Course Descriptions

Pre: Placement into ENG 100.
This course provides composition skills for all academic writing to follow, focusing on clear descriptive writing, critical analyses of texts, and research writing. Students will produce short essays as well as a longer research project in which they must practice correct citation and documentation. They will learn to plan, outline, and edit well-organized essays with clear theses, pertinent supporting information, and correct grammar. (FW)

The goal of English 100 is to help you develop a foundation as a writer. This course will expand on your previous knowledge of critical reading and writing techniques and help you develop rhetorical strategies for college-level composing. You will cultivate these strategies as you compose a variety of texts and expand your knowledge of genre conventions (including conventions of thesis and paragraph construction, organization, style, tone, clarity, design, mechanics, syntax, grammar, usage, and spelling). This course will introduce you to composing as a recursive process of invention, outlining, drafting, researching, revising, and editing that involves careful, rhetorical consideration of one’s audience, genre, context, and rhetorical situation. This course will also help you explore the benefits of seeing composing as a collaborative, social act that requires active participation from all members of the class. To that end, ENG 100 will include group discussions and activities, peer workshops, conferences, and peer and instructor feedback at various stages of the composing process. Finally, this course will introduce you to basic research and information literacy practices—locating and evaluating academic and online research, integrating source materials into texts, and employing citation conventions—in order to help you create effective, persuasive, and informed texts.

The UH West Oʻahu Writing Process Chart and the UH West Oʻahu Writing Cheat Sheet highlight UH West Oʻahu’s FYC approach to the writing process and rhetorical composing. 

Pre: Placement into ENG 22 or ENG 100.
This course provides composition skills for all academic writing to follow, focusing on clear descriptive writing, critical analyses of texts, and research writing. Students will produce short essays as well as a longer research project in which they must practice correct citation and documentation. They will learn to plan, outline, and edit well-organized essays with clear theses, pertinent supporting information, and correct grammar. This course will also include grammar and punctuation skills. (FW)

The goal of English 100T is to help you develop a foundation as a writer. This course will expand on your previous knowledge of critical reading and writing techniques and help you develop rhetorical strategies for college-level composing. You will cultivate these strategies as you compose a variety of texts and expand your knowledge of genre conventions (including conventions of thesis and paragraph construction, organization, style, tone, clarity, design, mechanics, syntax, grammar, usage, and spelling). Because ENG 100T is a stretch, 5-credit course, you will also frequently explore, develop, and practice these strategies in one-on-one tutoring settings.  This course will introduce you to composing as a recursive process of invention, outlining, drafting, researching, revising, and editing that involves careful, rhetorical consideration of one’s audience, genre, context, and rhetorical situation. This course will also help you explore the benefits of seeing composing as a collaborative, social act that requires active participation from all members of the class. To that end, ENG 100T will include group discussions and activities, peer workshops, conferences, and peer and instructor feedback at various stages of the composing process. Finally, this course will introduce you to basic research and information literacy practices—locating and evaluating academic and online research, integrating source materials into texts, and employing citation conventions—in order to help you create effective, persuasive, and informed texts.

Pre: ENG 100.
This is an intermediate composition course that will focus on outlining, organizing, revising, and editing academic essays, and students will complete a research paper that integrates primary and secondary sources.

The goal of English 200 is to help you grow as a writer. This course will build on the critical thinking and composing techniques you developed in ENG 100 and provide you with additional rhetorical strategies for composing a variety of texts. This course will approach composing as a recursive process of invention, outlining, drafting, researching, revising, and editing that involves careful, rhetorical consideration of one’s audience, genre, context, and rhetorical situation. This course will also help you further explore the benefits of seeing writing as a collaborative, social act that requires active participation from all members of the class. To that end, this course will include group discussions and activities, peer workshops, conferences, and peer and instructor feedback at various stages of the composing process. Finally, as an intermediate composition course, ENG 200 will also help you hone your research and information literacy skills: you will explore how to locate and evaluate primary and secondary research materials from a wide array of academic and online sources, integrate source materials into texts, and employ proper citation conventions in order to create effective, persuasive, and informed arguments.  

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
Practice and instruction in reporting, interviewing, and news and feature writing techniques.

Pre: ENG 100.
This intermediate composition course will provide students with argumentative, analytical, and effective communication in business writing. Students will write several short essays, reports, memos, and students will write a research paper or formal report.

