Undergraduate Courses - Fall 2025
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 – Section 1 (English Composition)
Christina Armistead
Cultural Exchanges
This is a Service-Learning Course. In this section of ENGL 2000, students will participate in a service-learning partnership that asks them to engage one-on-one with an international student. Through one-hour meetings each week, students will help their partner improve his/her spoken English while sharpening their ability to engage with and understand cultural perspectives beyond their own. Students will research and compose essays about their partner’s home country and culture.
ENGL 2000 - Section 3 (English Composition)
Ann Martin
Writing About Healthcare
This is a service-learning course. This section of English 2000 focuses on health care, specifically end-of-life care. It includes a service-learning component. Students will volunteer with The Hospice of Baton Rouge as part of coursework; writing projects will build on their experiences and insights during the semester. Assignments will explore the perspectives of researchers, practitioners, patients, caregivers, and citizens. APA formatting and style are emphasized.
ENGL 2000 - Sections 6, 33, and 37 (English Composition)
Lisa Nohner
The Language of Horror
This class is 100% Online. This class will focus on rhetoric and argument with special attention to the horror genre as a rhetorical medium. Students will evaluate horror imagery, horror scholarship and horror films to both locate and craft arguments in writing.
ENGL 2000 - Sections 9, 28, and 29 (English Composition)
Brian Hopper
Louisiana Legends and Lore
This course will use Louisiana's unique cultural heritage as a framework for practicing academic research and writing techniques.
ENGL 2000 - Sections 11 and 14 (English Composition)
Sharon Andrews
Writing for Community Action and Advocacy
This is a Service-Learning Course. This course will focus on the use of language, especially written language, as a tool for empowerment within the community. Students will be challenged to think about their role in the community and the use of writing to inspire and affect change. Students will be asked to do field research, analyze materials; research and document sources responsibly; present professional written, verbal, and visual reports; and work collaboratively.
ENGL 2000 - 27, 31, and 36 (English Composition)
Sarah Rosser
I Want to Believe: Examining the Paranormal
This class examines topics like Bigfoot, UAPs, and supernatural beings to better understand how argument works. Students will visit Hill Memorial Library’s paranormal collection as they prepare their own researched argument. Skeptics welcome!
ENGL 2000 - Sections 32, 39, and 40 (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 2025 - Section 10 (Fiction)
Jennifer Glassford
Gods, Heroes, and Monsters
In this course, we will study Greek mythology a collection of myths and stories belonging to ancient Greece, often involving gods, goddesses, heroes, and mythical creatures. Our journey will include a study of the Greek epics "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" by Homer. These tales were used to explain natural phenomena, cultural traditions, and the origins of the world.
ENGL 2027- Section 4 (Poetry)
Henry Goldkamp
Visual Rhetoric
Visual Rhetoric will investigate the manner in which images in the outside world can shape our thoughts of our inner worlds of selfhood and collective human experience. Covering a wide range of visual mediums, we will explore the fluid definition of propaganda and consider the ways it works in our own lives.
ENGL 2123 - Sections 1 thru 6 (Studies in Literary Traditions and Themes)
Brannon Costello
Comics and Graphic Novels
In recent years, comics—especially “graphic novels”—have come to be taken seriously as a form of literature: English professors frequently offer courses on comics, high-profile literary and cultural magazines regularly review and discuss comics, major art galleries and museums mount popular exhibitions of comics art, and cartoonists often find themselves the subjects of documentary films and enthusiastic journalistic profiles. This course will zoom in on some of the major works responsible for this elevated reputation and step back to consider the broader historical, cultural, and aesthetic discourses from which these works emerge. We’ll also ask what is at stake for our understanding of the concept of literature, and for our understanding of comics, in treating comics as literature, and we'll see how tracing the process by which comics became “literature” helps us understand just what that term means. No previous experience reading comics is required or expected.
