Fall 2022 Courses
UCRL 100E Interpreting Literature
ENGL 210 Business Writing
ENGL 211 Writing for Pre-Law Students
ENGL 220 Theory/Practice Tutoring
ENGL 271 Exploring Poetry
ENGL 272 Exploring Drama
ENGL 273 Exploring Fiction
ENGL 274 Exploring Shakespeare
ENGL 282 African-American Literature
ENGL 283 Women in Literature
ENGL 287 Religion and Literature
ENGL 288 Nature in Literature
ENGL 290 Human Values in Literature
ENGL 293 Advanced Composition
ENGL 306C Studies in Women Writers Post-1900
ENGL 317 The Writing of Poetry
ENGL 318 The Writing of Fiction
ENGL 319 Writing Creative Nonfiction
ENGL 325 British Literature – The Renaissance
ENGL 326 The Plays of Shakespeare
ENGL 355 Studies in Literary Criticism
ENGL 362 Studies in Poetry
ENGL 379C Studies in American Literature Post-1900
ENGL 381 Comparative American Literature
ENGL 384B Studies in African-American Literature 1700–1900
ENGL 390 Advanced Seminar
ENGL 393 Teaching English to Adults
ENGL 394 Internship
ENGL 397 Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry
ENGL 399 Special Studies in Literature
UCRL 100E Interpreting Literature
Section: 001 #3248
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15–9:05 AM LSC
Section: 002 #4327
Instructor: E. Weeks Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20–10:10 AM LSC
Toil and Trouble: Labor in American Literature
“Working hard”...“keeping my nose to the grindstone”...“bringing home the bacon.” We have lots of ways of talking about the labor humans must do in order to survive, and this class will explore the varied and rich ways in which authors have represented work in the U.S. We will closely read and carefully analyze a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama; master key literary and critical terms; and explore core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. We will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study in order to develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner. Course requirements are (1) engaged reading of all assigned texts, demonstrated through annotation assignments and reading quizzes; (2) active class participation; (3) several short writing assignments; and (4) midterm and final exams.
Section: 003 #4328
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25–11:15 AM LSC
This is a foundational literature course that 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, in particular within the pandemic setting, and discuss how these concepts are depicted in a number of different poems, plays and short stories. We will use texts, by a number of different American authors, such as Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Annie Proulx and more, to explore how different authors express the difficult experiences of dying, death and grieving, not only personally but also in a larger social context. The method of assessment will include pop quizzes, papers, and classroom participation.
Section: 004 #4329
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25–11:15 AM LSC
Section: 005 #4330
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
Section: 006 #4331
Instructor: S. Weller
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and carefully analyze 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? 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.
This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge.”
Section: 007 #4332
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
Literary Tradition and Its Undoing
In this course, we will read, discuss and write about the themes that have created a sense of European culture and the English cannon as a standard for literary study as well as some contemporary texts that have challenged those ideas with innovative techniques. We’ll read and listen to some of Beowulf’s best translations, hybrid forms of narrative and poetry by Black and Latinx writers, as well as rewritings of Western forms by East and South Asian writers. There is a special focus on social ecologies based in racial and gendered hierarchies in the material and our discussions. We will be reading short stories, novels, plays and poetry and viewing films. You will be introduced to multiple strategies that approach and interpret challenging texts through lectures, class discussions, group work and short responses. Materials include: short stories by Octavia Butler and Carmen Marie Machado, the film Pumzi by African filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, the poetry of W.B. Yeats, Douglas Kearney, Khadijah Queen, Tim Yu, Bashō and Agha Shahid Ali.
Section: 008 #4333
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
Dreams, Visions, and Fantasies
“From dreams we talk to each other about reality,” writes Jean Toomer in his collection of aphorisms Essentials (1931). Using “dreams” as a thematic bridge, this course will introduce students to poetry, drama, and prose that explores the relationship between literary representation and subjectivity. We will consider questions such as how does literature define and mediate our experiences of the world? How does fiction, like the dream, express our desire for a better future? Alternatively, how does fiction represent our ambivalence to the past and our frustration with the present? Throughout the course our class will foreground issues around gender, race, sexuality, nationality, place, and spirituality in our readings. Course texts may include plays by Sam Shepard (True West) and Tomson Highway (The Rez Sisters), novels by Eden Robinson (Monkey Beach) and Cherrie Dimaline (The Marrow Thieves), short critical readings by Sigmund Freud and Louise Halfe, and a broad selection of poetry from the 18th to the 21st century. Students who take this course will be introduced to a variety of approaches for reading literature in its cultural, historical, and political contexts, develop close writing and analytic skills through literary analysis and essay writing, and gain critical vocabulary to describe figurative language and genre.