Pre: ENG 100.
This course will build on the critical thinking and composing techniques developed in ENG 100. It will provide students with additional rhetorical strategies for composing in the sciences while enacting a recursive process of composing that includes invention, outlining, drafting, researching, revising, and editing that involves careful, rhetorical consideration of one’s audience, genre, context, and rhetorical situation. As an intermediate composition course, this course will also help students further hone their research and information literacy skills in the sciences: exploring how to locate and evaluate primary and secondary research materials from a wide array of academic and online sources, integrating source materials into texts, and employing proper citation conventions in order to create effective, persuasive, and informed texts for scientific and public audiences.

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
This course introduces students to basic skills for interpreting fiction, poetry, drama, and film. (DL)

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
This course provides an overview of American literature from translation/transcriptions of pre-contact Native American oral traditions through fiction, life-writing, poetry, drama, and cinema 1500-present. (DL)

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
This course offers a broad survey of world literature written before the 16th century. Representing literary genres such as the epic and the tragedy, primary texts will be drawn from a variety of global cultures, including those of the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. (FGA)

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
This course surveys world literature written after 1600. Texts will be drawn from a variety of global cultures, including those of the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
This course covers selected themes in literary works drawn from diverse periods and cultures. A: Crime and Mystery; B: MultiEthnic American Literature (this course focuses on multi-ethnic literature of the United States with an emphasis on race, gender and class. Fulfills Humanities multicultural requirement); C: Hip Hop Literature; D: World Literature in English. Other possible variations include food in literature and sports in literature. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
A study of British Literature from the ninth through early eighteenth centuries. The course will include study of Old English poetry and prose in translation. The course will also concentrate on such major authors as Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, and early Shakespeare. Literary works will be studied in their cultural and historical context. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
This course treats British Literature from eighteenth centuries through the present. The course will include study of major trends, movements, genres, and authors within the context of history, society, and politics. (DL)

This course introduces students to methodologies for interpreting cultural texts drawn from popular literature, cinema, music, advertising, architecture, subcultural practice, and other media. A central focus will be directed to ideology critical approaches (e.g. critical gender studies and postcolonial theory) and primary texts drawn from Hawai‘i and Oceania. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100, ENG 100T, or concurrent enrollment in ENG 200.
Study of significant works through analytical and creative writing. (DA)

Pre: Placement into or concurrent enrollment in ENG 100.
This course introduces students to the field of rhetoric and composition by exploring language and textual practices through the lens of the field’s history as a discipline and some current debates and themes. Our explorations will facilitate critical inquiry of what doing work in rhetoric and composition means; negotiation of ourselves within the field; and consideration of its professional and academic career paths.

Pre: ENG 100 with a “C” or higher grade.
This variable topic course treats various methods of literary interpretation. Possible iterations include A: Postmodernism; B: Feminist Criticism; and C: Introduction to Cultural Theory; D: Structuralism & Post-Structuralism; E: Post-Colonialism; F: Expository Writing for Teachers; G: Queer Theory. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 200 with a C or better.
This experiential learning course is designed to familiarize K-12 teachers with specific writing strategies for elementary or secondary classroom use. The course will cover basic literary theory/structure; analysis of poetry and creative prose; role playing of classroom writing techniques; and workshop-style discussion of the resultant creative writing, leading to extensive revisions and a finished portfolio of each student’s work. The major focus is on experiential learning which will apply directly to the classroom. (DA)

Pre: ENG 100.
This course is a workshop dealing with poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction written by students. Emphasis is on originality and structural unity based on conventional creative writing theory, with publishable writing as an end product. (DA)

Pre: ENG 100 or ENG 100T with a B or better; and instructor consent.
Students will explore a variety of peer tutoring and writing center theories, methods, and strategies by examining major texts and issues in writing center studies and applying this knowledge through hands-on tutoring experiences in ENG 100/100T. Through the coordinating of supplemental instruction (SI), participation in monthly Writing Fellow meetings and completion of bi-weekly reading assignments and reflections, Writing Fellows will receive professional development that will prepare them to better meet the needs of UHWO’s Noeau Center clientele.