ENGL 2123 - Section 8 (Studies in Literary Traditions and Themes)
Alison Grifa
The Natural and the Supernatural
This course encompasses a large swath of world literature from our earliest civilizations to our current days. Through fiction, nonfiction, poetry, film, and drama, characters will captivate us and leave us pondering the porous boundary between what’s real and unreal, possible and impossible. We will witness ordinary people capable of extraordinary feats as human bodies are tested with extreme acts of endurance, unwavering commitments to faith and service, and unspeakable acts of horror. Authors may include: Ben Jelloun, Márquez, Condé, Fitzgerald, Shyamalan, the Brothers Grimm, and more.
ENGL 2123 - Section 11 (Studies in Literary Traditions and Themes)
Amber Jurgensen
Poison in Literature
In this course, we will discuss major literary texts that feature the use of poison, whether plants in a garden or a substance used by a chemical criminal. Our survey will cover the common themes across these stories and their various genres, asking the question: "How is poison being used throughout these texts, and what is it really telling us?" We will use our discussions and writing responses to help determine how the perception of poison has changed over time.
ENGL 2201- Section 1 (Introduction to World Literary Traditions)
Salma Helal
Selected Tales from Eastern and Western Traditions
This course offers to explore the art of storytelling through a selection of stories pertaining to eastern and western traditions. Students will come to see the power of storytelling in foregrounding teachings of ethical and philosophical dimensions across cultures. They will come to see tales as a space for meaning to grow and metamorphose into a symbolic system of reference. The overarching theme of journey in the selection of stories can be recognized through such subthemes as migration/pilgrimage, exile, and love. Some of the readings include allegorical tales by Plato, Ibn al-Muqaffa, Boccaccio, Suhrawardi.
ENGL 2202 - Section 1 (Introduction to Modern World Literature)
Alexander Schmid
Modernism is sometimes described as an art movement which eschews classical forms and techniques. But what does it mean for a text to be modern? Need it have been recently written, focus on certain themes, or be expressed in a certain genre? A masterpiece is defined by Harvard professor David Damrosch as a work of near classical value which is itself a literary analogy of a liberal democracy, but what does it really mean for a text to be a masterpiece? Does this term suggest a rank beyond the normal measure? Does it suggest a workmanship not witnessed in the average piece of art? Can a masterpiece also be a classic and piece of world literature? Or does it suggest something as banal as mere popularity? Join me on an adventure from the 17th century through the 20th century to inquire into these questions.
ENGL 2202 - Section 2 (Introduction to Modern World Literature)
Gabrielle Bolgna Mesen
The Atomic Age: World Lit before and after Los Alamos
ENGL 2231 - Section 2 (Reading Film)
June Pulliam
The International Horror Film
In the International Horror Film, we will consider horror films created outside of the United States and their influence more broadly on the horror film genre.
ENGL 2231 - Section 3 (Reading Film)
Lisa Nohner
Gender and Horror
This course is 100% Online. This course will focus on the study of horror films through a gendered lens. Students will survey a range of films and their literary bases, paying special attention to questions of representation.
ENGL 2231 - Section 5 (Reading Film)
Geoff Trumbo
Warfare and Political Upheaval in Documentary Film
We will explore how warfare and political movements--governmental, revolutionary, grass roots, to name a few--are depicted and narrated in an international selection of documentary films.
ENGL 2300 - Section 1 (Interpreting Discourse)
Tracy LeBlanc
Discourse in Human Interaction
Study of and writing about discourse forms (fiction, popular and critical texts, technical and legal documents) using linguistic, rhetorical, and cultural analysis. Student work includes major writing and research in addition to oral multimedia presentations throughout the semester.
ENGL 2593 - Section 2 (Gender and Literature)
Saiward Hromadka
Representations of Women in Literature
ENGL 2716 - Section 1 (Language Diversity, Society, and Power)
Irina Shport
We examine the trends in language landscapes, language ideologies, and language use across nations and societies.
ENGL 3006 - Section 1 (Genres of Creative Writing)
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. A minimal ability to play an instrument and sing is necessary to enroll in this course. Permission of instructor required.
ENGL 3006 - Section 2 (Genres of Creative Writing)
Kyler Carter
Introduction to Audio Drama
ENGL 3220 - Section 1 (Major Themes in Literature)
Chris Rovee
Nostalgia and Literature
How does literature represent nostalgia--and what is nostalgic about literary experience? Or about literature itself? In this class we'll read a series of works from across literary history comprising a history of nostalgia, and that evoke nostalgia in readers.