Section: 009 #4334
Instructor: E. Weeks Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
Toil and Trouble: Labor in American Literature
“Working hard”...“keeping my nose to the grindstone”...“bringing home the bacon.” We have lots of ways of talking about the labor humans must do in order to survive, and this class will explore the varied and rich ways in which authors have represented work in the U.S. We will closely read and carefully analyze a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama; master key literary and critical terms; and explore core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. We will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study in order to develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner. Course requirements are (1) engaged reading of all assigned texts, demonstrated through annotation assignments and reading quizzes; (2) active class participation; (3) several short writing assignments; and (4) midterm and final exams.
Section: 010 #4335
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
This is a Wellness Community course which means there will be a focus on the idea of wellness in pieces of poetry, prose, and drama. In particular, we will be looking at how different authors have written about living during a pandemic and what ways they portray or suggest notions of wellness during a global outbreak. The method of assessment will consist of papers, reading reflections, participation, and attendance of one outside of class activity. This class will be both synchronous and asynchronous.
Section: 011 #4336
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
Section: 012 #4337
Instructor: E. Weeks Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
Toil and Trouble: Labor in American Literature
“Working hard”...“keeping my nose to the grindstone”...“bringing home the bacon.” We have lots of ways of talking about the labor humans must do in order to survive, and this class will explore the varied and rich ways in which authors have represented work in the U.S. We will closely read and carefully analyze a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama; master key literary and critical terms; and explore core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. We will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study in order to develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner. Course requirements are (1) engaged reading of all assigned texts, demonstrated through annotation assignments and reading quizzes; (2) active class participation; (3) several short writing assignments; and (4) midterm and final exams.
Section: 013 #4338
Instructor: A. Jochaniewicz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
Students in this course will survey some of the best literature ever written from various periods, places, and authors. This course will emphasize individual interpretations arrived at through a slow and close reading and will introduce students to key literary terms and core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This is a first tier, foundational course of literary studies designed to offer students a greater understanding and appreciation of short fiction, poetry, and drama. This class will be a prerequisite for all second tier literature courses, as designated by each department.
Section: 014 #4339
Instructor: B. Molby
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
After our experiences of the pandemic, this course will challenge literature to put its money where its mouth is. If literature is understood to be a unique mode of transmitting and interpreting knowledge and human experience through creative lingustic expression, then literature can make a uniquely valuable contribution to our own understanding and experience of times of plague, illness, and loss.
We will read and examine texts such as Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of A Plague Year, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” and Ling Ma’s Severance, and in the process discuss how past texts have presented plague, contagion, illness, isolation, and social fragmentation, but also how they provide opportunities for finding consolation and community through the shared experience of narrative.
Section: 015 #4340
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
Section: 016 #4341
Instructor: S. Weller
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and carefully analyze 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? 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.
This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge.”
Section: 017 #4342
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30–9:45 AM LSC
Section: 018 #4343
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and carefully analyze 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? 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.
This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge."
Section: 019 #4344
Instructor: R. Peters
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
UCLR 100 is a foundational literary studies course at Loyola. This class will require students to closely read and analyze 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 involves several short essay assignments and a longer seminar essay. The theme for this section of UCLR 100 is Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. Students in this class will read texts that stretch across the 19th, 20th, and 21st Century. Course authors may include T.S. Eliot, Octavia Butler, Caryl Churchill, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, and others.
Section: 020 #4345
Instructor: V. Bell
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
Personal & Political Hauntings in American Literature
The foundational course of literary studies requires students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of literary texts, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature.
This section explores the interpretation of American literary works that are “haunted” by the past. The essays, novels, stories, and poems that we will explore speak in the voices of real or imagined people in the history of the Americas, or at least obsessively struggle to represent those voices and earlier events. The works also focus on complex and uncomfortable, even taboo, American problems—death, suicide, racial conflict, genocide, abuse, violence, political upheaval, etc.—but they also explore opportunities for change and for the expansion of freedom.
Authors may include Coya Paz, Jane Addams, George Saunders, Edwidge Danticat, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Maggie Nelson, and/or other texts! Course requirements include 1 midterm exam and 1 final exam, 2 critical essays, active synchronous class participation, and asynchronous participation in Discussion Forums and VoiceThreads.
