The English program offers major concentrations in Literary Studies, English Education, and Creative Writing. Students who focus on Literary Studies will immerse themselves in principal works of the Western and non-Western traditions. Whether analyzing themes, characters, styles, or synthesizing ideas, students develop the analytical and communication skills that are exceptional preparation for rich and rewarding personal and professional lives. English Education students take extensive coursework in English and Education curricula to prepare them for careers as middle school and/or high school English teachers. We are pleased to say that our English Education program has an excellent record of placing students in teaching jobs. Finally, students who pursue Creative Writing will discover and refine their own voices in poetry, fiction, and playwriting. Studying both literature and the complex craft of writing, they learn to view texts as a bridge to self-discovery and creative engagement with the world and its rich literary traditions.

Major in Literary Studies Option

A minimum of 36 semester hours. The following courses are required:
ENG252 Close Reading of Poetry
ENG272 British Literature: 800 to 1800
ENG273 British Literature: 1800 to Present
ENG282 American Literature: Origins to 1865
ENG283 American Literature: 1865 to Present
ENG331 Literary Criticism
ENG471 Studies in Shakespeare

Also, 15 additional English credits, at least nine of which must be at the 300-level or higher.

Major in English Education Option

A minimum of 42 semester hours. The following courses are required:
ENG252 Close Reading of Poetry
ENG272 British Literature: 800 to 1800
ENG273 British Literature: 1800 to Present
ENG282 American Literature: Origins to 1865
ENG283 American Literature: 1865 to Present
ENG319 Creative Nonfiction Writing
ENG331 Literary Criticism
ENG338 Literature, Film, and Media
ENG359 History and Grammar of English
ENG420 Methods and Materials: Teaching English in the Secondary School
ENG471 Studies in Shakespeare

Choose one of the following:
ENG223 Introduction to Native American Literature
ENG224 Introduction to African American Literature
ENG291 Contemporary World Fiction

Choose one of the following:
ENG445 The American Novel
ENG447 The American Short Story
ENG452 American Poetry in the 20th Century

Students must also take one upper-division elective. To fulfill the degree students must complete the professional education program for secondary teaching (grades 5-12) as described in the “education” section of the catalog.

Major in Creative Writing Option

A minimum of 42 semester hours. The following courses are required:
ENG251 Imaginative Writing
ENG252 Close Reading of Poetry
ENG319 Creative Nonfiction Writing
ENG325 Professional Writing
ENG365 Journalism
ENG451 Advanced Imaginative Writing
ENG471 Studies in Shakespeare
ENG490W Seminar in Writing
ENG499 Independent Study

Choose one of the following:
ENG272 British Literature: 800 to 1800
ENG273 British Literature: 1800 to Present

Choose one of the following:
ENG282 American Literature: Origins to 1865
ENG283 American Literature: 1865 to Present

Choose one of the following:
ENG223 Introduction to Native American Literature
ENG224 Introduction to African-American Literature
ENG291 Contemporary World Fiction

Choose two of the following:
ENG445 The American Novel
ENG447 The American Short Story
ENG452 American Poetry in the 20th Century
ENG456 Studies in Drama

Minor in Literary Studies Option

A minimum of 18 semester hours, including:
ENG252 Close Reading of Poetry
ENG331 Literary Criticism

Choose one of the following:
ENG272 British Literature: 800 to 1800
ENG273 British Literature: 1800 to Present

Choose one of the following:
ENG282 American Literature: Origins to 1865
ENG283 American Literature: 1865 to Present

Plus six additional upper-division credits in literature.

Minor in Writing Option

A minimum of 18 semester hours, including
ENG251 Imaginative Writing
ENG319 Creative Nonfiction Writing
ENG325 Professional Writing
ENG365 Journalism
ENG451 Advanced Imaginative Writing
ENG490W Writing Seminar

Minor in English Education Option

A minimum of 27 semester hours. The following courses are required:
ENG252 Closed Reading of Poetry
ENG319 Creative Nonfiction Writing
ENG331 Literary Criticism
ENG338 Literature, Film, and Media
ENG420 Methods and Materials: Teaching English in the Secondary School
ENG471 Studies in Shakespeare

Choose one of the following:
ENG223 Introduction to Native American Literature
ENG224 Introduction to African-American Literature
ENG291 Contemporary World Fiction

Choose one of the following:
ENG272 British Literature: 800 to 1800
ENG273 British Literature: 1800 to Present

Choose one of the following:
ENG282 American Literature: Origins to 1865
ENG283 American Literature: 1865 to Present

ENG090 - Support ESL I

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
These credits will count for the semester in which it is taken but will not be counted toward the 124 credits needed for graduation. Students for whom English is a second language may request this course or may be required to take this course, which will help build intermediate academic English skills. The course will be customized to meet the needs of a particular student or group of students.