ENGL 3223 - Section 1 (Adolescent Literature)
Paige Watts
Adolescent Experiences across Genres
Young-adult novels have the unique ability to go beyond traditional boundaries of genre and readership. Although these books are targeted to adolescent readers, these stories reach people in all stages of life. These books are often categorized as young-adult literature but adhere to and experiment with various genres of writing. In this course, we will examine a variety of current YA novels to examine how these texts present ideas about the teenage experience and 'coming of age' that transcends the traditions of genre.
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 (Readings in Diverse Perspectives)
Rick Godden
Disability and Literature
This course will introduce you to Disability Studies and to the study of disability in literature. We will consider varied representations of disability, including physical, cognitive, and sensory impairments. Often viewed merely as moral symbols or instances of sentimentality and pathos, we will explore how figures of disability challenge and interrogate such familiar concepts as normal or human. What do these terms mean? Who decides?
ENGL 3716 - Section 1 (Dialects of English)
Irina Shport
Historical roots of American English dialects, speaker identities and communities facing inevitable language variation and change.
ENGL 4023 - Section 1 (Studies in Life Writing)
Joseph Kronick
Autobiography and the Novel
Roland Barthes said autobiography is "a novel that dares not speak its name." This course focuses on twentieth-century novelists who also wrote significant autobiographies. Each autobiography will be paired with either an autobiographical novel or a novel in the form of an autobiography by the same author. Readings include Virginia Woolf's "Moments of Being" and "To the Lighthouse," Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" and "Speak, Memory," Richard Wright's "Native Son" and "Black Boy," Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and "Dust Tracks on a Road," and Philip Roth's "It is My Life as a Man" and "The Facts."
ENGL 4030 - Section 1 (Studies in the Middle Ages)
Rick Godden
Medieval Romance
Love, betrayal, war, giants, fairy queens, Christmas games, the search for the magical and for the divine. These are only some of the elements that make up the rich and varied tapestry of the genre of medieval romance. Medieval romance often follows the adventures of a hero who faces several challenges in an outlandish or threatening landscape, only to be later re-integrated into the social order. Arthur and his companions are recurring protagonists in these tales, but we will also encounter historical Kings, classical heroes, and the occasional werewolf. Most readings will be in translation.
ENGL 4040 - Section 1 (Studies in the Age of Elizabeth)
David Nee
Arguing Both Sides in Elizabethan Drama
This course will look at Elizabethan writers who used drama and storytelling to stage debates about moral, social, and religious issues. Writers will include Shakespeare and works will include Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice. Attention will also be paid to how staging debates continues to inform contemporary literature and culture.
ENGL 4060 - Section 1 (Studies in the Romantic Movement)
Chris Rovee
Dorothy and William Wordsworth
The brother-sister writing duo, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, changed the course of literary history with their groundbreaking writings about the environment, modernity, and everyday life. In this class we'll get to know their work in depth, studying it in the context of their lives and their historical circumstances.
ENGL 4071 - Section 1 (Studies in American Literature Since 1865)
Alexandra Meany
Contested Geographies: Space and Place in U. S. Multi-Ethnic Literature
This course examines how space and place are historically produced instruments of power. Through novels and other cultural objects, we will examine how seemingly stable geographies of the home, workplace, city, and nation are linked with changing notions of social difference such as race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and more.
ENGL 4674 - Section 1 (Studies in African-American Literature)
Casey Patterson
Black Feminist Novels
During the late 1960s, movements for Black Power and Women's Liberation raised consciousness around the need for Black and feminist art. In the years that followed, Black feminist writers began responding to their erasure from the partnered literary movements which were dominated by Black men and white women. This course will focus on the robust tradition of Black feminist novel-writing that blossomed during this time. Together we will ask: What differentiates these novels from other writings produced in the Black feminist literary movement? How did this literary form help writers and readers conceptualize Black feminism? How does Black feminism change how we think about novels?