Courses

View full course information in the catalog 

Special Topics (ENGLISH 113) SPRING 2026

Catalog course ENGL 113 consists of multiple topics of focus that vary each semester. Current and/or forthcoming descriptions are listed below. To see course details, including dates, times and professors, please use the Registrar’s course schedule.

ENGL 113.01 YOUR LANGUAGE, YOUR CULTURE
All writers begin with what the poet and theorist Ellen Bryant Voigt calls their “fundamental language”: the language learned during the early stages of our language development, most often during infancy and our toddler years. This is often considered the basis of a writer’s core cultural identity. As adults and across different writing experiences at home and out in the world, we all manage to communicate with success. We even write differently from one place to another, depending on the context and goals — where and when we write, who we write to and why we’re writing. This course will help us to explore:

1. Different contexts in which we use writing
2. Choices we make when we’re communicating in writing
3. How our abilities as creative people help us manage those different contexts

We will ground ourselves in our fundamental language, consider how we can adjust our goals as writers according to different cultural contexts and establish a solid base for writing at the college level.

ENGL 113.02 Writing the Self:  Identity, Culture and Voice
In this course we will examine how identity is communicated through writing. Focusing on the intersections of who we are and how we write, students will not only explore how established writers communicate their identities and cultures, but students will also develop their individual voice while considering how their identity is informed by larger cultural contexts.The course aims to cultivate strategies for personal expression and foster critical discussions on the relationship between identity and culture through writing. Additionally, we will analyze various writing genres to understand how identity influences and is represented in each.

ENGL 113.03, 05 Stephen King: Trash or Talent?

“I think with the best writing you can actually feel the writer’s joy, the writer’s vision, or something like that.”
—Stephen King

Stephen King is a contemporary literary phenomenon: Since the beginning of his career in the 1970s he has averaged at least one new title per year, and his books continue to sell like candy corn at Halloween. Some people dismiss his work as trash, just low-quality pop cult horror stories; even King has jokingly referred to himself as a “salami writer.” But other readers insist that throughout his page-turner fiction King addresses serious, even urgent concerns. What are we afraid of, both as a society and as flesh-and-goosebumped individuals? What are the problems of family life and interpersonal relations? How does American society deal with racial prejudice? What about the scourge of alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse? How has our history made us what we are as a nation? What explains our perennial attraction to the supernatural, even in its more ghoulish manifestations? How has the literature of the past — especially the Gothic tradition, spawned in 1764 and still proliferating — infiltrated the literature of the present?

These are some of the questions we will address in a course that is at its core an introduction to college-level writing: how to form sentences in a variety of modes, how to incorporate appropriate punctuation, how to compose a coherent and interesting academic essay, and how to produce a research project you can be proud of. King’s novels The Shining (1977) and The Green Mile (1996) will be our foundational texts, accompanied by a selection of shorter fiction that demonstrates his relation to other works of the supernatural. And we will also contemplate the transmogrification of his scenarios into film and other media (comic books, cartoons, even opera). 

ENGL 113.04, 08 Analyzing Empathy
In this course, we will use the complex and sometimes controversial concept of empathy as a basis for the study of the conventions and possibilities of academic writing. Through a variety of readings — primarily essays and short fiction — we will explore the challenges that face writers endeavoring to define empathy and to determine how it can contribute to contemporary society. We will begin with texts that depict or challenge common methods, such as personal observation and storytelling, that allow us to engage with the feelings and experiences of others. We will then turn toward more specific cases, including works of historical drama and speculative fiction that attempt to give readers access to thoughts and emotions that might be drastically different from their own experiences. Throughout the course, we will think critically about this subject matter and the questions about it that our readings might raise: What are the limits of empathy? When might an empathetic approach create harm instead of helping? To what extent is it the responsibility of writers to create an easy sense of connection for their readers, and to what extent is it the responsibility of readers to engage with perspectives that differ from their own? Is empathy valuable as an abstract feeling, or does it only take on value when it translates into action?

ENGL 113.06, 16 The Rhetorics of Science
In this class we will use reading, writing and research to explore the place of science in American society. We will think and write about the ways in which science helps us to know the world, while also reflecting on the possible limits and authority of that knowledge. The course will also encourage students to reflect on their reasons for pursuing knowledge and the ways they hope to put their knowledge to work in the world. 

