Core Curriculum Guide: Knowledge Areas
Literary Knowledge and Experience
Learning Outcome: Demonstrate knowledge of, or experience in, literary traditions and expressions.
Throughout time, individuals have demonstrated the desire to know more about one's self, one's environment, and others, and to express this through literature. Literary knowledge and experience examine ways that literary expression is manifested in different types of texts. The study of literary traditions and expressions could focus on what is commonly considered traditional literary texts, as well as on classical rhetoric and textual analysis. The term "text" also includes film, television, magazines, newspapers, essays, and more. Students will have the opportunity to explore literary expression through formal study and creative processes, and to explore literary expression from a variety of perspectives and multiple cultures, including non-Western or non-dominant cultures.
Competencies: By way of example, Loyola graduates should be able to:
- Study, create, or participate in the creation of some forms of literary production as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process.
- Acquire the critical and technical vocabulary enabling them to describe and analyze, and formulate an argument about, literary productions.
- Assess how formal qualities of literary productions determine the nature of the experience offered and affect the response of the audience.
- Examine multiple interpretive possibilities of any literary work, and know that such interpretations both reflect the culture that produce[d] them and change over time.
- Assess the relationships of works of literature to the cultural-historical nexus that produce[d] and use[d] them.
Literary Knowledge and Experience Courses
Students will acquire the means for comprehending Dante's epic poem and minor works and they will demonstrate the ability to analyze such elements of a narrative poem as plot, character, or thematic development. In addition they will be taught to consider the complex relation of the events referred to in the poem in the late medieval religious-cultural-historical context.
| Classical Mythology | CLST 271 |
| This course explores the fundamental myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans through study of literature involving myth in its historical, social, and cultural context. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the fundamental myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans, their language and possible meanings. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communications (written) (oral) critical thinking |
| Heroes and Classical Epics | CLST 272 |
| This course examines the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil's Aeneid and endeavors to place these epic poems into their historical, social, and cultural contexts. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the epic as a literary genre and how this genre was presented and evolved to reflect audiences and times. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Classical Tragedy | CLST 273 |
| This course introduces students to ancient Greek and Roman tragedy, the authors of those tragedies, their social, historical, and cultural contexts, and to the performance-circumstances of extant Greek drama. Outcome: Students will be able to relate the mythical story presented on the stage to moral, social and political issues, as well as to assess the formal and aesthetic properties of the very different plays from Aeschylus' "Agamemnon" to Seneca's "Thyestes." |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Ancient Romance Novel | CLST 280 |
| This course explores the psychology of love, human sexuality, the relation of lovers to family and society as well as philosophical thought on human erotics in Ancient Greek and Roman literature. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of human experience, namely, love, sexuality, psychology as well as cultural institutions like marriage, the relation of the genders, and the relation of the individual to society. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Classical Comedy and Satire | CLST 283 |
| This course explores the great literary works of the ancient world that combine social criticism with humor. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of various modes of political and social criticism and how humor has worked in the past and how it works for us now. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Criticism and Theory | ENGL 270 |
| This course explores a range of critical approaches and literary theories, including reader-response, new criticism, gender theory (including feminism and theories of masculinity), marxism, new historicism and psychoanalysis. Outcome: Students will be able to describe and analyze, and formulate an argument about, literary productions using the critical and technical vocabulary. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Introduction to Poetry | ENGL 271 |
| This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of poetry; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of poetry's ability to express the deepest and most complex feeling of human beings, how a poem comes to be and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding poetry. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Introduction to Drama | ENGL 272 |
| This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of drama; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of drama's ability to express the deepest and most complex feelings and concerns of human beings as individuals, as family members, and as members of society: the individual's place in the universe, in relation to others, and in relation to the socio-political system that he or she inhabits. Students will also be able to demonstrate understanding of how plays are constructed in different ways to serve different purposes. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Introduction to Fiction | ENGL 273 |