Section: 021 #4346
Instructor: J. Hinkson
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. This course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study. 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: 022 #4347
Instructor: A. Welch
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
How To Do Things With Texts
This course is about how to do things with literary texts, and about how literary texts can do things with us. We will learn 1) to ask literary questions of texts, 2) to understand and make meaning out of difficult texts, and 3) to engage with the questions and problems that literature poses to us as humans. The course is divided into units on short fiction, poetry, and drama. These three genres propose differing relationships between texts and readers, and thus offer different routes toward the construction of meaning.
Coursework will consist of regular forum posts in response to readings, three exams centered on reading comprehension, and two papers centered on interpretation. Class discussion plays a central role in
The syllabus will include texts by Lydia Davis, Ayad Akhtar, John Keats, Ken Liu, Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, Ocean Vuong, Harryette Mullen, Jeremy O. Harris, and Annie Baker.
Section: 023 #4348
Instructor: N. Karatas
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
In The Modern Elegiac Temper, John B. Vickery explains that there are other losses besides the chaotic events of the modern period (World War I and the Great Depression), such as the “personal, intellectual, and cultural” losses that individuals grieve for. In our modern world, deprived of traditions and surrounded by innumerable objects of mourning, individuals are in great difficulty as to how to bear their losses. This course explores literature’s healing power to answer to the needs of individuals left with little help towards understanding or processing their suffering. By focusing various literary genres and digital platforms discussing the troubled mind, we will investigate writing as a therapeutic tool.
Section: 024 #4349
Instructor: S. Sleevi
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
This foundational course introduces students to the study of literature through the close reading and analysis of fiction, poetry, and drama. We will gain familiarity with key literary terms and approaches as we read novels, short stories, plays, and poems, examining their thematic content and formal features in relation to the unifying theme of “perspective.” The course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study—including how literary works reflect (and reflect on) culture, society, and human experience—that will help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.
Authors likely to be included on the syllabus include Nella Larsen, William Blake, and Edward Albee. Work for the course will include reading quizzes, written response and analysis assignments, and exams.
Section: 025 #4350
Instructor: J. Hovey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
In this section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies we will focus on the revival of chivalry from the 19th century onwards. What did the conventions of chivalry and the Arthur legend give readers in the 19th century, the 20th century, and today? How have African American writers, Feminists, and Queer writers, among others, used these conventions to tell different stories? We will look at how this literature fashions ideals of virtue, gender expression, national identity, class, and race, grapples with social and cultural issues, and interrogates masculine and Eurocentric codes of conduct and governance. Texts will include works by the Pearl Poet, Thomas Malory, William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson, Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, T.H. White, and Tracy Deonne.
Section: 026 #5769
Instructor: E. Hopwood
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Murder, Mystery, and Misfits
In this foundational core course in literary studies, we will investigate representations of crimes and criminality in prose, fiction, poetry, and drama from the 19th century to today. How does race, gender, class, and culture inform how we demarcate between the “guilty” versus the “innocent”? How has criminality been constructed and legislated? And why are we so attracted to consuming stories about true crime, who-dun-its, murder, and detectives?
We will read authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Agatha Christie, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Cornelius Eady, William and Ellen Craft, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden. We’ll also investigate literature’s connection to broader cultural issues, from analysis of sites like the Eastern State Penitentiary, to digital prison records, to narrative study of true crime podcasts and crime media. Students will be introduced to key literary terms and critical approaches to close reading and analysis. Students are expected to communicate insights about each text through writing, creative projects, and in-class discussion.
This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge.”
Section: 027 #5998
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25–11:15 AM LSC
Section: 028 #5999
Instructor: V. Popa
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze 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.
For this course, we will read and dissect literature of a fantastical, or magical bent: fanciful voyages to the moon, epic battels between frogs and mice, English lords who can live for centuries, or teenage barons who rebel against their parents by living out their entire lives in the canopies of trees. Along the way, we will discuss various modes of reading these texts, as well as ways to interpret their meaning and intent.
ENGL 210 Business Writing
Section: 01W #5959
Instructor: J. Chamberlin
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Business Writing will train you to approach any professional writing task by first assessing the rhetorical situation. You will learn to analyze genres and styles of writing commonly used in business (such as job ads, memos, letters, proposals, reports, and instruction) and compose your own writing based on your assessment of audience and persuasive goals. Collaboration and working effectively in groups are essentials skill to mastering professional communication; assignments and class activities therefore will text your ability to incorporate and respond to your peers’ ideas and work in class.
ENGL 210-01W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 60W #5960
Instructor: M. Meinhardt
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
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.
