Undergraduate Course Offerings

Undergraduate Course Offerings

Undergraduate Courses - Fall 2024

This list includes courses with a special emphasis. Go to the online LSU catalog for general course descriptions not listed here. Refer to the online Schedule Booklet for course times, classrooms, and updates.


ENGL 2000 – Sections 4, 7, and 25 (English Composition)
Trey Strecker
Writing About Film

Students in this course will study what constitutes successful film writing through a rhetorical focus on argument. Our reading, writing, and discussion will focus on issues of authorship, genre, representation, and narrative. Students will learn basic film concepts, techniques, and terminology in an effort to think critically about film and its role in our lives. Students will compose in multiple modes to improve their writing skills while gaining a more complex understanding of audience, form, and the contexts that inform effective argument.


ENGL 2000 - Sections 2, 17, and 24 (English Composition)
Nolde Alexius
Our Built Environment

Today's college students are essential to building environments that are just, accessible, functional, and beautiful. Societal problems are the result of human-made environments, both physical and conceptual. Academic disciplines hold the potential to address these problems. Students in English 2000 - Our Built Environment - will consider how societal problems such as racism, gender inequality, environmental pollution, health risks, may be addressed with interdisciplinary solutions. From there they will choose an area of research that interests them and explore it. 


ENGL 2000 - Section 27, 28, and 29 (English Composition)
Lisa Nohner
Language of Horror

100% of Instruction is delivered via the Web. Do you like scary movies? We will explore America's longest standing love affair: the horror genre. Students will study an array of both classic and contemporary horror texts, identifying and analyzing their use of rhetorical strategies and appeals. Through studying arguments found within horror advertisements, literature, film, and critical theory, students will develop a critical lens they can apply to their own analytical discussions and arguments. While students can expect to learn a great deal about the horror genre, this course is primarily concerned with the study of rhetoric, which is essentially the study of how we argue and what makes an argument effective. Students will gain effective reading, writing, research, and analysis strategies for the college environment. Students will practice various kinds of analytical and persuasive writing, from poster analysis and television reviews to a final argumentative essay about a horror film.


ENGL 2000 - Section 33 (English Composition)
Ann Martin
Writing and Healthcare

Includes a Service-Learning Component. This service-learning course focuses on health care. Students will work with The Hospice of Baton Rouge, developing writing projects in conjunction with their volunteer experience. Assignments will explore the perspectives of researchers, practitioners, patients, caregivers, and citizens. APA formatting and style are emphasized.


ENGL 2025 - Section 1 (Fiction)
Nolde Alexius
LSU Fiction

Communication-Intensive Learning. English 2025 examines a 60-year span of fiction writers who were students, editors, and faculty at Louisiana State University starting with 3-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Penn Warren. We will read these writers’ fiction in its various forms: short stories, novels, and novellas. Students will learn to think critically about the fiction they read and write one original essay of literary analysis.


ENGL 2123 - Sections 1 through 5 (Literary Traditions & Themes)
Chris Rovee
Coming of Age in Jane Austen's Novels

Jane Austen returns again and again in her novels to young adulthood, exploring with unprecedented precision the insecurities, uncertainties, and attachments that define the phase that we associate with 'coming of age.' In this class we will read Austen's novels in their historical context while paying special attention to the essential thread that ties all of them together: their relentless fascination with the exhilarating and often painful process of growing up.


ENGL 2123 - Section 8 (Literary Traditions & Themes)
Brodrick Hampton
Heroes in Classic and Modern Media

A survey of “the hero” throughout the history of literature and media—from Perseus to Superman to HALO’s Master Chief.  Topics include classic and modern definitions of the hero, the heroic journey, common themes across stories and genres, and the psychological, social, and moral context surrounding our depictions of heroes…and how we respond to those depictions!


