creative writing classes unc

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Take an inside look at the Writing Center: What Happens During A Writing Coaching Session

The Writing Center is a great place to get in depth help on essays and papers. I come to the Writing Center twice a week to get a jump start on essays so that I am not cramming at the last minute. It helps to get an extra set of eyes on your work. Blake Bozymski

Overcoming Procrastination:

• Don’t let your paper become overwhelming! Break your writing tasks up into the smallest possible chunks and tackle them one at a time.

Editing and Proofreading:

• Read your paper aloud, or get your computer to read it to you using text-to-speech. It’ll change your writing life.

Writing Concisely:

• Eliminate redundant words, delete unnecessary qualifiers, and reduce prepositional phrases.

The Importance of a Good Introduction:

• You never get a second chance to make a first impression. The opening paragraph of your paper will provide your readers with initial impressions of your argument, your writing style, and the overall quality of your work.

Featured Handouts

• Thesis Statements
• Essay Exams
• CVs and Resumes
• Transitions
• Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes
• Passive Voice
• Philosophy Papers
• Scientific Research Reports

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2024-25 University Catalog

Creative writing, m.f.a..

The M.F.A. in Creative Writing, one of the oldest and most prestigious programs of its kind in the nation, is offered to a limited number of students with superior ability in writing original works of poetry or fiction. The program requires 36-48 credit hours and permits students to develop particular talents in small classes and in conferences with writers in residence and distinguished visiting writers.  The most talented students are considered for fellowships as well as graduate assistantships. The M.F.A. is a residency program for full-time students.

For information regarding deadlines and requirements for admission, please see https://grs.uncg.edu/programs/ .

In addition to the application materials required by the Graduate School, applicants must submit a writing sample by January 1 to be considered for Fall admission.

Degree Program Requirements

Required:  36-48 credit hours

Usually in English or American literature.

May be a novel, a collection of short stories, or a volume of poetry.

Elective Academic Courses

Students may, with permission of the Director of the M.F.A. Writing Program, take 500- and 600-level courses offered by other departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, most often in the departments of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Media Studies, and Art.

Students who plan a career in college teaching should take as many courses as possible in literature, criticism, and composition and rhetoric, including ENG 680 Teaching Internships in English .

Students who plan careers in publishing and editing should select courses focusing on contemporary publishing:

Minor Programs

Each Department Minor consists of 18-20 hours selected from courses listed below as Options for the Minor Program.

• Six of these hours may be duplicated (count also for another program requirement).
• At least 6 of the 12-14 unduplicated hours must come from 3000‑ or 4000‑level courses. See Department Chair for more information.

Options for a Minor in Creative Writing

• ENG 3040. Principles of Literary Study (3 credits)

Choose three Creative Writing courses from the following:

• ENG 2760. Writing Creative Nonfiction I (3 credits)
• ENG 2780. Writing Poetry I (3 credits)
• ENG 2790. Writing Fiction I (3 credits)
• ENG 3740. Writing Poetry II (3 credits)
• ENG 3750. Writing Fiction II (3 credits)
• ENG 3760. Writing Creative Nonfiction II (3 credits)
• ENG 4260. Creative Writing Workshop (1-3 credits)
• ENGS 37xx. Special Topics in Creative Writing (3 credits)

Options for 6 additional hours

(cannot duplicate courses taken to fulfill Creative Writing requirement):

• ENG 2860. Literary Magazine Production (1 credit)
• ENG 2870. Literary Magazine Production (1 credit)
• ENG 3540. Modern Drama (3 credits)
• ENG 3560. Modernist Fiction (3 credits)
• ENG 3660. Modernist Poetry (3 credits)
• ENG 3670. Contemporary Fiction (3 credits)
• ENG 3680. Contemporary Poetry (3 credits)
• ENG 3710. English Grammar (3 credits)
• ENG 3860. Literary Magazine Production (1 credit)
• ENG 3870. Literary Magazine Production (1 credit)
• ENG 4860. Literary Magazine Production (1 credit)
• ENG 4870. Literary Magazine Production (1 credit)

Department of Creative Writing

• Undergraduate Programs
• Graduate Programs
• Publishing Laboratory
• Community Engagement
• Events, News and Accolades

Welcome! The UNCW Department of Creative Writing is a community of deeply committed writers who believe that the creation of art is valuable to self and culture.

We think you'll find we are an open-minded and big-hearted group. Our faculty encourages a rigorous yet safe, supportive environment in which diverse writers can grow as artists and as individuals. We believe excellence starts with an informed application of craft and we encourage writers to explore aesthetics and methods across genre lines.

Whether you are an undergraduate writer just starting down the path, or a more experienced one looking for support and guidance in the mastery of your art, we have a program that will work for you. We invite you to explore the pages of this site. Get to know us.

Look over the seasoned and well-published faculty. Check out the creative careers and prestigious publications of our students and alumni, and the extraordinary success of our Publishing Laboratory with its hands-on curriculum for BFA and MFA students.

Find out more about our award-winning semiannual journals,  Chautauqua and Ecotone , and book imprint, Lookout Books , at Ecotone Lookout . Read about our partnership with HarperCollins Publishers (which gives students direct access to crucial publishing industry information and individuals). Then be sure to let us know if you have any questions.

Publishing Lab

Integral to the Department of Creative Writing, the Publishing Laboratory incorporates into the apprenticeship of creative writers an applied learning experience in the process by which literary manuscripts, including their own, are edited and designed into books and published to a wide audience of readers.

Our Journals & Imprint

• Chautauqua ( submit )
• Ecotone ( submit )
• Lookout Books
• Ecotone & Lookout Blog

Books & Accolades

• Books published by our students and alumni
• Current Accolades
• Aspiring Writers

Creative Writing's Faculty & Staff

We believe that the ultimate measure of our worth is not a faculty's published work - important as that may be - but the artistic, personal, and academic evolution of each of the students in our charge. Our primary profession, in short, is to recruit, support, and nurture the most promising writers and students of letters in the country.

Support Creative Writing Today!

Our Guiding Principles

In the spirit of collective work and responsibility, UNCW actively fosters, encourages and promotes inclusiveness, mutual respect, acceptance and open-mindedness among students, faculty, staff and the broader community.

Contact UNCW Department of Creative Writing

Phone: (910) 962-7063 Fax: (910) 962-7461

[email protected]

601 S. College Rd. Wilmington, NC 28403-5938

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Each student will complete a service-learning internship and compose a multimedia documentary about the experience using original text, photos, audio, and video.

How do computers change the study of literature? How do images tell stories? How is writing evolving through photo essays, collages, and digital video? Students investigate these and related questions. Honors version available.

The seminar's purpose is to explore the African American slave narrative tradition from its 19th-century origins in autobiography to its present manifestations in prize-winning fiction and film.

Examination of literary and cinematic works that expose the cultural impact World War I had on contemporary and future generations. Honors version available.

This first-year seminar emphasizes contemporary autobiographical writing by and about women. Students investigate questions of self and identity by reading and writing four genres of life writing: autobiography, autoethnography, biography, and personal essay. Both traditional written and new media composing formats will be practiced. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 55H and ENGL 134H . Honors version available.

This class will investigate the forms and cultural functions of science fiction using films, books, and computer-based fictional spaces (Internet, video games, etc). Honors version available.

Course will examine the aesthetic and cultural functions and implications of textual images of photography and photographs in United States Latina/o short stories from the 1960s to the present. Honors version available.

This first year seminar will use literature, film, and popular culture to explore different expressions of masculinity and femininity in the African American and Black diasporic context. Students will evaluate how artists use gender and sexuality for social critique and artistic innovation.

This course will focus on issues of intellectual freedom and censorship, with particular attention to the ways in which these issues are racialized. Why do people ban books? What makes a book "scandalous" or "immoral"? Honors version available.

William Blake, the visionary poet, artist, and printmaker of the British Romantic period, has had enormous influence on modern art and popular culture. Using the Blake Archive, a hypertext of Blake's poetry and art, we will study key Blake works as well as the digital medium that enables us to study these works in new ways and performances and adaptations of them.

This course explores trends in online communication, emphasizing composition for the Web. The study of these writing activities is linked with a focus on innovation and on entrepreneurship.

This course examines the medieval concept of courtly love, or fin amour in a range of classical, medieval, and early modern texts. Questions that it might consider include the following: How does courtly love differ from modern visions of ideal love? Why is courtly love so often adulterous? And what is the relation of sex to love, in both the present and in the past?

This course explores the human struggle to make sense of suffering and debility. Texts are drawn from literature, anthropology, film, art history, philosophy, and biology. Honors version available.

This first-year seminar will introduce students to college-level critical analysis, writing, and oral communication by exploring representations of the 9/11 attacks and the "war on terrorism" in literature and popular culture.

This is a course about literature and war and what they might teach us about each other. Our work will be oriented around one central question: what, if anything, can a work of art help us see or understand about war that cannot be shown by other means? Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 73 and ENGL 161 .

In this course, students will study epic and anti-epic strains in Western literature, reading key texts in the epic tradition from Homer and Virgil through the 20th century in light of various challenges to that tradition and tensions within it.

The aim of the course is to give beginning university students the requisite research skills to allow them to appreciate and to contribute to an understanding of the past by directly experiencing and interpreting records from the past. Students will actually get to work with historical documents, some more than 200 years old.

This seminar focuses on biography, specifically on persons and places in Chapel Hill. Students will engage in basic research to create a final project around a person or place of their choice from any field or profession. Students will design and produce the biography in any format, from print to digital.

This course will explore the concept of globalization by focusing on the Asian diaspora, particularly the artistic and cultural productions that document, represent, and express Global Asians.

Class members will reflect upon Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) in its original contexts and study subsequent novels and films that engage with it. What makes a literary work a "classic"? How do later readers' concerns affect their responses? Lovers of Jane Eyre are welcome, as are newcomers and skeptics.

Our objective throughout will be to analyze how literary art simultaneously demonizes and celebrates the "miracle of the marketplace" and those financial pioneers that perform its magic. Honors version available.

This course is a cross-cultural and intermedial exploration of the imagery of the Great City in high modernist works of literature, art, and film.

This course focuses on the fiction of Jane Austen and its representations in film. Honors version available.

This course will explore stories about the Japanese American internment from first person memoirs to contemporary fiction. We will also examine the ramifications, historic and legal, of the internment post-9/11.

Content varies by semester. Honors version available.