Pre: ENG 100; and completion of or concurrent enrollment in ENG 200.
This writing workshop course focuses on creative writing written in Hawai‘i Creole English, known in Hawai‘i as pidgin. The bulk of the course is a workshop in which writing exercises/modeling lead students to create a portfolio of original work—poetry, fiction, or non-fiction—for analysis, feedback, and revision; a significant portion of each text must be in pidgin so some facility with pidgin is required. The course is offered credit/no credit. (DA)

Pre: ENG 100.
Selected topics in World Literature, such as European Literature, Asian Literature, Latin American Literature, and African Literature. Readings will introduce students to the style and vision of particular regions, periods, and literary movements. The course also allows a detailed examination of works by individual authors. A: Magic Realism, B: Literature of War; C: Short Story. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment; and ENG 260 and/or one literature course recommended.
Students will focus on a particular period or theme, with at least 75% of the material from the time prior to 1700. The course will provide in-depth analysis of the literary work and its cultural context in medieval and/or Renaissance England. Works from other national literatures will be included as appropriate. A: Allegory; B: Folktales and Legends. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
Students analyze diverse examples of British literature gathered under period, theme, genre, and other foci. Variations include A: Victorian Literature; B: British Imperial Adventure; and C: British Modernism. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
This course treats diverse examples of later American literature gathered under period, theme, genre, and other foci. Variations may include A: The American Puritans, B: The American Captivity Narrative, and C: American Literatures of Exploration, Colonization, and Resistance, and D: Literature of the American West. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
This course treats diverse examples of later American literature gathered under period, theme, genre, and other foci. Variations may include courses such as A: The American Renaissance, B: Fourth World Literatures of the United States, and C: 20th Century American Literature; D: Literatures of the American West. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

This course surveys the historical paradigm shifts, major theoretical movements, prominent scholars, and disciplinary growth of the field of composition studies. The course will also explore current and emerging topics and theories in the field and introduce students to the professionalization of the discipline through its national organizations.

Pre: Completion of or concurrent enrollment in ENG 200.
This course covers current and special interest topics in the field of rhetoric and composition. Possible topics to be covered include: (B) Race in American Political Rhetoric.

Pre: Completion of or concurrent enrollment in ENG 200.
Within and beyond the writing classroom, we come into contact with a number of languages, literacies, and modalities—how we interact with the array of diversified practices and texts in our everyday lives is the topic of our course. Through close reading, focused discussions, classroom observations, and critical self reflection, we explore how translingual perspectives can give us insight into second language writing. Translingualism sees language in a constant process of negotiation, translation, and revision; therefore, this approach encourages us to consider innovative ways of interrogating the relationship between language and meaning within our unique Hawaiian context.

Pre: ENG 100.
Concepts of dissent and analysis of literary and media sources. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
This course will introduce students to the key concepts in the study of rhetoric; ideologies underpinning the conception and employment of rhetoric at various time periods; frameworks useful for the analysis of texts, events, communication, and other phenomenon; and principles of rhetoric in the contexts of many media and cultures. The course will trace Western rhetoric as it evolved and changed throughout its 2,500 year history. Beginning with fifth century BCE Greece and ending with twenty-first century CE United States, the course will survey rhetorical history, observing the ways rhetoric shifted from an art for oral performance to an epistemic lens for understanding and creating meaning. In addition, the course will explore the ways in which language has been used across times and places to create a shared reality, to change reality, and to secure power within that reality. In the process, students will discover the intimate connection between rhetoric and philosophy, rhetoric and community, rhetoric and media, and rhetoric and the real world they occupy.

Pre: Completion of or concurrent enrollment in ENG 200.
This course introduces students to the methodological frameworks used when working within rhetoric and composition studies, such as ethnographic (qualitative) to corpus linguistic (quantitative) analyses. We apply these methods by interrogating the uses of the English language in creating, maintaining, and challenging borders found in a wide-range of contexts from popular media to writing classrooms. We work together not only to understand how borders are articulated in our increasingly multicultural and globalized world, but also to develop unique ways to challenge and/or cross those very borders that may limit and/or hinder us.

Pre: ENG 100.
This course will introduce students to key concepts in the study of media writing; major media writing professions, and the effects of Web 2.0 and convergence culture on digital media writing. Students will explore best practices, foundational knowledge, and key strategies for news writing (reporting and interviewing, hard news, feature writing, radio and television news writing, and copyediting); public relations writing; advertising (print, online, radio and television); and business communication. The course will conclude with an exploration of the emerging convergence culture online and the ways in which Web 2.0 capabilities and social media platforms alter and create new media writing opportunities. Throughout the semester, students will also review and learn basic style, grammar, spelling, and punctuation conventions for media writing.

