Current & Upcoming Courses

Instructor: Dr. Verena Theile
Meeting times: Online Asynchronous

As an online asynchronous course, ENGL 225 provides a general introduction to film studies, moving students from passive viewers to active "readers" of film. The course explores cinematic language—including mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound—and examines how filmmakers construct narrative, style, and emotional meaning. Through viewing, analyzing, and discussing a wide range of movies across various genres and historical periods, students will learn to appreciate film as art, entertainment, and a vital cultural text that reflects and influences society.

Course delivery: As an online asynchronous course, ENGL 225 offers flexibility for students to engage with course materials, readings, and screenings in a structured weekly rhythm. Each week guides students through textbook chapters, interactive InQuizitive modules, curated mini-lessons, and film screenings that culminate in collaborative discussion board exchanges.

Reading movies: ENGl 225 teaches students to become active participants in movie-meaning-making. We will analyze narrative and stylistic elements of films for their artistic merits, but also for their reflection of and influence on society. To capture the breadth of that reflection and influence, reading films like texts, students will learn how filmmakers convey stories and create meaning and how movies concomitantly function as art, as entertainment, and as important cultural texts that interact with the world around them. The movies we will study originate from a variety of periods, countries, and directors.

Thematic questions: We will attempt to answer the following overarching and recurring questions:

• How do mise-en-scène, camera placement, lighting, editing choices, and sound design combine to construct narrative and emotional meaning beyond dialogue?
• In what ways do movies mirror, challenge, or shape societal values, cultural identities, and historical moments?
• How do distinct directorial voices—from Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock to Spike Lee and Guillermo del Toro—utilize formal elements to build recognizable stylistic signatures?
• How do filmmakers manipulate point of view, narrative framing, and audience expectations to evoke specific cognitive and emotional responses?

Instructor: Dr. Amy Gore
Meeting times: Tu/Th, 12:30-1:45pm

From Native American literature and transoceanic cultural contact to the Civil War and Reconstruction, our class will survey the literary texts produced within the shifting boundaries of what would become the United States of America. Our seminar-style class conversation will include questions such as: How did literature help form and define the United States of America? How did the beginnings of widespread international travel and cultural exchange impact human stories? What influence did the newly popular skills of reading and writing have in shaping one’s identity and the identity of nations? How did publishing offer new opportunities for the voices of marginalized peoples?

While reading widely in a variety of genres and mediums, we will also consider the new technologies of printing and publishing, including their role in shaping many types of early U.S. literary production. We will have several opportunities to interact with original primary documents, and we will above all highlight the multicultural development of American literary expressions.

Instructor: Dr. Lisa Arnold
Meeting times: Tu/Th, 11am-12:15pm

This course gives students an overview of the English subdiscipline of writing studies. While we will only touch on a few key areas of this subdiscipline, the course ultimately provides a foundation for deeper exploration of these and other areas in more advanced undergraduate courses and/or the English capstone experience.

Students will engage in conversations about what the field says about writing development; what makes writing “good”; discourse communities; writing, language, culture and identity; digital writing; and technical/professional writing. Some of the questions we will address include:

• What is the relationship between writing and discourse?
• Where do our ideas about reading, writing, and literacy come from?
• What counts as “good” writing and who decides?
• How do diverse languages, media, cultures, and other factors impact our work as writers and our experiences as readers/users?
• What changes can writing make in diverse public, private, and professional contexts?
• Why is it important to understand writing studies as a distinct subdiscipline within English?

Instructor: Brady Bergeson
Meeting times: Tu/Th, 11am-12:15pm

An exploration of the craft and process of writing poetry. In this class you’ll develop a deeper understanding of your writing and how you can explore what it is to be alive through writing poetry. Readings consist of mostly contemporary poems, with a focus on learning how to use line, syntax, sound, form, image, and other techniques. The primary focus is your own writing, from generating ideas to drafting to revision, and producing a chapbook of your work at the end of the semester. Discover what poetry means to you and how it can fit in your life, whether you want to eventually publish or just write for yourself. No experience necessary.

Instructor: Dr. Verena Theile
Meeting times: Online Asynchronous

Let's embark on an exciting journey through the ever-evolving worlds of speculative fiction. This online asynchronous course traces the evolution of science fiction and fantasy in literature, film, and graphic novels. Students will examine how writers continuously adapt past traditions across these genres to reflect changing technologies, social structures, and human nature. From classic robotics and cyberpunk dystopias to dark fantasy and modern superheroes, you will discover how these genres probe the complex relationship between human imagination and contemporary culture.

Themes & questions:

• We will consider what it means to be human, non-human, and post-human.
• We will engage with machines that think, artificial intelligence, aliens, clones, cyborgs, androids, robots, and synthetics.
• We will encounter dragons, elves, witches, wizards, dwarfs, fairies, orcs, pixies, trolls, and hobgoblins.
• We will analyze change across dichotomies such as evolution-devolution, utopia-dystopia, apotheosis-degradation, arcadia-wasteland, progression-regression, and chaos-cosmos.