Required for incoming students with SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing or ACT scores below a threshold set by the department. Please visit the department Web site for the most updated scores. The courses focuses on academic writing in a variety of contexts. Workshop format involves frequent writing and revision.

This college-level course focuses on written and oral argumentation, composition, research, information literacy, and rhetorical analysis. The course introduces students to the specific disciplinary contexts for written work and oral presentations required in college courses. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 102 and ENGL 102I, 105 , or 105I .

This college-level course focuses on written and oral argumentation, composition, research, information literacy, and rhetorical analysis. The course introduces students to one specific disciplinary context for written work and oral presentations required in college courses: natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, law, business, or medicine. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 105 and ENGL 102, 102I, or 105I .

This course introduces students to the new field of critical game studies, which uses rhetorical and literary theories to explore the impact that games have on our culture. Students will analyze the impact of immersive narratives on players and explore issues of representation and identity by playing through selected games and reading core texts. No gaming experience or equipment is needed.

This course uses a rhetorical approach to explore the concept of data. Questions of race, gender, class and other markers of identity will guide our analysis of how data is rhetorically used to shape knowledge in our contemporary world. This course is especially well suited for those in the WEDP concentration in English & Comparative Literature as well as those interested in fields such as data science, social media, technical communication, and digital humanities.

A study of the development of English from its Proto-Indo-European origins to modern English, with emphasis on how events and contacts with other languages influenced the vocabulary of English. Course previously offered as ENGL 314.

Fulfills a major core requirement. This course examines how writing has evolved from ancient times to the present, with a focus on how writing technologies (from clay tablets to typewriters, pictographs to emojis) have shaped written languages and writing instruction. Activities will include making cylinder seals, writing with wax tablets, composing videos and comic books.

Fulfills a major core requirement. In this course, students will draw on classical rhetoric--the ancient art of persuasion--to analyze how people argue today, in online contexts. We will use rhetoric to examine the strategies internet trolls use, what makes a post go viral, and whether online arguments can actually change people's minds.

This course examines video games as narrative texts through game play and game design. By the end of the semester, students will develop and create an original interactive narrative video game using the open-source software Twine. Through this making-centered course, students will study existing non-linear narratives to explore the basic principles of writing and examine the needs and expectations of the audience/viewer/player for immersive/interactive media and that of established media.

Today, writers in almost every profession use visual evidence persuasively and effectively. How do we interpret and analyze those messages? How do we generate effective visuals that avoid misleading audiences? That is the domain of visual rhetoric, an area of study we will explore in this course. This course is useful for those planning careers in science, computer science, technical communication, business, and data science as well as those interested in cultural and historical aspects.

Survey of medieval, Renaissance, and neoclassical periods. Drama, poetry, and prose. Fulfills a major core requirement. Honors version available.

Fulfills a major core requirement. Seminar focusing on later British literature covering the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods--great foundation for studying later periods. Honors version available.

Fulfills a major core requirement. A survey of literary movements over the course of American history. Movements studied include romanticism, naturalism, realism, modernism, and post-modernism. Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Ellison, Morrison. Honors version available.

Novels and shorter fiction by Defoe, Austen, Dickens, Faulkner, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and others. Honors version available.

Fulfills a major core requirement. The literature of the present generation.

A course designed to develop basic skills in reading poems from all periods of English and American literature.

Drama of the Greek, Renaissance, and modern periods.

Course emphasizes literature, critical thinking, and the writing process. Students explore the relationship between thinking, reading, and writing by studying poetry, fiction, drama, art, music, and film.

A study of approximately six major American authors drawn from Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Whitman, Clemens, Dickinson, Chesnutt, James, Eliot, Stein, Hemingway, O'Neill, Faulkner, Hurston, or others.

Fulfills a major core requirement. Studies in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, Native American, Anglo-Indian, Caribbean, gay-lesbian, and other literatures written in English. Honors version available.

Intended for sophomores and first-year students. A writing-intensive introductory workshop in fiction. Close study of a wide range of short stories; emphasis on technical problems. Composition, discussion, and revision of original student stories. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 130 and ENGL 132H . This course (or ENGL 132H ) serves as a prerequisite for other courses in the fiction sequence of the creative writing program.

Intended for sophomores and first-year students. A writing-intensive introductory workshop in poetry. Close study of a wide range of published poetry and of poetic terms and techniques. Composition, discussion, and revision of original student poems. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 131 and ENGL 133H . This course (or ENGL 133H ) serves as a prerequisite for other courses in the poetry sequence of the creative writing concentration and minor.

Intended for first-year honors students. A writing-intensive introductory workshop in fiction. Close study of a wide range of short stories; emphasis on technical problems. Composition, discussion, and revision of original student stories. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 130 and ENGL 132H . This course (or ENGL 130 ) serves as a prerequisite for other courses in the fiction sequence of the creative writing concentration and minor.

Intended for first-year honors students. A writing-intensive introductory workshop in poetry. Close study of a wide range of published poems and of the basic terms and techniques of poetry. Composition, discussion, and revision of a number of original poems. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 131 and ENGL 133H . This course (or ENGL 131 ) serves as a prerequisite for other courses in the poetry sequence of the creative writing concentration and minor.

First-year honors students only. This course focuses on women's life writing, including autobiography, biography, autoethnography, personal essay. Includes theories of life writing. Students will read contemporary works in each genre and write their own versions. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 55 and ENGL 134H .

First-year honors students only. Study of literary forms (epic, drama, lyric, novel), beginning in the fall term and concluding in the spring, with three hours credit for each term. Students should consult the assistant dean for honors or the Department of English and Comparative Literature for offerings.

Students explore the many areas of the publishing industry and practice basic skills widely used in publishing, including submissions management, copy editing, proofreading, and book and ebook design. Through hands-on practice and meetings with experts in the field, students develop a solid foundation in publication design and the editorial process. Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 136 and ENGL 351 .

In this course students learn to study emergent relationships between print and digital literary cultures. In addition to reading and discussion, the course requires that students conduct original research (individual and also collaborative) in both print and digital formats.

Intended for sophomores and first-year students. An introductory workshop in creative nonfiction, a genre that is rooted in fact and composed in artful prose. Through readings and writing prompts, we will explore the full spectrum of the genre, including memoir, travelogues, nature writing, literary journalism, lyric essays, and visual autobiography. We will workshop and revise student essays as well. This course serves as a prerequisite for other courses in the creative writing concentration and minor.

Introduces students to concepts in queer theory and recent sexuality studies. Topics include queer lit, AIDS, race and sexuality, representations of gays and lesbians in the media, political activism/literature.

This course will be a basic introduction to literatures in English from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other Anglophone literary traditions.

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema. Honors version available.

Examines the ways culture shapes and is shaped by film. This course uses comparative methods to contrast films as historic or contemporary, mainstream or cutting-edge, in English or a foreign language, etc.

Introductory course on popular literary genres. Students will read and discuss works in the area of mystery, romance, westerns, science fiction, children's literature, and horror fiction.

Readings in and theories of science fiction, utopian and dystopian literatures, and fantasy fiction.

Studies in classic and contemporary mystery and detective fiction.

This course examines the complexities and pleasures of horror, from its origins in Gothic and pre-Gothic literatures and arts. Topics include psychology, aesthetics, politics, allegory, ideology, and ethics.

In this class students will practice composing in contemporary digital writing spaces. Students will study theories of electronic networks and mediation, and their connections to literacy, creativity, and collaboration. Students will also develop their own multimedia projects using images, audio, video, and words. Topics include the rhetoric of the Internet, online communities, and digital composition.

Introduces students to methods of literary study. Students learn to read and interpret a range of literary works, develop written and oral arguments about literature, and conduct literary research.

Survey of American literature from 1789-1900. Students will gain expertise in the major literary movements of the century in their historical contexts. Fulfills a major core requirement.

Survey of American literature in the twentieth century covering the major literary movements of the century: realism, modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary. Fulfills a major core requirement.

What did people think about sex, and how did they do it, before Darwin, Stonewall, and the Sexual Revolution? This course will introduce students to the rich and varied history of sex, sexuality, and gender in Western culture before 1700. Topics to be considered may include the evolution of marriage, same-sex love in the classical world, trans identities in medieval Europe, and the history of true love.

This course investigates the history of race (as an idea) and racism (as a practice) in Western culture, from the very first discussions of race in classical antiquity until 1700. Topics to be considered may include the history of slavery, the origins of "scientific" racism, early examples of resistance to racial prejudice, and the historical intersection of race with gender and class.

This course examines various visual texts, including graphic novels and emerging narrative forms, and explores how meaning is conveyed through composition, the juxtaposition and framing of images, and the relationship between words and images. Students create their own visual narratives.

This course is a multigenre introduction to postcolonial literatures. Topics will include postcolonial Englishes, nationalism, anti-imperialism, postcolonial education, and the intersections between national and gender identities in literature. Previously offered as ENGL 463. Honors version available.

This is a class about literature and war and what each might teach us about the other. We will consider a range of texts and center our work around this question: what, if anything, can a work of art help us see or understand about war that might not be shown by other means? Students may not receive credit for both ENGL 73 and ENGL 161 .

This course will introduce students to the key critical concepts, debates, and questions of practice in the interdisciplinary field of health humanities. Students will draw on humanities methods to analyze topics related to human health, illness, and disability. Topics to be considered may include narrative medicine, disability studies, chronic illness, graphic medicine, health activism, mortality, and healthcare systems.

Introduction to major questions of Latina/o Studies through an examination of literature, culture, the visual arts, and music. Topics include imperialism, colonialism, labor, decolonization, nationalism, ethnicity and other aspects of identity and identification, and new rubrics. Previously offered as ENGL 364. Honors version available.

This course is a survey of children's literature (broadly defined in terms of age range and medium), which considers the current significance of the genre, focusing on its reception in terms of contemporary experience and concerns.

Introduction to a popular genre, cultural context, group of writers, or contemporary issue in literature, composition, and/or film.

Introduces students to the field of literary studies while emphasizing a single writer, group, movement, theme, or period. Students conduct research, develop readings, and compose literary interpretations.

An introduction to the study of creativity and aesthetic expression in everyday life, considering both traditional genres and contemporary innovations in the material, verbal, and musical arts.

Substantial practice in those techniques employed in introductory course. A workshop devoted to the extensive writing of fiction (at least two short stories), with an emphasis on style, structure, dramatic scene, and revision.

An intensification of the introductory class. A workshop devoted to close examination of selected exemplary poems and the students' own poetry, with an emphasis on regular writing and revising. This course serves as a prerequisite for other courses in the poetry sequence of the creative writing concentration and minor.

