Published syllabi

For current syllabi see the latest tagged release.

Some past syllabi may be downloaded at the following links:

• "Exploring Poetry" spring 2024
• "Research Writing: Open Source Tools and Techniques" fall 2025
• "History of the English Language" spring 2023, spring 2025
• "Medieval British Literature" fall 2025
• "Introduction to Old English" spring 2024
• "Introduction to Middle English" fall 2024
• "English Poetry from Manuscript to Print" fall 2022
• "Interpreting Literature" fall 2024

Versioning

Beginning with v2025.01.0, tagged releases have the following semantics: YEAR.MONTH.VERSION. The MONTH is the two-digit month in which a given semester begins (usually 01 or 08).

Plain text components

Plain text components are maintained in the directories frames, schedules, bibliographies, and partials.

frames

Markdown files (one per course). These supply document outlines and code blocks for loading content.

schedules

Course schedules as CSV and Markdown. The Markdown files are created by script from the corresponding CSV and should not be edited manually. See scripts.

bibliographies

Bibliographical details for use by Pandoc's citeproc.

partials

This directory houses all syllabus content except course schedules and bibliographic details. Files are queryable with ZettelGeist. To do that, clone the repository. Then, assuming you have installed ZettelGeist, and activated the Python virtual environment, do the following:

$ cd path/to/zg-syllabi/partials
$ zimport --database index.db --create --fullpath --dir .
$ zfind --database index.db --get-all-tags | less

To view metadata for documents with a given tag, run (e.g.)

$ zfind --database index.db --query-string 'tags:presentation' --show-all

To view the document payloads, add the option --show-document to the above command, or open or view the files themselves. Filenames are included among the metadata printed by --show-all.

For more on queries, see the ZettelGeist manual. (ZettelGeist queries have some known issues).

Production tools

Production tools are maintained in the directories scripts and config.

scripts

The directory scripts contains Python scripts to generate skeleton course schedules as CSV and transform the CSV into well-structured Markdown. See comments at the head of the files.

config

The directory config contains files used by pandoc to control the conversion and formatting of documents, including the formatting of bibliographical references.

Builds and deployment

For local builds, and prior to each release, run the shell script build-all.sh. This script calls a Python script (scripts/date-formatter.py) to create Markdown files in schedules and calls another shell script (build-pdf.sh) to create PDFs in build. The Markdown files created in schedules must be committed to the repository and pushed to origin prior to deployment. (This may be obviated in a future release.) The PDF files created in build are for local testing. (They are ignored by git.) Deployment is done with GitHub Actions: see .github/workflows/action.yaml.