WGS 350: Women’s Leadership

Instructor: Dr. Alison Bertolini
Meeting times: Tu/Th, 11am-12:15pm

This course is for undergraduate students in any major who want to understand power and leadership at work, and who want to grow as leaders themselves.

We will examine current research on gender and leadership to help us understand why women are still largely under-represented in leadership roles. Additionally, we’ll ask how gender identity shapes who gets to lead, which leadership approaches work best and why, and how transformative leadership can drive social change. Most importantly, students will reflect on how they see themselves as leaders, investigate their own leadership styles, and build the confidence to speak up for what they believe in.

Instructor: Dr. Verena Theile
Meeting times: Online Asynchronous

An online asynchronous course, ENGL 358 focuses on moments of extreme social crisis to explore how, across the humanities and social sciences, writing may be deployed to mitigate crimes, shape public perception, influence policy, protect vulnerable populations, and advocate for meaningful, enduring, and systemic change. Moving from analysis of discipline-specific documents to composing, creating, and designing their own documents, students will first witness and then mitigate the functioning—and failure—of private and public safety systems.

By using touchstones such as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis, systemic racism, capital punishment, serial killings, school or campus shootings, and violence against women, ENGL 358 highlights rhetorical tools that investigate, analyze, and respond to real-world breakdowns in social justice. A recursive writing process, involving peer reviews and genre and audience explorations, will help students learn to craft persuasive, audience-centered, public-facing documents designed to solve or mitigate harm and protect vulnerable populations.

Themes & questions:

• We will examine how rhetorical choices, genre conventions, and research methods shape public perception, drive social advocacy, and influence policy.
• We will analyze the breakdown of private and public safety measures and propose research-backed strategies to mitigate crime and support vulnerable populations.
• We will engage critically with complex social and legal crises—including systemic racism, mass incarceration, psychopathy, mass violence, and historical trauma—across diverse disciplines and media.
• We will practice recursive writing and professional communication across multiple genres, from annotated bibliographies and research reports/policy briefs to slideshow presentations, open-genre projects, and reflective portfolios.

Instructor: Dr. Daniel Kenzie
Meeting times: Mon/Wed/Fri, 2:00-2:50pm

Have you ever wondered why something is designed one way and not another? Have you ever pulled on a door only to discover you’re supposed to push it, taken longer than you expect to find something basic on a website, or struggled to get an automatic faucet to recognize your hands? This course offers both a mindset for thinking critically about the design of websites, mobile apps, documents, AI tools, and everyday things and spaces as well as a set of methods to test design choices and make recommendations to enhance the user experience. We will review a variety of research methods used in user experience design and usability testing including observation, heuristic inspection, persona and scenario development, interviewing, surveys and questionnaires, sketching, and prototyping. We will also focus on how to advocate for users across a range of identities to promote inclusive and accessible design. No previous experience with this topic is necessary. ENGL 449 counts toward the undergraduate certificate in professional writing and enables students to build their experience and portfolio of work in professional and technical writing.

Instructor: Dr. Amy Gore
Meeting times: Tu/Th, 3:30-4:45pm

Why do stories matter? How might some stories ask us to read, or to listen, differently? Our course will consider the importance of literature to Native peoples while we learn to read, research, and teach Native literature in culturally-responsive ways. We will reflect upon literature and rhetoric as a political tool, and we will examine its efficacy and power in Native history. Although a single course cannot cover the depth and breadth of Native literary history, we will read a select range of Indigenous writing across genres, including autobiographies, short stories, poetry, essays, and novels, while contextualizing and deepening our knowledge of Native American history. Our samplings will also cover a variety of different cultures and geographical spaces, but we will take the time to focus on the exciting number of Indigenous writers from our region.

Instructor: Dr. Bruce Kovanen
Meeting times: Tu/Th, 9:30-10:45am

In Writing for Social Change, students consider questions like, How does an issue become something people are willing to act on? How does change happen? What makes a campaign strategy effective? How do we know whether a campaign is working? And what does it take to move from identifying a problem to changing the conditions that produced it? Rather than writing about social change from a distance, students will do the work: choosing an issue, researching it, building a base of supporters, and writing the flyers, emails, social media posts, petitions, talking points, and public statements to win a policy change at NDSU or in the Fargo-Moorhead community.

The semester follows four main components, with the concepts we read about tied directly to what student teams are doing:

1. Issue development. Identify a problem, research it, and shape it into a winnable demand.
2. Build power. Recruit allies, understand who holds decision-making power, and organize support.
3. Develop tactics. Choose and plan the actions most likely to move a decision-maker.
4. Launch and implement campaigns. Carry out the plan, including at least one public action led by your team, such as a rally, lobbying day, or direct meeting with decision-makers.