The NEIU English Institute has stimulating courses available to enroll in for non-credit. Take a course for continuing education hours or just for personal growth and enrichment. To enroll, follow the link below for the course(s) you would like to take and pay online by credit card. No application process is needed for a non-credit enrollment other than creating an account in our registration system. Current and future NEIU students seeking college-level credit can take these courses by registering through the normal process. (If you are not already registered as an NEIU student, visit our Admissions page and register as a degree-seeking student or student-at-large.)
Winter Session 2022
LING 366: Language and the Beatles
Our first Linguistics course to be included in the Institute, this Winter Session class uses hands-on activities to explore new ways of using pop culture singing/lyrics to make English, language arts and modern cultural history concepts more relevant. We'll engage in poetry, dialect variation, and cultural history by presenting them via modern pop-culture. While the data in this class will all be from the Beatles, the techniques taught will be applicable to any musical/lyrical artist.
Hybrid
Dec.19-22, 2022; Jan. 3-5; Jan. 9-12, 2023
4:30-7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday
Fine Arts Building (FA) Room 152
Instructor Karen Duchaj, k-duchaj@neiu.edu
Fee: $600
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Dr. Karen Duchaj is a long-time faculty member in the Linguistics Department. Her academic expertise focuses on the language of the Beatles, including John Lennon’s writing, Lennon and Paul McCartney’s consonant pronunciation, and George Harrison’s singing vowels, and she has taught and presented her work to a variety of audiences.
Spring 2023
ENGL 304A: Literary Editing
This course is an introduction to literary editing (as an intellectual and aesthetic process and as literary citizenship) and an exploration of the collaboration between writer and editor. We’ll discuss and enact the procedures, concepts and nuances of literary editing, focusing particularly on manuscript editing, copyediting and proofreading. While our work might include some tools that relate to editing, in general, our focus is on literary editing, closely examining creative writing itself.
Lecture
Jan. 17-May 4, 2023
7-9:45 p.m. Tuesday evenings
Building B, Room 146
Instructor Olivia Cronk, o-cronk@neiu.edu
Fee: $600
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Olivia Cronk teaches Composition, Creative Writing, and Literature for the English Department at NEIU. She is the author of three books: "WOMONSTER" (Tarpaulin Sky, 2020), "Louise and Louise and Louise" (The Lettered Streets Press, 2016), and "Skin Horse" (Action Books, 2012). With Philip Sorenson she edits The Journal Petra. They also co-write criticism; their upcoming piece is about Madison McCartha's Freakophone World and its between-ness, sonic worms, and freak-speech.
ENGL 374B: Flash Forms
Flash forms are often studied (if at all) as a footnote within a contemporary literature or creative writing course, the literary version of the short story's cute younger cousin. However, while flash forms—stories and essays composed of less than 1,000 words—have become increasingly popular over the past two decades, they have been around for centuries. In this online course, students will study and practice specific craft elements while also exploring the plasticity of the form. They will read and write stand-alone pieces and investigate the possibilities and varieties of flash.
Jan. 17- May 4, 2023
Online-Asynchronous
Instructor Larry Dean, l-dean@neiu.edu
Fee: $600
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Larry O. Dean's numerous books include "Frequently Asked Questions" (2021), "Muse, Um" (2021), "Activities of Daily Living" (2017), "Brief Nudity" (2013), "Basic Cable Couplets" (2012), "ABBREV" (2011), "About the Author" (2011), and "I Am Spam" (2004). He is also an acclaimed singer-songwriter whose latest solo album is "Good Grief" (2015); "Product Placement," the sophomore album from his band, the Injured Parties, was released August 2019. For more information, visit larryodean.com
ENGL 370: Folklore and the Fairy Tale
Folklore and the Fairy Tale will explore archetypal stories (some familiar, some new) involving tricksters, witches and violent men—some classics of European and African tradition as well as adaptations and modernizations by contemporary writers such as Angela Carter and Jasmine Sawers. In groups, the class will create their own adaptations of a fairy tale.
Lecture
Jan. 17-May 4, 2023
10:50 a.m.-12:05 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday
Fine Arts Building (FA) Room 255
Associate Professor Kristen Over, k-over@neiu.edu
Fee: $500
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A member of the English Department for nearly 20 years, Kristen Over teaches a variety of courses in British and American literatures and cultures that cover material from the 8th through the 21st centuries. She has written about colonialism and identity formation in medieval England and Wales, the figure of King Arthur and the role of myth in British history, and most recently about inherited white supremacy in Faulkner's fiction and nonfiction.
ENGL 303: Contemporary LGBTQ+ Literature
ENGL 303 will feature LGBTQ+ literature that focuses on the individuality and uniqueness of individuals, the importance and difficulty of understanding the LGBTQ+ community as united around common goals, and the ways race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and more intersect to shape identity. Highlighted will be voices that challenge the depiction of LGBTQ+ literature (and life in general) as white and male, wealthy and muscled, as we work toward a deeper understanding of sexualities, pride, and politics for the 21st century.
Lecture
Jan. 17-May 4, 2023
1:40-2:55 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday
Building B, Room B 152
Professor Tim Barnett, t-barnett1@neiu.edu
Fee: $500
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Tim Barnett has taught in the English Department and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at NEIU for many years and is also the co-director of NEIU's University Without Walls Program at Stateville Prison. He is interested in the ways we can use stories, critical reading and writing, and activism to challenge systems of dehumanization linked to racism, queerphobia, misogyny, mass incarceration, and more.
ENGL 330: Shakespeare: Comedies, Romances, Poetry
In Shakespeare’s comedies and romances, desire (often female) tries the limits of authority (always patriarchal). These are the plays where the full range of social and cultural conflicts are on display, the patriarchy put under scrutiny. Where plucky heroines save fickle, irresponsible men. Where desire, gender, and the perils of marriage are explored most deeply.
Lecture
Jan. 17-May 4, 2023
12:15-1:30 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday
Fine Arts Building, Room FA 152
Professor Bradley Greenburg, b-greenburg@neiu.edu
Fee: $500
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Bradley Greenburg specializes in Shakespeare, as well as teaching film, creative writing, and other subjects at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. His publications range from articles on Shakespeare to T. S. Eliot, Pushcart Prize-nominated short stories and poems, and a novel, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" (Sandstone Press, UK: 2014). His most recent article on the pandemic and Shakespeare’s "Venus & Adonis" can be found in Pop Matters.
