Fall 2015 Courses
Interpreting Literature (UCLR 100)
Section: 02L #4434
Instructor: B. Beasley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC
Literature and Loss: From the Victorian Cult of Death to the American Flight From Death
Whether or not we consider ourselves “bookish” people, when we lose something or someone we love, we often turn to poems, plays, and novels. Sometimes we want to forget our loss, sometimes we want to remember it. Sometimes we need help grieving, sometimes we need to laugh our grief away. Sometimes we’re seeking comfort, other times we value being confronted with harsh realities. Whatever our need, literature tends to play a central role.
This foundational course in literary studies investigates the various ways authors have represented and responded to loss in their writings. Beginning with the Victorian era and moving to the present day, we will read and analyze a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama. While reading classic authors like Charles Dickens and contemporary masters like Joan Didion, students will learn key literary and critical terms. The course will employ a variety of core critical approaches to ask key questions such as: What is literature? What does literature do for us? Is its function always the same in different times and places? And, finally, what can literature teach us both about our own culture and about cultures that are vastly different from ours?
Interpreting Literature (UCLR 100) is a prerequisite for all second tier literature courses.
Section: 04L #4436
Instructor: M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC
In this section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies we will focus on literature written in and about Chicago, from the 19th century to the present. We will focus on how literature represents and portrays the city, from helping us remember key moments in Chicago history, to grappling with social and cultural issues, to capturing what makes this city unique among American cities.
This course will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to conceptual questions about literature and its study. What is literature? Why does it matter? How has it been conceived in different times and places? Where does meaning come from in literature? What is literary interpretation and what role does it have in the production of literary meaning? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect—and reflect on—questions of value and the diversity of human experience?
Section: 05L #4437
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM LSC
This is a foundational course that introduces key literary and critical terms and explores a variety of critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. In particular, we will be looking at the concepts of dying, death and grieving and discuss how these concepts are depicted in a number of different poems, plays and short stories. These topics are often difficult topics to discuss and yet, they are inevitable realities in each of our lives. Thus, we will use texts, by a number of different American authors, such as Willa Cather, Raymond Carver, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich and more, to explore what dying, death and grieving might consist of, not only personally but also politically, and further, within the medical field itself. The method of assessment will include quizzes, three, four-page papers, and classroom participation.
Section: 06L #4438
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM LSC
Section: 07L #4439
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM LSC
The foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This course will combine formal with thematic analysis, examining the way literary techniques create meaning and shape the reading experience. Readings may include works by authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison. Assignments will include quizzes, exams, and two short papers.
Section: 08L #4440
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC
Section: 09L #4441
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC
Section: 10L #4442
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC
Section: 11L #4443
Instructor: S. Polen
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC
This foundational course in literary studies explores the concept of storytelling as exhibited in prose, poetry, drama, and film. Why do we tell stories? What do different modes of storytelling accomplish? How do stories conceive of and comment on themselves? And, most importantly, why do we study stories from our earliest days in preschool to our final days as college students (and beyond)? The class will emphasize close reading as the foundation of literary analysis and will explore the role the reader plays in creating meaning out of those readings. Major assignments will include 2-3 papers, short response papers, regular reading quizzes, and two exams.
Section: 12L #4444
Instructor: T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 - 1:25 PM
Section: 13L #4445
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC
The foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This course will combine formal with thematic analysis, examining the way literary techniques create meaning and shape the reading experience. Readings may include works by authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison. Assignments will include quizzes, exams, and two short papers.
Section: 14L #4446
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC
This is a foundational course that introduces key literary and critical terms and explores a variety of critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. In particular, we will be looking at the concepts of dying, death and grieving and discuss how these concepts are depicted in a number of different poems, plays and short stories. These topics are often difficult topics to discuss and yet, they are inevitable realities in each of our lives. Thus, we will use texts, by a number of different American authors, such as Willa Cather, Raymond Carver, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich and more, to explore what dying, death and grieving might consist of, not only personally but also politically, and further, within the medical field itself. The method of assessment will include quizzes, three, four-page papers, and classroom participation.
Section: 15L #4447
Instructor: T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 - 2:30 PM LSC
Reading can be fun. Close reading can make the experience even more enjoyable. In this introductory course we will explore how writers tease the reader with multilayered texts, rich in imagery, clever word choices, and interesting insights into human behavior. During this course we will cover works of poetry, prose and drama from at least two different time periods; pre-modern and modern. Texts will include works from Ireland, England and the U.S.A.
