English

3 Credits

Mondays / Wednesdays / Fridays 11:00 – 11:50

Prof. Mac Miller

Gen Ed Attributes: Lit & Artistic Studies (L); Writng Across Curriculum

3 Credits

Tuesdays / Thursdays 9:30 - 10:50

Prof. Erin Costello Wecker

Gen Ed Attributes: Lit & Artistic Studies (L); Writng Across Curriculum

3 Credits

Tuesdays / Thursdays 11:00 – 12:20

Prof. Eric Reimer

Gen Ed Attributes: Lit & Artistic Studies (L); Writng Across Curriculum

3 Credits

Section 02: Mondays / Wednesdays / Fridays 10:00 – 10:50

Section 03: Mondays / Wednesdays / Fridays 11:00 – 11:50

Prof. Rob Browning 

At a time when nobody seems to know where our entanglements with artificial intelligence are taking us, is it possible that creative literature authored by human beings can help us in finding our way? This class will be dedicated to exploring the possibility that it can. After a short survey of pre-modern speculations about artificial intelligence, we will study several novels and novellas, each of which addresses issues that are of pressing concern to us today. Among these issues are:

• The motivations and psychologies of the scientists and engineers who invented and are currently developing A.I. technology
• Questions about the natures of consciousness, intelligence, and the human imagination
• Efforts to “police” the line between “the human” and “the artificial”
• The linguistic and narrative dimensions of efforts to describe, manage, and engage with A.I.
• Perspectives on A.I. as “author” or “creator”
• Implications of the idea that artificial intelligence is an “alien” entity

Alongside each work of fiction, we will consider recent perspectives and developments relevant to the questions it raises. Since developments on the artificial intelligence “frontier” come to light on a nearly daily basis, this class will adjust in ways that make sense to us as we go along.      

Tentative primary texts: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818); E. M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909); Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968); Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2. (1995); either Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961) or Peter Watts, Blindsight (2006); Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects (2010); Benjamin Labatut, The MANIAC (2023).

Gen Ed Attributes: Lit & Artistic Studies (L); Writng Across Curriculum

Credits 3

Tuesdays / Thursdays 12:30 – 1:50

Prof. Katie Kane

In this introductory course in literary and cultural theory, we will attempt to explore representative schools of and issues in contemporary criticism (formalism, postmodernism, eco-criticism, postcolonial/colonial criticism, critical race theory, trans-studies, psychoanalytic criticism and others).  We will be working, therefore, to build an analytic and critical vocabulary for the activity of reading select number of texts from the canons of literary criticism and from the canons of Anglophone culture.  Prior to engaging with the core of the class, we will consider the multiple ways in which both the truth and research methodology are in flux in our era: we will consider what it means to read a theoretical text, what it means to create an argument or assertion, and what it means to do research in Literary and Cultural Studies. 

In addition to these “first-principles” objectives, however, we will also attempt to engage with such complexities of the current theoretical debate such as the role of emotion in art,

the question of aesthetics in the Anthropocene, the problematic of decolonization, the use value of economic and political theory (among other concerns)., and, finally, with the crucial issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.  Throughout the course we will be moving toward our current early twenty-first century moment in which the range and scope of the labor of the literary critic seems—in light of the rise of a host of non-traditional representational and narrative forms—to be both expanding and contracting.  Film, video games, the world of the digital, social media, all require the decoding and demystifying work of the engaged critic.  A specific focus on the filmic texts of Sinners and Adolescence will allow for us to work through major issues and schools of cultural criticism.

Gen Ed Attributes: Writing in the Disciplines

3 Credits

Mondays / Wednesdays 4:00 – 5:20

Prof. Casey Charles

Gen Ed Attributes: Lit and Artistic Studies (L); Writing in the Disciplines

Credits 3

Tuesdays / Thursdays 2:00 – 3:20

Prof. Robert Baker

Can poetry still speak to our deepest concerns in an age of polycrisis, an age in which everything seems to be unravelling? Or has everything always been falling apart? “The singers were singing the world into place,” Joy Harjo has written, “even as it continued to fall apart.”