ENGL 210-60W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 61W #5961
Instructor: L. Parzefall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
ENGL 210 offers students who want to improve their professional writing, or are considering careers in business, training and practice in various forms of business writing, such as memos, instructions, letters, resumes, proposals, and reports. Business Writing will train you to approach any professional writing task by first assessing the rhetorical situation. You will learn to analyze genres and styles of writing commonly used in business (such as job ads, memos, letters, proposals, reports, and instruction) and compose your own writing based on your assessment of audience and persuasive goals. Collaboration and working effectively in groups are essential skills to mastering professional communication; assignments and class activities therefore will test your ability to incorporate and respond to your peers’ ideas and work in class.
ENGL 210-61W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 62W #5962
Instructor: L. Parzefall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
ENGL 210 offers students who want to improve their professional writing, or are considering careers in business, training and practice in various forms of business writing, such as memos, instructions, letters, resumes, proposals, and reports. Business Writing will train you to approach any professional writing task by first assessing the rhetorical situation. You will learn to analyze genres and styles of writing commonly used in business (such as job ads, memos, letters, proposals, reports, and instruction) and compose your own writing based on your assessment of audience and persuasive goals. Collaboration and working effectively in groups are essential skills to mastering professional communication; assignments and class activities therefore will test your ability to incorporate and respond to your peers’ ideas and work in class.
ENGL 210-62W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 211 Writing for Pre-Law Students
Section: 60W #5772
Instructor: D. Gorski
3.0 credit hours Seminar
M 7:00–9:30 PM WTC
In this course, students will learn to develop the writing skills used by law school students and attorneys to prepare case briefs, office memoranda, and pre-trial motions. Students will also learn how to answer essay examination questions of the type given in law school and on a state bar examination.
In class, students will develop the verbal abilities necessary to take a legal position and defend it with statements of fact and conclusions of law. Realistic hypothetical fact patterns will be analyzed using the IRAC method: issue, rule, application, and conclusion. Learning how to cite to legal authorities is a central part of the course. Readings include judicial opinions, state and federal statutes, and law review articles. The course is taught by a practicing attorney, and assumes no prior legal studies by the students.
ENGL 211-60W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 220 Theory/Practice Tutoring
Section: 1WE #1899
Instructor: A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Seminar
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 and discussion of research as well as through practical experience. In this course, you will learn how to help others become better writers while improving your own writing and critical thinking skills. You will become part of a community of fellow peer tutors and gain experience that will benefit you in a variety of careers. The service-learning component consists of approximately 20-25 hours of observation and tutoring in the Writing Center. The writing intensive component includes several short essays and a group research paper. Students who wish to be enrolled in this course must obtain a short recommendation from a faculty member who can speak to the student’s writing ability and interpersonal skills. Email recommendations to Amy Kessel (akessel@luc.edu). Those who excel in the course will be eligible to work as paid writing tutors. ENGL 220-1WE is a service learning, writing intensive class. This class satisfies the Engaged Learning requirement in the Service Learning category.
This class satisfies the Engaged Learning requirement in the Service Learning category and is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 220-1WE is a service learning writing intensive class.
ENGL 271 Exploring Poetry
Section: 001 #5773
Instructor: K. Lecky
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
Dangerous Beauty
"Beauty, tho' injurious, hath strange power." This statement, which describes the biblical Dalilah in John Milton's Renaissance drama Samson Agonistes, cuts to the heart of how throughout history beauty has been more than simply a physical attribute. Since before Helen of Troy had "the face that launched a thousand ships," beauty has justified war, rape, and murder. However, at the same time that beauty has exposed the darkest aspects of human nature, since Plato it has also been heralded as the surest physical manifestation of humanity's sublimity. In the western canon, beauty is simultaneously divine and bestial, good and evil, essential to our survival and instrumental in our destruction.
This course explores the strange, injurious power of beauty fueling the creation of poetry from classical antiquity through contemporary American culture. We’ll inform our survey of these poems with excerpts from the aesthetic theories of Emmanuel Kant, Theodor Adorno, Paul Taylor, Jacques Rancière, Adrienne Rich, and others. We will also focus on popular music lyrics to see how in the common imagination beauty still marks the best and worst of the human condition. This course will cultivate a broadly humanistic form of critical thinking in tandem with honing the craft of writing.