An intermediate-level workshop in creative nonfiction that focuses on a particular sub-genre, such as memoir, travel writing, food writing, or nature writing. Students will workshop and revise their own original compositions as well. This course can be repeated under a different professor or sub-genre. This course serves as a prerequisite for other courses in the nonfiction sequence of the creative writing concentration and minor.

In this writing-intensive workshop, we will explore the ever-expansive category of Young Adult ("YA") Literature, examining genre, plot, and character through our own writing, in addition to YA novels, novel excerpts, and craft essays.

An intermediate-level creative writing workshop intended for students who have already taken ENGL 130 or ENGL 132H , this course focuses on the art and craft of fiction that features visible politics. Rather than encouraging a didactic approach to storytelling, this course teaches students to ask better questions of themselves and their readers. Instead of using storytelling as a tool for propaganda, students will learn how well-crafted fiction can combat false narratives, social injustices, and tyranny.

An introductory course in descriptive English linguistics that studies the sounds, word-building processes, and sentence structures of current English as well as general notions of correctness and variation. Previously offered as ENGL 313.

A historical and critical examination of regional, social, and stylistic variation in English in the United States, including correctness, legal and educational issues, and the influence of mass media. Previously offered as ENGL 315. Honors version available.

Content of course varies with instructor, but students are given a sense of the chronological, stylistic, and thematic development of American poetry over two centuries. Previously offered as ENGL 348. Honors version available.

The development of the American novel from the late 18th century through the 20th century. May proceed chronologically or thematically. Previously offered as ENGL 347. Honors version available.

Instructors choose authors or topics from the period before 1900. The course may be organized chronologically or thematically, but is not intended as a survey. Previously offered as ENGL 344. Honors version available.

Instructors choose authors or topics from the period 1900 to 2000. The course may be organized chronologically or thematically, but is not intended as a survey. Previously offered as ENGL 345. Honors version available.

Fulfills a major core requirement. An introduction to Chaucer's major poetry: Troilus and Criseyde, the "dream" poems (e.g., Parliament of Fowls), and The Canterbury Tales. Previously offered as ENGL 320. Honors version available.

This course surveys the canonical works of Old and Middle English literature from the eighth to the 15th centuries, with the sole exception of the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. Topics to be considered may include the development of courtly love, the history of meter, religious visions and visionary experience, and the birth of modern English. Previously offered as ENGL 319. Honors version available.

Fulfills a major core requirement. A survey of representative comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances by William Shakespeare. Honors version available.

A survey of Renaissance drama focusing on contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Honors version available.

Poetry and prose of the earlier English Renaissance (from 1485 until 1600), including More, Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Bacon, and Marlowe. Honors version available.

Poetry and prose of the later English Renaissance (from 1600 until the early 1660s), including Donne, Jonson, Bacon, Herbert, Burton, Browne, Marvell, Herrick, and others. Honors version available.

Fulfills a major core requirement. A study of Milton's prose and poetry in the extraordinary context of 17th-century philosophy, politics, religion, science, and poetics, and against the backdrop of the English Civil War. Honors version available.

Poetry and prose of the Victorian period, including such writers as Tennyson, the Brownings, Arnold, the Brontës, Dickens, G. Eliot. Previously offered as ENGL 439. Honors version available.

Focuses on particular forms, authors, or issues in the period. Previously offered as ENGL 436. Honors version available.

Students will read novels in English, including Joyce, Woolf, and Proust, to explore how writers from across cultures created new strategies to represent the late 19th and 20th century worlds of imperialism, science, and experiment. Previously offered as ENGL 355. Honors version available.

Fulfills a major core requirement. This course focuses on both the novels of Jane Austen and their fate since publication in the early 19th century. They have inspired countless imitations, over 150 sequels and continuations, and more than 30 full-length films. We will trace the transmission and transformation of the original texts across time and cultures. Previously offered as ENGL 340.

A survey of 18th-century fiction from Behn to Austen. Previously offered as ENGL 333. Honors version available.

A survey of Restoration and 18th-century drama from Etheredge to Sheridan. Previously offered as ENGL 332. Honors version available.

Important novelists in the tradition, from Austen to Wilde. Previously offered as ENGL 338. Honors version available.

Twentieth-century poetry in English, approached historically, thematically, formally, politically, and aesthetically. Previously offered as ENGL 350. Honors version available.

An introductory exploration of key topics in the literatures of the Caribbean basin, Bermuda, and the Caribbean diaspora.

This course focuses on the life and works of one of the most striking personalities of the nineteenth century: Oscar Wilde. In addition to reading numerous works by Wilde (including short fiction, poetry, drama, fairy tales, and critical essays), we consider the scientific, religious, and aesthetic contexts that shaped Wilde's work.

The study of an individual Victorian writer, a group (such as the Pre-Raphaelites), a theme (such as imperialism), or genre (such as Victorian epic or the serialized novel). Previously offered as ENGL 442.

An in-depth single-author course examining the fiction and non-fiction writings of Virginia Woolf.

This course focuses on gender and sexuality by examining the history, theory, politics, and aesthetics of queer identities in film and possibly other audiovisual media. Questions of representation, authorship, genre, and performance are addressed, either in national or transnational contexts.

The first goal of this super course is to give students real tools for how to address multiple modes of difference and identity formations like race, gender, class, and sexuality.

Devoted to British Romantic-period literature's engagement with a literary mode (such as the Gothic) or a historical theme (such as war or abolition) or to an individual author. Previously offered as ENGL 441. Honors version available.

The writings, contexts, and legacy of William Faulkner. Fulfills a major core requirement.

This course focuses on performances in cinema, as well as the concept of stardom. This course surveys a diverse range of performances across cinema history, through a variety of different genres and production modes. Close attention is paid to actorly expression, and to the creation of star images in media.

Historical, theoretical, and analytical approaches to the intersection of nation and cinema. This course may focus on films made within a particular nation or serve as a comparative analysis of the cinemas of several nations.

In this course, students consider the relationship between space and place in literature or film. Honors version available.

This course provides an introduction to concepts of media studies as they bear on the critical examination of cinema, television, and other cultural forms. Students explore different theoretical perspectives on the role and power of media in society in influencing social values, political beliefs, identities, and behaviors.

This course places students behind the camera and in front of the screen as they alternate between creative and critical approaches to cinema. They learn how to practice the basic principles of narrative film production (producing, directing, cinematography, editing, and sound design) while engaging critically with key debates in film theory and criticism (semiotic, cognitive, psychoanalytic, feminist, and phenomenological). Honors version available.

In this hands-on gaming course, students decipher the narrative design of video games while exploring the legacy of cinema to gameplay. They also apply critical gaming concepts (agency, world-building, point of view, authorship, representation, narrative choice, play) to evaluate cinema as a ludic and participatory artform beyond conventional narrative elements.

An introduction to literary criticism in English studies, with an emphasis on historical developments from Plato to the present. Honors version available.

Focused study of how issues of gender shape literary themes, characters, and topics, and the composition and reception of literary texts. Honors version available.

This course brings together literary and ethnographic methods to explore narratives of illness, suffering, and healing, and medicine's roles in these processes. Themes include illness narratives, outbreak narratives, collective memory and healing from social trauma, and healers' memoirs.

Considers texts in a comparative ethnic/race studies framework and examines how these texts explore historical and contemporary connections between groups of people in the United States and the Americas. Honors version available.

Introductory exploration of the relation between science and literature, as well as the place and value of both in the contemporary world. Honors version available.

This interdisciplinary course will examine what it means to grow up Latina/o through an exploration of childhood narratives, linguistic debates, education policies and legislation, and censored books.

An introduction to key topics that focus on questions of representation at the intersections of medicine, literature, and culture. Honors version available.

This course will introduce students to the key critical concepts, debates, and questions of practice in the emerging scholarly field of disability studies.

This course introduces students to the study of Asian American literature and culture. The focus of the course may include examining coming-of-age novels, immigration narratives, or other genre explorations.

This service-learning course is partnered with a charter school, and together UNC-Chapel Hill and high school students will explore issues of race in American literature and culture.

This course focuses on the life and writings of a specific African American author. In addition to examining numerous texts by the author, we will consider the cultural, political, and artistic contexts that shaped the author's work. Fulfills a major core requirement.

Approaches to the literary interpretation of drama through consideration of PlayMakers Repertory Company's current season, stressing original research into literary history, genre, and social and cultural contexts.

This course introduces major texts and current themes, from Joyce to the postcolonial, in Irish writing from 1800 to 2000.

Covers literary and other social texts associated with the legacies of population transfers and the movements, forced or voluntary, of people across borders. Course previously offered as ENGL 365.

Students will analyze and compose various types of travel literature, such as voyage, pilgrimage, and tour, in terms of literary conventions, historical conditions, and considerations of gender, ethnicity, economics, empire, and religion. Honors version available.

Students will analyze and compose different forms of life writing such as autobiography, biography, and autoethnography. Readings will include theories of autobiography and selected literature. Honors version available.

An overview of the tradition of children's literature, considering the ways those books point to our basic assumptions about meaning, culture, self, society, gender, and economics. The course stresses original student research and oral and written presentation. Honors version available.

In this course students will read early 20th-century poetry, fiction, films, and criticism, and consider the ways these works constituted, defined, and challenged the phenomenon known as literary modernism.

Through readings in a wide range of genres, this course will examine major factors and influences shaping Jewish American literature and culture in the 20th century.

Focused study of a popular genre, cultural context, group of writers, or contemporary issue in literature and/or composition.

A survey of illustrated books for children in Britain and America considering both image and text. The course stresses original student research and oral and written presentation. Honors version available.

An examination of youth in culture through a range of texts that focus on the aesthetic, historical, and social factors grounding the depiction of youth in the past and its experience and representation today. The course stresses original student research and oral and written presentation.

An opportunity to gain credit for an internship in a field related to the study of English, such as publishing, teaching, business writing, or law. Available to majors with at least a 2.5 GPA. Requirements include portfolio of work completed for the internship, meetings with the academic advisor, and a 4000-word writing project related to the internship.

Guides students through the processes of developing an original research topic, conducting research, and analyzing research, leading students to produce a high-quality presentation of their findings. Topic varies by instructor but may focus on literary studies or closely-related arenas such as medical humanities, digital humanities, and creative writing, among others. Honors version available.