ENGL 113.07, 11 LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
This writing course explores how language creates and interprets culture. We will learn about how our attitudes about language shape our realities and about how language mediates the way we understand ourselves and our cultures. Readings and projects will cover a range of topics including the ways that language and culture influence one another, the rhetoric of social media, and analyses of cultural phenomena. Students will also develop research projects in an area of personal interest.

ENGL 113.09, 13 College Pressures: Rethinking Education, Purpose, and Flourishing
Who are you? What are you called to do? How do you know? How does your calling intersect with justice and community and global problems? What does it mean to flourish as person, a student, a professional, a citizen?

Too often, college doesn’t open us up to such transformative questions or provide the education necessary for developing answers to them. Instead, it forces us to narrow ourselves into preplanned lives, makes us “panicky to succeed,” exhausted and anxious about the future. Is college just stress, debt and pressure? 

In order to take a hard look at what college is, what it should do and bust some myths about why we go to college, we will explore readings ranging from the ancient world to contemporary fiction. We will also examine why so often even faith-based, liberal arts colleges fail to provide the type of transformative education that empowers students to live lives of hope, resilience and innovative career success in the midst of our complex, 21st century global realities. Special emphasis will be placed on rhetoric, the art of persuasive and critical writing, as the foundational academic discipline.

If you are interested in discerning your calling, getting the most out of your education, understanding what it means to flourish, and learning to tell the story of your education well to future employers, this class is for you.

ENGL 113.12 Writing as Self Discovery
This course will orient you to the world of expository writing and will provide a solid preparation for the written assignments you will encounter throughout your course work at Hope College. Our work together will emphasize writing as a process and it will focus on exploring, planning and organization of complex ideas, editing and revising of drafts, and developing writing skills through effective means of organization, support and justification of ideas. As such, students will read intellectually intriguing essays, engage in writing workshops that focus on developing a clear and coherent expository style of writing, craft individual and critical responses, construct unified and coherent paragraphs, and contribute to the dialogue about writing that would emerge from our classroom responses. By the end of the semester, you should have generated at least 28 pages of polished prose.

ENGL 113.14, 18, 19  Writing as Self-Crafting
In this core course, we will focus on writing as a tool for inquiry, expression and, above all, self-discovery. The word “essay” comes from the French for “to try” — an essay is an attempt to get to the heart of a difficult matter. As we put words on the page and subject our opinions to various tests, we often realize that our views on a given subject are more complex than we previously thought. Sometimes we even find that we hold two seemingly contradictory beliefs at the same time, and that there is much “unpacking” to do. In this sense, expository writing serves not only as a way to explain ourselves to others, but also as a way to explain ourselves to ourselves. And just as writing is never finished (only due), the self is never finished with the process of its own (re-)creation. Writing can be an important part of that process, and can help us become more conscious of it and intentional about it. 

This semester, we will explore the connections between writing and human development, often focusing on coming-of-age experiences. As a student, you will hone your academic writing skills, with the particular goal of learning to ask probing questions and to craft complex, well-supported arguments that matter in academic contexts. Working closely with your peers and instructor, you will develop your essays through workshops and extensive revision. The specific questions that you pursue in your essays will be guided by your own interests related to themes of coming-of-age and self-crafting.

 ENGL 113.15 IMAGINING THE OTHER
One of the keys to good writing is to imagine your audience. Artificial intelligence can’t do it, at least not yet, but we do it all the time in successful communication. While this course helps you develop the tools of academic writing, we will explore how language and imagination enable us to cross the gap between ourselves and others. We will pay attention to what happens when we read. Reading some fiction will stretch us to imagine people, and even intelligent aliens, very different from ourselves. We will explore how the English language changes as different communities use the same language to express their identity and experience.

ENGL 113.17 Writing About Writing
Writing is something we do but it is also a technology with its own history, research and theories. This course aims to sharpen your writing skills through writing practice and also through the study of writing’s history and key ideas, including how to use artificial intelligence ethically and effectively. We will ask questions like: What counts as writing in a world where text is so often combined with images and video? What makes writing good? Why do some messages succeed while others miss the mark or cause confusion? How can we use AI tools like chatGPT to improve our writing while also using them ethically? Through expository essays and research-based arguments, you will learn to make claims, examine evidence and engage differing viewpoints with care and clarity.

Special Topics (Anchor Plan and Upper Level Courses) SPRING 2026

Coming soon!