This course is an introduction to American poetry of the last fifty years through a careful reading of the work of six poets of this period: Louise Glück, Joy Harjo, Forrest Gander, Juliana Spahr, Ross Gay, and Sandra Lim. We will read two or three books by each of these widely read and widely appreciated poets, paying attention to the particular path and vision of each, while at the same addressing larger questions about important orientations or frameworks in contemporary American poetry: a quasi-confessional mode that has been reinvented time and again in recent decades; the intertwining of a personal mode and a ranging historical mode; different sorts of environmentalist or ecopoetic modes; and elegies and odes—songs of grief and songs of praise—that are as old as the lyric tradition itself and as new as any morning.

Provisional list of books:

•  Louise Glück: The Wild Iris; Averno; Faithful and Virtuous Night
•  Joy Harjo: How We Became Human; Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings; Crazy Brave
•  Forrest Gander: Torn Awake; Be With
•  Juliana Spahr: Well Then There Now; Ars Poeticas
•  Ross Gay: Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude; Be Holding
•  Sandra Lim: The Curious Thing; The Givens

Credits 3

Tuesdays / Thursdays 2:00 – 3:20 

Prof. Eric Reimer

Credits: 3

Tuesdays / Thursdays 2:00 - 3:20

Staff

Credits: 3

Thursdays 4:00 - 6:50

Prof. Robert Baker

In this capstone we will explore the place of beauty, awe, and wonder in our lives. 

Sometimes we say of a lake, what a beautiful lake; or of something a person has done, what a beautiful thing to do; or of a story, what a beautiful story. Perhaps the first thing we could note about beauty, awe, wonder, and their many kin, then, is that they are capacious terms. 

We will begin the seminar by reading Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses, a book that is, among other things, a meditation on the significance of beauty in a world marred by widespread ugliness, violence, and injustice. We will then briefly step back in time, looking at a few older ideas about beauty, awe, and wonder, in particular ideas developed in the Romantic Era, many of which are still influential in our culture today. We will then turn back to the present and address some ways that questions of beauty, awe, and wonder are explored in different fields of concern in contemporary culture: in discussions of our ecological situation; in discussions of the burdens and promises of history; and in discussions of human experience in general in a world in which nearly everything, including beauty, seems to be commodified or turned into a hustle.

Our readings will be far from comprehensive. They are meant to open up perspectives, to generate questions. In the second half of the course every student will undertake a project of their own, based on writers important to them, about the meaning of beauty, awe, and wonder in our lives today. We will hold a sort of mini-conference at the end of our journey.

 Provisional (very provisional) list of readings: 

•   Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses 
•   Longinus, selections from On the Sublime
•   Friedrich Schiller, selections from On the Aesthetic Education of Man
•   William Wordsworth, poems, and Elizabeth Bishop, poems
•   Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
•   Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
•   Theodor Adorno, “Education after Auschwitz”
•   Ross Gay, Inciting Joy
•   Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
•   Ali Smith, Autumn

3 Credits

Mondays 6:00pm – 8:50 pm

Prof. Katie Kane

3 Credits

Tuesdays 3:00pm – 5:50

Prof. Louise Economides

This beginning writing workshop emphasizes the reading, discussion, and revision of students' short fiction. Students will be introduced to the technical elements of writing fiction. No prior experience in writing short fiction required.

Gen Ed Attributes: Expressive Arts Course (A)

3 Credits

This beginning writing workshop focuses on the reading, discussion, and revision of students' poems. Students will study and use models of poetic techniques. No prior experience in writing poetry required.

Gen Ed Attributes: Expressive Arts Course (A)

3 Credits

A study of the art of nonfiction through reading and responding to contemporary nonfiction and the writing of original nonfiction works. Focus is on creative expression, writing technique and nonfiction forms. Students begin with writing exercises and brief essays, advancing to longer forms as the semester progresses.

