* ENGL 0133a / LING 0330a, Words, Words, Words: The Structure and History of English Words  Peter Grund

Meggings. Perpendicular. Up. Ain’t. Eerily. Bae. The. These are all words in the English language, but, like all words, they have different meanings, functions, and social purposes; indeed, the meaning and function may be different for the same word depending on the context in which we use it (whether spoken or written). In this course, we explore the wonderful world of words. We look at how we create new words (and why), how we change the meaning of words, and how words have been lost (and revived) over time. As we do so, we look at debates over words and their meanings now (such as the feeling by some that ain’t is not a word at all) and historically (such as the distaste for subpeditals for ‘shoes’ in the sixteenth century), and how words can be manipulated to insult, hurt, and discriminate against others. We look at a wide range of texts by well-known authors (such as Shakespeare) as well as anonymous online bloggers, and we make use of online tools like the Google Ngram viewer and the Corpus of Historical American English to see how words change over time. At the end of the course, I hope you see how we make sophisticated use of words and how studying them opens up new ways for you to understand why other people use words the way they do and how you can use words for various purposes in your own speech and writing. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

* ENGL 0440b / ART 0740b, Writer as Designer, Designer as Writer  Rachel Kauder Nalebuff and Alice Chung

This seminar invites us to explore the boundaries between written and visual expression. Students with a background or interest in visual art learn to harness their voices as writers, and writers learn tools for how words take on new meaning through visual compositions. The course investigates the relationship between form and content through the creation of three projects—an interview, a manual, and an essay—each of which is written, designed, and physically produced using a variety of tools at our disposal. Through readings, in-class discussion and exercises, as well as workshops, we consider the ways language and ideas can be communicated to others through different media, and how that media in itself also carries meaning. The aim of the course is to playfully blur the categories of “writer” and “designer” so that we can be both at once: messengers. Previously ENGL 041. Enrollment limited to first-year students. This course does not count toward the Creative Writing Concentration for English majors.  HU
HTBA