Section: 16L #4448
Instructor: A. Welch
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 - 2:30 PM LSC
In this course, we’ll begin to learn how to read literature. More precisely, we’ll develop tools for understanding how meaning emerges between texts and readers, genres and cultural horizons. We’ll then use this understanding to build an active reading practice. This means understanding how our own processes of understanding work, taking responsibility for the meanings we create, and discovering how to self-consciously build our interpretations. Our goals are 1) to learn to produce rigorous arguments about literature, 2) to construct strategies for reading any text as text—that is, as a process of meaning-making , 3) to come to terms with the role of meaning-making in the more nebulous textual activity we call living.
We’ll read poetry, drama, and fiction ranging from the Renaissance to the contemporary: Lydia Davis and David Foster Wallace, William Wordsworth and William Blake, Italo Calvino and Christina Rossetti, Tom Stoppard and Tao Lin. This course will demand active and consistent engagement and participation.
Section: 17L #4449
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC
Section: 18L #4450
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC
Section: 19L #4451
Instructor: D. Macey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 - 9:45 AM LSC
Monsters in the Workaday World
This foundational course in literary studies will focus on the theme of monstrosity and the fantastic as portrayed in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. What happens on the page when the marvelous intrudes on the everyday, and what effects does it have on readers? The course will emphasize close reading, including a careful attention to form. Assignments will include essays, short response papers, and regular quizzes.
Section: 20L #4452
Instructor: J. Wexler
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 - 9:45 AM LSC
Section: 21L #4453
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 - 11:15 AM LSC
Literature in a Scientific Age
The theme of this course is literature in a scientific age. We will compare the truth-claims of science and literature by studying examples of poetry, fiction, and drama from the nineteenth century to the present. Using appropriate literary terms, we will analyze textual evidence to construct critical arguments. We will consider fundamental questions such as: What is literature? Why does it matter? Where does meaning come from in literature? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect – and reflect on – questions of value and the diversity of human experience?
Section: 22L #4454
Instructor: J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 - 11:15 AM LSC
Whatever you do, don’t take this class. Studying literature is pointless; it won’t get you a job. That’s what the internet tells you, right? But who is this internet, anyway, and how did it learn to think and write? How does it know that you shouldn’t study literature? If literature is so useless, why does it need to warn you to stay away? This foundational course will focus on the interpretive skills you need to explore such questions and to understand the world more generally. Though literature may be useless when compared to learning how to use a hammer, it represents the most complex attempt to make sense of human experience in language. We will examine works from a variety of historical periods in a variety of literary genres (poetry, drama, prose fiction). Assignments will include quizzes, short papers, as well as a mid-term and final exam.
Section: 23L #4321
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC
Social Justice and the Value of Literature
The mission of Loyola University Chicago is “to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice and faith.” In this introductory course, we will explore literature as a form of social justice, specifically with respect to race, class and gender inequities. We will address the following questions: What is literature and why does it matter? How does literature deal with issues of social justice, and how do literary texts function as tools for social justice? To explore these questions, we will read a range of genres including novels, poetry, drama and non-fiction spanning from the 18th century to the 21st century. While these issues are pertinent in a global, transnational context this course will focus primarily on literatures of the United States.
Section: 24L #5083
Instructor: J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 - 12:45 PM LSC
We will explore major critical approaches and apply them to key literary texts. Our course will help you develop valuable critical thinking and analytic abilities. To that end, we will work on close reading, focused discussion, and effective writing. We will discuss our readings in class. That gives you opportunities to share ideas and raise questions. There will be several papers, group presentations, and a take-home final exam.
Section: 25L #5084
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 - 2:15 PM LSC
Section: 26L #5085
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 - 2:15 PM LSC
Section: 27L #6133
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC
Section: 28L #5087
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
Section: 29L #5088
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
Section: 30L #5089
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 PM LSC
Section: 31L #6134
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
Section: 32L #6135
Instructor: A. Welch
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 - 1:25 PM LSC
Section: 33L #6136
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 - 2:30 PM LSC
Section: 34L #6137
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 - 1:25 PM LSC
Section: 60L #5086
Instructor: J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC
We will explore major critical approaches and apply them to key literary texts. Our course will help you develop valuable critical thinking and analytic abilities. To that end, we will work on close reading, focused discussion, and effective writing. We will discuss our readings in class. That gives you opportunities to share ideas and raise questions. There will be several papers, group presentations, and a take-home final exam.
Advanced Writing: Business (ENGL 210)
Section: 20W #2214
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM WTC
Section: 21W #2215
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM WTC
Section: 60W #3279
Instructor: M. Meinhardt
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM WTC
Business Writing is a seminar designed to build and improve effective communication practices for use in the business community. The ideas of “personal professionalism” and “priority of purposes” guide an exploration of business writing genres ranging from correspondence to memos, and from employment documents to executive summaries. Collaboration, peer interaction, and individual economy direct the creation of a series of writing projects that use revision and research as a necessary step in the writing process.