Gen Ed Attributes: Expressive Arts Course (A)

3 Credits

Credits 3

Mondays 3:00 – 5:50 pm

Prof. Robert Stubblefield

This course is open to undergraduates who have completed at least one semester of creative writing. Students focus on the editing, design, layout and marketing of The Oval, University of Montana's undergraduate literary magazine. Students will read, discuss and develop responses to to recongnized literary works, as well as developing criteria for each volume's content and design. The class will include the evaluation and selection of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art submissions to The Oval. Students are required to keep a reading journal, and compile a portfolio of writing exercises, responses to texts and critiques of published works.

Credits 3

Tuesdays / Thursdays 12:30 - 1:50

Prof. Jules Ohman

Prereq, completion of CRWR 210A with a "B" average or better. An intermediate fiction writing workshop. Students will be expected to finish 3 or 4 substantial stories for the course. Although some outside material will be considered, the primary emphasis will be analysis and discussion of student work.

Credits 3

Tuesdays / Thursdays 12:30 - 1:50

Prof. Brian Blanchfield

CRWR 211A. An intermediate workshop involving critical analysis of students' work-in-progress as well as reading and discussion of poems in an anthology. Numerous directed writing assignments, experiments, exercises focused on technical considerations like diction, rhythm, rhyme, and imagery.

Credits 3

Mondays / Wednesdays 12:30 – 1:50 pm

Prof. Sam McPhee

Prereq., completion of CRWR 212A or CRWR 210A with a "B" average or better. An intermediate nonfiction workshop. Students read and respond to model essays, in addition to creating and revising original essays for workshop review. Assignments and exercises focus on writing craft and research techniques.

3 Credits

Tuesdays / Thursdays 11:00 - 12:20

Staff

3 Credits

Tuesdays / Thursdays 3:30 - 4:50

Prof. Sean Hill

Credits 3

Wednesdays 12:00 – 2:50 

Prof. Emily Ruskovich

Prereq, junior standing and CRWR 310. An advanced writing workshop in which student manuscripts are read and critiqued. Rewriting of work already begun (in CRWR 310 classes) will be encouraged.

Credits 3

Thursdays 3:00 – 5:50

Prof. Sean Hill

Poetry is the art of connection—yoking disparate things together with metaphor, stringing sounds together in patterns of rhythm and rhyme, employing the power of syntax with a chain of words. In this course, students will analyze published poems for specific strategies of connection and discuss the ways the poet uses these various techniques to establish motivation and emotional depth, and create linguistic music, among other things. Writing in the class will focus primarily on the generation and revision of the students’ own poems. Students will participate in evaluating their own work and the work of their peers. The goal of this course is to deepen and expand the students’ poetry writing skills and knowledge developed in previous creative writing workshops. Each student will produce an end-of-term portfolio of revised poems.

Credits 3

Wednesdays 3:00 – 5:50

Prof. Robert Stubblefield

Prof. Kelly Schirmann

The BFA capstone is the ultimate course for students prior to graduation. This is a hands-on course and a mentorship, though some elements may be be offered electronically. Restricted to students in the Creative Writing BFA program.

Prereq., CRWR 410 or CRWR 411 or CRWR 412 with a minimum grade of B.

Credits 3

Thursdays 3:00 – 5:50

Prof. David Axelrod

3 Credits

Mondays 3:00 - 5:50

Prof. Erin Saldin

Credits 3

Wednesdays 3:00 – 5:50 pm

Prof. Jules Ohman

Prereq, consent of instr. A creative writing workshop focused primarily on fiction.

Level: Graduate

Credits 3

Wednesdays 3:00 – 5:50 pm

Staff

Prereq, consent of instr. A creative writing workshop focused primarily on fiction.

Level: Graduate

Credits 3

Tuesdays 6:00 – 8:50 pm

Prof. Sean Hill

Creative Writing 511 is a writing intensive course designed to facilitate the development of new poetry through the vital encouragement of faculty and peers in a workshop setting. Students in this course should already exhibit an advanced understanding of craft in at least one of the following areas: fiction, poetry, memoir, personal essay, or dramatic writing, as well as have experienced the writing workshop environment. We will also explore other aspects of the writing life and consider our goals and our roles in the greater literary and artistic community.