ENG091 - Support ESL II

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
These credits will count for the semester in which it is taken but will not be counted toward the 124 credits needed for graduation. Students for whom English is a second language may request this course or may be required to take this course which will help build intermediate academic English skills. The course will be customized to meet the needs of a particular student or group of students.

ENG103 - Advanced ESL I

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
These credits will count for the semester in which it is taken but will not be counted toward the 124 credits needed for graduation. This advanced level course is offered to students for whom English is a second language and who wish to refine their English language skills. The course will be customized to meet the needs of a particular student or group of students.

ENG104 - Advanced ESL II

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
These credits will count for the semester in which it is taken but will not be counted toward the 124 credits needed for graduation. This advanced level course is offered to students for whom English is a second language and who wish to refine their English language skills. The course will be customized to meet the needs of a particular student or group of students.

ENG118 - Basic Composition

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course introduces students to the basic skills necessary for writing effectively at the college level and prepares students for the writing demands of other college courses. Students explore many types of writing projects, beginning with a personal essay and ending with a formal critique. Using writing theory, the course emphasizes writing as a process, the importance of revising, and the value of peer editing and evaluating. Sponsored by services for academic success (SAS), this course is linked with Introduction to the Humanities as part of the Rocky Freshman Experience. ENG118 may not be taken to satisfy general education requirements.

ENG119 - First-Year Writing

Semester: Fall and Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course is an introduction to college writing. Students critically read and discuss texts, learn that writing is a process, experiment with academic prose, develop the skills necessary to create and support a thesis, practice incorporating research into their analysis, and develop grammatical and stylistic competence. Further, working in collaboration with a second discipline, students learn to integrate knowledge. Students keep a portfolio of their work, which includes a self-evaluation of their writing progress. Required of all students entering as freshmen as part of the Rocky Freshman Experience. This course fulfills a general education requirement. It cannot be used to fulfill any major or minor requirement.

ENG120 - Critical Reading and Evaluative Writing

Semester: Fall and Spring
Semester hours: 3
Designed to follow First-Year Writing, students analyze texts and create effective writing based on their insights. Students practice generating questions that lead to the formation of complex thesis and effective support. Building on the idea of integrated knowledge, students develop strategies aiding them in cross-disciplinary and multi-cultural reasoning. They compose essays deploying diverse strategies, such as definition, classification, comparison/contrast, analysis, and argumentation. Students keep a portfolio of their work, which includes a self-evaluation of their writing progress. This course fulfills a general education requirement. It cannot be used to fulfill any major or minor requirement.
Prerequisite: ENG 119

ENG223 - Introduction to Native American Literature

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
An examination of selected literature produced by such Native American writers as Momaday, Welch, Erdrich, McNickle, Silko, and others. Students will consider issues of genre, history, and politics as they relate to American literature. Special emphasis is given to the oral tradition and its relationship to contemporary American writing.

ENG224 - Introduction to African American Literature

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course is a study of selected topics in African American literature and criticism. Topics vary but may include such areas as the literature of civil rights, African American memoir, captivity and freedom narratives, African American poetry, theories of race and class, and Black feminist writing, among others.

ENG236 - Literature and Photography

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course is an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between photography and the literature, art, politics, and history from the nineteenth-century to the present. It introduces theories of photography as well as works of individual artists.

ENG242 - Modern Dramatic Literature

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Focusing on script analysis, students consider diverse trends in play-writing and theatrical performances over the past hundred years as viewed through the works of the major playwrights of Europe and the United States. Trends studied include expressionism, surrealism, cubism, and absurdism. This course encourages cross-cultural understanding. This course is cross listed with THR 242.