Writing for Pre-Law Students (ENGL 211)
Section: 62W #5447
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC
Theory/Practice Tutoring (ENGL 220)
Section: 1WE #2809
Instructor: A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
English 220 is a seminar designed to prepare students to serve as tutors in the Loyola University Chicago Writing Center. We will explore the theory and practice of peer tutoring through reading, discussion, and practical experience. A writing center is an organic intellectual community, in that tutoring involves an impromptu meeting between two writers who think together about clear expression. In this course you will not only learn how to help others improve their writing, but you will also improve your own writing and critical thinking skills. You will become part of a vibrant community of fellow peer tutors while gaining experience that will serve you in a variety of careers. This course is open to students from all majors who have a passion for clear written communication. The service-learning component consists of approximately 20-25 hours of observation and tutoring in the Writing Center and a small- group project aimed at enhancing the Center’s services.
Exploring Poetry (ENGL 271)
Section: 01W #4782
Instructor: J. Jacobs
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC
This course is not intended to turn people into poetry scholars. I hope it will help them find the freedom to be poetry readers. It is designed to help people discover how to engage a poem directly. How to have fun with poetry, how to get at the kinds of pleasures it offers, how to use poetry as a tool to look at your own life and experience.
I require you to have your own copy of one of a major collection with poems from many periods, the NORTON ANTHOLOGY (5th full edition, not the Shorter Edition). But we will stress modern writers. We will supplement the anthology with a short collection, also required, by a single author. Three main papers will be required, plus a final exam. I may make extended comments, but won’t lecture. I also require class participation—and you can’t participate without being in class. You should be willing to “risk” entering discussion actively.
Section: 02W #5477
Instructor: D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 - 11:15 AM LSC
Through close attention to the basic elements of poetry—voice, rhythm, form, tone, etc.—students will develop their ability to read and enjoy this art. Readings for the course include poems written by over 60 authors. Most of our class time will be spent in discussion and analysis of these works. Assignments will include short essays, reading quizzes, and midterm and final exams.
Exploring Drama (ENGL 272)
Section: 04W #5479
Instructor: V. Foster
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 - 10:10 AM LSC
This course is writing intensive.
Through reading, writing, discussion, film clips, and in-class performance we will explore significant plays from ancient Greece to present-day America. We will consider genres such as tragedy, comedy, and tragicomedy, dramatic movements such as realism, epic theatre, and theatre of the absurd, and themes such as the relations between men and women and between science and society. We will be concerned about the relation between text and performance and audience response. Dramatists will include Euripides, Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Brecht, Williams, Beckett, Churchill, and Parks. We will attend Loyola Theatre Department’s production of Brecht’s Galileo. Since this course is writing intensive, we will pay special attention to students’ writing skills through workshops, revision, and conferences. Requirements: three essays (two drafts each); midterm and final exams; brief in-class performance; class participation, including ungraded brief in-class writing assignments.
Exploring Fiction (ENGL 273)
Section: 05W #5482
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 - 2:30 PM LSC
This course examines works by important novelists from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Class discussions will address formal and thematic features of these writings. Based on these discussions, students will write papers that draw upon the readings to support original and consequential interpretations.
Section: 062 #5481
Instructor: A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC
Most of us have experienced the pleasure that can be derived from a good scary story. We love to feel spine-tingling chills while sitting in the comfort of familiar surroundings. In this course we will explore some of the best horror fiction and try to figure out just how and why these stories produce such exciting and pleasurable effects. We will read short and longer works spanning the history of this genre, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and Grimm’s fairy tales, traveling through the great gothic traditions represented by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and others. We will also read some short critical works to help us consider the psychological and literary mechanisms behind the dreadful pleasures of the scary story. Course requirements: consistent attendance and participation, three short response papers, and a final exam.
Section: 07W #5484
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC
This course examines works by important novelists from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Class discussions will address formal and thematic features of these writings. Based on these discussions, students will write papers that draw upon the readings to support original and consequential interpretations.
Section: 08W #5485
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
Why do people enjoy reading stories about made-up characters? This course will offer students an introduction to prose fiction as a mode of literary representation. It will aim to acquaint students with the historical development of fictional characters, as well as the many techniques authors use to creation fictional worlds. Most of our energy will be devoted to reading and discussing short stories and novels, but we will range across genres from realism to science fiction. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, John Irving, Sherman Alexie, Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, and Octavia Butler.