| This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of prose fiction. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of fiction as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process, and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding fiction. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Introduction to Shakespeare | ENGL 274 |
| This course focuses on the works of Shakespeare as literature and as theatre, covering at least three of the four genres (comedy, history, tragedy, romance). Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the thetrical and poetic works of Shakespeare, such elements of drama as plot, character, theme, imagery, and verse forms, as well as the personal, political and theatrical world in which Shakespeare lived and worked. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Chief American Writers to 1865 | ENGL 277 |
| This course focuses on the study of selected American writers from the earlier period; these may include Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, Douglass. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the history of literary production in America from its earlier times and how writers moved generally from non-fiction to fiction and poetry forms. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Chief American Writers: 1865-Present | ENGL 278 |
| This course focuses on the study of fiction, poetry and drama produced in America from 1865 to the present. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the personal, cultural, and political experience of America's diverse population as it is reflected in the literature of the period. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Introduction to Medieval Culture | ENGL 279 |
| The chief objective of this course is to introduce students to texts and ideas characteristic of medieval culture, with a special focus on works in English read in translation. It is a basic assumption of the course that a familiarity with some of critical terms useful in cultural analysis, including literary analysis, will assist in the process. Outcome: students will receive training in the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of works of medieval culture; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| African American Literature | ENGL 282 |
| This course focuses on the study of texts written by and/or about African Americans; authors may include Douglass, Wright, Baldwin, Hughes, Hurston, Morrison, and Walker. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the particular significance of literacy and writing to African Americans, a group for whom textual production served a variety of purposes. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Women in Literature | ENGL 283 |
| This course focuses on the representation of women in literature, as discuseed in a variety of literary works. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the representations of women in various periods of literary history and diverse cultural contexts. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Nature in Literature | ENGL 288 |
| This course focuses on the relationship of human beings and the environment in which they function, as represented in a variety of literary works. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the representations of "nature" in various periods of literary history and diverse cultural contexts. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Society and Literature | ENGL 289 |
| This variable topics course focuses on the relationship between literature and society. Each semester the course focuses on a particular social issue and a selection of literary texts that deal with the issue. Outcome: Students will be able to recognize the ways literary form complicates the meaning of literary representations of society, and demonstrate understanding of the basic critical terms used to recognize and describe the meaning of literary form. |
View syllabus Skill Area: |
| Human Values in Literature | ENGL 290 |
| This variable topics course focuses on a perennial psychological or philosophical problem facing the individual as exemplified in literary works, e.g., the passage from innocence to experience, the problem of death, and the idea of liberty. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the ability of literature to express the deepest and most abiding concerns of human beings, and how literary works come to be. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| South Asian Literatures and Civilizations | ENGL 292/THEO 291 |
| This course offers an introduction to South Asian literatures and civilizations, spanning from what we know of the earliest peoples to contemporary times. Attention is given to both unity and diversity across the South Asian sub-continent. Topics addressed include religious thought and practice, literature, civilizational origins and development, the establishment of social institutions, artistic achievements, and modern challenges. Outcome: The proposed course will fulfill two of the designated Core learning outcomes: literary knowledge and experience, and theological and religious studies knowledge. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Masterpieces of European Literature | LITR 280 |
| This course focuses on major literary works of Europe, from medieval romance through the modern novel and short story. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of how literary masterpieces interpret human interaction and social organization. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| Masterpieces of German Literature | LITR 230 |
| This course focuses on the major German literary works of the 20th Century. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of literary technique and structure, while maintaining an acute awareness of its function and its effects in a particular cultural and historical setting. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| Masterpieces of Italian Literature | LITR 260 |