ENG244 - Literature and the Environment

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course is a comparative study of the environmental imagination as expressed in literature. By reading and discussing a wide range of literary texts, students investigate timeless and more urgent questions, such as “What is nature?”; “What is our responsibility to the environment?”; “How do various cultures express their relation to the natural world?”.

ENG245 - Travel Literature

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
Students in this course explore the world of travel writing through the diverse narratives of selected contemporary and classic travel writers. The course emphasizes literary analysis, with particular attention paid to understanding the cultural and historical contexts of this literature.

ENG247 - War Literature

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students explore how a variety of writers through time have represented the tragedy, trauma, and psychology of war. The course covers fictional and non-fictional works from various historical and literacy periods as well as genres such as epic and lyric poetry, romance, and drama.

ENG251 - Imaginative Writing

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This introduction to imaginative writing explores poetry and short fiction. The course is a workshop focusing on the stages of free writing, drafting, presenting, and revising poems and prose. Elements of poetry discussed include tone, voice, image, metaphor, and devices of sound, meter, traditional structure, and innovations. Elements of fiction emphasized include setting, character development, dialogue, plot, and conflict.
Prerequisite: ENG 119

ENG252 - Close Reading of Poetry

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students are introduced to the genre of poetry. The course provides students with a foundation in the methods of detailed reading and analysis essential to an understanding of poetry and, more broadly, to the study of literature. The course addresses the basics of prosody, poetic devices such as diction, metaphor, image, tone, and major verse forms such as the sonnet, elegy, ode, ballad, dramatic monologue, and free verse. The texts reflect the continuity and variation in the history of British and American poetry and provide a sample of works from the 16th century to the present.

ENG253 - Classical Dramatic Literature

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Focusing on script analysis, this course provides a chronological study of the major theatrical periods of dramatic literature from the emergence of Greek tragedy in the 5th century BC to the development of European realism in the late 19th century. The course also encourages cross-cultural understanding. This course is cross listed with THR 253.

ENG254 - Writing Consultant Practicum

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 1
Students learn the theory and practice of peer tutoring. Along with traditional classroom discussions and reading assignments, students train for and eventually lead tutoring sessions at the campus writing center.
Prerequisite: ENG 119, ENG 120, COM 250; letter of recommendation from faculty member.

ENG258 - Topics in Language and Literature

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
Content varies, including comparative literature topics, problems in literature topics, and language topics. This course may be taken more than once.

ENG270 - Literature of Montana and the American West

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
This course examines literature written by and about people living in Montana and the western United States, including American Indians, women, and immigrants.

ENG272 - British Literature: 800 to 1800

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
The first in the sequence of two British literature surveys, this course provides an introduction to the formative period of British language and literature. Students read representative works from the Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, Renaissance, Restoration, and 18th century periods against their literary, historical, linguistic, and philosophical backgrounds.

ENG273 - British Literature: 1800 to Present

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
The second in the sequence of two British literature surveys, this course introduces students to Romantic, Victorian, Modern and Postmodern literature, analyzing selected texts, from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 20th, against their literary, historical, ideological, and cultural backgrounds.

ENG282 - American Literature: Origins to 1865

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course provides a survey of major literary works from the Puritan, Enlightenment, and Romantic periods. Emphasis is placed on such figures as Edwards, Franklin, Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, Jacobs, Whitman, Douglass, Melville, and Dickinson. The literature is examined in the context of literary, historical, and philosophical backgrounds.

ENG283 - American Literature: 1865 to Present

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course provides a survey of major literary works since the Civil War. Emphasis is placed on such figures as Twain, James, Crane, DuBois, Chopin, Wharton, Toomer, Cather, Hughes, Hemingway, and Stevens. The literature is examined in the context of literary, historical, and philosophical backgrounds.

ENG291 - Contemporary World Fiction

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course introduces students to recent prose fiction, with special attention paid to non-Western and non-American works.

ENG319 - Creative Nonfiction Writing

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students study examples of creative nonfiction and practice writing their own. They also gain experience-incorporating research into their prose.
Prerequisite: ENG 119

ENG322 - Renaissance Literature

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students examine the Renaissance as expressed in British literature. Typical subjects of study include the early humanism of More, the courtly poetry of Wyatt and Surrey, the sonnets of Drayton, Sidney, and Wroth, the chivalric romance of Spencer, the satire of Nashe, the drama of Kyd, Marlow, Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, and Ford, the essays of Francis Bacon, and the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Herrick, and Marvel.