Section: 602 #5486
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC
Exploring Shakespeare (ENGL 274)
Section: 09W #3992
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM LSC
In this course we will study eight of Shakespeare's plays, including plays from a variety of genres--comedy, history, tragedy, romance--and from various stages of his career as a playwright. We will consider the plays in relation to the intellectual, political, and social contexts in which they were produced, the theatrical practices and conventions of the age, and Shakespeare's own development as a playwright. We will also explore ways in which the plays allow for a variety of interpretations and kinds of performance, and consider various critical approaches. Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class. Requirements will include papers, response papers, a midterm, and a final.
Please note: English majors should take English 326, not English 274.
Section: 10W #4456
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC
In this course we will study eight of Shakespeare's plays, including plays from a variety of genres--comedy, history, tragedy, romance--and from various stages of his career as a playwright. We will consider the plays in relation to the intellectual, political, and social contexts in which they were produced, the theatrical practices and conventions of the age, and Shakespeare's own development as a playwright.
We will also explore ways in which the plays allow for a variety of interpretations and kinds of performance, and consider various critical approaches. Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class. Requirements will include papers, a midterm, and a final.
Please note: English majors should take English 326, not English 274.
Women in Literature (ENGL 283)
Section: 064 #2433
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 - 11:15 AM LSC
Section: 11W #1973
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 - 11:15 AM LSC
The course will focus on the feminist avant-garde, women writers of the early to mid twentieth-century who experimented with narrative techniques and challenged conventional notions of gender. Our purpose will be (1) to learn to read literature in relation to its social and historical context, especially contemporaneous notions of gender, and (2) to analyze literature in terms of its narrative techniques. How do we read literature that doesn’t provide a linear plot, stable characters, or positive images of women? What effect does such literature have on our notions of ourselves as gendered subjects? What are the political implications of such radical texts? We will read Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Djuna Barnes from the first half of the century, and Kathy Acker, Angela Carter, Harryette Mullen, and Jeanette Winterson from the second half. We will also read Nella Larsen, a more conventional novelist whose writing was indebted to Stein and has radical implications for our understanding of gender, race and class, and we will discuss contemporary visual artists. Requirements will include frequent ungraded writing in response to the readings; three short graded essays; a presentation (group or individual); and, a final exam.
Section: 12W #2129
Instructor: J. Bouson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC
“If women have learned many of the ways they interpret their lives from the narrative schemata of novels and stories,” writes Joanne Fry, “they can also gain from fiction new insights into the narrative processes of constructing meaning.” Crosslisted with Women’s Studies, English 283 is designed to meet the “literary knowledge and experience” requirements of the Loyola Core. Focusing on literature written by 20th- and21st-century women authors, this course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women’s lives and writings; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; to train them in the analysis of literature; and to teach them how to describe, analyze, and formulate arguments about literary texts. Analyzing representative works of fiction written by women authors, this course will investigate the important cultural and gender scripts and psychological dramas encoded in the works read, paying special attention to the various ways the authors represent coming of age, the female body, romantic love, mother-child relationships, and female friendship in their works. The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison. There will be reading quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.
Religion and Literature (ENGL 287)
Section: 13W #5487
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 - 1:25 PM
What is faith? What is hope? What is love? These three very complex questions are what will be explored in this course. By focusing on both religious and literary texts, we will look at the ways in which these ideas play a role in people’s lives, both individually and socially. In this class we will actively engage the unique space and conversation happening between these two types of texts and look at what they have to say about how we live and understand notions of faith, hope and love. While the course is focused significantly on texts inspired by Christianity, ample attention will be devoted to literary texts in a number of other traditions as well. This conversation will then serve as a starting point for not only literary analysis, but further, a deep questioning of these three ideas. The mode of grading will consist of papers, quizzes, written reflections, and classroom participation.
Nature in Literature (ENGL 288)
Section: 065 #5488
Instructor: S. Jones
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC
This course focuses on the relationship of human beings and the environment in which they function, as represented in a variety of literary works, in different genres and from different historical periods and cultural contexts. We’ll focus on specific examples of literature that illustrate the concept of the Anthropocene, the geological period, which some see as beginning with the so-called industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, in which the human species has had a significant impact on the global environment, a geologic age “of our own making” (Revkin, 1992). Requirements include leading discussions of the readings and writing a critical essay from the perspective of your own major or area of interest—which we’ll begin in the first week and develop all semester. Course outcome: students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the representations of "nature" in various periods of literary history and diverse cultural contexts. Watch Jones’s website (http://stevenejones.org) for the syllabus.