Section: 002 #5774
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
Why should we care about poetry—and how should we care about it? We’ll start historically—who before us cared about poetry, and why? We’ll study the pressure poems put on their historical moment, and how they’re shaped by it in surprising ways: for example, our discussion of Shakespeare will start with the formation of “Shakespeare” as a figure, often at odds with the “evidence” of the poems, of canonical standards throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a program that affected even the spelling of his poems. Many of the authors we’ll read were white, male, and rich—how has literature been used to promote a series of questions and assumptions that they may have shared (sometimes called “the canon”), and how has it, even in some of these same authors, blown apart (some of) the stereotypes and orthodoxies we’d expect to find? We’ll watch the invention not only of English-speaking cultures, but of the English language itself, its twists and triumphs, detours and degenerations—and most importantly, we’ll watch as language, especially literary language, is fashioned into a vehicle of social (as well as aesthetic) contest. Readings in genres epic, lyric, dramatic, and pornographic, from many hundreds of years. We (well, you) will also write papers, take exams, and mix metaphors—the entire range of academic abjection, in one convenient course.
Section: 01W #5776
Instructor: P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
This course will act as an introduction to poetry in English, from the Romantic to the contemporary period. We will discuss the conventions and patterns poets often follow, and I will provide you with the standard terminology used to describe these conventions, such as line, stanza, measure, rhythm, lyric, etc. Perhaps more importantly, you will learn how to critically approach these texts. We will discuss how these poems work, what they might be arguing, what they suggest about the historical moment in which they were written, and how they relate to or comment on other texts. We will also examine the critical literature that surrounds these poems. Finally, our course’s theme is “Inside and Out.” These insides and outsides may relate to a poem’s content: dreamscapes, underworlds, and far-out spaces. Our theme will also feature in discussions of the interplay between the content and the form. In other words, we will investigate the relationships between a text’s surface expressions, its outer form, and its subterranean content, its inner meanings. These investigations will help us to better understand how poems contain, mask, or even occasionally abandon “meaning” altogether. Ultimately, we will excavate these poems’ contents; we will pull the inside out.
ENGL 271-01W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 02W #5778
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Why should we care about poetry—and how should we care about it? We’ll start historically—who before us cared about poetry, and why? We’ll study the pressure poems put on their historical moment, and how they’re shaped by it in surprising ways: for example, our discussion of Shakespeare will start with the formation of “Shakespeare” as a figure, often at odds with the “evidence” of the poems, of canonical standards throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a program that affected even the spelling of his poems. Many of the authors we’ll read were white, male, and rich—how has literature been used to promote a series of questions and assumptions that they may have shared (sometimes called “the canon”), and how has it, even in some of these same authors, blown apart (some of) the stereotypes and orthodoxies we’d expect to find? We’ll watch the invention not only of English-speaking cultures, but of the English language itself, its twists and triumphs, detours and degenerations—and most importantly, we’ll watch as language, especially literary language, is fashioned into a vehicle of social (as well as aesthetic) contest. Readings in genres epic, lyric, dramatic, and pornographic, from many hundreds of years. We (well, you) will also write papers, take exams, and mix metaphors—the entire range of academic abjection, in one convenient course.
ENGL 271-02W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 272 Exploring Drama
Section: 01W #5780
Instructor:K. Zhorne
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30–12:45 PM LSC
This course surveys the major conventions of non-Shakespearean drama written and performed in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. We will pay special attention to the religious, political, and social influences that defined tragedies and comedies as well as explore their textual history. In particular, we will discuss the way theatrical and printing conventions affected the distribution and reception of dramatic works in England after the invention of the printing press. Among others, we will study works such as The Spanish Tragedy, Doctor Faustus, and The Knight of the Burning Pestle.
Because ENGL 272-01W is a Writing-Intensive course, we will devote time in and outside of class to practicing and improving your academic writing. Assignments will include in-class reading responses, a few short writing assignments, a midterm with a take-home essay, and a research paper on an approved topic.
ENGL 272-01W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 273 Exploring Fiction
Section: 001 #5781
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MW 10:25–11:15 AM LSC
Humans are the only animals on the planet who try to understand the world by telling made-up stories about it. This course, entitled “Unreal Fictions,” will consider genres of fiction that turn away from the real world to explore alternate universes that nevertheless shed light on our own experience. Our readings will span widely, as we explore the roots of genres such as fantasy, science fiction, horror, and counterfactual history. Texts will be grouped under rubrics such as time, space, bodies, technology, life after death, and utopia, and authors will include Sir Thomas More, Edgar Allan Poe, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Octavia Butler. Over the course of the semester, we will follow our authors and texts as they embark upon wide-ranging journeys of imagination. Yet throughout our focus will remain on how deliberately fantastical portrayals of the world help us come to grips with the real world.
