Loyola University Chicago

Department of English

Fall 2014 Courses

Interpreting Literature (UCLR 100)

Section: 01L #5309
Instructor:  K. Dyson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC

In this foundational course, we’ll explore the representation of violence and the violence of representation across a variety of literary modes and genres, including poetry, short stories, drama, and novels. As we survey the literary history of violence in the twentieth century, we will ask what’s at stake in these representations of violence. What kinds of violence do these texts represent – personal, collective, structural, political, etc.? How do different literary modes or critical approaches shape how violence becomes meaningful? How might the very ways in which we make sense of the world be violent? And, more centrally, what role does literature play in our social and cultural imagination? To answer these questions and others, we will develop close reading skills, master key literary and critical terms, and investigate critical approaches to interpreting and analyzing literature. For this course, we will be reading poems by W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich; short fiction by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Flannery O’Connor, and long fiction, including Nella Larson’s novella Passing and Vera Caspary’s pulp mystery Laura. Assignments will likely include discussion leads, short quizzes, two papers, and a final exam.

Section: 02L #5310
Instructor:  M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10AM 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. Texts will include Simon Pokagon, The Red Man’s Rebuke, Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross, poems and short stories by Chicago authors such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Li-Young Lee, Carl Sandburg, Stuart Dybek, and Sandra Cisneros.

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: 03L #5311
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10AM LSC

Section: 04L #5312
Instructor:  S. Lahey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

This foundational course in literary studies examines a broad range of prose, poetry, and drama, all centered on the theme of courtship (and its less distinguished counterpart: seduction). A concern of writers from Shakespeare to D. H. Lawrence, courtship often defines not only characters and their struggles but also literary form itself. The Elizabethan sonnet, for example, is a poetic form often dedicated to celebrating or securing one’s love. Through a detailed analysis of the formal qualities of each work, we will master key literary and critical terms, and finally explore a variety of critical approaches to the interpretation of literature.

Readings may include: Much Ado About Nothing, Sense and Sensibility, The Great Gatsby, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Selected short stories from writers including Kate Chopin, D.H. Lawrence, and Raymond Carver. Selected poems from writers including Shakespeare, Browning, Wordsworth, Whitman, and Plath. Assignments will include quizzes, exams, and two short papers.

Section: 05L #5313
Instructor:  K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 AM – 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: 06L #5314
Instructor:  J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 PM LSC

This course is designed to provide students the opportunity to read and analyze selected works in a variety of literary genres (prose, poetry, and drama), learn key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature.  We will read works from a variety of historical periods. Requirements will include writing assignments, a midterm, and a final exam.

Section: 07L #5315
Instructor:  J. Hastings
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 PM LSC

This course will focus on satire as a mode of literature that offers subtle critiques of social conventions.  We will investigate the way deft use of tone, diction, irony, and wit enables this sort of social critique across the genres of prose fiction, poetry, and drama.  Authors will include Aristophanes, Horace, Juvenal, Geoffrey Chaucer, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Molière, Voltaire, and Margaret Atwood.

Section: 08L #5316
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 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: 09L #5317
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

Section: 10L #5318
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: 11L #5319
Instructor:  M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM 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. Texts will include Simon Pokagon, The Red Man’s Rebuke, Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross, poems and short stories by Chicago authors such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Li-Young Lee, Carl Sandburg, Stuart Dybek, and Sandra Cisneros.

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: 12L #5320
Instructor:  L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

In this course, we will read, discuss and write about a variety of literary genres. You will be introduced to multiple ways of approaching and interpreting texts ranging from ancient authors to contemporary ones, including traditional and experimental forms. Materials will include: Oedipus Rex, Othello and Venus (Plays),“Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Short Stories), Aquamarine (Novel), Andrew Marvell, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein, Harryette Mullen and Maureen Thorson (Poetry). We will also be reading Greek Myths and Fairy Tales. Writing assignments will include short responses, a midterm essay, and a final exam.

Section: 13L #5321
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

Section: 14L #5322
Instructor:  W. Farina
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 – 9:45 AM LSC

This course introduces students to college-level literary studies and will teach foundational skills of close reading, analysis, and literary interpretation. Against the truism, "art reflects the world," we will assess the efforts of 19th- and 20th-century writers who believed art to make worlds of its own, thereby imagining alternatives, transformations, and escapes from human life. We'll explore invention of literary forms as a means of preserving life, from the traditional concern with the immortality of the literary object (as epitomized by Shakespeare's  famous lines, "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee"), to the more radical desire that art salvage experience from time's corrosive effects and renew sensation to the human sensorium. Assignments will include regular reading-quizzes, two papers, and two exams.