Human Values in Literature (ENGL 290)
Section: 066 #3738
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC
Section: 14W #5489
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 - 2:15 PM LSC
Many academic disciplines explore values and the process of valuation. Economists are interested in economic value, sociologists and anthropologists in social and cultural values, ecologists in the value of nature, people in religious studies in spiritual values, and, of course, philosophers explore the very question of what a value is and how values get determined. Literary writers and literary scholars are also interested in the exploration of values, but there’s something unique about the exploration of values in literature. Instead of being studied quantitatively or empirically, we explore the representation of values in forms of writing that actually dramatize people struggling with competing values in their everyday lives. Literary writing, then, is a unique artistic laboratory for exploring what we value, what we ought to value, and how to balance competing values. In this course we will focus on fiction and poetry from the 20th and 21st centuries that explores a wide and competing range of human values by writers with diverse cultural backgrounds. We’ll try to identify enduring, seemingly timeless values, but we’ll also track how values change, how new values emerge and sometimes compete with or supersede traditional ones, especially in the modern and postmodern periods. Our overriding concern will be to explore how creative writers use the unique qualities of literary art to explore human values. Texts will include short story collections such as In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway, Redeployment, by Phil Klay, Runaway, by Alice Munro, and Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri, as well as a small, diverse selection of 20th century poetry. Requirements will include short essays and a longer final paper. This is a writing intensive course.
Section: 15W #5490
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 - 2:15 PM LSC
Adopting an international and cross-disciplinary perspective, this section of English 290 will examine the portrayal of human values in modern and contemporary works by selected non-western writers from Africa, the West Indies, South Asia, and USA. Our main aim will be to examine the extent to which the societies under study (and the individuals who constitute them) share universal values and the extent to which these societies and their values are predicated upon culture specific norms and expectations. To this end, we will consider the role of nationalism, tradition, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, and class/caste in the conception and practice of such values. In addition, we will analyze the cultural bases of contributing literary techniques, including structure, language, narrative focus, and characterization among others, to arrive at comparative assessments of the portrayal of human values in modern world literature.
Further, this course is Writing Intensive; satisfies 3 credits of the Core Curriculum requirements in Literary Knowledge and in Promoting Justice Values; counts as a 200-level elective for both the English major and minor; and meets the 3-credit multicultural requirement of the English major.
English Grammar (ENGL 303)
Section: 603 #2641
Instructor: E. Weeks-Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC
Humans are language-producing animals, so in a sense our language is something we already “know.” But do we understand how it really works? The goal of this course is to analyze the structure of that language, to unlock the secrets behind the meaning we produce innately. We will explore English grammar not only as a list of rules and regulations that govern linguistic behavior, but also as a means of clearly conveying ideas in speech and writing. This course will examine all elements of English grammar from parts of speech and how they function in a sentence to punctuation and how it enhances clear and precise prose. We will also gain an appreciation for the English language and investigate techniques for using language effectively in speech and writing. This course is required for students planning to teach high school English, but it is also open to others.
Women Writers Post-1900 (ENGL 306C)
Section: 067 #6112
Instructor: J. Bouson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 - 11:15 AM LSC
Crosslisted with Women’s Studies, English 306 will focus on literature written by twentieth- and twenty-first-century women authors. This course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women’s writings and to understand the ways in which women novelists use fiction to challenge inherited cultural and literary assumptions; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; and to help them become familiar with the application of feminist theory to works by women authors. In English 306, the instructor will provide necessary background information on the works covered and will model how to perform close readings of literary texts as she guides students in the investigation of the structures and strategies of representative works of women-authored fiction. The instructor will also place emphasis on the gender scripts and psychological dramas encoded in the works read in the course, paying special attention to the various ways the authors represent coming of age, coming to age, the female body, romantic love, mother-child relationships, and female friendships in their works. The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, and Nancy Mairs. There will be reading quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.
This course fulfills the post-1900 period requirement of the English major.
Feminist and Gender Studies (ENGL 307)
Section: 068 #5492
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC
This course provides an overview of feminist, gender, and transgender theories from the 1980s to the contemporary era. We will study theoretical works from various disciplines as well as novels, memoirs, and films from the late 19th century to the present. Our focus will be on the different historical understandings of such concepts as gender, sexuality, transsexuality, femininity, masculinity and queer. Our guiding question will be: What difference do feminist and (trans)gender theories make to our understanding of literature and popular culture, to our lived experiences as gendered subjects (or those subjected to gender), and to our ability to engage in social change? Readings cover philosophy (Sandra Bartky, Judith Butler, and Marilyn Frye); biology (Anne Fausto-Sterling); anthropology (Emily Martin); history (Michel Foucault); and literary studies (Susan Bordo). Literary authors include Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Radclyffe Hall, Jennifer Boylan, and David Ebershoff. Requirements include three short papers, a presentation (group or individual), and a final exam. The course is designed for both English majors and Women's Studies and Gender Studies majors.
