ENG-101 Elements of Writing – 3 credits
Develops students’ fluency in communication and clarity in thinking through writers’ notebooks, expository writing, analytical reading and listening. Students use structured assignments to explore personal goals and values, exercising skills needed for reasoning and writing across the curriculum. Prereq: none

ENG-105 Composition – 3 credits
Develops expository writing with emphasis on organization supporting details, style, vocabulary, and library research skills. Prereq: ENG-101 or qualifying placement score

ENG-106 Composition II – 3 credits
Teaches precise and responsible use of research tools. Requires critical analysis of reading materials, audience and self when communicating content material. Develops students’ ability to use effective and ethical arguments. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

ENG-108 Composition II: Technical Writing – 3 credits
Provides concepts, principles and practice of writing and analyzing documents in business, science (including health occupations), and industry. Research emphasized. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

ENG-120 College Writing – 5 credits
Develops expository writing with emphasis on substance, organization, supporting details, style, and vocabulary. Teaches precise and responsible use of research tools. Requires critical analysis of reading current issues and literature. Develops student’s ability to use ethical and logical argument. Prereq: ENG-101 or qualifying placement score

ENG-221 Creative Writing – 3 credits
Offers students an opportunity to do advanced work in writing short story, poetry, literary nonfiction or play writing. Emphasizes regular workshops with attention to content issues, structures, forms, and styles of particular genres. Students read and comment on other students’ works as well as published material. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

ENG-225 Creative Writing: Poetry – 3 credits
Offers a writing workshop devoted to responding to and revising work, reading and discussing published poetry, and exploring various forms of the poem. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

ENG-233 Creative Writing Short Fiction – 3 credits
Offers a writing workshop focused on students’ attempts and successes in writing 500- to 3,500-word short stories. 75 percent of class time devoted to drafting, reading, and responding to peers’ drafts; 25 percent devoted to reading and discussing published short stories and the elements of fiction as they apply to crafting stores. Prereq: ENG-105, ENG-120

ENG-238 Creative Writing: Nonfiction – 3 credits
A writing workshop for students’ nonfiction: personal essays, memoir, nature writing, literary journalism, or other subgenre of the craft. Class time devoted to reading and responding to classmates’ work, discussing published nonfiction, and the writing craft. Homework devoted to drafting and revising, and to reading, and responding to published nonfiction in a variety of subgenres. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

ENG-240 Advanced Creative Writing – 3 credits
Offers students an opportunity to do advanced work in fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with an eye toward getting something published. Students respond to each other’s writing and enlarge their knowledge of the publishing industry. Prereq: ENG-221 or ENG-225 or ENG-233 or ENG-238

ENG-245 Advanced Creative Writing: Short Fiction – 3 credits
Provides a writing workshop approach to working on students’ short fiction. 75 percent of class time is devoted to reading and discussing the responses; 25 percent of class time is devoted to discussing already published work. All critiquing based in either New Critical/Elements of Fiction discourse or Reader Response. Prereq Eng-221 or ENG-233

ENG-275 Editing a Literary Magazine – 3 credits
Provides practical experience in reading and editing literary manuscripts (nonfiction, fiction and poetry). Students design and edit hypothetical magazines using actual student manuscripts and work on preparing an issue of Cedar Valley Divide, Kirkwood’s student art and literary magazine. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

ENG-924 Honors Project – 1 credit
Allows a qualified honors student to pursue a special concentration of student under the guidance of an honors faculty member. Requires that student meets honors eligibility criteria. Requires completion of an honors project contract. Requires approval of supervising professor and dean

ENG-928 Independent Study – 2-3 credits
Provides opportunity for independent writing projects under the guidance of a faculty member. Prereq: ENG-105, ENG-221; Permission of instructor is needed