Section: 15L #5323
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

Section: 16L #5324
Instructor:  M. Shapiro
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

UCLR 100 had been designated as the foundational course in literary studies. This course will introduce students to representative texts of fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as to common literary and critical terms. Most importantly, it will teach them to use various modes of literary interpretation to discern how, in specific cases, imaginative writing illuminates human experience and delights its readers. In other words, a major objective of this course is to analyze works of literature and thereby to deepen both the insights and the pleasures to be derived from reading and analyzing those works. The course will carry out the time-honored mission of literary studies by demonstrating the power of fiction, poetry, and drama to instruct and delight. The readings—short stories, short poems, and plays-- will be mostly drawn from The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mars (shorter 11th edition). There will be three short (c. 5pp.) critical papers, periodic quizzes, and a final exam.

Section: 17L #5325
Instructor:  J. Frey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

This course in literary studies will require students to read and analyze  prose, poetry, and drama. Students will develop a critical vocabulary for discussing literature as well as theoretical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This course will be pair key canonical texts with modern literary responses to them. We will read Homer's Iliad (selections) and Derek Walcott's Omeros (selections), Euripides' Hippolytus and Edward Albee's The GoatBeowulf and John Gardner's Grendel, and Shakespeare's Hamlet and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This pairing of texts will provide students with a foundation in literary history and its continuing effects on modern culture while also encouraging students to confront representations of the past that do not immediately mirror their own experiences. The course assignments will include three short papers, a midterm and final, and weekly reading responses.

Section: 18L #5326
Instructor:  M. Shapiro
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

UCLR 100 had been designated as the foundational course in literary studies. This course will introduce students to representative texts of fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as to common literary and critical terms. Most importantly, it will teach them to use various modes of literary interpretation to discern how, in specific cases, imaginative writing illuminates human experience and delights its readers. In other words, a major objective of this course is to analyze works of literature and thereby to deepen both the insights and the pleasures to be derived from reading and analyzing those works. The course will carry out the time-honored mission of literary studies by demonstrating the power of fiction, poetry, and drama to instruct and delight. The readings—short stories, short poems, and plays-- will be mostly drawn from The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mars (shorter 11th edition). There will be three short (c. 5pp.) critical papers, periodic quizzes, and a final exam.

Section: 19L #5327
Instructor:  H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

This 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.  Since this section is offered as a multicultural one, there will be a specific emphasis on non-western colonial, postcolonial, and global works of literature from the 19th to the 21st centuries.

Section: 20L #5328
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

Section: 21L #5329
Instructor:  V. Foster
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

In this course we will read plays, poems, and a novel focusing on love, sex, war, and death—in various combinations.  Texts:  Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing,Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and selected poems from across the centuries of British and American literature.   Students will learn to read closely and defend their interpretations of the works we read.  Requirements: class participation, three essays (2-3 pages, 3-4 pages, 4-5 pages); midterm and final exams; brief tests on reading.

Section: 22L #5330
Instructor:  J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

This core course in literary studies will acquaint students with a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama.  It will also introduce key literary and critical terms and explore a variety of critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature.  What is literature?  Why does it matter?  How has it been conceived in different times and places? How do we envision the relationships among author, text, and reader or audience?  What is the difference between reading a literary work in its historical context and in the light of our own contemporary time?  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?  Exploring these questions will help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.

Section: 60L #5331
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC

In our course, we will cover a range of literary theories (including Marxist and Psychoanalytic approaches) and apply them to selected literary texts. You will gain practice in literary analysis and critical writing. There will be papers and exams based on our course texts and class discussions. You will also give a class presentation.

Section: 24L #6204
Instructor:  J. Bninski
3.0 credit hours Lecture
LSC

In Loyola's foundational literature course, we explore the three major genres (fiction, poetry, and drama) while learning to read more closely by mastering key literary terms and concepts. In order to hone these skills, we'll focus on texts that are set in Chicago or written by Chicagoans. 

As we read, we'll ask ourselves: What is literature for? How and why do authors disagree about the answer to this question? How do their answers shape their choices about subject matter and style? We'll find that, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many Chicago authors believed that literature should inform readers about social injustice, providing realistic portraits of the grittiness, danger, and disappointment of urban life. Richard Wright's novel Native Son is a classic example of this kind of socially engaged realism. Other authors, like Carl Sandburg and Sandra Cisneros, represent Chicago's gritty side while also treating the city as a subject of surprising beauty. For twenty-first-century writers like David Auburn and Sarah Ruhl, the city is a backdrop that allows them to explore issues of relationships, personal identity, emotion, and belief.

