ENLT 112 FYS: Mystery Across Time, Space, and Text (3) 
Mystery is one of the most enduring features of fiction and nonfiction alike. In this literature class, we will consider not only how a mystery story functions, but also how it functions differently across media and time. In particular, we’ll focus on mysteries associated with specific places, using the lenses of cultural studies and post-colonialism. We will begin in Egypt, by reading ancient Egyptian myths, studying troubling archaeological history, and then seeing how Agatha Christie relies on both in her novel Death on the Nile. We will then watch two adaptations of the novel: the 2004 BBC version with David Suchet, and the 2023 film with Kenneth Branagh. What do the differences between these versions tell us about the cultures that produced them? Where is the truth in the fiction? We will then move closer to home. Our own Jill Hobgood, librarian and researcher of the College’s mysterious history, will introduce unsolved crimes from the 19th and early 20th century that have Saint Mary’s connections. In this class, students will gain knowledge of how mystery functions, how it creates tension, and how it reflects (and can challenge) cultural values and biases. Building on this, the semester will end with students designing their own mystery event and the Saint Mary’s community will be invited to identify the culprit … if they can. This course is a First Year Seminar. 

ENLT 151 Introduction to Literature (3)

This course introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the college level. Throughout the semester, we’ll practice skills necessary for literary analysis, including close reading, using textual evidence, and developing strong interpretive arguments.

ENLT 151W Introduction to Literature (3)
This course introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the college level. Throughout the semester, we’ll practice skills necessary for literary analysis, including close reading, using textual evidence, and developing strong interpretive arguments. This course also provides students the opportunity to earn the Basic Writing requirement.

ENLT 151W Unruly Bodies (4) 
In this session of ENLT 151, we will examine both canonical and contemporary speculative fiction that represents unruly bodies–ranging from bodies that resist rigid gender norms to those that bend the boundaries between self and other, human and nature. As we read from such varied writers as Ursula K. Le Guin, Carmen Maria Machado, Octavia Butler, Jeff VanderMeer, and Julia Armfield, we will also establish an introductory foundation for reading and writing about literature at the college level. Throughout the semester, we will create a toolbox of skills for literary analysis and analytical writing, including close reading, citing textual evidence, organizing our ideas, and interpreting literary texts through both form and content. This course provides students the opportunity to earn the Basic Writing requirement.

ENLT 151W Haunting Femininity (4)
This course introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the college level. Throughout the semester, we’ll practice skills necessary for literary analysis, including close reading, using textual evidence, and developing strong interpretive arguments. As we read novels, short stories, poetry, and drama, our focus will be on transgressive feminine archetypes and characterizations in Gothic literature across time and space. Through critical readings, discussions, and analyses, we will examine the portrayal of women as heroines, victims, and monstrous figures. We will pay particular attention to tropes and the stigmas they create. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the Gothic as a multi-century genre and its impact on shaping women’s identities. This course also provides students the opportunity to earn the Basic Writing requirement.

ENLT 216 Literature of Social Justice (3)
How can the written word and its embodied expressions testify to the experiences of gender and sexual difference—and to the ways those differences interact with race, culture, and class? How might such testimonials support movements for social justice? In this session of English Literature 216, we will traverse US-American literary fiction, drama, manifestos, memoirs, and poetry in order to apprehend intersectional archives of lived experience and social justice from the 1960s to the present. As we interrogate how these vastly different texts might touch one another in unexpected ways, we will also contextualize them through their cultural and historical contexts in liberatory political movements in the United States and abroad. Together, we will reckon with the literary and lived experiences of gender and sexual outlaws over the last half-century as they express new ways of being in the world and even new worlds. 

ENLT 244 Tolkien and Modern Fantasy (3)
This course explores the importance and the pleasures of fantasy through the work that defined the genre, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In the first part of the course, we will read works that anticipate Tolkien's novel and that influenced and inspired him. In the middle part of the course, we will read The Lord of the Rings carefully. In the course's last part, we will consider some major works of recent fantasy to see what some of Tolkien's most notable successors do—thematically, stylistically, and politically—with the model for the genre he established.  

HUST 103 Lives and Times (3 )
This course features lively classroom discussion and introduces you to a wide range of fascinating people throughout history, whether powerful or downtrodden, famous or obscure, free-spirited or strait-laced. To see what makes these people tick, we will read a variety of works taking us to the core of their beings: novels, autobiographies, and memoirs. We try to answer the sorts of questions that we all have to ask ourselves: What makes a good life? How does my ethnicity, gender, geography or historical setting affect who I am? What do I owe my parents? What place does spirituality have in my life? How do I balance the need to be my own person with the need to belong to the group?  This course fulfills the Gen Ed requirement for Literary Inquiry.