Does not give concentration credit. Practice in writing narration, exposition, argument and persuasion, the critical essay, and the research paper. Related readings. Class discussion of papers. Individual conferences. Students enroll in specific seminars. Limited enrollment. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following areas: Research and Information Literacy; Writing, Research and Inquiry.

EN 201 - A1 (Bennett) -- "Contemporary Fiction's Otherworldly Glow"
In this course, our reading will take us to Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, regions more culturally different than some might imagine. Our close reading, however, will reinforce the universality of the human condition as we examine issues of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. We will encounter colonialism, war, love, and political intrigue in four twenty- first century novels: Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go, Hala Alyan's Salt Houses, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, and Luis Alberto Urrea's The House of Broken Angels.

EN 201 - A2 (Grabianowski) -- "Imagining Ourselves, Imagining the Landscape, Imagining Technology"
Can humans muster the imagination and the ethical grit necessary to create a sustainable and livable future where freedom, equality and human rights are respected? How can scientific insight, technological advancement, business interests and the humanities find common ground in creating such a world? Could revisiting the powers of imagination provide some answers? Could insights derived from thousands of years of living in a natural landscape help humans to better understand the opportunities and limitations of our current technological landscape? In this section of English 201, we will consider what insights the long history of the imagination can offer us into the awe-inspiring wonders of nature and how they have contributed to unlocking the hidden capacities of the human mind. We will first take a look at the deep currents of imagination going back to the ancient philosophers like Heraclitus. We will then, over the course of the semester, consider how 19th and 20th century poets, novelists, theoretical physicists and environmentalists like Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, E.M. Forster, Gary Snyder, Albert Einstein, David Bohm, and Aldo Leopold have addressed the practical and ethical issues that arise at the intersection of nature, technology and society. Based on student interests, the background of these texts will allow us to shine new light on the social, environmental and technological issues of our day like cyborgs and the future of AI, the ethics of genetic engineering, machines with human purposes, big data, human relationships in the age of social media and fake news, the failures of modern education, and the rise of sustainability and ecological economics. We will discuss how contemporary scientists, poets, technology industry leaders, and writers like Herman Daly and Sherry Turkle seek to rediscover in a modern context how we can forge deeper and more meaningful relationships with ourselves, nature, and each other by re-discovering the capacities of our innate imaginative powers to grapple with the rapid transformation of our technological existence. We will harness these perspectives to think critically about writing itself as a technology and about how understanding it better can draw us nearer to the finer points of the writing process.