics of such internet outputs as blogs, texts, email and communications on social networking platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram and Tik Tok. In addition to being a valuable course for linguistics and English majors, the course is an excellent elective for students studying sociology, anthropology, political science, African American studies and other humanities subjects.
ENG 5795: Topics in Rhetoric and Writing: The Rhetoric of Incivility
Ryan Flaherty
What has emboldened the incivility that has become commonplace in our speech and language practices? Are we in a new era where personal attacks, willful deception and false equivalency (to name just a few) are tolerated and even expected in our rhetoric and discourse? This course will explore the status of uncivil discourse in many facets of our culture. We will look at incivility as a trend, comparing current incivility in speech and rhetoric to other eras of high social tension. Students will do historical research to report on rhetorical/ discursive incivility in earlier time periods. Students will define and analyze acts of rhetorical/ discursive incivility in popular modes of discourse (social media, legacy media, music, film, etc.). Students will produce a text that conveys an important message about rhetorical/ discursive incivility to an audience of their choosing. The class will be a combination of discussion and writing workshop. Students will read perspectives on civil discourse from Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, Sharon Crowley, Carl Rogers and explore the impact of media figures ranging from Mr. Rogers to... less neighborly popular voices.
ENG 5860: Topics in Creative Writing: Writing Abundance: Creative Practices in Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction
Caroline Maun
Abundance surrounds us—in nature, in language, in history, in memory. This course explores how contemporary writers engage with abundance as a creative and ethical force, shaping their work through themes of generosity, reciprocity, resilience and wonder. Anchored by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry, we will read and write across poetry, nonfiction and fiction, considering how abundance manifests in different forms: the natural world’s gifts (Robin Wall Kimmerer, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ross Gay, Ada Limón), the legacies of language and history (Natasha Trethewey, Tracy K. Smith, Joy Harjo) and the expansive possibilities of storytelling (George Saunders, Lauren Groff and Roxane Gay). Through discussion, generative writing exercises, journaling and workshops, students will develop their own creative work in response to these texts, experimenting with craft techniques that reflect the many ways abundance operates in literature and creative practice. How do we write about what sustains us? How do we recognize abundance in overlooked places? How can an awareness of reciprocity shape our creative practice? By the end of the semester, students will have built a portfolio of original writing that engages deeply with these questions, exploring the richness of the world through their own imaginative and critical lenses.
ENG 5992/4991: Senior Seminar/Honors Seminar: Short Fiction in Global Contexts
renée hoogland
This course focuses on what is perhaps the most elusive form of literary genre, the short story. Traditionally, Anglo-American literary criticism has favored the longer form of the novel as the most important, if not prestigious form of prose fiction. Yet, as the short-story Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges outside this context has claimed, "unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential." Taking up the challenge of Borges’ statement, we will study a range of short fiction written in English but largely originating outside dominant English-speaking countries, including, among others, the African continent, the Caribbean, Australia, India and South America. Through careful close readings of a variety of short fictional texts and several theoretical and critical essays, we will explore the question of the forms and functions, the historicity and the local contexts of production and reception of the genre, as well as questions of identity as they emerge in the selected texts and thus try to get to the "essentiality" of short fiction in a global world. Assignments will include weekly passage discussions, monthly response papers and a take-home exam.
6000 level
ENG/LIN 6720: Topics in Language: Pragmatics
Natalia Rakhlin
Did you ever need to figure out "what someone means" even though you understood every word they said? This issue arises because there is often a gap between "what is said" and "what is meant." In other words, we often communicate messages that extend beyond the directly stated, literal (truth-conditional) meaning of sentences and must be inferred using context. What counts as context is not only linguistic. It also may include the setting, speaker's goals, speaker's background knowledge of the physical and social world and their assumptions about the extent their knowledge is shared by the listeners. Pragmatics is the sub-field of linguistics that deals with the aspects of meaning that arise from such contextual use of language. The course will cover the core topics in pragmatics, including implicature, presupposition, speech acts, deixis and reference. We will also discuss politeness and impoliteness theory and critical discourse analysis. The students will have an opportunity to collect and analyze real-world examples of messages that arise pragmatically.
