ENG 2012 - FALL 2025 - GOLDRING

This course invites students to explore what it means to be an English Major through the lens of creative expression, adaptation, and interpretation. It reviews the history of the discipline, talks about current practices and areas of inquiry, including the broadening of categories of interest to other forms of writing and media. While grounded in close reading and critical analysis, the course places an emphasis on the creative process behind writing, reimagining works of art, and researching in literature, visual media, and/or digital forms. Students will develop key skills in annotation and analysis, drafting, workshopping, and revision, and will be introduced to concepts of thesis and argumentation, providing them with the vocabulary for specialization. Alongside the required textbooks and traditional literary texts, we will engage with contemporary forms of creative nonfiction, literary fiction, and visual storytelling. Emphasis will be placed on writing as an act of both analysis and creativity, encouraging students to think (and write) both critically and imaginatively. Designed to prepare students for further studies in English, this course also highlights the ways reading, writing, and interpretation connect to future career paths, artistic practice, and personal expression. Above all, it aims to illustrate the power of language, the joy of storytelling, and to prove that studying English can help us shape how we understand ourselves and the world.