UT Martin College of Humanities and Fine Arts
Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages
English Composition Theme Courses
Spring 2017
There are two tracks in English Composition at UT Martin, depending on ACT scores and other assessments:
ENGL 100-110-112 or ENGL 111-112. Students must complete the courses in sequence and must pass each course
with a grade of C or higher to enroll in the next course.
ENGL 112-002
The Aims of Argument
MWF 8:00-8:50
CRN: 21607
ENGL 112-004
MWF 9:00-9:50
CRN: 21623
Melvin Hill
This course provides the opportunity for students as readers, viewers, writers, and speakers to engage
with social and ethical issues. Over the course of the semester, through discussing the writing of classic
and contemporary authors, we will explore different perspectives on a range of social issues such as
free speech, poverty and homelessness, mental illness, capital punishment, and racial and gender
inequality. Also, we will analyze selected documentaries, feature films, and photographs that represent
or dramatize social problems or issues.
In assigned essays, students will have the opportunity to write about social and ethical issues of their
choice. This course aims to help students grow significantly in their ability to grapple with and
understand arguments, integrate secondary print and visual sources, and craft well-reasoned and elegant
essays. In class, we will discuss assigned texts, explore strategies for successful academic writing, and
respond to one another's essays.
ENGL 112-003
The Myth-Making Power of Fairy Tales MWF 9:00-9:50
CRN: 21620
ENGL 112-005
MWF 10:00-10:50
CRN: 21630
Charles Bradshaw
Bruno Bettelheim claims that in past centuries fairy tales allowed children to grapple with their world in
symbolic terms. Do these tales symbolize anything for kids today? What do these archaic stories tell us about
existence in the 21st century? We'll spend a fair amount of time reading fairy tales presented by the Brothers
Grimm and others, and we’ll also look at some modern adaptations by Disney and others. Love, death,
honoring your elders, and rewards for good behavior will make up only a small portion of our readings;
angst-ridden animals, vindictive and vengeful virgins, the devil with an Oedipus complex, witches dancing in
hot metal boots—these will be the subjects of our inquiry. We’ll analyze, research, create, view, and write
about fairy tales, with our studies culminating in a final research project based upon your reading and
evaluation of several different versions of a particular fairy tale.
ENGL 112-008
Justice and Society
MWF 11:00-11:50
CRN: 21639
ENGL 112-019
TR 2:30-3:45
CRN: 21679
David Williams
This writing-intensive course will explore different concepts of law and justice, from natural law (rules of
behavior and justice derived from nature) to positive law (the jurisprudence, or theory and philosophy of law
of a given political community). We will discuss the relationship between justice and jurisprudence, and
consider how concepts of each have evolved over time. Attention will be given to the way that the media and
pop culture represent law and justice. This course may be of particular interest to students who aspire to
careers in law, criminal justice, or public service.
ENGL 112-015
Change Makers
TR 11:00-12:15
CRN: 21671
ENGL 112-018
TR 1:00-2:15
CRN: 21677
Heidi Huse
The theme of this course is change makers. We will read about individuals who refuse to settle for the status
quo and either initiate change or join the work of others in making a better society and world for everyone,
often despite great risk to themselves. The change makers we will learn about include African
environmentalist Wangari Maathai, 1960s civil rights activist and now Congressman John Lewis, and rights
activist Reverend Dr. William Barber, who was the keynote speaker at UT Martin’s 2015 Civil Rights
Conference.
These individuals will be the foundation for the campus, local, state, national, and global issues students
research and write about in assigned writing. The course will allow students to produce informational,
reflective, and persuasive texts to deliver orally, in print, and online. Students will enhance the paper
formatting, voice, style, and mechanical skills they’ve already been developing as scholarly, public, and
personal writers. A service learning component may be included.
ENGL 112-016
Grendel’s Offspring
TR 11:00-12:15
CRN: 21672
Daniel Pigg
“Villains Through the Ages”
Villains have intrigued writers and readers from the earliest pages of recorded history. What motivates these
characters? Are they born that way? Are they products of the society in which they live? Are they themselves
victims? All of these questions are important to our exploration of villains. Our readings and writing
assignments begin with the epic Beowulf, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone and
include Shakespeare's Othello to develop one definition of villain (a person with a darkened conscience). We
will also look at Shelley's Frankenstein and the poets of World War I to develop an image of society as
villain. In the twentieth century, we will examine several films, including classic films that raise an even
more complex understanding of villains. Knowing how to define and identify the "bad guy" may be harder
than we think.
ENGL 112-022
Graphic Novels
MWF 8:00-8:50
CRN: 21612
Tim Hacker
The different forms that writing can take—letters, essays, short stories, and novels, for example—are called
genres. Most genres have been around for a long time; it’s a rare occurrence when a new one appears. So
we’re lucky that in the past 20 years or so we’ve seen a new kind of writing emerge: graphic novels.
Although they may look like comic books, they’re not. For one thing, they’re longer. And they are
meaningful to us in ways that we expect serious writing to be.
We will learn about the visual craft of graphic novels by reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.
We will apply what he says by writing in response to three graphic novels: Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s Trinity,
about the development of the atomic bomb; Jason Quinn’s Gandhi: My Life Is My Message; and Safe Area
Gorazde, an account of the civil war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Each student will, in addition, complete a
research project inspired by the work of our class.
This section will be connected by interactive television to a dual-enrollment section at Camden Central High
School.