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 2004 - Section 1 (Introduction to Writing Creative Nonfiction)
TBA
In this class, we’ll explore the wide range of creative nonfiction, from memoir and biography, to travel writing and cultural criticism. You’ll get to tell your own stories, in your own way. From ranting about your favorite music to reminiscing about your most powerful memories, we’ll explore how you can elevate talking about yourself and your interests into artful literature.
ENGL 2005 - Section 1 (Introduction to Writing Short Stories)
Xavier Hawkins
This discussion-driven course focuses on the craft of narrative and is built around exposure. We break down and explore a diverse selection of readings to identify the basic structure of storytelling. We use music spanning across a wide range of genres to build connections. Then, by observing, discussing, and thus understanding the nuances of others' work, we craft a personalized writing process. The goal of the course is to become a more well-rounded and confident writer via reading and by viewing writing as a positive, collaborative, and dare I say, fun endeavor.
ENGL 2005 - Section 2 (Introduction to Writing Short Stories)
Brett Hymel
This workshop-model course focuses on the basics of short story construction. Students will participate in discussions, exercises, and lectures to understand the rudimentary components of storytelling. Students are expected to write stories, provide feedback on the work of their peers, and manage a modest reading load. Throughout the semester, we will look at the work of writers like George Saunders, Okga Tokarczuk, and...yourself!
ENGL 2007 - Section 2 (Introduction to Writing Poetry)
Jesse Delong
Poetry is 17th Century Japan colliding with Nicholson Drive. Poetry is a 19th Century Victorian novel being transformed into the paintings and erasures of a contemporary British poet. Poetry is the sonnet and the haiku, yes, but it is also finding photographs and scraps of journals in abandoned trailer parks in Nevada. For this workshop, we will explore not only what poetry is, but what poetry can be—for both ourselves and the community. We will accomplish this by both reading and writing poems as well as by engaging in discussions about our own work and the work of published authors.
ENGL 2007 - Section 2 (Introduction to Writing Poetry)
Sarah Brockhaus
In this generative poetry workshop, where your work and voice are valued, you will be introduced to trends in contemporary poetry by reading work from a wide range of successful poets. These readings will help you develop your own writing, editing and reading practice and your personal poetic style. We will invent poems with activities focused on sound, rhythm, form, diction, tension, emotion and other more experimental craft elements. You will also learn how to give meaningful feedback and prepare your best work for publication!
ENGL 2009 - Section 1 (Introduction to Writing Screenplays)
Jason Buch
Want to write a movie? TV Pilot? Learn the form and structure of Screenwriting to bring your ideas to life, while reading, watching, and discussing current films and television programs. Workshop your scripts to get friendly and helpful feedback from your fellow students. You will write your own short script and begin work on a feature film script or television pilot.
ENGL 2009 - Section 2 (Introduction to Writing Screenplays)
Mari Kornhauser
Storytellers! Come and learn the ins and outs of creating a feature film script by writing a series of short scripts and the first act of a feature (with the rest of the script outlined). You’ll watch films and tv shows of your choice to study, culminating in a short visual paper/PowerPoint. Other forms of writing, such as collaborating with writing partners, writing for web-series and television, may be discussed and/or practiced. Plus, you will workshop each other’s work. MOST OF ALL, IT WILL BE FUN!
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 2123 - Section 12 (Studies in Literary Traditions and Themes)
Jennifer Glassford
Gods, Heroes, and Monsters: Introduction to Greek Mythology and the Homeric Epic
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 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
The audio drama — a dying art? A relic of bygone eras? The next great frontier of storytelling? Audio dramas are what they sound like, pun entirely intended: they are narratives told entirely through sound. Without a written or visual component, writers and foley artists work magic to make stories come to life! While audio dramas were once performed live on the radio, they now live in the wide-open world of podcasts. In this class, we'll listen to a variety of audio dramas, past and present, to get a feel for what the medium and genre can do. We'll speak with current audio drama writers and producers to get their perspective on craft and creativity. Each student will also develop an original concept and proposal for an audio drama and draft the first ten minutes of their pilot episode. If you like podcasts, radio, or storytelling, this is the course for you!
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 4001 - Section 1 (Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Workshop)
TBA
In this class, you will work on a single, extended piece of creative nonfiction over the course of the semester. We’ll explore how to develop a topic or story into a creative essay worthy of publication in a fancy magazine. You’ll dig into the writer’s toolbox and use research, reporting, and personal experience to write and revise one magazine style work of creative nonfiction. Prerequisite: ENGL 2005
ENGL 4005 - Section 1 (Intermediate Fiction Writing Workshop)
Taylor Denton
This class is for students who love books, movies, and TV shows—in other words: stories! Some reading will be required, but the focus will be on the production of fiction stories. All genres are encouraged. Above all this class is about the joy of writing. Students are invited to share their creativity and to learn from their talented peers. Time will also be spent learning about revision and publication of stories. Bring your best tales! Prerequisite: ENGL 2005
ENGL 4007 - Section 1 (Intermediate Poetry Writing Workshop)
Ariel Francisco
This course is dedicated to understanding the craft of poetry in order to write and develop your own poems and poetic understandings. We will read a wide range of poets and poems (both from assigned books and texts I will provide), break down and discuss the poems in class, derive writing prompts from our discussions, write our own poems based on those prompts, and then workshop those poems in class.You’ll be required to bring in hard copies of the poem you want to workshop a week ahead of time. Your final portfolio will consist of at least ten poems that you have revised based on feedback, along with an introductory essay explaining your writing and revision process, how you feel your work has evolved over the course of the semester, and which of our texts you found most useful, inspirational, or influential. By the end of this course, you will not only have a better understanding of poetry as a whole but also a better understanding of your own writing, what you’re trying to accomplish with it, and how you can go about continuing to improve. Prerequisite: ENGL 2007
ENGL 4009 - Section 1 (Intermediate TV and Film Writing Workshop)
Mari Kornhauser
Writers: come and workshop your pilot for TV or a feature film script. Using your own scripts, you’ll learn to scene card or outline your scripts as well as critique each other’s work. You’ll watch films or TV shows of your own choosing and present a journal of your observations at end of semester. This is a workshop to complete a rough draft of your script, not a lecture course, so having fun while writing is all part of the process. Prerequisite: ENGL 2009
ENGL 4015 - Section 1 (Forms of Creative Writing)
TBA
Last semester, Jennifer Davis taught Debut Fiction. In that course, they read several debut novels and short story collections, discuss these books, then during class visits, interviewed the authors about their experiences writing their debut fictions and getting their books to market. They also used the class texts as inspiration to write some of their own fiction. We hope to offer an amazing course such as this one for all creative writers who have taken an intro course in any genre!
ENGL 4105 - Section 1 (Capstone Seminar in Writing Fiction)
Joshua Wheeler
This class is the culmination of your journey in creative writing at LSU. Though we will be workshopping extensively, we will also examine our fiction writing and revision practices, focus on the development of a lifelong writing practice, discuss career and publishing opportunities, and engage in generative exercises that remind us why we began writing in the first place. This class will also introduce you to the fundamentals of creative research. Ideally, you will leave the class with a polished and possibly publishable short story or novel excerpt.This course is only for students who have completed an intro andintermediate course in Fiction.
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?