ENG325 - Professional Writing

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course teaches concepts, practices, and skills for communicating technical, scientific, or business-related information. Topics include understanding how people read, designing documents, incorporating graphics, writing about statistical results, rewriting, editing, and using the Internet. This course may be especially useful for non-English majors, providing them with the tools and techniques to communicate their messages effectively.
Prerequisite: ENG 119

ENG331 - Literary Criticism

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course introduces students to current controversies in literary criticism. The course discusses approaches to literary analysis such as deconstruction, cultural criticism, and postcolonialism. Students typically use a casebook method, observing how critics from divergent backgrounds interpret a single text. Students critique these various approaches and refine their own critical practices.

ENG333 - British Romantic Literature

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course examines a wide range of British Romantic texts. Students read and analyze selected works against the literary, historical, and philosophical background of late 18th and early 19th century England. Representative authors include Blake, Radcliffe, Wordsworth, Wollstonecraft, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and DeQuincy.

ENG334 - The British Novel

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course surveys the rise and development of the British novel. It includes an analysis of such Eighteenth-century writers as Defoe, Sterne, Fielding, Radcliffe, and Burney; early Nineteenth-century writers such as Austen, Shelley, and Scott; such Victorian novelists as Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Eliot, Thackeray, Trollope, and Hardy; and such Modernists as Conrad, Woolf, Joyce, Forster, and Lawrence.

ENG338 - Literature, Film, and Media

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course investigates interrelations among literature, film, and other forms of non-print media. Subject matter will include literary works, films, television, web-content, and emerging technologies through which cultural narratives are increasingly transmitted and developed. Theories of audience reception, textual production, and modes of critical interpretation will be emphasized.

ENG347 - The American Renaissance

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students examine the extraordinary quickening of American writing in the years before the Civil War. Of central concern are the different visions of "America" these literary texts propose. Authors may include Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, Child, Fuller, Douglass, Whitman, Jacobs, Melville, and Dickinson.

ENG354 - Writing Consultant Practicum

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 1
Students learn the theory and practice of peer tutoring. Along with traditional classroom discussions and reading assignments, students train for and eventually lead tutoring sessions at the campus writing center.
Prerequisite: ENG 119, ENG 120, COM 250; letter of recommendation from faculty member.

ENG355 - Mass Media

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course explores how the communication medium, whether smoke signals, newspapers, television or the Internet, influences human communication. With each change in technology, communication changes. These changes alter what it means to be human. Students must be able to understand the power of the media to better manage its influence in their personal and professional lives.

ENG356 - American Naturalism and Realism

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Considers literary realism and naturalism in terms of its philosophy, influence, and development during the period in American culture that Mark Twain called "The Gilded Age." Authors may include Twain, James, Jewett, Chopin, London, Norris, DuBois, Crane, Frederick, and Dreiser.

ENG358 - Topics in Language and Literature

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
Content varies, including comparative literature topics, problems in literature topics, and language topics. This course may be taken more than once.

ENG359 - History and Grammar of English

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students are introduced to the linguistic and theoretic approaches to the study of English, including phonology and morphology. Students pursue an in-depth study of syntax, focusing on the grammar of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Students also review the history of English from proto-Germanic to the development of regional dialects, cultural variations, and “global” English.

ENG362 - Literary Modernism

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students examine the major movement in Western art in the first half of the twentieth century as reflected in representative literary texts. Attention focused on the questions: What is modernism? What is its relation to naturalism and realism? How does literary art fuse with the other arts during this period? Authors may include Joyce, Stein, Pound, Eliot, Williams, Cather, Toomer, Ford, Lawrence, Woolf, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner.

ENG365 - Journalism

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Providing an introduction to writing print, broadcast, and multimedia articles and producing a professional publication, this course is strongly recommended for all students participating on the student newspaper.

ENG370 - Religion and Literature

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
A study of religious issues, conflict, and hopes in modern literature. Studied works will vary from year to year, but they may include texts by authors such as Melville, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and John Updike. This is a writing-intensive course. This course is cross listed with PHR 370.