Advanced practice with writing for professional audiences, based on attention to theories of genre, audience, rhetoric, and style. Students will develop skills in professional writing, editing, copyediting, proofreading, and publishing.

Advanced practice with writing about health from medical and humanistic perspectives, ranging from grant proposals to qualitative research articles to the personal illness narrative.

A course focused on writing in professional settings focused on the arts and humanities. Students will compose documents such as funding proposals, performance reviews, artists' statements, or promotional educational materials. Includes oral, written, and digital compositions.

Advanced course focused on writing for professional audiences in non-profit, public policy, social justice, and social entrepreneurship settings. Includes oral, written, and digital compositions. Students will compose documents such as grant proposals, policy reports, websites, public presentations, or multimedia videos to advance social causes.

Advanced course focused on adapting scientific and technical content to public or non-expert audiences in oral, written, and digital forms. Assignments may include composing professional reports, developing multimedia instructions for a product, or developing an interactive exhibit.

Advanced practice with business and professional oral, written, and multimedia forms. Students will develop business proposals, reports, plans, and professional oral presentations for professional audiences.

Advanced practice with oral, written, and digital composition for legal settings.

A workshop for people interested in writing plays, focusing on elements that make them work on stage, such as characterization, climax, dialogue, exposition, momentum, setting, and visual effects.

An occasional intermediate course that may focus on such topics as living writers, poetic forms, flash fiction, or imitation. Permission of the program director.

Studies of syntax, parts of speech, types of sentences, wordplay, the narrative and non-narrative power of words, prose style, and the relationships between language, rhythm, and culture culminate with students performing a selection of the comedic and dramatic sketches written during the semester.

A study of fairy tales as historical artifacts that reveal the concerns of their times and places, as narrative structures capable of remarkable transformation, and as artistic performances drawing upon the expressive resources of multiple media, intended to challenge conventional presuppositions about the genre.

Students will focus on learning skills and strategies to deliver effective oral presentations. The course will be organized around an individual research project that will culminate in a major presentation following the "best practices" of that discipline. During the semester, students will deliver presentations of various lengths and genres and will learn effective use of media support. Course standards will emphasize professional-level expectations and current "best practices" in the field.

This class explores writing in and about contemporary social media spaces. The course focuses on developing writing projects that study and participate in online social networks. Topics include the rhetoric of the Internet; collaboration online; information ethics; amateur content creation; networks and social interaction; networks and literacy; data and privacy; and remix composition.

This class studies composing in a variety of modes, including visuals, moving images, gestures, sounds, and words. Students develop projects using image, audio, and video editors, examining how multimedia fits within the history of rhetoric and writing and relates with concerns such as purposes, audiences, contexts, arguments, genres, and mediums. Honors version available.

This course examines one of the most adventurous decades in U.S. film history, from the "Auteur Renaissance," to independent cinema, through to the politically conscious reconfiguration of popular genres. Films are discussed in the context of social changes and anxieties in the years surrounding Watergate and the Vietnam War.

This instructional course gives students the opportunity to make video essays. Students learn how to use creative audiovisual media tools, in particular those related to the moving image. Students gain familiarity with digital production and editing technology, which they use as instruments of critical expression and argumentation.

This course explores the wide range of drama produced in England between the 1570s and 1640s, including work by Shakespeare and his many rivals. Honors version available.

An introduction to one or two intellectual movements of the Renaissance, such as humanism, the protestant reformation, the baroque, or the scientific revolution, through the examination of both literary and non-literary texts of the period.

This course explores the contributions of the Middle Ages, and of medieval women, to the history of feminism and women's writing. Over the course of the semester, we will explore four different types of work by and about women: literary writing, theological writing, life writing, and the performance of identity and dramatic character. Along the way, we will also read selections from contemporary feminist theory, including Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Luce Irigaray, and Judith Butler.

Students will study Renaissance literature through one or more contemporary theoretical lenses, which might include feminist theory, queer theory, cultural materialism, new historicism, or psychoanalytic theory. Texts may range in date from the early 16th century to the late 20th and early 21st century.

A survey of British literature from Dryden to Paine. Honors version available.

This course examines the technical and aesthetic revolutions in the fine arts of the English Romantic Period, focusing on lyrical poetry, landscape painting, and original printmaking and works by Wordsworth, Turner, and Blake. Honors version available.

This course introduces students to developments in modern tabletop gaming. Students will analyze the mechanics and thematics that tabletop games use to create narratives. Particular attention will be paid to the values and stories that emerge from the decisions made by designers. This course culminates in a capstone project in which students create their own tabletop game. No prior experience with tabletop gaming is required.

This course pairs selected canonical works of U.S. literature (short stories, poems, essays, and short novels) with films that adapt or translate the original text for cinema. Works range from westerns and war movies to psychological thrillers, biopics, and comedies. By comparing text and film, the course deepens students' understanding of both aesthetic forms and traces the sometimes conflicting ideals, myths, and narratives that gave shape to different historical versions of American national identity. Honors version available.

Students learn the basics of book production, including acquisitions, developmental editing, copy editing, layout and book design, marketing, and digital publication by working on titles in production at a national press and meeting with professionals in the industry.

Course studies contemporary British and American fiction through representative works. Intellectual and aesthetic, historical and cultural emphases. May include works from the Anglophone diaspora. Honors version available.

This course examines factors shaping British/Commonwealth literature in the 20th century, especially the world wars and the dismantling of the British Empire. We will investigate themes of both nostalgia and anticipation: ways of remembering the past of England and the Empire, and of describing the future of British culture(s).

This course will focus on important poets and poetic movements in the United States in the long twentieth century. Special attention paid to writings by poets about what poetry is and does: critiquing social injustice, expressing alternative identities, exploring disordered mental states, communicating otherwise unintelligible experiences, etc. Movements may include: the Harlem Renaissance, Modernism, Confessionalism, the Black Arts Movement. We will also read poets who don't belong to any movement and poets writing today.

This course introduces students to United States Latina feminist theories, literatures, and cultures. Through a blend of genres, students explore historical foundations of Latina feminisms, examining the relationship between Latina feminisms and United States Third World feminisms, and analyze literary and cultural representations of feminist praxis.

This course will explore contemporary Asian American literature and theory and will examine how Asian American literature fits into, yet extends beyond, the canon of American literature.

This course covers writings by Asian American women and examines issues of gender, race, and sexuality.

This course focuses on events of particular import in Asian American history and how they are recounted in a variety of interdisciplinary texts. Events may include the Japanese American incarceration, refugee movements, immigration, or others, at the instructor's discretion. Honors version available.

Theories of feminist criticism in relation to general theory and women's writing. Honors version available.

Covers literary works associated with one or more of the major historical migrations, forced and voluntary, and present-day works engaged with globalization.

Survey of writers and literary and cultural traditions from the beginning of African American literature to 1930. Honors version available.

Survey of writers and literary and cultural traditions from 1930 to 1970. Honors version available.

Survey of writers and literary and cultural traditions from 1970 to the present. Honors version available.

This interdisciplinary course explores how issues of health, medicine, and illness are impacted by questions of race in 20th-century American literature and popular culture. Specific areas covered include pain, death, the family and society, reproduction, mental illness, aging, human subject experimentation, the doctor-patient relationship, pesticides, and bioethics. Honors version available.

This course will consider the themes of globalization and regionalism through an examination of narratives featuring Asians/Asian Americans in the American South. Honors version available.

An introduction to Southern literature, with emphasis on the 20th-century: fiction, poetry, drama, essays. Representative authors include Faulkner, Wolfe, Williams, Warren, Hurston, Wright, Ransom, Tate, Welty, Chappell, McCullers, O'Connor. Honors version available.

The study of fiction, poetry, plays, and essays by Southern American women writers of the past 200 years, continuing to the present.

A broad survey of the cultures of the Celtic-speaking areas, notably Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Brittany, with special emphasis on language and literature.

An introduction to the history and practice of film criticism.

This course examines one or more topics in film history, focusing on specific periods. The scope may be national or transnational. Films are analyzed for how they address and reflect key historical developments. Restricted to any undergraduate student who is a Sophomore, Junior, or Senior with a GPA or 3.0 or higher, OR any First-Year student. Honors version available.

The course introduces students to the complex narrative, aesthetic, and rhetorical relationship between literature and cinema.

This course investigates the rich and complex relationship between literature and other mass media. Previously offered as ENGL 281. Honors version available.

This class studies the composition and development of podcasts, paying attention to the unique affordances and drawbacks of podcast technologies. Students develop, research, script, and record podcasts in several genres, including topical, interview, and storytelling formats, while learning practical editing techniques using industry-standard software.

Explores various connections of literature and law, including literary depictions of crime, lawyers, and trials; literary conventions of legal documents; and/or shared problems in interpretation of law and literature.

This course explores how gender and sexuality shapes the literature, politics, and public culture of South Asian immigrant communities in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and other locations outside the Indian subcontinent.

A study of Canadian literature in English from the late 18th century to the present, with emphasis on 20th-century writing and on the novel.

What was modernism? When was modernism? Where was modernism? Reading literature and visual art from 1890 to 1940 in Europe, America, and Africa will be key to finding answers.

This course introduces students to the aims and concerns of authorship study in film through discussion of a major filmmaker's body of work. The course may focus predominantly on a single figure or may compare two or more figures who share certain affinities of theme or style.

An intensive study of a single writer, group, movement, theme, or period. Honors version available.

Students research, refine, and compose a portfolio of advanced written work for professional audiences or publication. Each portfolio will contain an array of written work that demonstrates the student's versatility as a writer, researcher, and editor. The portfolio is intended for presentation to professional audiences, potential employers, prospective graduate programs, and/or publication. Previously offered as ENGL 492.

Permission of the department. Intensive reading on a particular topic under the supervision of a member of the staff.

Museums have long been considered repositories for artifacts and sites of pedagogy, far removed from contemporary visual practices. And yet, today's museums are full of moving images, from interactive displays to IMAX theaters to screen-based art. In this class we will consider interactions between the cinema and the museum. Topics to be addressed include immersive viewing technologies, film and ethnography, expanded cinema, virtual reality, and installation art. This course includes visits to campus museums.

This course combines frequent writing practice with discussions of rhetorical theories and strategies for teaching writing. The course examines ways to design effective writing courses, assignments, and instructional materials.

This course considers learning to write from three vantage points: personal, social, and contextual. Emphasis on theory, reflective practice, and pedagogy for peer tutoring.