Active student participation--meaning a range of activities that may include informal response papers and short oral presentations--will play a major role in this course. Quizzes will ensure reading comprehension and mastery of literary terminology. There will be two or three formal writing assignments totaling approximately 2500 words.

Our texts:  Richard Wright's Native Son, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, David Auburn's Proof, Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, course pack containing poetry and short fiction, additional readings posted on Sakai.


Business Writing (ENGL 210)

Section: 20W #2322
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 PM WTC

Section: 21W #2323
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM WTC

Section: 61W #3525
Instructor:  M. Meinhardt
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 PM – 9:30PM WTC

This business writing course offers various techniques, priorities, and strategies for effective and efficient business writing and communication. Through the establishment and refinement of purpose, we will explore group project dynamics, professional personal documentation, organizational agency, and a wide range of genre documents such as memos, executive summaries, and reports, amongst others.

Section: 62W #5303
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 PM – 9:30PM WTC

Our course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing. We will focus on particular types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. We will also practice writing for multiple audiences. You will gain experience in reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including: memos, proposals, letters, and resumes. There will be individual and collaborative projects; you will also give a group class presentation.


Writing Center Tutor Practicum (ENGL 220)

Section: 1WE #3002
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. This course is open to students from all majors who have a passion for clear written communication. 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 students 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. 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 #5305
Instructor:  C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 PM LSC

Section: 02W #2568
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

The course will be a survey of British and American poetry, especially from the Romantic movement on, especially of lyric kinds.  Class discussion will generally focus on the form and sense of individual poems, and will in general be about poetic ways of meaning, and individual poets’ understandings of what poetry is and what it is to do.  Three papers, some journal writing, some short exams, a midterm, and a final.

Section: 03W #2569
Instructor:  J. Jacobs
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 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 lead people to discover: how to have fun with poetry, how to get at the kinds of pleasures it offers, how to use poetry as a tool for looking at one’s own life and experience.

I require students to have their own copy of one of the major collections with poems from many periods, the NORTON ANTHOLOGY (5th full edition, not the Shorter Edition).  But we will stress modern writers.  We may supplement the anthology with a short collection by a single author.  Three main papers will be required, plus a final exam.  I may make extended comments, but I won’t lecture.  Students should be willing to “risk” entering discussion  actively, engaging each other in understanding shared readings.

Section: 061 #2570
Instructor:  D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM 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.

Section: 062 #3269
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Section: 069 #5802
Instructor:  L. Janowski
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

Why take Exploring Poetry (English 271) this fall? Practically, of course, it may fit your schedule or fulfill a curriculum requirement. Okay, but how about this: Take this course because poetry can change your life. And how might this happen? First, by reading a good deal of poetry, and then—rather than asking the usual “What does this poem mean?” we'll go deeper and ask “How can I experience these words in a new way?” We'll read a good deal of poetry: on the page, yes, but especially by speaking the poems out loud. Poetry was an oral art long before writing even existed. We'll learn the jargon of poetry, its techniques, craft and history, in order that we can discuss the poem before us intelligently. There will be several short papers (three pages each) a longer paper (about five pages) and several projects including attending a poetry reading, compiling an anthology, and trying your hand at writing a poem or two. All the while, poetry will do its magic in your soul.


Exploring Drama (ENGL 272)

Section: 063 #2632
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

This course of studies will include texts that actively critique the importance of religion on the creative imagination, in particular Catholicism. The quest for meaning, whether religious or secular, can lead to some interesting works of drama. Modernist theater, for instance, with its quest for newness, has sought to dramatize the problems associated with religious faith (Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot). While the depictions can sometimes be sympathetic, sometimes skeptical, there is an underlying affirmation, and legitimization of the immense influence religion has had on forming our understanding of life. In this class we will also explore the movement away from the classical form of drama towards what Brecht calls ‘epic theatre’.

Exploring Drama covers literature from 19th C, 20th C and 21st Century


Exploring Fiction (ENGL 273)

Section: 04W #5306
Instructor:  J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

This course examines works by important novelists from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Authors may include Cather, Chopin, Crane, Faulkner, James, Twain, and Wharton.  Class discussions will address formal and thematic features of these writings.  Students will submit weekly responses, take a mid-term exam, and write three interpretive essays.  This course satisfies the tier two requirement in the core curriculum's area of literary knowledge and experience. 