ENG418 - Writing and Publishing in New York City

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students will meet regularly throughout the term and spend eight days in New York City attending workshops and seminars on publishing, editing, and freelance writing. They meet professional writers, editors, and agents who introduce them to all aspects of the writing and publishing professions. Students also visit museums and attend cultural and literary events.
Prerequisite: ENG 120

ENG420 - Methods and Materials: Teaching English in the Secondary School

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This seminar requires focused study and consultation with a public school English/language arts teacher or other acceptable professional in the field. Hours will be arranged in consultation with the content area professor, the appropriate education professor, the student, and the professional mentor. The course focuses on English pedagogy with special attention to reading and writing instruction. Students study methods for creating a classroom conducive to learning, select materials for motivational and instructional purposes, incorporate technology in classroom strategies, evaluate and assess student work, integrate the language arts with other content areas, and examine the scope and sequence of literature and writing for grades 5-12. This seminar strongly emphasizes practical methodologies and is the capstone course for the English education major.
Prerequisite: Admission to the teacher education program, senior standing

ENG445 - The American Novel

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students examine American novels from the nineteenth-century to the present. Attention is given both to the genre of the novel as well as to the individual literary works. Content varies, but representative topics include the way in which personal and national identities are shaped or defined in the fictional texts, the role of the marketplace in influencing literary practice, and the relation between American fiction and philosophy.

ENG447 - The American Short Story

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students are introduced to the genre of the short story, emphasizing major American writers from the nineteenth century to the present. Particular attention is directed to historical and cultural backgrounds. Students cultivate skills in critical analysis by focusing on issues of character, plot, theme, point of view, setting, tone, style, and other literary devices as they function within the context of individual stories.

ENG450 - Internship

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 1-12
This course is a guided work experience in an already established place of business. The student must arrange the internship in agreement with the instructor and the office of career services. The internship should relate to the student's major or minor area of study. Contract is required.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing

ENG451 - Advanced Imaginative Writing

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course offers extensive imaginative work in a broad range of genres. Students explore the creative process and challenge themselves with longer and more complex assignments than in Imaginative Writing. They experiment with points of view other than their own and with styles of writing. They also work independently to produce a significant amount of polished work in a writing portfolio. Students keep a writing journal and have considerable input into the development of assignments.
Prerequisite: ENG 251

ENG452 - American Poetry in the 20th-Century

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
An in-depth study of American poetry in the twentieth-century, focusing on representative poets in the context of literary and cultural history. Representative poets include Pound, Lowell, HD, Eliot, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Oppen, Niedecker, Sexton, Rich, Kerouac, Rexroth, and Ronan. Particular emphasis is on developing and strengthening students’ skills in the close reading of poetry.

ENG456 - Studies in Drama

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students examine authors, themes, and/or movements significant in British, American, European, or world drama. It includes reading and analysis of selected plays. Focus is on variety in period, type, and technique. Content varies.

ENG458 - Major Author

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 3
Students explore, in-depth, one major writer from the British or American literary tradition. Content varies. This course can be taken a maximum of two times.

ENG471 - Studies in Shakespeare

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students engage in the advanced study of Shakespeare's works, analyzing them within their literary, historical, theatrical, linguistic, and cultural contexts. Particular attention in this course is devoted to the major critical and theoretical approaches to Shakespeare, providing a foundation for students intending to go to graduate school in English or teach English at the secondary level.

ENG490-L - Seminar in Literary Studies

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 2-3
Intensive work is done in a selected area of literary studies. This course includes a major research essay or creative project. Students are encouraged to visit a research library while completing their major project.

ENG490-W - Seminar in Writing

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This is an occasional course of advanced creative nonfiction, poetry, drama, or fiction. The course may consist of workshops, discussions, readings, peer reviews, presentations, and revised writings that cover elements of contemporary craft, editing, publishing, and market.
Prerequisite: ENG 251 or ENG 319 or permission of the instructor.

ENG492 - Soliloquy

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course examines writing as a communicative art form from three points of view: creator, editor, and performer. Students submit their revised work to the student writing competition; take responsibility for the literary journal, Soliloquy; and organize the "Focus on Rocky Writers" evening, where selected works are shared with an audience.
Prerequisite: ENG 120

ENG499 - Independent Study

Semester: On Demand
Semester hours: 1-3
This course allows a superior student to devise and pursue independent study in an area agreed upon in consultation with, and supervised by, a faculty member. Students should be either a major or minor and have a cumulative GPA of 3.00 or greater.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing