The course analyzes our global cultural condition from a dual historical and literary perspective and follows a development stretching over the last 60 years, beginning with the period just after WW II and continuing to the present day. Of central concern will be the varieties of cultural expression across regions of the world and their relation to a rapidly changing social history, drawing upon events that occur during the semester.

An interdisciplinary survey of global time-travel novels, film and music (Kindred, The Time Machine, Interstellar, Back to the Future, Janelle Monáe, Bob Marley). Armed with genre vocabulary and physics concepts (special relativity, time dilation, retrocausality), we will untangle science fiction from science fact and unpack the thorny ethical, narrative and physics implications of time travel. Assignments include time machine design, time policy proposals and a capstone Time Travel Convention.

In this course, we'll look at a variety of texts from academic arguments, narratives, and pedagogies, to consider what it means to write, communicate, and learn across cultures. Topics will include contrastive rhetorics, world Englishes, rhetorical listening, and tutoring multilingual writers. A service learning component will require students to volunteer weekly in the community.

Studies the development of the Anglophone African novel as a genre, as well as the representation of the post-colonial dilemma of African nations and the revision of gender and ethnic roles. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

This course trains students to become attuned, thoughtful listeners and sonic composers. In addition to discussing key works on sound from fields such as rhetoric and composition, sound studies, and journalism, we will experiment with the possibilities of sound as a valuable form of writing and storytelling. Students will learn how to use digital audio editing tools, platforms, and techniques for designing and producing sonic projects.

This course will explore travel writing using a variety of texts, including essays, memoirs, blogs, photo essays, and narratives. We will examine cultural representations of travel as well as the ethical implications of tourism. Students will have the opportunity to write about their own travel experiences, and we will also embark on "local travel" of our own.

This course is a survey of modern poetry written in English. 'Make it new,' wrote Ezra Pound, and this course explores the various ways in which modern poets reinvented poetry in the first half of the twentieth century. It examines the signature style and literary contribution of selected anglophone poets, asking how they remade inherited genres, forms, and vocabularies.

This course focuses on creating meaningful, responsible, and engaged writing in the context of significant environmental issues. Analysis of representative environmental texts, familiarity with environmental concepts, examination of ethical positions in private and public spheres of writing, and sustained practice with form, style, medium, and genre will drive a variety of writing projects.

Interdisciplinary course on memory. Readings from literature, philosophy, history, psychology, and neuroscience.

Argumentation Across Disciplines examines how the linguistic and rhetorical features of argument vary from discipline to discipline. The course will make two primary movements: The first is an examination of what argument is through the lens of classical and new rhetorical theory. Second, students will do comparative research on the linguistic and rhetorical features of texts in two different disciplines.