How do communities resist oppression through writing? This course examines texts and methods related to the study of social movements. Students will work with archival materials at Wilson Library to research social justice movements at UNC and in the South. Previously offered as ENGL 316. Honors version available.

In addition to surveying key works of creative nonfiction throughout the ages - from Montaigne in the 16th century to Solnit, Rankine, and Urrea in the 21st - we will be composing (and peer-reviewing) our own explorations of every subgenre, including memoir, literary journalism, travel writing, flash nonfiction, and the lyric essay, with an eye toward publication.

Permission of the program director. A continuation of the intermediate workshop with emphasis on the short story and novella. Extensive discussion of student work and revisions in class and in conferences with instructor.

Permission of the program director. A continuation of the intermediate workshop, with increased writing and revising of poems. Extensive discussion of student poetry in class and in conferences with instructor.

This is a course in popular-songwriting collaboration, a workshop with constant presentation of original songs and close-critiquing of these assignments. Varied assignments including songs for soloists, duos, trios, quartets, and chorus; ballads, folk, jazz, blues, art, and musical-theater songs, etc.

This course is a collaborative exploration of popular-song lyric writing, requiring numerous drafts written to varied existing musical models - narrative ballads; hymns; folk, theater, jazz, art, R&B, R&R, and worldbeat songs, etcetera - to be tried out and worked on in class, as well as in conference.

This course provides a history of documentary cinema since the beginnings of the medium and surveys different modes and theoretical definitions; or the course may focus largely on a certain mode (such as ethnographic, observational, first-person, cinema vérité, politically activist, found footage compilation, or journalistic investigation). Honors version available.

This advanced technical writing course will help you develop skills in developing professional documents with a focus on document design, user experience, project management, and technical editing. You will assess the documentation needs for a client, propose a document or set of documents to fulfill that need, and then produce polished, professional documents for that client. These materials will lead to a professional portfolio you can share with potential employers.

"Archives" are documents - manuscripts, photographs, recordings, diaries, letters, and other materials - that are so valuable they need to be preserved in a special place. In this course, the instructor will guide students as they conduct original research in literary archives, such as online databases or physical archives (at Wilson Library, for example). We will learn how to formulate research questions and how to identify key documents. Previously offered as ENGL 342.

This course examines Renaissance literature through the lens of cultural themes, issues, and problems that were important to Renaissance authors and readers. Texts may be drawn from, among others, the English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish literary traditions, and may range in date from the 15th to the 17th centuries.

Survey of works by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley, Keats, and others. Honors version available.

A junior- or senior-level course devoted to in-depth exploration of an author, group of authors, or topic in American literature to 1860. Honors version available.

Intensive study of one or more authors or a topic in American literature from the Civil War through 1900. Honors version available.

A junior- or senior-level course devoted to in-depth exploration of an author, group of authors, or a topic in American literature from 1900 to 2000. Honors version available.

American women authors from the beginnings to the present. Honors version available.

This course brings together theories of collective and individual memory with questions of aesthetics and narrative while exploring global connections between memory and literature.

Examines current issues in literary theory such as the question of authorship, the relation of literary texts to cultural beliefs and values, and to the formation of identities. Honors version available.

Permission of the instructor. Designed for students accepted as mentors to the Scholars' Latino Initiative (SLI). Students will take this course during their first year as SLI mentors to prepare them as effective mentors to Latina/o high school students. Students cannot receive credit for both ENGL 267 and 467 .

Study of particular aspects of African American literature, such as the work of a major writer or group of writers, an important theme, a key tradition, or a literary period. Honors version available.

A rigorous combination of field work, lab work, and colorful, original contemporary writing on the natural world will help tell the story of our many, evolving North Carolina coasts. Combining marine science and the creative literary arts, this immersive course will explore issues of change over many eras. This combination of social, cultural, and scientific observation will lead to imaginatively constructed, well-written non-fiction reportage about one of North America's most productive, compelling, and challenging regions.

The study of a particular topic or genre in the literature of the United States South, more focused than students will find in ENGL 373 .

Students will explore the history of computer-assisted humanities scholarship, from its beginnings in computational linguistics, media studies, and humanities computing to its current incarnation as "digital humanities." The course will provide an introduction to the field and to digital research methodologies and prepare students to develop their own digital projects. Previously offered as ENGL 530.

This Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) course interrogates the rhetoric of data construction and management by positioning students as "critical makers" in a digital humanities project. Previously offered as ENGL 353.

Oral storytelling may seem old-fashioned, but we tell true (or possibly true) stories every day. We will study personal narratives (about our own experiences) and legends (about improbable, intriguing events), exploring the techniques and structures that make them effective communication tools and the influence of different contexts and audiences.

Introduces major topics in the interdisciplinary field of critical security studies. Critically analyzing the public construction of risk and security in military, technological, informational, and environmental domains, the course explores major theories that attempt to make sense of the transnational proliferation of violence and risk in historical and contemporary contexts.

The student will have an opportunity to concentrate on researching topics and texts central to the study of health, medicine, culture, and ethics. Central topics may include representations of genetics, cloning, reproduction, and biotechnology. Honors version available.

Permission of the program director. An occasional advanced course, which may focus on such topics as advanced creative nonfiction, editing and publishing, the lyric in song and collaboration between lyricists and composers, the one-act play, and short-short fiction.

This course introduces students to research methods in film studies. While this course will provide a broad survey of methods one might employ in film studies research of all kinds, the course may be restricted to a particular research topic.

Recommended for students in junior or senior year of study. Intensive mentored research, service learning, field work, or creative work. Requires 30 hours of research, writing, or experiential activities, culminating in a written project.

Examines the ways knowledge from other disciplines can be brought to bear in the analysis of literary works. Questions of disciplinary limits and histories will also be addressed.

Offered as part of summer study abroad programs in Oxford, London, and Stratford-on-Avon. Students experience plays in performance and as texts, and discuss their literary, dramatic, cultural, and historical aspects. Honors version available.

An opportunity to gain credit for an internship in a field related to the study of health humanities, such as science writing, health non-profit work, and qualitative research. Available to majors with at least a 3.0 GPA. Requirements include regular journal entries, meetings with a faculty advisor, and a final report of 10-15 pages.

This course introduces advanced undergraduate and graduate students to topics, methods, and concepts in health humanities through practical learning experiences.

Sociologist Arthur Frank asserts that "whether ill people want to tell stories or not, illness calls for stories." This seminar explores narrative approaches to suffering, healing, and medicine's roles in these processes. Students learn literary and anthropological approaches to examine medically themed works from a range of genres.

An introduction to English literature from the eighth to the 15th century, focusing on the primary works of Old English and Middle English literature.

Students will learn to read Old English, the Germanic language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons in Britain from about the middle of the fifth century until the time of the Norman Conquest. Students will study Beowulf, "Caedmon's Hymn", and other selections in poetry and prose.

British and continental Arthurian literature in translation from the early Middle Ages to Sir Thomas Malory.

This course will examine drama written and performed in England from 1570 to 1640, situating Shakespeare's plays in relation to others in his generation.

An investigation of important texts by 19th-century women writers that considers issues of gender in relation to other important considerations--tradition, form, culture--with an introduction to the chief scholarly and critical problems of this period.

A study of literary works written in English concerning World War I, or the Spanish Civil War and World War II, or the Vietnam War. Honors version available.

The focus is on Shakespeare's various treatments of war in his plays: all his Roman histories, most of his English histories, all his tragedies, even some of his comedies.

Examines contemporary theoretical issues and critical approaches relevant to the study of literature.

A history of literary criticism from the Greeks to mid-20th century, focusing on recurrent concerns and classic texts that are indispensable for understanding the practice of literary criticism today.

This course explores literature, performance art, film, and photography by Latinas and Latinos whose works may be described as "queer" and that question terms and norms of cultural dominance.

This course explores Latina/o literature about photography in relation to photography by "queer" Latina/o artists and, through this double focus, poses certain questions about identity, subjectivity, and culture.

An examination of phenomenology, the "philosophy of experience." Taking the perspective that literature helps clarify our experience, we will engage in readings of various genres--poetry, autobiography, fiction, and drama--as we examine how literature not only records experience, but also shapes it through a distinct method of reasoning.

Digital literature explores how literary works are composed for, shaped by, and studied in electronic environments. Course texts range from books to electronic fiction and poetry to video games. Hands-on activities give students a chance to develop their own literary projects--either as electronic literary works or as digital scholarship.

This course explores issues and methodologies related to online teaching. Topics include instructor-student dynamics in the online classroom, opportunities for extending the classroom through online platforms, trends in online pedagogy, and development of online teaching portfolios.

Students will investigate theories and practices of editing in multimedia, digital environments. Students will explore histories of textual editing, research major humanities projects, examine trends and toolsets related to developing scholarly digital materials, and collaborate with one another and with campus entities to develop an online digital humanities project.

This course provides a rigorous introduction to various theories (aesthetic, narrative, historical, political, psychological, philosophical) inspired by cinema.

This course examines aesthetic and social aspects of contemporary cinema, television, and/or other media. Previously offered as ENGL 580. Honors version available.

Multidisciplinary examination of texts and other media of the Americas, in English and Spanish, from a variety of genres. Two years of college-level Spanish or the equivalent strongly recommended.

This mixed level undergraduate and graduate student course examines queer LatinX literature from the 1970s to the present as it intersects with ecological and environmental concerns. We pay close attention to LatinX cultural productions that approach ecology and environmental justice from queer perspectives and that queer ecological concerns from minoritized perspectives.

Selected topics in literary studies, composition, digital media, and related fields. Topic varies by semester.

Restricted to senior honors candidates. First semester of senior honors thesis. Independent research under the direction of an English department faculty member.

Restricted to senior honors candidates. Second semester of senior honors thesis. Essay preparation under the direction of an English department faculty member.

Restricted to senior honors candidates. The first half of a two-semester seminar. Each student begins a book of fiction or creative nonfiction (25,000 words) or poetry (1,000 lines). Extensive discussion of student work in class and in conferences.

Restricted to senior honors candidates. The second half of a two-semester seminar. Each student completes a book of fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry. Extensive discussion of student work in class and in conferences with instructor.

Guides students through the processes of developing an original research topic, conducting research, and analyzing research, leading students to produce a high-quality presentation of their findings. Topic varies by instructor but may focus on literary studies or closely-related arenas such as medical humanities, digital humanities, and creative writing, among others.

Introduction to medieval studies for graduate students in any department. Intended to expose students to research problems, tools, and techniques in fields other than their own.