| This course focuses on the major masterpieces of Italian literature from Petrarch to the 20th century. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of literary technique and structure, while maintaining an acute awareness of its function and its effects in a particular cultural and historical setting. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| Russian Literary Masterpieces | LITR 225 |
| This course focuses on 18th, 19th, and 20th century Russian literature, including poetry, drama, and fiction. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of literary technique and structure, while maintaining an acute awareness of its function and its effects in a particular cultural and historical setting. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| European Novel | LITR 202 |
| This course focuses on on major European novels of the 19th century in order to give students an overview of the literary production of representative European novelists. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of literary technique and structure, while maintaining an acute awareness of its function and its effects in a particular cultural and historical setting. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| European Drama | LITR 203 |
| This course focuses on major works in Western theatrical tradition. It also makes use of literary and critical texts to provide analytic skills to discuss major themes, dramatic structure, and the conventions of classic, neo-classic, and modern theatre. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of literary technique and structure, while maintaining an acute awareness of its function and its effects in a particular cultural and historical setting. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| Italian Novel | LITR 262 |
| This course will focus on major Italian novels of the 19th and or 20th century in order to give students an overview of the literary production of representative Italian novelists. The literary texts of authors such as Alessandro Manzoni, Giovanni Verga, Luigi Pirandello. Italo Svevo, Ignazio Silone, Natalia Ginzburg, Alberto Moravia, Giorgio Bassani, Italo Calvino and Primo Levi will be studied in relation to Italian and European history and society in the 20th century. | View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| Dante | LITR 283 |
| This course will examine the Divine Comedy as the masterpiece of Dante Alighieri and of all of Italian literature. We will see how Dante's allegorical and mystical journey to God unfolds through a series of precise descriptions of characters and settings and concrete episodes that comprise the vast and world of the great narrative Poem. Outcome: Students will acquire the means for comprehending Dante's epic poem and minor works and they will demonstrate the ability to analyze such elements of a narrative poem as plot, character, or thematic development. In addition they will be taught to consider the complex relation of the events referred to in the poem in the late medieval religious-cultural-historical context. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Latina Writers | LITR 211 |
| This course focuses on selected works that belong to the rich, diverse, and ever-growing field of Latina literature. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the principal differences and similarities, both thematic and formal, that characterize today's Latina writing. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Polish Authors | LITR 221 |
| This course focuses on the major Polish writers from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment and Romantic periods, and into the modern era. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the major Polish writers and the aesthetic movements that underpin each writer's work, such as the Enlightenment, Romantic Period, and Positivism on through to Postmodernism, and their relevant societal and cultural issues (e.g., the social structure of Polish feudalism, with its system of manor houses and serfs). |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| Literature and Opera | LITR 285 |
| This course examines the complex relationships--sometimes happy, sometimes hostile--between literature and music on the operatic stage. Outcome: Students will be able to understand and appreciate opera. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) critical thinking |
| Arabic Literature | LITR 238 |
| This course focuses on the detailed study of the primary literary source of our knowledge about the life and times of Muhammad. Outcome: Students will be able to conduct an indepedent, critical review of the Prophet's biography, rather than accept the constructions of the Prophet that have been shaped by two groups over the centuries. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |
| Japanese Literature | LITR 245 |
| We will read selections of Japanese literature in a variety of genres, including myth and poetry derived from oral traditions, Classical Japanese prose, plays from the feudal period, early modern novels and short stories, and contemporary fiction and personal histories that have gained critical acclaim and wide popular success. All reading, writing, and discussion will be in English, but students will learn enough about the structure and history of the Japanese language to be able to consider the conceptual and technical demands of translation. Outcome: Students will show knowledge of Japanese literary traditions and be able to recognize and understand the different uses of these genres and the social and personal conditions that allow these works to be produced in a variety of settings. |
View syllabus Skill Area: critical thinking |
| South Asian Literature in Translation | LITR 243 |
| This course examines literary and historical readings to provide an overview of South Asian society and culture, and focuses on issues of caste, communalism and gender in South Asia. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of literary traditions and expressions of South Asia. |
View syllabus Skill Area: communication (written) |