Border Literatures (ENGL 313C)
Section: 444 #6196
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC
In recent decades the study of national literatures (e.g. British, American, Spanish, French) has been supplemented by the study of literature produced in the increasingly porous spaces between national borders. Originating in the study of literature produced along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the field of border studies has expanded to include a wide range of literatures produced in zones of cross-cultural contact around the world. In this course we will study a variety of fiction focusing on characters on the move, people displaced by forced or voluntary migration, exile, or war, people who have to negotiate new identities (usually but not always in an American context) and construct a sense of cultural belonging as they move across borders both real and metaphorical. Readings for this course will likely include Woman Hollering Creek, by Sandra Cisneros, Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina Garcia, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz, The Hungry Tide, by Amitav Ghosh, The Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri, and The Lazarus Project, by Aleksandar Hemon. Assignments will include two short critical essays (7-8 pages) and a longer final paper (12-14 pages).
This course fulfills the multicultural requirement.
Section: 084 #6197
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TBA LSC
The Writing of Poetry (ENGL 317)
Section: 070 #1975
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC
This course approaches the writing of poetry as both a study and craft that requires reading, exploration, practice,
and sharing. We will read a wide range of mostly contemporary poetry in order to discuss its role as a cultural
form of expression and its multiple manifestations as an art form. Readings include experimental verse, prose
poetry, hybrid writing, and digital literature, all meant to encourage the young writer to consider different
avenues of creativity and expression that could benefit their own writing. The workshop element of the course
includes prompts for writing in class and between classes, presentations of student poetry to the group with the
expectation of respectful and productive responses that will encourage writers to build upon their ideas for
subject, form, and style, and in-class collective writing experiments. Students produce a final collection of poetry
presented as a self-published chapbook in a final reading.
Section: 071 #1977
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC
Section: 072 #3739
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 – 5:00 PM LSC
This course offers practice and instruction in the techniques and analysis of poetry through reading, writing, discussing, and revising poems. We will give particular attention to the unique challenges and opportunities facing beginning poets as we first seek to channel our ideas and life experiences into poetry, to find and then develop our own voices in relation to not only our own impulses but to "the tradition" and the aesthetically diverse and fascinating world of contemporary poetry. The poems you write will be carefully read and critiqued by both your classmates and the instructor. The culmination of the course will be to compile a portfolio of the work you have written over the term.
The Writing of Fiction (ENGL 318)
Section: 073 #1978
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC
Section: 074 #3073
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC
Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading master writers such as Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Haruki Murakami, Donald
Barthelme, and others, to analyze their craft; (b) writing three original short stories; and
(c ) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow students in a supportive workshop environment. Class participation is emphasized.
Fulfills a Core Expressive Arts Requirement.
Section: 604 #2083
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC
Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading master writers such as Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Haruki Murakami, Donald
Barthelme, and others, to analyze their craft; (b) writing three original short stories; and
(c ) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow students in a supportive workshop environment. Class participation is emphasized.
Fulfills a Core Expressive Arts Requirement.
Writing Creative Nonfiction (ENGL 319)
Section: 075 #4770
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
F 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC
Studies in Medieval Literature (ENGL 323)
Section: 076 #6171
Instructor: E. Wheatley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC
This course will trace the history of English drama from its Latin roots through the Middle Ages and into the sixteenth century. Readings will include examples of liturgical drama, cycle drama, saints' plays, morality plays, and humanist drama, as well as relevant literary criticism. The course will also examine each type of drama in light of the conventions and practices that governed its original production. Requirements will include active class participation, weekly responses, one short essay, one oral report with an annotated bibliography, a final essay, and a final exam.
British Literature – The Renaissance (ENGL 325)
Section: 077 #1979
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC
Plays of Shakespeare (ENGL 326)
Section: 078 #1980
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC
In this course, students will study plays in various genres--comedy, history, tragedy, and romance--and from various stages of Shakespeare's career, reading them closely and considering them in relation to the intellectual, political, and social contexts in which they were produced, the theatrical practices, spaces, and conventions of the age, the functions that authors and audiences expected dramatic poetry to serve, and Shakespeare's own development as a playwright. We will also explore how the plays invite various kinds of interpretation and performance. Requirements will include papers, a midterm, and a final exam.