A study of rhetorical theories and practices from classical to modern times. Emphasis is on translation of theories into instructional practice for teaching in the college writing classroom.

This course introduces the history of technologies used to produce and circulate literature, from medieval Europe to the twenty-first-century. Proceeding chronologically, this history provides a broad overview of the material conditions of possibility for the emergence of literary form and genre in the Anglophone tradition.

An introduction to Old English language and literature that also attempts to relate that language to Modern English and to the larger context of the history of the English language.

Required preparation, a working knowledge of Old English. The translation and interpretation of Old English poetry including works such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Deor, The Dream of the Rood, and Beowulf.

English literature of the late 14th and 15th centuries, including Gower, the English and Scottish Chaucerians, and Sir Thomas Malory.

A study of Chaucer's major poetry, including Troilus and Criseyde, at least some of the 'dream' poems such as Parliament of Fowls, and most of The Canterbury Tales.

A wide-ranging, graduate-level survey of the American novel from the late 18th century through the 20th century.

A wide-ranging, graduate-level survey of American poetry from the late 18th century through the 20th century.

An introduction to myriad texts, topics, controversies, institutions, and personalities that make up the ongoing knowledge projects that are loosely affiliated under the rubric "cultural studies."

Permission of the Instructor. This course introduces students to topics and methods in health and humanities. Students will read classics in the field, engage texts from different disciplines and genres, and conduct intensive research into a condition or disability of their choosing.

This course examines texts by medical professionals who practice in perilous venues, as well as their sponsoring institutions (Christian missions, the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders), investigating the texts' representational strategies and the historical and ethical settings of both texts and institutions.

The main emphasis of the course will be on mastering the basic grammar of the language. There will be some readings from selected Old Irish glosses and from Aislinge Oenguso.

Readings from a variety of genres of Old Irish literature: Stories from the Tain, Crith Gablach, Cambrai Homily, Early Irish Lyrics, Scela Mucce Meic Datho.

This course introduces students to the field of literary studies in English and comparative literature. Students will survey a range of approaches, methods, and controversies that have emerged from the field. The focus on critical and institutional histories will provide a foundation for graduate work and for developing professional objectives.

Course introduces graduate students to methodologies of research in the field of Rhetoric and Composition. Emphasis is on theoretical and practical concerns that improve teaching and help develop research agendas.

Focus varies by semester, but generally investigates intersections of literacy, pedagogy, and rhetorical theory. Courses range from explorations of technology and literacy, to investigations of forms of writing and pedagogy.

Study of English from its Proto-Indo-European origins through the 18th century focusing on historic events and the major changes to the structure and usage of English they occasioned.

Topics in Old English poetry and prose that vary with each seminar and instructor.

Intensive study of major Middle English authors or genres or of medieval cultural influences. Topics have included Malory, Piers Plowman and its tradition, drama, and intellectual backgrounds of medieval literature.

A study of select works of Renaissance literature, both dramatic and nondramatic, in its intellectual, social, political, or religious context.

Concentrated studies of single authors, groups of authors thematically linked, or authors in their families or coteries.

Students will study Renaissance literature while assessing the usefulness and status of a theoretical approach, such as feminist theory, queer theory, cultural materialism, new historicism, or psychoanalytic theory.

A study of Renaissance drama linked thematically, or framed by select cultural practices and historical issues.

A focused examination of an aesthetic, historical, or theoretical problem in the study of Renaissance literature.

Selected topics in 18th-century literature.

Studies in eighteenth-century fiction from Behn to Austen.

Sections: 1) Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 2) Byron, Shelley, Keats. Examination of the major Romantic poets, supplemented by readings in other Romantic authors.

Examination of important 19th-century British novels, such as those by Austen, Scott, Dickens, the Brontes, sensation novelists, Gaskell, Carroll, Thackeray, Eliot, Trollope, Doyle, Hardy, Meredith.

Study of Victorian poets, focused on a group or a topic, including figures such as Tennyson, the Brownings, Arnold, and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Topics concerning major authors and issues of the Romantic period.

Topics concerning major authors and issues of the Victorian period.

Topics vary: e.g., New England Puritanism, New England response to American literary nationalism; Emerson; Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe and the development of the American short story.

In-depth exploration for doctoral students of selected topics or authors in American Literature from 1860 to 1900.

Doctoral-level seminar in the selected topics or authors.

Usually taught as a survey of major poets: Yeats, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Pound, Eliot, Auden, with some more recent poets.

Explores representative works of contemporary playwrights.

Studies in special modern and/or contemporary topics; e.g., the Irish literary renaissance, Latina/o Studies, Asian American Studies, cultural, visual culture, postcolonial, gender, and/or ethnic studies, and British and/or American Literature.

Usually taught as a survey of major writers: Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Hemingway, Faulkner, with some other writers.

Seminar examining issues in modern English and American Literature.

Seminar with varying topics, focusing on recent developments in literary and cultural theory, including narratology, feminism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial and materialist theory.

Advanced exploration of myriad tests, topics, controversies, institutions, and personalities that make up the ongoing knowledge projects that are loosely affiliated under the rubric 'cultural studies.'

Course examines the shifting meanings of postcoloniality in 20th- and 21st- century literature from formerly colonized countries.

Representative work by Latina/o writers and critics in relation to major social and historical trends and critical models-border theory, biculturalism, mestizaje, tropicalization, diaspora, pan-latinidad, Afro-Latina/o disidentifications, and LatinAsia Studies.

Key writers within the context of selected literary, cultural, and critical traditions from 1930 to 1970.

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An in-depth treatment of selected topics (e.g., the Southern Renaissance, postmodern southern fiction, the racial conversion narrative) in Southern literature.

Seminar examines and engages with critical race theory and the various texts (narrative, cultural productions) that are in conversation with theories of race and that reflect representations of race.

An introduction to modern Irish grammar.

Readings in Modern Irish Literature.

This course will examine the relationships between Irish writing, culture, and modernism, in the context of international developments in literature and art.

This course offers graduate students the opportunity to investigate, in a seminar setting, a particular subject within the domain of film studies.

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Topics vary according to the needs and interests of the individual student and the professor directing the reading and writing project.

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Creative Writing Concentration

The Creative Writing concentration offers students support in developing their writing through a sequence of workshops combined with literature surveys, genre studies, and a selection of special topics courses. The goal of the program is to foster confident undergraduate writers who work with a sound knowledge of their own literary tradition and who can produce works of publishable quality.

Students receive individual assistance in understanding and extending their skills in writing poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and/or playwriting, with responsibility for growth and achievement resting ultimately on the student. The instructor will encourage, critique, suggest opportunities, and recommend authors to read, but the students themselves provide the spark and will to progress.

Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing with Teaching Licensure

The Creative Writing with Teaching Licensure track is designed especially for prospective teachers. This special curriculum supplements the core requirements of the concentration in creative writing to prepare students in the broad range of areas expected of English teachers, including literature, composition, and the history of the English language. This program has rigorous requirements, and planning ahead is wise. Student teaching, the senior thesis, and comprehensive exams all converge in the senior year, along with other courses that may be needed outside the major. Students who undertake this path need to work closely with their advisors to ensure their success.

Creative Writing Minor

Students may minor in Creative Writing by completing 20 hours of specified courses, including LANG 260 and LIT 240, 4 hours from LIT 325, 326, 327 or 330, and 8 additional hours from LANG 361, 363, 365, or 366. Students can declare a minor online .

Admission Requirements

Freshmen and transfers.

• Minimum GPA:  2.0
• Declaration of Major:   Change of Major forms accepted year-round; students must make an advising appointment during SOAR and when declaring the major
• Transferable Credit Hours:   24

Degree Requirements

Students in the major must complete a minimum of 36 credit hours in English courses, including 12 credit hours at the 4000-level.

General Education Courses (37-41 credit hours)

For details on required courses, refer to the General Education Program   .

Foreign Language Courses

Students with an English major (all concentrations) are required to demonstrate foreign language competency at the intermediate level.  Intermediate proficiency requires completion of a 2000-level or above course in a foreign language that uses the Latin alphabet (e.g., French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish) or a 1202-level course in a language that does not use the Latin alphabet (e.g., Chinese, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, etc.).

Major Courses (21 credit hours)

Introductory creative writing courses (6 credit hours).

Select two of the following:

• ENGL 2125 - Imagined Worlds: Creative Writing Laboratory (3)
• ENGL 2126 - Introduction to Creative Writing (3) (W)
• ENGL 2127 - Introduction to Poetry Writing (3)
• ENGL 2128 - Introduction to Fiction Writing (3)
• ENGL 2200 - Contemporary Literature (3)
• ENGL 2201 - Contemporary Poetry (3)
• ENGL 2202 - Contemporary Fiction (3)

Intermediate Creative Writing Course (3 credit hours)

Select one of the following:

• ENGL 3201 - Intermediate Poetry Writing (3)
• ENGL 3202 - Intermediate Fiction Writing (3)

Advanced Creative Writing Courses (6 credit hours)

• ENGL 4202 - Advanced Poetry Writing (3) (W)
• or   ENGL 4208 - Poetry Writing Workshop (3) (W)
• ENGL 4203 - Advanced Fiction Writing (3) (W)
• or   ENGL 4209 - Fiction Writing Workshop (3) (W)
• ENGL 4206 - Writing Creative Nonfiction (3) (W)
• ENGL 4290 - Advanced Creative Project (3) (O)

Literature Courses (6 credit hours)

Select one course from two of the following categories:

Pre-1800 British Literature

• ENGL 3211 - Medieval Literature (3)
• ENGL 3212 - British Renaissance Literature (3)
• ENGL 3213 - British Literature of the Restoration and 18th Century (3)

Post-1800 British Literature

• ENGL 3214 - Romantic British Literature, 1785-1832 (3)
• ENGL 3215 - British Victorian Literature (3)
• ENGL 3216 - British Literature in Transition, 1870-1914 (3)
• ENGL 3217 - Modern British Literature (3)

Pre-1900 American Literature

• ENGL 3231 - Early African American Literature (3)
• ENGL 3232 - Early American Literature (3)
• ENGL 3233 - American Literature of the Romantic Period (3)
• ENGL 3234 - American Literature of the Realist and Naturalist Periods (3)

Post-1900 American Literature

• ENGL 3235 - Modern American Literature (3)
• ENGL 3236 - African American Literature, Harlem Renaissance to Present (3)
• ENGL 3237 - Modern and Recent U.S. Multiethnic Literature (3)

Children’s Literature

• ENGL 3102 - Literature for Young Children (3)
• ENGL 3103 - Children’s Literature (3)
• ENGL 3104 - Literature for Adolescents (3)
• ENGL 4102 - British Children’s Literature (3)
• ENGL 4103 - American Children’s Literature (3)
• ENGL 4104 - Multiculturalism and Children’s Literature (3)

Restricted Elective Courses (15 credit hours)

Students select fifteen additional credit hours in ENGL courses at the 2000-level or above.