Section: 05W #5307
Instructor:  J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

(See above.)

Section: 064 #2801
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

Section: 065 #2802
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

Section: 066 #2571
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Section: 06W #5308
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

Section: 094 #5755
Instructor:  A. Welch
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

In this course, we’ll explore how literature represents, refracts, and complicates experience. Words help us to make sense of our senses, to unify our sensations into coherent experience, and to organize the world around us. Along these lines, we’ll try to apprehend the literary text as an archive of perceptions deposited for us by another mind. How do texts stimulate our bodies, and how do texts challenge our perceptions? These questions can encourage us to rethink the relationship between textual worlds and the world of everyday life. How does reading shape how we see, hear, feel, and think?

Short stories, ranging over the past two hundred years, from across the globe, will be our focus. We’ll work through various aspects of fiction, like plot, character, point of view, and metaphor. Our reading will include Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges and Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace and Vladimir Nabokov, Haruki Murakami and Roberto Bolaño. This course features two papers and two exams, and will require consistent participation from all students.

Section: 602 #3526
Instructor:  N. Jung
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

From the classical age to the global age, diasporic populations dispersed by violence, economics, opportunity, and exclusion have attempted to navigate between lost homelands and found host-lands. In so doing, they raise fundamental questions about the nature of individual and social identity: what sustains communities over vast distances and times? What does it mean to identify as part of a diaspora, and how does this identification square with one’s resident nation-state? Is diaspora a social network, a temporary “holding pattern” away from lost land, a psychological scar, an economic arrangement, a political structure, a form of radical opposition, a cultural orientation, or something else altogether? This class will explore the many dimensions of diaspora through novels, poetry, cinema, and scholarship. Course requirements will include a class collaborative project to provide Wikipedia’s “Diaspora Studies” page with content, weekly discussion questions, two short papers, and a final exam. Authors on the syllabus may include Teju Cole, Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Fred Wah, and Chang-Rae Lee.


Exploring Shakespeare (ENGL 274)

Section: 08W #2805
Instructor:  J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 PM LSC

In this course we will study several 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: 09W #4621
Instructor:  V. Strain
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

In numerous works that mastered and innovated the literary forms trending in the late sixteenth century, Shakespeare probed the major cultural and political topics of his day, from the nature of love and friendship to the nature of political leadership. Significantly, he returns again and again to the relationship between language and thought, and thought and action. We will examine Shakespeare’s language use and plots in the context of the early modern commercial theater (its material conditions and literary trends) and the poetic and rhetorical traditions disseminated through Elizabethan grammar schools. In addition to the questions related to his works, the history of Shakespeare’s popular and critical reception demands further investigation. What are the cultural, economic, political, and academic forces that have driven the reading and performance of his works for hundreds of years? How do we explain the experience of coming to an author whose works seem very familiar and very difficult at the same time? Shakespeare’s plays and poems represent a so-called common heritage yet they are utterly “foreign to us all,” distant from us in “time, language, and thought.” My assignments are designed to help students (1) overcome historical and linguistic barriers to comprehension, and (2) come to terms with material that resists simplification and assimilation. I present historical difference as an intellectual challenge and ultimately as an opportunity to reimagine the norms of current culture that can otherwise appear natural or inevitable.

Section: 10W #5332
Instructor:  J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

This section of English 274 will offer an introduction to the major genres of comedy, history, tragedy and romance.  The course will place Shakespeare’s treatment of these dramatic genres in historical context.  Shakespeare wrote in a period shaped by a tumultuous religious reformation, the emergence of modern science, and shifting economic and political realities.  We will examine the development of Shakespeare’s art beginning with some early plays.  Taking such early, and generally more conventional plays as a starting point, we will go on to look at how Shakespeare complicated the dramatic conventions he inherited.  We will also consider Shakespeare as theater by attending a performance of King Lear at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier (a course requirement).  In addition to King Lear, plays will include the comedies Much Ado About Nothing and Measure for Measure, the history Richard II, the tragedy Macbeth and the romance The Tempest.  The primary text will be David Bevington’s edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.  As a writing intensive course there will be numerous writing assignments in addition to formal papers.  There will also be a midterm and a final.

ENGL 274-10W is a writing intensive class.  Note that English majors should take English 326 rather than 274.