Pre: ENG 100.
Literature/film adaptation is the primary subject of this course, alongside genre studies and literary treatments of the cinema. In addition to film screenings, course readings will include primary literary texts and film criticism. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
A chronological survey of the many forms and interpretations of the cinema: technological and aesthetic developments, competing movements and schools of filmmaking, and tensions between the individual director-auteur and the “culture industries” of Hollywood. Emphasizing canonical films by famous directors, the course also alerts students to alternative film historiographies. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
An examination of major film genres and the film makers who have contributed to their development. Readings and discussions will focus upon negotiations between generic convention and artistic innovation. A: Film Noir; B: The Western; C: Gangster Film; D: Science Fiction Film; E: The Road Trip. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
This course allows students the opportunity to pursue various topics in the area of television studies including A: TV and American Culture; B: The TV Medical Drama; and C: Television Auteurs. Repeatable with a different alpha.

Pre: ENG 100.
An examination of contemporary Asian American and Asian/ Pacific American Literature. Various topics such as the treatment of the immigrant versus the national, language acquisition, and differences between Asian American and Asian/ Pacific American will be covered. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
Basic concepts and representative texts as the basis for literary and film inquiry. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
With recourse to the work of writers from around the world, this course explores the tension in literary studies between cultural diversity and political resistance. Central issues include the composition of literary canons and the role of literature in imperialism and decolonization. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
Basic concepts and representative texts for the study of popular literature genres, such as A) The Detective Story; B) Roman Noir; C) Science Fiction; D) Adventure; E) Westerns; F) Gothic Horror. May be repeated with a different alpha.

Pre: ENG 100.
This course will analyze diverse examples of children’s literature, including folk-tales, picture books, and chapter books. (DL)

Pre: Completion of or concurrent enrollment in ENG 200.
Comparative analysis of selected tales of magic and their adaptations across history, cultures, and media. The course emphasizes feminist approaches to the genre. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
Concentrating on the novel and short fiction, this course surveys literature written for young adults. Prominent issues treated in the course include the coming-of-age story, diversity, and the relationship between adolescent literature and broad historical/social contexts such as the Enlightenment and Modernism. (DL)

 Pre: ENG 200.
A study of the origins, changes, and reasons for changes in the grammar, sounds, and vocabulary of English from the beginnings of the language to modern times.

Pre: ENG 273 or ENG 313 or instructor consent.
Writing, evaluating poems. (DA)

Pre: ENG 313 or instructor consent.
Workshop analysis of nonfiction as a literary form. (DA)

Pre: ENG 313.
Narrative techniques for students interested in writing fiction. (DA)

Pre: ENG 313 or instructor consent.
Writing, evaluating fiction. (DA)

Pre: ENG 200.
From public to private sector jobs, from civic engagement
to academic careers, English majors have a wide variety of opportunities available to them after graduation. To prepare for that next step, whatever that may be, this course builds a community for English majors in junior and senior standing at UHWO. This community draws connections between literary, rhetorical, and theoretical analyses; critical and reflective reading and writing strategies; and persuasive and professional writing skills. Based on these connections, we articulate, as a community, the ways our learning at UHWO translates into contemporary workplaces and civic life. Moreover, these articulations lead to innovating an e-portfolio that presents skills to potential employers, graduate school programs, and more.

Pre: Placement in ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
Students will focus on the work of one author (or a small group of closely related authors). The course will provide an in-depth analysis of the literary and/or cinematographic work produced by the author as well as a selection of criticism about the author and studies of the author’s later influence. Author may be of any national origin.A: Dante; B: Morrison and Yamanaka; C: Spenser; D: James Baldwin; E: Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter; F: Foucault; G: Sara Ahmed. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
An examination of the representation of gender roles and sexual identities in a sample of literary works and films. (DL)

Pre: Placement into ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 22.
This course will cover 6-8 Shakespeare plays. Course will focus on live performance issues and consider filmed versions and live performances (when available). The selected plays will represent various genres and different historical points in Shakespeare’s work. Course will also include selections from recent scholarship. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100, ENG 200 and one upper division WI course.
A practicum-style course focused on various writing, programming and promotional tasks required to operate a literary press. May include researching and contracting of writers; programming literary events; promotional or social media campaigns; web/flyer graphic design; writing author bios, text summaries, book reviews, news articles, or blogs; writing grant proposals or corporate donation requests to fund events. A: Literary Arts in the Community; B: Writing for and Managing a Literary Press. (DA)