Section: 002 #5782
Instructor: A. Aftab
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
Identity, Power and Resistance in Fiction
What is the function of literature in challenging or reinforcing dominant ideologies about race, nation, gender, sexuality and class? How do writers of color use fiction to reveal the intricacies of interpersonal and systemic oppression? How do different genres and forms – such as the bildungsroman or speculative fiction – represent structures of power and modes of resistance? These questions will guide our class as we delve into contemporary fiction by writers of color. In this course, we will use an intersectional lens to analyze fictional representations of social identity, power and privilege, and resistance and oppression. We will read novels and short stories by writers such as Tsitsi Dangarembga, Shani Mootoo, Ocean Vuong and Nnedi Okorafor. In addition to sharpening their literary analysis, students will learn about current debates in theories of race, colonialism and gender, consider the burden of representation for minoritized writers, and examine the relationship between aesthetics, form, politics and ethics.
ENGL 273-002 is a multicultural class.
Section: 003 #5783
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
Section: 01W #5784
Instructor: C. Walton
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15–9:05 AM LSC
This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of prose fiction. Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of fiction as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process, and they will be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding fiction. This course will explore the theme of imprisonment in various African American texts. Potential authors may include James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and Walter Dean Myers.
ENGL 273-01W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 02W #5785
Instructor: J. Fiorelli
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20–10:10 AM LSC
Exploring Fiction: Introduction to Asian American Fiction
Broadly, this course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of prose fiction. Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of fiction as a means of exploring human experience and to use the technical vocabulary necessary to effectively analyze works of fiction. More specifically, this section of ENGL 273 will serve as an introduction to Asian American fiction. We will explore questions such as, what does “Asian American” mean – what are the cultural and political entailments of this capacious term? How do works of Asian American literature give shape to the various but also related historical experiences of Asian Americans through authors’ choices of literary form and style? How has literary criticism sought to establish and interpret the importance of this literature? This class is Writing Intensive; therefore, in conjunction with our study of this literature, we will give significant attention to the writing process. Course requirements will include active reading, written homework and quizzes, class participation and writing practice, and literary analysis essays.
ENGL 273-02W is a writing intensive and multicultural class.
Section: 03W #5786
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
Humans are the only animals on the planet who try to understand the world by telling made-up stories about it. This course, entitled “Unreal Fictions,” will consider genres of fiction that turn away from the real world to explore alternate universes that nevertheless shed light on our own experience. Our readings will span widely, as we explore the roots of genres such as fantasy, science fiction, horror, and counterfactual history. Texts will be grouped under rubrics such as time, space, bodies, technology, life after death, and utopia, and authors will include Sir Thomas More, Edgar Allan Poe, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Octavia Butler. Over the course of the semester, we will follow our authors and texts as they embark upon wide-ranging journeys of imagination. Yet throughout our focus will remain on how deliberately fantastical portrayals of the world help us come to grips with the real world.
ENGL 273-03W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 274 Exploring Shakespeare
Section: 01W #5787
Instructor: J. Chamberlin
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
You’ve probably heard of Shakespeare. Chances are you have read one of his plays in school, watched one of his dramas performed, or seen an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s works. If you follow SparkNotes on Instagram or Twitter, chances are you have also stumbled upon a Shakespeare meme. This course will investigate Shakespeare’s plays as they were meant to be encountered: through the multifaceted lenses of adaptation, interpretation, remediation, and cultural perspective.
In addition to learning the vocabulary, historical knowledge, and analytical skills necessary to read Shakespeare’s plays as products of their time, we will explore how the “Bard” has inspired countless adaptations in film, text, and more. In doing so, we will address the question of what makes Shakespeare significant today.
ENGL 274-01W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 282 African-American Literature
Section: 001 #5788
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
ENGL 282-001 is a multicultural class.
Section: 01W #5789
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25–11:15 AM LSC
ENGL 282-01W is a writing intensive and multicultural class.
ENGL 283 Women in Literature
Section: 01W #5790
Instructor: M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20–10:10 AM LSC
Deconstructing the Diva
This writing intensive section of ENGL 283: Women in Literature focuses on divas and diva culture. Revered and reviled, imitated and appropriated, divas are the most visible women in our culture. They are also the most misunderstood. On the one hand, the diva represents empowerment—she is loud, courageous, and often outrageous. But her power comes at a great cost: when she is consumed and absorbed into fans’ lives, she risks becoming the object of obsession. She also risks losing her identity, even as she serves as a vehicle for shaping others’. This class uses fiction, drama, biography, autobiography, film, and performance theory to explore the paradoxes and problems of the “woman with a voice” and her place in contemporary conceptions of femininity.
