ENGL 4230W, Middle English Literature Fall 2026: “Slow Reading, Slow Writing: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” The tendency of the English professor is to cram as much Cool Stuff into the syllabus as they can. This class is deliberately doing the opposite: instead of giving you a broad survey of Cool Stuff from Middle English literature (roughly 1300-1500), we’re just reading one long poem (and some related poetry), deeply and thoroughly. This is not only the best way to understand these texts well; it also replicates medieval reading practices, as we’ll discuss in class. Our main text, the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is among the masterpieces of English literature of any period, and will repay the slow, careful attention we will give it. We’ll read some shorter pieces as well – both medieval and contemporary – to frame and deepen our appreciation of this poem. While engaging in some deliberate slow reading, we will also practice the basic skills of the English major: close reading, word studies, poetry explication, and thoughtful engagement with secondary criticism. We’ll then apply these skills in a formal researched English essay in which you’ll engage deeply and richly with both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the criticism that scholars have written about it. If you’re considering graduate school in any field (not just English, and not just medieval literature), this class is for you. If you want to level up your English major skill set, this class is also for you. If you just like to read and write about knotty, complex, mind-blowing stories – even when they’re nearly 650 years old – this class is definitely for you. Required Texts: You are required to purchase physical copies of these texts. We will be living in a "no laptops most days" world, and you will need to bring hard copies to class. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Paul Battles (Broadview Press, 2012). Make sure you get the Battles edition linked here, NOT the Winny edition, also published by Broadview. If you are buying on your own, double check your purchases before clicking that “buy” button. Eric Hayot, The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities (2014) Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (anything after the 2nd ed; I’ll be using the 5th ed) Optional texts: The Middle English Breton Lays, ed. Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury (ISBN-13: 978-1879288621). You should be able to get a used copy easily. We will be using texts from this volume from Day 1. If you are a paper book person, you will want this, but you can also read these poems for free online. Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, ed. Thomas Hahn (ISBN-13: 978-1879288591). If you can get a used copy of this book, I strongly recommend it (there should be lots and lots), but you can also read these poems for free online. Other texts will be made available as PDFs and/or as online texts. ENGL 3340, Literature and Crime Southern Gothic, Southern Noir Southern writers gravitate toward gritty brutality, local wrongs, and the buried truths that continue to haunt us -- just the stuff that makes for good crime fiction. In this class, we'll read contemporary southern writers of crime fiction through the lens of southern gothic (asking, in part, if there is such a thing) and the hard-boiled noir genre. We'll ask how the common tropes of southern gothic play out in crime fiction; where those villainized by such tropes can find a voice in this genre; and how noir, typically written within an urban setting, translates to the largely rural south. We'll attend to issues of genre as well as of class, race, place, and regional identity; interrogate these novels' relationship to incarceration, the military and policing practices; and, of course, ask whodunnit. (Spoiler alert: in these novels, not the butler!) Expect to read widely across southern writers from William Faulkner to Ace Atkins, writers well known and just coming onto the scene. This is crime fiction, so also expect the content to be difficult at times. You'll be writing regularly about the crime fiction we will read; your final project will be a public-facing book review of a novel not on the syllabus, so also expect to learn how to write a good, spoiler-free book review. Required Texts: Coming soon!