African-American Literature Post-1900 (ENGL 282)

Section: 11W #4700
Instructor:  B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

What is African American literature? This course is both an introduction to some of the major works of black literary expression and an examination of this category. From slave narratives to hip-hop music, we will trace the range of artistic conventions and cultural movements while paying close attention to broader historical shifts in American literature and culture over the past three centuries. Some questions we will consider are: How do authors create and define a tradition? What are some of the predominant themes and artistic concerns within this tradition? And, finally, where does the future of African-American literature seem to point? Students should expect to participate regularly in class discussions, complete a series of response papers (1-2 pages), and three short essays (5-7 pages). There will also be a mid-term exam.

 

This course is writing intensive, and fulfills the multicultural and post-1900 historical requirements for the major.


Women in Literature (ENGL 283)

Section: 068 #3277
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− and  21st−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 quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.

Section: 096 #2572
Instructor:  S. Polen
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 – 9:45 AM LSC

"I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess," Donna Haraway writes in her seminal essay, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs." What is it about cyborgs that appeals to Haraway? What is "cyborg ontology," and how does it relate to women and women's issues? What does the fusion of the organic and the mechanical offer contemporary thinkers? In this class we will explore what the cyborg trope specifically, and science and technology more broadly, offer in terms of approaching contemporary women's issues. We will look at how biology, gender, and desire are constructed and construed in these fictional worlds. We will also grapple with what kind of progress technological advances offer, and how science fiction use technology as a means of expressing anxiety about our world as it is and our world as it could be. Authors may include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, Catherynne M. Valente, and others. Major assignments will include two short papers, a long paper, a midterm, and a final.

Section: 12W #2039
Instructor:  M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

Until recently, women were regularly barred from pulpit, courtroom, podium, laboratory, voting booth and most forms of participation in public life, and so, when they were fortunate enough to be able to read and write, they turned to literature to express their ideas, emotions, ethics, and spirituality. This course will focus on writings by women, beginning with contemporary writers and moving back through history to trace the origins and evolution of a women’s tradition. This tradition includes a wide range of perspectives, and speaks to both women and men.  Our readings will include poetry, fiction, essays, and speeches composed between the medieval through contemporary eras.     

Because it is writing-intensive, this course incorporates a variety of assignments that are specifically designed to help you become a better writer.  Assignments include in-class reflection papers (some to be written in class and others at home), a mid-term and a final examination, and two papers. 

Section: 14W #2216
Instructor:  M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

(See above.)

Section: 15W #5333
Instructor:  P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

In 1919 an Act of Parliament opened the professions (law, medicine, business) to women in Britain, enabling many middle-class women to enter the workforce for the first time. In 1938 Virginia Woolf said of that act: "The door of the private house was thrown open. In every purse there was, or might be, one bright new sixpence in whose light every thought, every sight, every action looked different."  What has the right to work meant to middle-class women?  How have working-class women seen work differently? How does race inflect these questions?

This course will focus on American and British literature and film from the early 20th century to the contemporary era. We will read fiction and poetry, and view films by and about working women. The early decades of the 20th century were among the most eventful for women and minorities. Employment opportunities opened up for many women while union movements sought to improve the conditions and wages for working-class women and men. Our purpose will be to (1) learn about the social and historical context in which the literature and films we study were produced, and (2) learn to analyze literature and film in relation to contemporaneous notions of gender, race, class, and work.

Some works we will likely read include: excerpts from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics (1898); Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives (1905); writings from the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers (1920s); writings from the Women’s Cooperative Guild (1930); Ann Petry’s The Street (1946); Connie Field's documentary, The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1976); and, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed (2001). Requirements will include frequent ungraded writing in response to the readings; three short graded essays; and a final exam.

ENGL 283-15W is a writing intensive class.

Special Topic: Gender and Illness

Section: 16W #5334
Instructor:  S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 AM LSC

I have chosen the topic of illness since it is a frequent motif in literature and since it highlights several important themes for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies.  Illness is often stigmatized as a sign of weakness or invoked as contagion to justify fears of outsiders. Our experiences of illness are shaped by cultural expectations, gender norms, eroticism, and spiritual beliefs. Women have a particular relationship to illness through their stereotypical roles as sufferers and caregivers.  We will explore these themes, among others, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome,Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints and Waiting in the Wings, Nancy Mairs’s Carnal Acts, Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  Assignments will include three papers, one paper revision, regular in-class exercises, and an in-class presentation.

This writing intensive section is cross-listed with Women’s Studies and Gender Studies. 


