ENGL 396

Fall 2026 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Aug 24-Dec 9

English Honors Seminar

Credit: 3 hours.

An open-topic, discussion-oriented seminar aimed at majors who have shown high skill and intensive interest in the area of English studies.

May be repeated up to 6 hours in the same term to a maximum of 12 hours. Prerequisite: A 3.33 grade point average or consent of the English Department's Director of Undergraduate Studies. Restricted to English majors.

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ENGL 396 class schedule data for fall 2026
	Status		CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
			32226	Lecture-Discussion	C	12:30PM -1:45PM	TR	English Building	Oh, R	Availability: Open (Restricted) Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/26-12/09/26 Special Approval: Departmental Approval Required Section Info: FA26 - ENGL 396 - English Honors Seminar - Rebecca Oh - Apocalypse - The times are apocalyptic. Since at least midcentury, apocalypse no longer signifies a divine world-ending but a secular one. It now encompasses the midcentury nuclear complex and fears of nuclear annihilation, it has been used to describe the effects of war and colonialism, neoliberal austerity, and most recently it names the crisis of futurity inaugurated by climate change. This course will explore the cultures of apocalypse – the narratives, genres, affects, representations, and discourses – produced out midcentury nuclear apocalypse and environmental apocalypses and climate change. In relation to nuclearity and environmental crisis in the US and the global South, we will examine scholarly and cultural texts that confront apocalypse’s unwanted futures and “sense of an ending” from both the future and the past. What happens to its stakes and forms when apocalypse can be prevented and conversely when it cannot be changed? We will also track the unevenness of apocalypse, the fact that futurelessness is never actually universal. Readings may include criticism by scholars like David Pike, Teresa Heffernan, and Jessica Hurley, and aesthetic works such as The Road, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Future Home of the Living God, Animal’s People, How Beautiful We Were, The Year of the Flood, Parable of the Sower, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Anote’s Ark. Course work will likely include discussion leading, short responses, an annotated bibliography, and a final research paper.
			40420	Lecture-Discussion	F	2:00PM -2:50PM	MWF	Gregory Hall	Newcomb, L	Availability: Open (Restricted) Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/26-12/09/26 Special Approval: Departmental Approval Required Section Info: FA26 ENGL 396 - English Honors Seminar - Lori Newcomb - Shakespeare’s Last Plays - While the best-known Shakespeare plays are comedies, histories, and tragedies, critics have long argued that the last half-dozen plays he wrote, debuting in the 1610s, require a category of their own, dubbed “Shakespearean romances.” It’s unusual for critics to create a genre for just one author’s works, and we’ll sometime ponder whether these plays really are so distinct from Shakespeare’s earlier plays or from other plays of the 1610s. Our primary goal, however, will be to understand these daring, wide-ranging plays— including Pericles, Cymbeline, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and the co-authored Two Noble Kinsmen – as experiments in playwriting. What were they trying to explore about their era, from the practical (such as new spaces for viewing and reading drama) to the world-historical (such as England’s entry in the colonial project)? I’ll suggest that the neglected common denominator of these plays – their focus on young women and men displaced from their families—was a flashpoint for changing gender, sexual, household, economic, and political formations in British culture and beyond. Texts: individual play editions, supplemented by critical readings.