Prereq., consent of instr. 

Level: Graduate

Credits 3

Thursdays 6:00 - 8:50

Staff

A creative writing workshop focused primarily on personal essay and narrative nonfiction. Attention given to writing and publishing professional magazine essays. Students complete two substantial essays.

Prereq., consent of instr. 

Level: Graduate

Credits 3

Tuesdays 3:00 – 5:50 pm

Prof. Brian Blanchfield

Prereq., consent of instr. 

Level: Graduate

Credits 3

Mondays 3:00 – 5:50 pm

Prof. Emily Ruskovich

Prereq., consent of instr. 

Level: Graduate

Credits 3

Wednesdays, 3:00 - 5:50

Prof. Chris Dombrowski

Prereq, consent of instr. 

Level: Graduate

Credits 3

Tuesdays / Thursdays 11:00 – 12:20 

Prof. Erin Costello Wecker

3 Credits

Staff

UM: Offered every term. Prereq., WRIT 095 or proof of passing score on writing diagnostic examination, ACT English, 22-27, ACT Combined English/Writing 18-31, ACT Writing subscore 7-10, SAT Writing Score 440-690, SAT Essay subscore 7-10, ACT Writing subject score 19-32, ACT English Language Arts (ELA) score 18-31, SAT Writ/Language Test score 25-36. Emphasis on rhetorical understanding, textual analysis, and genre flexibility. Grading A-F, or NC (no credit).

Missoula College description for this course: Offered every term. Prereq., WRIT 095 or proof of passing score on writing diagnostic examination, ACT English, 22-27,ACT Combined English/Writing 18-31, ACT Writing subscore 7-10, SAT Writing Score 440-690, SAT Essay subscore 7-10, ACT Writing subject score 19-32, ACT English Language Arts (ELA) score 18-31, SAT Writ/Language Test score 25-36., WRIT 095 or proof of appropriate SAT/ACT essay, English/Writing, writing section scores, appropriate MUSWA scores, or proof of passing scores on Writing Placement Exam). Expository prose and research paper; emphasis on structure, argument, development of ideas, clarity, style, and diction. Students expected to write without major faults in grammar or usage. Grading A-F, or NC (no credit). Co-Requisite Support sections of WRIT 101 are 4 credits; they are offered Autumn and Spring. Placement is based on UM Writing Placement Assessment score, ACT Combined English/Writing <18, ACT Writing subscore <7, SAT Writing Score <440, SAT Essay subscore <7, ACT Writing subject score <19, ACT English Language Arts (ELA) score <18, SAT Writ/Language Test score <25, or referral by WRIT 101 instructor. Designed for students who need additional instruction, support, and practice integrating critical thinking, reading and writing.

Gen Ed Attributes: Introductory Writing

3 Credits

Offered every term. Offered at Missoula College. Prereq., WRIT 101 (or higher) or equivalent or proof of appropriate SAT/ACT essay, English/Writing, writing section scores, appropriate MUSWA scores, or proof of passing scores on Writing Placement Exam. Introduction to technical writing situations that integrate text, design, and graphics. Emphasis is on evidence-based, informative writing that uses design and graphics to visually represent logic and organization. Course focuses on writing as a process and includes student self-assessment. Major assignments include a pure technical document, exploration of credibility, and public science writing. Students are expected to write without major faults in grammar or usage and to have basic computer literacy.

Gen Ed Attributes: Writing Across the Curriculum WRIM

3 Credits

Staff

Offered autumn and spring. Prereq., placement or C or better in WRIT 101; ACT English 28 or higher; ACT Combined English/Writing 32-36; ACT Writing subscore 11-12; SAT Writing Score 700-800; SAT Essay subscore 11-12; ACT Writing subject score 33 or higher; ACT English Language Arts (ELA) score 32 or higher; SAT Writ/Language Test score 37 or higher. Offers instruction in rhetorical reading and writing, particularly the study and practice of written argumentation in different academic and civic contexts.

Gen Ed Attributes: Writing Across the Curriculum WRIM; Writing Course - Introductory WRIN