Human Values in Literature (ENGL 290)

Section: 070 #2575
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

Section: 071 #4127
Instructor: F. Fennell
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

To live, to be fully human, is to make choices that reveal who you are by showing what moral codes guide your behavior.  Whether it is balancing justice and mercy, or thinking through the implications of political decisions, or exploring the connection between love and sexuality, or weighing conflicting duties, we find it difficult to know how to act.  Literature has always been one of our greatest resources for exploring these tensions.  Using a mixture of novels (e.g. Joseph Heller’s Catch 22), plays (e.g. Shakespeare’s Measure of Measure), and poems (e.g. Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover”), we will try to understand better what it means to be human.  Two papers, two exams.

Section: 072 #4128
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

Section: 097 #4129
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC


Grammar: Principles & Pedagogy (ENGL 303)

Section: 603 #2806
Instructor: A. Kessel
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.


U.S. Latino/a Literature (ENGL 311)

Section: 074 #5355
Instructor: S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

In this course, students will study texts by U.S. Latina and Latino writers and develop analytical tools, culturally-specific terms, and critical questions to help them to interpret and to write about this literature.  I have chosen texts with very different styles, different political perspectives, and different representations of Latina and Latino identity in order to emphasize diversity rather than a single (inherent or ideal) way of being “Latino.”  We will begin with an in-depth examination of Mexican American (or “Chicana/o”) literature, since this is the largest group of Latina/os and since Chicana/os have been the most widely-published writers and critics amongst Latina/os.  We will then turn to comparative analyses of Puerto Rican and Cuban American writers and artists.  Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to the role of race, gender, spirituality, and sexuality in the form and content of Latino/a literature.  Authors will include Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, Arturo Islas, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, Piri Thomas, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Cristina Garcia, and Achy Obejas.  Assignments will include three brief papers, two exams, and regular in-class exercises. 

This course fulfills multicultural requirement for the English major.  It is also cross-listed with Latin American and Latino Studies. 


South Asian Literature in Eng. Post-1900 (ENGL 315)

Section: 075 #5373
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

This course examines literatures in English from South Asia and the South Asian diaspora.  Whereas the beginnings of writing in English on the Indian subcontinent date back to the mid-nineteenth century, it was the anti-colonial movement in the early- to mid-twentieth century that saw this literature come into its own; and it is the postcolonial and diasporic experiences of South Asians that have underwritten much of its excellence since then.  Focusing primarily on the issues of modern-day colonization, independence and partition, decolonization, and globalization as depicted in South Asian literatures in English, therefore, this course also investigates the representation of multiple nationalities, ethnicities, classes and castes, religions, linguistic traditions, gender and sexuality, and migration in the writings.  In addition, the course assesses the role of the English language and the authors' locations and target audiences in determining the reception of the literatures both at home and abroad; and it analyzes the cultural bases of contributing literary techniques, including structure, language, narrative focalization, and characterization among others.  Finally, the course addresses the disciplinary and pedagogical practices underwriting the study of South Asian literatures in English in the western academy.  Readings will be drawn from various literary genres as well as critical and theoretical works written by authors from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and resident in India, Pakistan, USA, UK, and Canada.  

Please note that this course meets the multicultural and post-1900 period requirements of the English major.


The Writing of Poetry (ENGL 317)

Section: 076 #2041
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 PM – 5:15 PM LSC

Section: 077 #2043
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 PM – 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.

Section: 078 #4131
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 2:45 PM – 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.


The Writing of Fiction (ENGL 318)

Section: 079 #2044
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

Section: 080 #3284
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 – 5:00 PM LSC

Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading master writers 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 #2162
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 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.


English Literature: Medieval Period (ENGL 320)

Uses of the Supernatural in Medieval Literature
Section: 081 #3286
Instructor: E. Wheatley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

This course will examine romances and related literature of medieval England in which writers deploy supernatural forces or characters. We will analyze these texts in their social and historical contexts in order to elucidate the cultural work of various forms of supernaturalism in the Middle Ages. Readings will include the Lais of Marie de France, some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and anonymous romances in verse. Some readings will be in modern English translations, and others will be in the original Middle English with vocabulary glosses to aid comprehension. The final grade will be based on class participation, weekly reading responses, an oral report with an annotated bibliography, a Middle English pronunciation exam, two essays, and a final exam.


British Literature-The Renaissance (ENGL 325)

Section: 082 #2045
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

The course is a literary survey of the English Renaissance (c. 1516 – 1660), with an emphasis on the later part of the period.  We will spend a relatively large amount of time on at least 4 writers’ works: Donne, Jonson, Bacon, and Marvell.  We will also be reading many works by other writers, both in poetry and prose, enough to provide a sense of the conventions available in the period.  Special attention will be paid to changing conceptions of social class and individuality, to genres and generic change, and to representations of knowledge, love, faith, and virtue.  Two papers, a midterm, and a final.