Minor Courses (18 credit hours)

A Major in English also requires completion of either a minor established at UNC Charlotte or an individually designed course of study consisting of a minimum of 18 credit hours in coursework selected from English and/or other departments, approved by the student’s Department of English advisor and undergraduate coordinator.  Students with a second major in another department are considered to have satisfied the minor requirement.  

Unrestricted Elective Courses

Degree total = 120 credit hours, grade requirements.

A GPA of 2.0 or above in all English courses above the 1000-level is required for graduation.

UNC Creative

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The Creative Essentials service is designed to meet your daily design challenges. Choose from a variety of curated layouts for common materials, make selections from a menu of design options, provide your content and receive your files. It’s simple, quick, professional and all at a transparent, flat cost.

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The concentration in Creative Writing offers students the opportunity and incentive to develop their writing in a workshop setting and to support their writing with a strong background in literary studies. The goal of the program is to foster confident undergraduate writers who work with a sound knowledge of their own literary tradition. Students in the program will learn to write in multiple genres: fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Scaffolded workshops at the 200, 300, and 400 levels will help them hone their craft throughout their undergraduate experience.

I. Required courses in the major—44 hours, including:

• LANG 260 - Introduction to Creative Writing (4)
• LIT 240 - Introduction to Literature (4)
• LIT 324 - American Literary Traditions (4)
• LIT 334 - Western Literature: Ancient to Renaissance (4)
• LIT 335 - Western Literature: Enlightenment to Modern (4)

Two different courses from 300-level LANG:

• LANG 361 - Poetry Writing Workshop (4)
• LANG 363 - Fiction Writing Workshop (4)
• LANG 365 - Playwriting Workshop (4)
• LANG 366 - Creative Non-Fiction Workshop (4)

Two different courses from 400-level LANG:

• LANG 460 - Advanced Creatuve Writing Workshop (4)
• LANG 487 - Thematic Approaches to Creative Writing (4)
• LANG 494 - The Creative Writing Professional (4)

One course from:

• LIT 325 - Readings in Drama (4)
• LIT 326 - Readings in Fiction (4)
• LIT 327 - Readings in Poetry (4)
• LIT 330 - Readings in Film (4)
• LIT 328 - Ethnic Literatures (4)
• LIT 329 - Southern Literature (4)
• LIT 346 - Readings in Gender and Sexuality (4)
• LIT 363 - Appalachian Literature (4)
• LIT 364 - Postcolonial Literature (4)
• LIT 369 - World Literatures (4)

II. Required courses outside major—None

Iii. other departmental requirements:.

Major competency is demonstrated by successful completion of two 400-level LANG courses.

Liberal Arts Core (LAC)

For additional information about the Liberal Arts Core and the specific courses that fulfill the requirements, visit the Office of the Registrar website, https://registrar.unca.edu/liberal-arts-core .

Liberal Arts Core Requirements

Courses that satisfy some of the following LAC requirements can be found throughout the curriculum and may be used to fulfill multiple requirements.  

AI is contentious among authors. So why are some feeding it their own writing?

The vast majority of authors don't use artificial intelligence as part of their creative process — or at least won't admit to it.

Yet according to a recent poll from the writers' advocacy nonprofit The Authors Guild, 13% said they do use AI, for activities like brainstorming character ideas and creating outlines.

The technology is a vexed topic in the literary world. Many authors are concerned about the use of their copyrighted material in generative AI models. At the same time, some are actively using these technologies — even attempting to train AI models on their own works.

These experiments, though limited, are teaching their authors new things about creativity.

Best known as the author of technology and business-oriented non-fiction books like The Long Tail, lately Chris Anderson has been trying his hand at fiction. Anderson is working on his second novel, about drone warfare.

He says he wants to put generative AI technology to the test.

"I wanted to see whether in fact AI can do more than just help me organize my thoughts, but actually start injecting new thoughts," Anderson says.

Anderson says he fed parts of his first novel into an AI writing platform to help him write this new one. The system surprised him by moving his opening scene from a corporate meeting room to a karaoke bar.

"And I was like, you know? That could work!" Anderson says. "I ended up writing the scene myself. But the idea was the AI's."

Anderson says he didn't use a single actual word the AI platform generated. The sentences were grammatically correct, he says, but fell way short in terms of replicating his writing style. Although he admits to being disappointed, Anderson says ultimately he's OK with having to do some of the heavy lifting himself: "Maybe that's just the universe telling me that writing actually involves the act of writing."

Training an AI model to imitate style

It's very hard for off-the-shelf AI models like GPT and Claude to emulate contemporary literary authors' styles.

The authors NPR talked with say that's because these models are predominantly trained on content scraped from the Internet like news articles, Wikipedia entries and how-to manuals — standard, non-literary prose.

But some authors, like Sasha Stiles , say they have been able to make these systems suit their stylistic needs.

"There are moments where I do ask my machine collaborator to write something and then I use what's come out verbatim," Stiles says.

The poet and AI researcher says she wanted to make the off-the-shelf AI models she'd been experimenting with for years more responsive to her own poetic voice.

So she started customizing them by inputting her finished poems, drafts, and research notes.

"All with the intention to sort of mentor a bespoke poetic alter ego," Stiles says.

She has collaborated with this bespoke poetic alter ego on a variety of projects, including Technelegy (2021), a volume of poetry published by Black Spring Press; and " Repetae: Again, Again ," a multimedia poem created last year for luxury fashion brand Gucci.

Stiles says working with her AI persona has led her to ask questions about whether what she's doing is in fact poetic, and where the line falls between the human and the machine.

read it again… pic.twitter.com/sAs2xhdufD — Sasha Stiles | AI alter ego Technelegy ✍️🤖 (@sashastiles) November 28, 2023

"It's been really a provocative thing to be able to use these tools to create poetry," she says.

Potential issues come with these experiments

These types of experiments are also provocative in another way. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says she's not opposed to authors training AI models on their own writing.

"If you're using AI to create derivative works of your own work, that is completely acceptable," Rasenberger says.

But building an AI system that responds fluently to user prompts requires vast amounts of training data. So the foundational AI models that underpin most of these investigations in literary style may contain copyrighted works.

Rasenberger pointed to the recent wave of lawsuits brought by authors alleging AI companies trained their models on unauthorized copies of articles and books.

"If the output does in fact contain other people's works, that creates real ethical concerns," she says. "Because that you should be getting permission for."

Circumventing ethical problems while being creative

Award-winning speculative fiction writer Ken Liu says he wanted to circumvent these ethical problems, while at the same time creating new aesthetic possibilities using AI.

So the former software engineer and lawyer attempted to train an AI model solely on his own output. He says he fed all of his short stories and novels into the system — and nothing else.

Liu says he knew this approach was doomed to fail.

That's because the entire life's work of any single writer simply doesn't contain enough words to produce a viable so-called large language model.

"I don't care how prolific you are," Liu says. "It's just not going to work."

Liu's AI system built only on his own writing produced predictable results.

"It barely generated any phrases, even," Liu says. "A lot of it was just gibberish."

Yet for Liu, that was the point. He put this gibberish to work in a short story. 50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know , published in Uncanny Magazine in 2020, is a meditation on what it means to be human from the perspective of a machine.

"Dinoted concentration crusch the dead gods," is an example of one line in Liu's story generated by his custom-built AI model. "A man reached the torch for something darker perified it seemed the billboding," is another.

Liu continues to experiment with AI. He says the technology shows promise, but is still very limited. If anything, he says, his experiments have reaffirmed why human art matters.

"So what is the point of experimenting with AIs?" Liu says. "The point for me really is about pushing the boundaries of what is art."

Audio and digital stories edited by Meghan Collins Sullivan .

Copyright 2024 NPR

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Creative Writing

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The Daily Iowan

Humanities seniors speak out about next steps

  In each of Jenna Mather’s writing and publishing classes at the University of Iowa, the vast majority of her classmates have been female-identifying.

Similarly, Mather, a third-year English and creative writing major graduating this May, noticed only one male-identifying student in her intern cohort at a New York City publishing press last summer.

The female domination of the authorship and publishing industry is not unique to Mather’s experience at the UI, however. Rather, it is an anecdotal representation of the broader gender breakdown of the publishing industry in the U.S.

A 2019 study conducted by Statista revealed that 74 percent of employees in the publishing industry — including the “Big Five” publishing houses Penguin/Random House, Hachette Book Group, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan — are cisgender women; cisgender men accounted for 23 percent, while nonbinary individuals accounted for less than 5 percent.

Despite the vast female majority, the same study indicated that cis men are more likely to hold executive positions over other positions in the industry, as 80 percent of the cis women employed are in lower-level marketing or public relations positions.

While Mather attends the last few writing classes of her college career, she is unsure that the predominant female demographic in her classes will translate into leadership roles after she turns the tassel at graduation in just a few weeks.

“There has been a lot of uncertainty because graduation is coming up,” Mather said. “I would love to have a job lined up when I graduate.”

Mather hopes to secure a job in marketing, communications, or writing positions after graduating. She has also applied to some remote positions as well.

Though she has found the hiring process to be taxing, Mather came prepared. This was in part due to her collegiate coursework and the extracurricular activities she engaged in while at the UI.

As a first-year, Mather served as both the social media editor and editor-in-chief of Ink Lit Mag , the UI’s only student literary magazine run by first-years. Then, she worked with the magazine Earthwords before returning to Ink Lit on the upperclassmen management team as an assistant publisher during her third and final year.

In addition to her work with literary magazines, Mather has also gained useful insight into the job market through her courses at the UI.

She cites the class, “Iowa Chapbook Prize: Publishing Practicum,” as one that gave her the most hands-on experience with the publishing process.

“We discussed submissions, and each person selected the one that they liked best. I also had to typeset, so I got experience working with InDesign, Photoshop, and other software like that,” Mather said.

Despite her publishing endeavors, however, Mather’s career goals have shifted as she learned more about the industry.