ENGL 283-01W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 02W #5791
Instructor: C. English
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
Building off the famous trope of the madwomen in the attic, this course will examine the gendering of mental health afflictions that led to the oppression and confinement of women for transgressive behavior through a variety of genres (fiction, poetry, short story) from the late eighteenth-century (1790s) to the present day. We will study texts written by women as well as texts representing women by male authors. Situating these texts within their historical frame, we will consider the medical discourses that labeled women insane and posited that women were afflicted with “wandering wombs” in order to interrogate patriarchal cultures and institutions. Students will examine these representations of women’s mental health issues in a global context to better understand how different cultural and political contexts influenced these depictions.
This writing-intensive course is designed to focus on writing skills that will help students to write about gender construction and difference; to analyze literary texts and formulate arguments about them; and to situate these texts in their historical contexts, with close attention paid to medical and political discourses.
Authors include: Toni Morrison, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jean Rhys, Sylvia Plath, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Carmen Maria Machado
ENGL 283-02W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 287 Religion and Literature
Section: 01W #5792
Instructor: M. Murphy
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
This course has a twofold objective: 1) to explore the many ways which religious ideas and practices appear in various genres of literature, and 2) to examine how literary, poetic, dramatic, and cinematic texts serve as a “sites” for religious inquiry, phenomena, and mystery. By contemplating ancient, classic, and contemporary works, students will encounter a broad array of literary art shaped by the religious experience—in impulse, imagination, reflection, and vision. While the course is focused significantly on texts inspired by Catholic Christianity (as this is the professor’s scholarly competence), ample attention will be devoted to literary texts in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions as well. No specialized knowledge of any of these traditions is presumed and necessary background will be presented in both the lectures and discussion sessions.The course will also provide an introduction to theories in the interdisciplinary field of religion and literature and develop further vocabularies for constructive engagement in both literary and textual studies as well as discourses in theology.
ENGL 287-01W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 288 Nature in Literature
Section: 01W #5793
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
This is a writing intensive course. In this course we will use a number of different Ecocritical approaches, with a particular focus on Ecofeminism to explore and interpret pieces of fiction. Literature provides a vast account of how the natural world is represented, treated, understood, and further, misused or abused. In response to this, we will explore the question: is there is a direct correlation between the treatment of nature and the treatment of humans, and in particular, women and children? Therefore, this course will focus heavily on the connections between the treatment and abuse of women, children, and nature. Assignments in the semester will include writing papers, reading reflections, peer review, quizzes, and participation.
ENGL 288-01W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 290 Human Values in Literature
Section: 01W #5795
Instructor: J. O'Briant
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
Requirement: UCLR 100 for students admitted to Loyola University for Fall 2012 or later. No requirement for students admitted to Loyola prior to Fall 2012 or those with a declared major or minor in the Department of English, Department of Classical Studies, or Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
This variable topics course focuses on a perennial psychological or philosophical problem facing the individual as exemplified in literary works, e.g., the passage from innocence to experience, the problem of death, and the idea of liberty.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the ability of literature to express the deepest and most abiding concerns of human beings, and how literary works come to be.
ENGL 290-01W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 02W #4784
Instructor: A. Palmisano
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30–9:45 AM LSC
Body, Mind and Soul
This course examines varying representations of body, mind, and soul in literature across multiple eras and cultures. We will examine questions asked by a wide range of authors about how body, mind, and soul impact our sense of self-identity and what it means to be human. How does the body relate to the soul? How does the mind mediate between world and self? How do conceptions of mind, body and soul shape our view of the world? Readings will extend across time periods and cultures so that we may compare how these ideas have been uniquely handeled across time and space. As a writing intensive course, we will also spend time cultivating skills for written argument and literary analysis. Potential readings include Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, Dante’s Inferno, Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and Chenjerai Hove’s Bones.
ENGL 290-02W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 200 #5796
Instructor: J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:45–5:15 PM WTC
We will explore major critical approaches and apply them to a range of literary texts. Our theme: what comprises and compromises social class and wealth? Our course will help refine our critical thinking and analytic abilities. To that end, we will work on close reading, focused discussion, and effective writing. We will also explore and apply a range of theories (including Post Colonialism, Gender, and Marxism) to our course texts. Each class, we will discuss our readings together. That gives you opportunities to share ideas and raise questions. We will have two exams, two papers, a group presentation, and an in-class reading journal. Our readings include Guy du Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” James Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Scarlett Bermingham’s Big Boy Pants.
ENGL 293 Advanced Composition
Section: 01W #5797
Instructor: E. Hopwood
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 4:15–6:45 PM LSC
Writing in/with New Media
The focus of this Advanced Composition class will be Writing with/in New Media. We will practice writing in and across modalities and technologies that are both “old” and “new,” familiar and unfamiliar. We will consider how communication is mediated and remediated in the digital age, and we will draw connections between historical moments of print culture with that of contemporary technological advancement, considering, for instance, the many ways that technology has shaped the way we read and interpret (and, indeed, are ourselves read and interpreted). Some topics we will explore include the history of writing and writing technologies, as well as emerging digital genres (websites, podcasts, memes), digital storytelling, multimodal discourse, and visual rhetoric. Students will research and write about new media, create podcast, and design both digital and analog content.