Plays of Shakespeare (ENGL 326)

Section: 083 #2046
Instructor: V. Strain
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

In numerous works that mastered and innovated the literary forms trending in the late sixteenth century, Shakespeare probed the major cultural and political topics of his day, from the nature of love and friendship to the nature of political leadership. Significantly, he returns again and again to the relationship between language and thought, and thought and action. We will examine Shakespeare’s language use and plots in the context of the early modern commercial theater (its material conditions and literary trends) and the poetic and rhetorical traditions disseminated through Elizabethan grammar schools. In addition to the questions related to his works, the history of Shakespeare’s popular and critical reception demands further investigation. What are the cultural, economic, political, and academic forces that have driven the reading and performance of his works for hundreds of years? How do we explain the experience of coming to an author whose works seem very familiar and very difficult at the same time? Shakespeare’s plays and poems represent a so-called common heritage yet they are utterly “foreign to us all,” distant from us in “time, language, and thought.” My assignments are designed to help students (1) overcome historical and linguistic barriers to comprehension, and (2) come to terms with material that resists simplification and assimilation. I present historical difference as an intellectual challenge and ultimately as an opportunity to reimagine the norms of current culture that can otherwise appear natural or inevitable.

Section: 084 #2047
Instructor: J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

This course will focus on a selection of Shakespeare’s plays in all the major genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance).  We will read the plays through a variety of critical approaches, taking into account the historical context in which they were produced.  To emphasize the importance of drama as intended for theatrical performance students will attend a production of King Lear at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier (a course requirement).  Throughout the course of the semester we will focus on the development of drama in England, the material history of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and the political and cultural place of the theater in Shakespeare’s England.  Students will learn more about these aspects of Shakespeare’s theater through reading criticism alongside the plays.  Plays will include: Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, Richard II, 1 Henry IV, Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale.  The primary text will be David Bevington’s edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.  There will be papers, a midterm and a final.


British Literature: Romantic Period (ENGL 335)

Section: 085 #5376
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 1700-1900 requirement.  Papers, exams, floggings.


British Literature: Victorian Period (ENGL 340)

Section: 086 #2048
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 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: 087 #4134
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

“The main effect of theory,” writes Jonathan Culler, “is the disputing of ‘common sense’” (Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, 4). Whether the topic is language or reality, sex or race, literature or authors, theory refuses to take such concepts at face value, as “givens.” Theory teaches us how to question what we often take for granted. If this course succeeds, then, it should produce a kind of crisis—a crisis of meaning, a crisis of confidence, a crisis of language—as we unlearn certain habitual ways of thinking. We will read theories from a range of disciplines (e.g., linguistics, literature, history, sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy) and “schools” (e.g., formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, Marxism) from the 1960s through the present to understand how the theory revolution has changed the study of literature and culture. We will also read literature, but not simply to “apply” the theory to a work. Instead we will read literature as theory, just as we will “close read” theory as a type of literature.  Requirements include two essays (3-5 and 6-8 pages), responses to the readings, a report on an outside reading, and a final exam.

Section: 088 #4135
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

This course introduces students to a range of contemporary theories about literature, literary criticism, and cultural studies. We will explore recent innovations in how we think about texts, authorship, narration, writing, and reading, review a variety of approaches to critical analysis and interpretation, and consider the social, cultural, and political dimensions of critical theory and literary analysis. The course is a mix of lecture and discussion. Required texts for this course will include a range of introductory and advanced readings in critical and literary theory, and a selection of poetry and fiction. Requirements include weekly quizzes, 2 shorter critical essays, and a final longer paper (10-12 pages).


The Modern Novel (ENGL 371)

Section: 089 #5377
Instructor: J. Wexler
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

D. H. Lawrence called the novel the “one bright book of life.” He thought that the novel could make people feel fully alive. The modern novel has been treated as a formalist experiment, but in this course we will focus on the ways formal innovations in the twentieth century responded to the need to represent contemporary events. Texts will include Heart of Darkness, The Rainbow, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, All Quiet on the Western Front, To the Lighthouse, Berlin Stories, A Bend in the River. There will be three essays, a mid-term, and a final. This course fulfills the English major requirement of one course after 1900.