Pre: ENG 100.
Students will focus on a particular period or theme in drama. The course will provide an in-depth analysis of the dramatic works and their cultural context. A: Ancient Drama in the Modern World; B: Opera; C: The Devil on Page, Stage and Screen ; D: Opera & Musical Theatre; E: Popular Theatre; F: Drama of Ancient Greece. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100 or concurrent enrollment.
Students will learn about the history of theatre, from its beginnings in Greece to its modern manifestations around the world. The course will provide survey of drama and its cultural context. Dramatists might include Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Moliere, Schiller, Brecht, Beckett, and Baraka, and anonymous medieval plays. Readings will include plays and theoretical essays. (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
An examination of works whose popularity offers valuable insights into the historical periods in which they were written. The books will be studied for their cultural and historical importance as well as their literary merit. Among the works to be covered: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Henry Adams, Democracy; John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Taught primarily as a seminar. (Cross-list HIST 470) (DH)

Pre: ENG 100.
A study of writers who either came from, or have written about, Hawai‘i. This course may begin with 19th century “sojourner literature” and will emphasize the modern writers. (Cross-list HPST 476) (DL)

This class introduces students to a wide range of traditional oral literature from islands within Polynesia and Micronesia, the parts of the Pacific nearest to Hawai‘i. The literature covers traditional time periods – stories common just before European Contact, from the late 1700’s to the early 1800’s. Literature includes tales of the different gods of these islands and the creation of the universe, the islands, and man; myths of the afterlife; stories of cultural heroes like Maui and Tahaki in Polynesia; stories of the arrival of settling groups headed by certain chiefs; and more factual oral historical accounts of pre-European rulers and chiefs and battles for political control. (Cross-list HPST 477) (DH)

This class is taught as a companion class to Hawaiian Mythology I (ENG 479). The class further introduces students to the range of traditional Hawaiian oral literature. These include stories and prayers involving major and local gods, family ‘aumakua (focusing on sharks), the Pele and Hi‘iaka story, Kamapua‘a (the 1860s Fornander Collection version), the Maui stories, accounts of voyaging to Kahiki, and the late period dynastic accounts of the rulers of the Kingdom of O‘ahu. The cultural setting of these stories is discussed in the context of where they took place, and of Hawaiian culture and its changes. How these stories were recorded in the 1800s and changes in them, since then, are analyzed. The background of key collectors of oral stories is also reviewed. (Cross-list HPST 478). (DH)

This class is taught as a companion class to Hawaiian Mythology II (ENG 479). The class introduces students to the range of traditional Hawaiian oral literature. These include tales and prayers involving the gods, the creation of the islands and man, stories of menehune, Pele (her arrival, and the local stories of Hawai‘i Island), Kamapua‘a (the 1891 version), Ku‘ula and ‘Ai‘ai, and the late period dynastic oral accounts of rulers of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i. The cultural setting of these stories is discussed in the context of where they took place, and of Hawaiian culture and its changes. How these stories were recorded in the 1800s and changes in them, since then, are analyzed. The background of key collectors of oral stories is also reviewed. (Cross-list HPST 479) (DH)

Pre: ENG 100.
This course surveys the new emerging English literature by native South Pacific Islanders from 1960-1995. Emphasis on contemporary themes and issues in the novels, poetry, short stories, and essays from New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and other areas. (Cross-list HPST 480) (DL)

Pre: ENG 100.
Literary and cinematic treatments of the American plantation experience in Hawai‘i and the continental United States. Including works by writers such as Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Toni Morrison, and Milton Murayama. (DL)

Pre: Completion of or concurrent enrollment in ENG 200.
Intensive study of selected problems and issues in the construction and representation of sexuality and gender in specific genres, social and cultural contexts, or thematic/figurative clusters. A: The Body. B: 20th Century Women Writers. Repeatable with a different alpha. (DL)

Pre: Consent of instructor, and one class of upper division writing-intensive (WI) course work.
Students are provided an internship with an appropriate community agency. As an intern, the student is delegated the responsibility of developing the solution to a well-defined problem or is asked to complete a relevant task. Students report on the experience using their understanding of the field in which they are working.

Pre: Consent of instructor, and one class of upper division writing-intensive (WI) course work.
Working with an English Faculty Advisor, students will complete an original work of scholarship in the field of literary and/or cultural studies. Students will share the results of this project via a substantial thesis-oriented paper and brief oral presentation.

Topics selected will be based on program relevancy and student interest. Course content will vary. May be repeated for credit.

Pre: Instructor approval.
Individual projects in various subjects. To be arranged with the instructor. Reserved for advanced students who have completed at least three literature courses.