English 6800: Advanced Creative Writing
Natalie Bakopoulos
English 6800 is a graduate-level creative writing workshop dedicated to the creation of and discussion of new works-in-progress. In addition to having your creative work discussed by the class, you'll also be asked to reflect on your own work: to examine not only what you have produced, but the thinking, inspiration and influence behind it. Many of you have been working on projects already and this class is dedicated to adding something new to your body of work: new stories, new essays, a new sequence of poems, etc. Regular, consistent attendance and engagement are mandatory. We will begin discussing student work in the second week of the semester. Though the primary texts for the course will be the works of your peers, I will also assign other supplementary published work: essays, stories, poems, novel excerpts and craft essays. Though this is a traditional, face-to-face class, we may have the occasional asynchronous week.
7000 level
ENG 7007: Composition Theory
Adrienne Jankens
Students in this course will read foundational composition theory and then explore how composition theory is applied in community writing and first-year writing contexts as well as in studies that explore reflective writing. Students will host discussion activities, participate in community-engaged learning and compose short essays synthesizing their developing knowledge of composition theory, among other writing tasks.
ENG 7043: Twentieth-Century American Literature/Culture
Sarika Chandra
This course offers a rigorous study of the critical scholarship in American studies. We will analyze theoretical frameworks that situate the United States in relationship to broader global systemic processes of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will take up crucial contemporary questions through an interdisciplinary framework, including those of race, gender, class, capitalism, the environment, health, migration and borders. The course readings will help theorize the interconnections between various concepts. Readings may include texts by Timothy Mitchell, Ashley Dawson, Joseph Nevins, Rachel Buff, David Harvey, Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Natalia Molina and Fredric Jameson. This is a discussion-based course. Students will have the opportunity to complete written projects commensurate with each student's own intellectual interest. This is a discussion-based course; therefore, attendance is required.
ENG 7054: Topics in Film and Media Studies: This Class is Haunted: the Gothic, Horror and Haunting across Media
Chera Kee
Exploring the role of haunting in Gothic and horror, this course sets out to consider haunting from several different perspectives: haunting in folklore, haunted people, haunted houses, haunted histories, haunted technologies and even the soundscapes of haunting. We will ask how haunting is manifest in gothic and horror texts, as well as in real life and how haunting shapes our perceptions of spaces and other peoples. Throughout the course, students will engage in creative-critical research, completing both traditional and creative projects during the semester. Using locations in metro Detroit as test subjects, for our final projects, we will interrogate how place and space inform haunting and in particular, how we might imagine Detroit as a gothic/haunted space. This is a hybrid course, with some meetings in person and some conducted synchronously online. This course meets with ENG 5070.
ENG/LIN 7710: Advanced Studies in Linguistic Structure: Tone
Irina Monich
This course explores tone and tonal phenomena across the world’s languages. Tone plays a crucial role in many phonological systems, affecting word meaning, morphology, and syntax in various ways. We will survey diverse tonal systems, from simple two-tone contrasts to intricate multi-tiered tonal structures, while evaluating different theoretical approaches on these phenomena. Key topics include the distinction between tone and intonation, tonal processes such as sandhi and downstep, and the interaction of tone with morphosyntactic structure.
ENG 7720: Advanced Studies in Language Use: Language Variation and Change
Walter Edwards
The course will review various cases of stable variation or variation leading to change in English dialects and other languages and consider the theoretical and descriptive sociolinguistic issues involved. We will examine examples of language variation in which the independent variables are respectively, age, social class, sex, race, ethnicity, social networks and communities of practice. We will study how to analyze speech data within the quantitative paradigm and review studies that employ socio-phonetics. We will also consider and evaluate the insights gleaned from using real-time versus apparent time studies and in the process discuss the concept of age grading. We will discuss such recent American language changes as the Northern Cities Chain Shift and the low back vowel merger and discuss the presence or absence of these vowel rotations in the speech of Detroit residents. We will also focus attention on the language changes that led to the creation of African American English and Caribbean English creoles. The discussions and evaluations in the course will continuously address the following questions: what general linguistic principles are discerned in linguistic variation and change? What social and demographic factors interact with language behavior in linguistic variation and change?
ENG 7840: Technical and Professional Comm. Seminar
Olagbreno Oladipo
The oldest trick in the technical and professional communication book may not work for today's audiences. We need new ways of communicating in technical and professional contexts. In this class, we will examine theories and practices of technical and professional communication in a changing world. Classroom activities will focus on putting theories into practice.