UNDERGRADUATE FLIER
JUNE 2ND, 2025 – JULY 8TH , 2025
SUMMER SESSION I
ENG. 1100C: LITERATURE IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT (30391)
ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
Dr. Stephen Paul Miller
Email: millers@stjohns.edu
This course interfaces students with issues and problems related to reading literature in a global context. What is it to study literature in a global context? On July 4th, 1858, Abraham Lincoln said about the American immigrants in Cincinnati, Ohio:
“If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of Patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
In Lincoln’s sense, would you say there is something “American” running throughout the globe? How did what he said in 1858 apply to African American slaves at the time? To African Americans, other peoples of color and other minorities, and women now? This class also considers what there is in other cultures and nations that might be said to be a part of American thought today. Can Americans be strengthened by the various ethnic traditions that will be encountered in this course?
ENG. 2750: WOMEN AND LITERATURE (30709)
WOMEN AND LOVE
ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
Dr. Jennifer Travis
Email: travisj@stjohns.edu
This course will explore the theme of love, examining how love shapes American women writers’ narratives, characters, and worldviews. We will investigate how women authors portray love in many forms: romantic, familial, self-love, and the love for country and community. Students will read a range of short works by authors such as Kate Chopin, Nella Larsen, and Carmen Maria Machado, analyzing how love can be both personal and political. This course encourages critical thinking and offers a space to discuss and explore literature and the transformative power of love.
SUMMER SESSION II
ENG. 1040: WRITING FOR BUSINESS (30805)
*COUNTS FOR WRITING MINOR*
ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
Dr. Stephen Sicari
Email: sicaris@stjohns.edu
In this course, we will overview and draft many of the conventional forms of writing and communication you’ll use in a professional environment. These include cover letters, memos, business letters, policy positions, and executive summaries.
Just as important as a goal for this course is to recognize that all writing requires imagination, strategy, awareness of audience, the ability to persuade. In essence, ALL writing has these “rhetorical” goals, trying to persuade a reader of the legitimacy of a position, or of an idea, or even of yourself as a prospective employee. Writing is an art, no matter the context or the aim.
In all phases of the course, we will consider writing as a process that depends just as heavily on reading, thinking, collaboration, and revising as it does on writing new material.
That’s why this course, aimed at business students, is something all students with an interest in writing may benefit from. It’s why we count it toward our writing minor in the English department.
ENG. 2100: RACE AND LITERARY CULTURE (30460)
ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
Dr. Robert Fanuzzi
Email: fanuzzir@stjohns.edu
Can we ever stop talking about race? Not if you study American culture. In every phase, form, and period, American culture is the source of concepts and conversations about race. Our class studies a diverse range of literature, art, film, and media and the critical terminology of cultural studies in search of to uncover the “racial signifiers” that shape our world. Topics include Hollywood films and the “white savior” complex; the legacy of Black people’s media representation and contemporary self-representation; and the racialization of US immigration. Students are encouraged to bring their own interest in media and social justice to the class research question: what is race?
ENG. 2210: STUDY OF BRITISH LITERATURE (30804)
ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
Dr. Gregory Maertz
Email: maertzg@stjohns.edu
A course on three classic British novels and their representation in film and television. The novels we will examine, along with their transmutability and continuing cultural relevance, are Jane Austen’s Emma (1815), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).
ENG. 3740: FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP (30708)
MONSTERS!
ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
Prof. Gabriel Brownstein
Email: brownstg@stjohns.edu
This class is an introduction to writing fiction—students will write stories, fragments, chapters, and even pieces of novels. We’ll read great writers and think about their work, and students will write regular exercises which will lead to original works of fiction. You’ll share your work with your classmates, receive and offer critiques, and work toward developing a style and subject that suits you. While you won’t be required to write a monster story, all the fiction we will read this semester will be about monsters. The writers we will study include: Carmen Maria Machado, Victor Lavalle, Angela Carter, H. P. Lovecraft, and Franz Kafka.