British Literature: Romantic Period (ENGL 335)
Section: 079 #4484
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC
In the last decade of the eighteenth century, the most powerful earthly king was beheaded, the institution of monarchy annihilated, and a God who had been heretofore supposed “Almighty” overthrown. “The French Revolution,” conceded even Edmund Burke, its greatest British opponent, was “all circumstances taken together … the most astonishing thing that has hitherto happened in the world.” We’ll study this time of exuberance, dispute, and outburst, in which every inherited piety and orthodoxy seemed debatable. We’ll read poets and novelists, of course—but we’ll also read lunatics and prophets, opium addicts and slave traders, peasant bards and the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Lord Byron. In William Wordsworth, we’ll find the first poetry created out of a “language really used by men”; in Percy Shelley, we’ll be seized by an art that announced itself a “sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it”; in John Keats, we’ll delight in verse dismissed as “mental masturbation.” We’ll follow the rise of Napoleon, the fall of the Slave Trade, and the foundation of Australia—in newspapers and magazine articles, political pamphlets and diaries, as well as the parlors of Jane Austen. Fulfills post-1700, pre-1900 requirement. Papers, exams, experimental yoga.
British Literature: Victorian Period (ENGL 340)
Section: 080 #1982
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
The purpose of this course is to guide students toward better understanding and appreciation of Victorian literature, that is, literature written in England between 1837 and 1901. This course will help students improve their ability to analyze and interpret literature, and to understand the ideas, attitudes, and techniques that characterize the literature of this important historical period. Lectures will provide information on intellectual and cultural contexts in which the literature was written, and class discussions will encourage students to reflect on and respond to the works that continue to have a presence in contemporary culture. We will read essays, poems, short fiction, one play, and at least one novel written during the period. This course fulfills the post-1700/pre-1900 period requirement for English majors.
Contemporary Critical Theory (ENGL 354)
Section: 082 #3740
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 - 12:45 PM LSC
This course is a survey of readings in the literary theory of the twentieth century. It will acquaint students with the major schools of thought in twentieth-century criticism, including Russian formalism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxist literary theory, critical race and gender theory, and reader-response theory. Over the course of the semester, students will encounter many of the major statements of contemporary critical theory, with a special focus on the act of reading itself as a mode of cognition with far-reaching philosophical and social consequences.
Modern Drama (ENGL 367)
Section: 083 #5634
Instructor: V. Foster
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC
Through reading, writing, discussion, film clips, and in-class performance we will explore some of the major developments in modern drama, including realism, expressionism, epic theatre, theatre of the absurd, and feminist theatre in relation to their cultural and political moments. We will be especially concerned about the relation between text and performance and audience response. Dramatists will include Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Williams, Beckett, Pinter, Churchill, and Nottage. Requirements: critical essay (5 pages), research paper (8-10 pages), midterm and final exams, brief in-class performance, participation in class discussions. We will attend Loyola Theatre Department’s production of Brecht’s Galileo. This course fulfills the Literature post-1900 requirement.
Studies in American Literature (ENGL 379)
Section: 084 #5638
Instructor: D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
[meets the post-1900 requirement]
Our topic will be the literature and culture of the Jazz Age, an era of rapid and profound social change. The course will be interdisciplinary: we will cross over into music, film, and the visual arts in order to study the culture of the 1920s more comprehensively, and to examine the interaction among the arts as the age of modernism reached its peak. We will read works by such authors as Edna St. Vincent Millay, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Nella Larsen, and Langston Hughes. Topics to be discussed include the cult of the primitive; the rise of the New Woman; representations of race; high and low culture; and the relationship of jazz to all these phenomena.
Advanced Seminar: (ENGL 390)
Section: 16W #2435
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM LSC
The seminar will discuss works from what can be considered the utopian literary tradition. We will focus on two main generic questions: the relation between utopias and dystopias (some have argued that they are generically the same, others that they are quite different), and the ways in which some science fiction works extend and take part in the utopian tradition. Works will likely include: Thomas More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Morris’ News from Nowhere, Wells’ The Time Machine, Orwell’s 1984, Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon, Leguin’s Always Coming Home, the Strugatski brothers’ Roadside Picnic, Callenbach’s Ecotopia, Mieville’s Embassytown, Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. There will also be critical readings, theoretical and practical. Requirements include a short paper (5-7 pages), a longer paper (12-15 pages), and two class "leads" (leading a discussion rather than giving a formal presentation).
Teaching English to Adults (ENGL 393)
Section: 01E #1983
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC
If students have never tutored at the Center, they must attend one evening of orientation as well as bi-weekly class meetings (5 meetings per semester for 1-2 credit hour students, 6 class meetings per semester for 3 credit hour/Core students). Students keep a weekly journal of their experiences; examine a textbook and journal articles concerned with literacy, language, and adult education; submit ten of their journals and four papers throughout the semester; prepare a final paper or project; and, for 3 credit hour students, read and report on one additional text of their choice related to the work of the Center, to adult literacy, to the culture of their learners, or to any topic suggested by their tutoring experience.