LIT-105 Children’s Literature – 3 credits
Provides a broad overview of children’s literature, with emphasis upon work down by American writers and illustrators. Students use standard techniques of literary analysis to critique the works explored in the course. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-158 Literature of the African Peoples – 3 credits
Provides an introduction to the literature and culture of persons of African descent. Reading include fiction and nonfiction authors from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-203 Forms of Literature: Story Cycle – 3 credits
Explores through story cycles and critical theory, the questions: What is a story cycle? How are they different from or similar to other forms of literary expression? How does from affect interpretation? Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-204 Forms of Literature: Nonfiction – 3 credits
Focuses on literary nonfiction – essays, memoirs, profiles or criticism – that aspires not only to inform, but also to employ language aesthetically and prompt reflection through literature and critical theory, the following questions: What is literary nonfiction? How are works of literary nonfiction crafted, read and interpreted? How are they different from and similar to other forms of literary expression? How does form affect interpretation? Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-205 Forms of Literature: Drama – 3 credits
Focuses on the study of dramatic literature. Students will practice a method of reading and interpreting plays, exploring the following questions: What is drama? How are works of drama crafted, read and interpreted? How are they different from and similar to other forms of literary expression? How does form affect interpretation? Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-206 Forms of Literature: Fiction – 3 credits
Explores, through short stories, novels, films and critical theory, the following questions: What is fiction? What are it common elements? How does understanding these elements and the ways that interconnect affect our understanding of how fiction is crafted, read, and interpreted? How is fiction different from or similar to other forms of literary expression? Prereq: ENG-105 or WNG-120

LIT-207 Forms of Literature: Poetry – 3 credits
Focuses on the study of poetry. Students will practice reading and interpreting poems, exploring the following questions: What is poetry? How are poems crafted, read, and interpreted? How are they different from and similar to other forms of literary expression/how does form affect interpretation? Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-208 Forms of Literature: New Media – 3 credits
Explores online and computer-based literature. Employing relevant literary theory, students traditional fiction and poetry, and compare those forms to the new media forms of hyperficiton and hyperpoetry. Questions include the following: What is new media literature? How does it compare with traditional genres? Is it a new genre? What makes it qualify as literature? How does literary form affect interpretation? Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-209 Film Adaptation
This course focuses on the relationship between literary works (fiction, drama, nonfiction, poetry, or graphic literature) and their adaptations into film. Students will explore, through reading literature and viewing films, the following questions: What is adaptation of literature to film? How are the elements of plot, character, setting, point of view, symbol, and theme adapted or altered from literature to film? How do the adaptations of literature to film inform our understanding of both literary forms and film? Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-222 Literature and Culture: American Dreams – 3 credits
Explores a variety of expressions of self and society in America through established fiction, autobiography, journals, letters, photographs, and other cultural artifacts. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-224 Literature and Culture: Women and Work – 3 credits
Through reading literature along with social documents by women and men, the course explores gender identity and work issues for women in traditional and nontraditional gender roles – as domestic angels, factory workers, or professionals. Materials may include autobiographies, letters, films, short fiction, poetry, drama, novels, and other artifacts. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-225 Literary Themes: Beyond Bartleby: Images of Business and Labor in Literature and Film – 3 credits
Explores images and issues of business and labor as they manifest in major fiction and nonfiction texts. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120; Admission to the Advance program

LIT-226 Literary Themes: Literature and the Search for Identity – 3 credits
Explores the theme of identity in literature – short stories, novels, poems, plays, and nonfiction. May use ideas and approaches from literary criticism, psychology, philosophy, and religion to illuminate the importance of stories in structuring human experience and establishing a sense of our own identities. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120

LIT-227 Literature and Culture: World Poetry – 3 credits
Explores non-Western traditional and contemporary poetry of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. Studies the forces that shape the creation as well as the experience of poetry in these cultures, such as politics, gender, religion, technology, etc. Students learn to compare literary expression across cultures and to place the Western tradition in a larger context. Prereq: Eng-105 or ENG-120

LIT-924 Honors Project – 1 credit
Allows a qualified honors students to pursue a special concentration of study under the guidance of an honors faculty member. Requires completion of an honors project contract. Requires approval of supervising professor and dean

LIT-928 Independent Study – 1-3 credits
Provides readings, papers and/or research projects in literature under the guidance of a staff member.

LIT-945 Selected Topics – 1-3 credits
Offers specialized study in interest areas. Areas may include special courses in mythology, American culture, adolescent literature, or other concentrations. Prereq: ENG-105 or ENG-120