ENGL 2123 - Section 9 (Literary Traditions & Themes)
Alison Grifa
Food, Hunger, and Dominion

We are what we eat! Through fiction, poetry, film, and drama, this course examines how our food traditions have influenced our communities, cultures, and civilizations around the world from ancient Greece to the present.  Considering recipes of delight and disaster, we’ll discuss food in the context of celebration, security, resistance, and the macabre. How do these texts relate to us even though our experiences might seem far removed from places like Ireland, Vietnam, Nigeria, and the post-apocalyptic U.S.? What are our common folklores, fears, and dysfunctions? Authors may include: Swift, the Brothers Grimm, Lahiri, Truong, Esquivel, McCann, and others.


ENGL 2148 - Section 1 (Shakespeare)
Jennifer Glassford
Swiftian Shakespeare

Despite being born centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Taylor Swift share the intrinsic ability to unearth the human condition. This semester, we will focus our study on the structure and language that creates complex characterization and complex narratives in Shakespeare.  We will examine the connections between the most famous playwright in history and the self-proclaimed, “mastermind” lyricist, Taylor Swift.


ENGL 2202 - Section 1 (Introduction to Modern World Literature)
Alexandre Schmid

This course will explore modernist masterpieces from the 17th century through the 20th.


ENGL 2231 - Section 2 (Reading Film)
Julie Roundtree
Horror and the Oppressed

In this class, we will view a selection of horror films from different points in history and analyze how oppressed individuals are depicted and treated. There will be an emphasis placed on analyzing the depictions and treatment of women, people of color, and those who are differently-abled. The films will be viewed in class, discussions will follow, and students will write three-four essays over the course of the semester.


ENGL 2231 - Section 3 (Reading Film)
Lisa Nohner
Gender & Horror

100% of Instruction is delivered via the Web. This course will study depictions of masculinity in contemporary horror films. We will also identify and evaluate the gendered social desires, fears, crises, and anxieties at play in each text. We will look at how horror’s depictions of gender performance both represent and reconfigure notions of sexuality and gender, and the ways they reinforce or challenge social norms.


ENGL 2231 - Section 4 (Reading Film)
June Pulliam
The International Horror Film

In the International Horror Film, we will examine a variety of films that were not produced in the United States to become familiar with monsters from other parts of the world as well as what they reveal about the cultures that produced them. Most of these films are not in English, but they do have English subtitles.


ENGL 2231 - Section 5 (Reading Film)
Dylan White
The Horror Genre

This section of ENGL 2231 will focus on the horror genre. Throughout the course of the semester we will delve into the origins of horror cinema, investigate the diverse subgenres of horror, examine cinematic techniques, study iconic directors, consider cultural and social context and address ethical considerations within the genre. 


ENGL 2673 - Section 1 (Literature and Ethnicity)
Denis Waswa

This course will focus on representations of ethnic literature (African and African American) at the intersection of topics like race, gender, ethnicity, and identity politics. While focusing on multiple genres and writers, the course will examine fundamental aspects of literary narrative, from aesthetics to structure, specifically focusing on representations of black identity and selfhood. While this is a literature course, we will acknowledge that ethnic storytelling encompasses and relies on multiple discourses. Hence, we will explore their social, cultural, and historical voices and discuss their styles and techniques. Although our discussions will be less than exhaustive, course projects will allow you to investigate exciting aspects of the texts in more detail.


ENGL 2716 - Section 1 (Language Diversity)
Irina Shport

AI-Engaged Humanities and Social Sciences Class. An exploration of sociolinguistic landscapes and language ideologies affecting language use by you and your speech communities.


ENGL 3006 - Section 1 (Creative Writing Genre)
Eric Schmitt
Songwriting

In this course, students will learn about the craft and art of songwriting. By analyzing songs from various genres and studying basic song elements, we’ll strive to understand how the songs we love work and then use that understanding to create, and to improve, our own writing. Students will write songs and participate in an inviting and creative workshop environment. Both beginners and experienced songwriters are welcome. It’s not required that students be able to read music; however, a minimal ability to play an instrument or sing will be helpful. 