“I’m certainly interested in publishing — I love books, but I think my perspective on working in publishing has changed a little bit,” Mather said.

One of the major drawbacks Mather sees in the publishing industry is the overlap that would exist between her job and her creative work. She said it would be nice to have some separation of the personal and professional.

“I started seeking out more marketing and communications jobs, because then I’d still be learning skills and contributing my experience, but also kind of be separate,” Mather said.

Reflecting on the job hunting process as a whole, Mather said it wasn’t what she expected. Job opportunities are determined based on the relative job market, and creative markets are not currently in high demand, she said.

“It is not like engineering or business where employers are actively searching for you,” Mather said. “So you have to go out and be actively searching on all of the job sites and going to the career fairs. I feel like I expected it to be difficult, but maybe not as difficult as it is.”

Similarly, UI third-year Abby Bishop has used internship experience to pave her way to graduation. A double major in political science and English and creative writing, Bishop plans to graduate next winter.

Though Bishop doesn’t know exactly what the future has in store, she said, she has a strong background to rely upon. Last summer, she was a writing intern for Eco Stylist, a sustainable clothing company.

While in college, Bishop has been an active part of several creative writing and reading groups, allowing her to learn how to advertise both herself and her writing.

“It was nice to be a part of groups that showed me how I can get people to read my work outside of class,” Bishop said.

Bishop also found that many of her political science and writing workshop classes helped build skills applicable to her career. “Women in Gender Studies” was one particularly influential course.

“I learned about the barriers minorities face in college, it just really helped give me perspective and helped me look beyond school,” Bishop said. “I want to be able to use my skills to make the world a better place.”

Currently, Bishop hopes to learn about online journalism and copywriting to improve her writing skills. Eventually, she hopes to fulfill her dream of receiving a Master of Fine Arts in poetry. However, a graduate program wasn’t originally in the cards for Bishop before she came to the UI.

“I never even considered getting my master’s, but working closely with professors and being so close to the writer’s workshop really changed my perspective,” Bishop said.

UI graduates are continuing their education by studying 357 different fields at 351 universities from 2020 to 2022.

For UI fourth-year student Sabrina Lacy, graduate studies were the most appealing.

“It kind of developed over time — wanting to apply to grad school. From my first year through the first half of my third year, I thought I was going to apply for psychology graduate programs, whether that be an MA or a Ph.D.,” Lacy said.

Lacy will graduate in the spring with a double major in English and creative writing and psychology.

As she progressed through college, Lacy discovered she didn’t want to dedicate five to seven years of her life to studying psychology. She still enjoyed the subject but liked it more as a secondary interest instead of the main focus of her career.

“I realized that I like creative writing. I had an epiphany my junior year and I decided — I’m going to apply to graduate programs for creative writing,” Lacy said.

Lacy ended up applying to several graduate programs between December 2023 and February 2024. Since she was applying mainly to creative writing programs, many of them wanted 40-page-long writing samples. Alongside that, she also needed letters of recommendation, as well as a personal statement that could range anywhere from one to five pages.

Lacy’s biggest advice to those wanting to begin graduate school applications is to start working on them early. She also advises students to have trusted professors, as well as others applying to schools in the same department, who can look over their applications before submission.

Relying on the community around her has been the most helpful part of Lacy’s process, as the information she has learned both from her peers and on different programs’ websites aided her when solidifying which programs to apply to.

In the end, Lacy chose to commit to Ohio University, where she will earn her Master of Arts in fiction writing.

“I wanted to have the opportunity to experience a place different from here, getting involved in the creative writing community in other places,” Lacy said.

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Meet Llayna and Saniah Maul: Twins with unique passions are Godby valedictorian, salutatorian

Llayna and Saniah Maul, 17, are identical twins, but under the surface, they are totally different.

Saniah is drawn to pinks and bright colors. Llayna loves darker hues like black.

Llayna enjoys writing creative stories about gothic horror. Saniah has a passion for fashion.

Their personalities differ but they both share a love for learning.

On May 22, the twins will graduate from Amos P. Godby High School with Llayna as valedictorian, the top-ranked student in a class, and Saniah as salutatorian, the student who ranks second highest.

"We are very intrinsically motivated," Saniah said. "A lot of people think the work I put in is for grades or the accolades but it's not. My passion for learning drives me, I just want to do the best that I can."

"I don't work for the grades, they just come on their own."

After starting high school in 2020 remotely through the Florida Virtual School, the twins transferred to Godby High in 2022 and began taking dual enrollment classes at Tallahassee Community College.

At Godby, they excelled in their academic classes and joined extracurriculars, like the theater club, and were inducted into the National Honor Society.

Their most recent joint achievement was performing at the Florida Thespian Festival in Tampa with Godby's theater troupe in the school's one-act show "Rumpelstiltskin," which won several awards.

"They are amazing individuals and creative. They are both very different even though they're twins and they're very hardworking. I am going to miss them both very much," said Randi Lundgren, Godby's theater teacher.

Their parents, James and Annie Leonard, said they got an early start on educating their girls, often playing music and reading to them while they were still in cribs.

"This isn't a surprise, because in our house the importance of family and education has always been a priority. I believe the foundation to a good education is an early start," said Annie Leonard, her husband sitting next to her.

"They really like being challenged, in a good way, of course, and I like that. They don't settle," said James Leonard, a grocery employee. "They try to learn as much as they can."

The parents, who also have two adult sons, see their daughters as an inspiration. That is why Annie, a stay-at-home mom, who also graduated from Godby High, has decided to pursue a career in teaching. She's taking classes online with Western Governor's University.

"The way they learn has inspired me to become a teacher, because I feel like the stuff I did with them when they were smaller kind of fueled their love for learning and I just want to bounce that off some more kids," she said.

The twins expressed gratitude to their parents for instilling within them an understanding that a free public education is a privilege.

"People really spend their whole lives working for things that we can learn for free, especially people from our demographic who were once barred from having access to education, so why not take advantage of it," Llayna said.

The twins are both nominated for Leon County's Best and Brightest class of 2024 , with Saniah in the arts category, and Llayna in the English language arts category. Winners will be announced May 15 during a ceremony at the Ruby Diamond Concert Hall.

Saniah Maul: The 'bubbly' one

Her parents call her their "bubbly baby," full of energy and contagious joy.

Saniah plans to start at Florida A&M University in the fall as a junior majoring in Animal Science Industry. She says she wants to be a wildlife veterinarian and, later on, a science teacher.

"I like zoology, really. Animals are just so different and I love them," Saniah said.

According to her mother, Saniah is a "doer," meaning if she has a desire to do something, she executes it immediately, no planning necessary.

She holds two Advanced Placement Scholar Awards and a community service award from Godby High.

Llayna Maul: The meticulous writer

Llayna likes structure and, before she does anything, she makes a plan which is why she hasn't decided which university she'll attend, but she knows she wants to major in psychology.

"I'm still weighing all my options," she said. "I think that learning about the science of why people do the things that they do is really interesting."

Llayna enjoys reading and writing gothic and horror stories, and as president of TCC's creative writing club, she focuses her entries on those themes. She is a recipient of the Yale Book Award, which is given to students who excel in English language arts and literature.

Their parents said they support their girls no matter what, and they know brighter things await them in the future.

"I am going to support my kids in whatever they want to do, wherever they want to go, wherever they feel like they can learn the most, because I know that learning is their first priority," James Leonard said.

Alaijah Brown covers children & families for the Tallahassee Democrat. She can be reached at  [email protected] .

Scholarships and Awards in Creative Writing

Thanks to the generosity of various donors, there are a number of awards—available at different stages of a student writer’s career at UNC—designed to make possible continued study at the University and in the Creative Writing Program, and also to reward excellent work in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction by undergraduate students.

The Thomas Wolfe Scholarship

This unprecedented program for student writers—which began in 2002 and is funded at roughly the same level as the University’s prestigious Morehead Scholarship—provides a full scholarship to one incoming student each year for four years including summer research stipends. The scholarship is not limited to fiction writers: applications are welcomed from student poets, playwrights, fiction writers, essayists and journalists across the country, and each Wolfe Scholar will be a young writer who shows extraordinary promise. The scholarship was endowed by Frank Borden Hanes Sr., class of 1942, to honor Wolfe, class of 1920—who as a UNC student edited  The Tar Heel  and wrote and starred in “The Return of Buck Gavin” (one of the first productions of Playmakers Repertory Company), later remembering Chapel Hill fondly in his classic 1929 novel  Look Homeward, Angel —and to support the creative writing program. Students must apply for this scholarship during their senior year of high school. For more information, write Stephanie Elizondo Griest and Gaby Calvocoressi, Co-Directors of The Thomas Wolfe Scholarship Program, or review the scholarship website .

The Wanda Chappell Scholarship

Juniors and seniors are eligible for this award, designed for a student who is an English major and a Creative Writing minor, who qualifies for financial aid from the University, and who demonstrates a serious interest in the publishing world. This scholarship program was initially funded by Random House, in memory of Wanda Chappell ‘81.

The Charles and Rita Collins Scholarship

This is a needs-based award—made possible by Charles D. Collins, MD of Rockingham, N.C.—meant to assist students who are Creative Writing minors.

For more information on the Chappell and Collins Scholarships, please contact the Director of Creative Writing, Ross White .

Currently, there are four literary prizes for seniors at Carolina: the Robert B. House Memorial Prize in Poetry; the Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Prize in Fiction; the Max Steele Award in Fiction; and the Ann Williams Burrus/Academy of American Poets Prize, administered by the AAP in New York.

There are two prizes for juniors: the Blanche Armfield Prize for Poetry, and the George B. Wynne Award for Fiction.

Other annual prizes, each of which comes with a cash award, include: the Bland Simpson Prize in Creative Non-Fiction, awarded to one undergraduate for outstanding literary essays and belles-lettres; the Mini-Max Short-Short Fiction Award, founded by former Creative Writing Program Director Max Steele, a practicioner and proponent of very short fiction, and awarded for complete short stories of no more than 750 words; and the Suzanne Bolch Award, founded by Ben and Ann Bolch in honor of their daughter, filmmaker/producer Suzanne Bolch, which provides summer support to a creative writing minor who seeks to develop an original, independent project designed to stimulate and expand the writer’s imagination and artistic vision.

*Photograph of Thomas Wolfe used by permission of the Estate of Thomas Wolfe and courtesy of the North Carolina Photographic Collection at UNC-CH. Photograph of Davie Poplar courtesy of Jerry Cotten.