The Center is open for tutoring M-Th evenings during the fall and spring semesters from 7-9:30 pm. 1 credit hour students tutor one evening per week; 2 and 3 credit hour students tutor two evenings a week.
One student who was enrolled in one of our Literacy Center courses said, “I can’t say I’ve been in a nicer environment on Loyola’s campus. Everyone is welcoming and treats everyone else with respect. And the time flies by because I love what I’m doing.” Students who have taken this course have found it to be a challenging and exciting experience, even life changing as they help neighborhood adults improve their skills.
More information can be found at www.luc.edu/literacy. Follow the links to "tutoring" and then "course credit tutoring" for a complete description of English 393/Honors 290.
Section: 02E #1984
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC
(See above.)
Internship (ENGL 394)
Section: 03E #1985
Instructor: J. Cragwall
Honors Tutorial: (ENGL 395)
Section: 03W #6073
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC
This is a course on the cultural history of Satan in England, from 1650 to 1830. We’ll start with a sustained reading of the most glorious poem in English, John Milton’s Paradise Lost. But our subsequent interest will be in the early nineteenth century, when Milton’s Satan towered over respectable poetry, reinvented by radical thinkers as a model for righteous rebellion, rational anarchy, and a transcendent moral authority that confounded God and his Christianity. In 1793, for example, William Blake argued that “Milton was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it,” and we’ll follow Blake’s sounding of “The Voice the Devil” across his illuminated books, climaxing in his astonishing epic, Milton. We’ll read plenty of prose, as well as poetry: in The Monk, we’ll encounter blood magic, zombie nuns, and a Catholic abbot who sells soul to purchase the pleasures of incest; in The Confessions of a Justified Sinner, we’ll watch a devoted Presbyterian transform into a serial killer after befriending Satan; and in Frankenstein, we’ll find devilry and enthusiastic madness summoned, rather than banished, by secular science. We’ll also read eighteenth and nineteenth-century theologians grappling with the problem of evil and the persona of Satan, as well as people for whom the Devil wasn’t a poetic fiction or theological abstraction, but intimate reality: people like Joanna Southcott, who (seriously) had the Devil over for tea, even though he greeted her as “Thou infamous Bitch!” Southcott’s language was earthy, but as Lord Byron remarked, as his own very different Cain was successfully prosecuted for blasphemy (we’ll read both play and trial), how else was “the first rebel and the first murderer” to talk? Must be a member of the Honors Program in English to register. Papers, presentations, ill-advised contracts with unusual strangers smelling of brimstone. Fulfills post-1700, pre-1900 requirement.
Section: 17W #1986
Instructor: J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC
There is nothing more essential to literature than time. From the origins of literature as the memory of nations to current experiments in the alternate temporalities of science fiction, time has been crucial to literary art. This course will explore the various ways in which literature engages with temporality, including the representation of history and memory, the relationship between narrative and time (including foreshadowing and flashback, omen and prophecy, etc.), experiments in non-linear and asynchronous narratives (stories told backwards, from different narrative temporalities, etc.), and works structured around the passage of time (novels that take place in a single day, plays that conform to Aristotle’s unity of time, poems that attempt to capture either a moment in time or the movement of time, etc.). This is a writing intensive course. Assignments will include informal reading responses, several short papers, and a longer research paper.
Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry (ENGL 397)
Section: 18W #2131
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
F 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC
In this advanced poetry workshop, we will seek to deepen our engagement with poetry as an art form—both as readers and writers. Through reading, writing, and workshopping, we will grow more familiar with the anatomy and texture of poetry: image, word, voice, syntactical configurations, rhetorical devices— stanza, line, punctuation, and page. Your work will be given a great deal of individual attention in our workshops, and you will be offered the opportunity to work very closely with the instructor as you write and revise your final project for the course—a portfolio of your best work.
Advanced Writing: Fiction (ENGL 398)
Section: 19W #1987
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC
A fiction writing workshop for those who have already taken English 318 (a prerequisite), which builds upon concepts of fictional art and craft studied there.
Students will write original stories which will be discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by one's fellow writers in a supportive workshop environment. Students will also read and discuss the craft of master fiction writers, such as Steven Milhauser,
Haruki Murakami, Joy Williams, Richard Ford, Aimee Bender, and others. Class participation is emphasized.
Special Studies in Literature (ENGL 399)
Section: 086 #1988
Instructor: J. Cragwall