ENGL 3035 - Section 1 (Readings in Pre-1800s Literature)
Rick Godden
Monsters and Marvels

The literature of the Middle Ages positively teems with monsters and marvels, with magic and the miraculous. In this course, we will use the confrontation between human and nonhuman, and between natural and supernatural, to survey diverse genres of medieval literature, including the epic, romance, travel narrative, dream vision, and drama. We will encounter carnivorous giants, rather mundane demons, chivalrous monsters, talking birds, pious werewolves, magical objects, and even the undead. In our journey through medieval literature, we will consider the monstrous and the marvelous as a site of contested identities and as an opportunity to interrogate cultural assumptions and anxieties. All readings will be in translation.


ENGL 3300 - Section 1 (Rhetoric: Texts and Historical Contexts)
Jonathan Osborne
Rhetoric of Public Memory

As a society, we create various artifacts to invoke a particular understanding of a place, person, or event. These markers of history serve as a touchstone for people in the future to remember the past according to a broadly agreed upon narrative about the past. In other words, these artifacts are rhetorical in nature – they attempt to persuade audiences on how to remember the past. In this course, we will investigate, analyze, and question various artifacts, such as museums and Civil War monuments, to understand their rhetorical influence on public memory in terms of politics, race, gender, and culture.


ENGL 3550 - Section 1 (Diverse Perspective)
Joseph Kronick
Literature of the Holocaust

This study of literature of the Holocaust will focus on the role of testimony, the effects of trauma, and, perhaps most importantly, the problem of representation.  We will read memoirs, fiction, essays, and poetry.


ENGL 4060 - Section 1 (Studies in the Romantic Movement)
Chris Rovee
Homesickness in Romantic Literature

What is the longing we call "homesickness" and how did this desire for a lost place enter into our secular literature around 1800? This course surveys the writing of British Romanticism with attention to this distinctive modern feeling.


ENGL 4121 - Section 1 (Studies in Literary History)
Lauren Coats
How to Judge a Book

How do we judge the value of a book?  In this class, we’ll read American novels and stories – from Poe to Stowe to recent bestsellers –  that have captured the reading public’s imagination, and read carefully to see what the stories tell us about how to evaluate them.  We’ll also spend some time not reading, exploring other methods for examining books for how they are valued such as judging books by their covers, investigating marginalia, and other archival adventures.


ENGL 4148 - Section 1 (Studies in Shakespeare)
William Demastes
Shakespeare Our Contemporary

Looking at major plays from a 21st-century point of view.


ENGL 4674 - Section 1 (Studies in African American Literature)
Angeletta Gourdine
Contemporary African American Autobiography

African Americans are defining "blackness" and troubling "American" as identities through autobiography. From the spaces of hip hop to fashion, chefs, academics and tech, these voices challenge our notions of black personhood and citizenship.


ENGL 4680 - Section 1 (Studies in Post Colonial Literature & Culture)
Pallavi Rastogi
Novel Novels: New Fictions of Today

The novel has historically suggested newness or novelty through its very name. But the word "novel" to describe a piece of long-form fiction has become the default nomenclature for the genre when the novel was new, a novelty, only at its inception. So, what constitutes a genuinely new novel, a "novel novel," in other words, today? How are newness and novelty braided into contemporary fiction? Is it possible to write a "novel novel" in an age where literary fireworks, bold inventiveness, and the articulation of taboo topics are so widely prevalent?   In this class, we will read Global Anglophone "novel novels" published in the last two years (2022-2024) and written primarily by authors from South Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, and multi-ethnic Britain,  Centering our analysis on literary experimentation, thematic fearlessness, and emotional intensity, we will consider whether these "novel novels" live up to their name. Texts may include Sheehan Karunatilaka's "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida," Jonathan Escoffery's "If I Survive You," and Chetna Maroo's "Western Lane," amongst others.  The class is a discussion-style seminar where everyone is encouraged to participate actively. 


ENGL 4710 - Section 1 (Introduction to Linguistics)
Irina Shport

AI-Engaged Humanities and Social Sciences Class. Communication-Intensive Learning. An Introduction to the scientific study of language – the structure, meaning, and social functions – with some generative AI help to explore new areas.