American Literature 1914 - 1945 (ENGL 377)

Section: 090 #5378
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

This course examines works by selected American writers produced between the twentieth century's two World Wars, paying particular attention the contribution of literary works to emerging notions of the "modern" and the “native.”  Authors may include Anderson, Cather, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Frost, Hemingway, Lewis, and Wharton.  Students will submit weekly responses, take a mid-term exam, and write three interpretive essays.  This course satisfies the post-1900 requirement of the English major.


Comparative American Literature (ENGL 381c)

Narratives of Displacement, Exile, Expatriation and Tourism
Section: 091 #6070
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

This course will consider the concept of diaspora, comparatively, across a diverse range of Americanist literatures and cultures. Specifically, the course will explore efforts by people of African descent throughout the Americas to forge the contours of an internally complex diasporic community through both visual and literary means.  The guiding questions we will consider are: how do diasporic writers and artists imagine the African diaspora and how are African diasporic subjectivities both constructed and produced within these contexts? How might we redefine the notion of diaspora beyond Middle Passage narratives to incorporate 20th and 21st modes of “travel” (exile, expatriation, heritage tourism, etc.)? To what extent is diasporic subjectivity a “choice?” This course will introduce students to a wide selection of literary and theoretical/critical works from the Americas (the US, Latin America and the Caribbean), as well as film and print media, that engage with the multivalent dimensions of diasporic subjectivity. Students should expect to participate regularly in class discussions, complete a number of ungraded response papers (1 page each) to enhance class discussion, and a short essay (5 pages). There will be a mid-term and a final exam for this course.

This course fulfills the multicultural literature and the Post-1900 requirements.


Advanced Seminar: (ENGL 390)

Section: 18W #2576
Instructor: D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

One of the most influential and intensely debated figures in modern literature, T.S. Eliot is known, on the one hand, for his pioneering experimental poetry, and, on the other hand, for his later Christian work. His critical writings dominated the study of literature for half a century. In this seminar, we will study a broad range of Eliot's art—poems, plays, and essays—in its literary and cultural contexts as we follow his career from its early years through its "high modernist" phase and on to its later stages. Representative works likely to be covered include "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Tradition and the Individual Talent," The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men," Four Quartets, and The Cocktail Party.

"The Spirit of the Age."
Section: 19W #3292
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

This is a course on spirits and souls, ghosts and black magic—and what happened to them in the industrializing, nationalizing, and secularizing England of the early nineteenth century.  This was a moment filled with spirit-talk: men and women who said they were possessed (and sometimes impregnated) by the Holy Spirit; thinkers who wondered whether souls had sexes, and what a politics of gender might look like without bodies; critics who thought that the unprecedented eruption of literary creativity after the French Revolution demonstrated the existence of “The Spirit of the Age,” a world-soul that seized everyone, whether they wanted it or not; and skeptical philosophers who argued against the existence of souls and spirits with such force that their objections are unanswered even today. We’ll read atheists, scientists, religious zealots, poets and priests.  We’ll also read (assuming no administrator looks at this course description) the most outrageous novel in English, The Monk—a story of necromancy, devil worship, murder, insane Catholics, and sado-masochistic sex.  We will (well, you will) also write papers, which are almost as fun.


Teaching English to Adults (ENGL 393)

Section: 01E #2049
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC

Other learners are international visitors, or immigrants or refugees whose skills in their native language range from their being highly educated professionals to being perhaps functionally illiterate, and who may know some English or no English. 

The Center is open 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. 

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 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. 

More information can be found at www.luc.edu/literacy; follow the links to "tutoring" and then "course credit tutoring" for a complete description. 

Section: 02E #2050
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC

(See above)


Internship (ENGL 394)

Section: 05E #2052
Instructor: B. Ahad


Honors Tutorial: (ENGL 395)

Section: 20W #2053
Instructor: F. Fennell
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

This seminar will look closely at five nineteenth-century poets who have had a profound effect on the practice of poets who have come after them:  William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, and Gerard Manley Hopkins from England, and Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson from the United States.  Each, without necessarily intending it, was a revolutionary, and in each case we will assess what kind of revolution they caused and why they might have undertaken it.  Working closely with only a few poets allows us to study them more deeply, understand them better, and appreciate their achievements more fully.  There will be a shorter paper, a longer research paper (which will also involve a brief class report), and a final examination.


Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry (ENGL 397)

Section: 21W #2220
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.

ENGL 397-21W is a writing intensive class.


Advanced Writing Workshop: Fiction (ENGL 398)

Section: 22W #2054
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 three 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, and others.  Class participation is emphasized.


Special Studies in Literature (ENGL 399)

Section: 093 #2055
Instructor: B. Ahad