ENGL 293-01W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 02W #5798
Instructor: E. Weeks Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
F 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
The Writing Process
As many professors will tell you (from personal experience!), great academic writing doesn’t just happen. It must be practiced, studied, learned, and taught. Therefore, this advanced writing course will focus on the academic writing process - how an academic writer progresses from the blank page to a “finished” product. We will explore how this process works, what scholars have discovered and theorized about it, and how you can master it yourself! Course content will center around, first, students’ reconsiderations of their own writing processes and additions to their repertoire of strategies and, second, active reading and discussion of composition theory about the writing process. Course requirements will include (1) reading and annotating all assigned materials; (2) actively participating in class; (3) completing two extensive essay writing processes and two reflective essays; and (4) giving a collaborative, multimodal presentation.
ENGL 293-02W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 306C Studies in Women Writers Post-1900
Section: 001 #5799
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
Transnational Perspectives
This course will focus on literature written by Caribbean, African, and South Asian women, as well as on works of transnational, decolonial, and postcolonial feminist theory and criticism. Locating the literary as well as theoretical and critical texts in their regional, national, cultural, and historical contexts, the course will examine the extent to which women of color share feminist concerns and the extent to which they demonstrate a plurality of gender roles and sexualities. To this end, we will consider the ways in which the women writers, critics, and theorists under study mediate debates about feminism, gender, sexuality, and social identity; construct or retrieve women’s histories; create women’s culture; and participate in related forms of social activism. Other, linked topics include the intersectional representations of (post)colonialism, (neo)imperialism, nationalism and citizenship, religion, race and ethnicity, class and caste, migration and diaspora, and globalization.
ENGL 306C-001 is a multicultural class.
ENGL 317 The Writing of Poetry
Section: 001 #3373
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Seminar
M 4:15–6:45 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: 002 #5800
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Seminar
W 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
Basic (Experimental) Poetry Workshop
Writing poetry is a craft that requires reading, exploration, practice, and sharing. Each week we read a unique work of contemporary poetry mostly by POC and queer writers to form a framework for discussion about vulnerable points of view and innovative forms. From there, students are encouraged to find their own process, form and voice. In our sessions, we experiment with language together to discover and foster creativity and delight in creating work both as a group and on our own. Our work also includes prompts for writing in between sessions, and presentations of student poetry for review by the group. Finally, students spend several weeks compiling and reviewing final collections of poetry for a self-published chapbook, and for the final, give a reading of their work.
Section: 003 #5801
Instructor: P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours Seminar
F 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
This course centers poetry as an individual and collective project. Through outside reading, students will question their relationships to contemporary modes and cultures while also working to develop their own voices, styles, and methods of production. Thus, students will begin to situate their craft in a larger poetic conversation. Weekly class meetings will center on discussions and presentations of outside materials, in-class writing and writing experiments, discussions of student-generated poetry, and collaborative writing. In addition to regular writing assignments and in-class presentations, students will develop a twenty-page chapbook by semester’s end.
ENGL 318 The Writing of Fiction
Section: 001 #5805
Instructor:V. Popa
3.0 credit hours Seminar
M 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
This course explores the art and techniques of writing fiction; how and why it succeeds in capturing the imagination of readers, and how those skills can be channeled successfully to craft new and original work. This introductory course will include a combination of craft lessons and workshop critique. We will investigate the output of a diverse cast of authors, from Francois Rabelais and Laurence Sterne to Denis Johnson and Danyial Mueenuddin. From these works, we will then distill valuable lessons about the writing of fiction, such as character development, dialogue, plot, and tension, which students will then apply to their own compositions. Assignments include two original works of short fiction (either short stories or novel excerpts) and a final portfolio (which will include revisions of workshopped assignments).
Section: 002 #5806
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Seminar
T 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
Section: 003 #5807
Instructor: H. Axelrod
3.0 credit hours Seminar
F 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
This is a workshop class in fiction. Students will learn to become better readers and writers of fiction by learning how to attend to structure, character, imagery, dialogue and other craft elements as we analyze how writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Denis Johnson, Jhumpa Lahiri, and others create stories that resonate with the stories of our own lives. What makes a character stay with us? What makes a metaphor work? What makes dialogue sound believable? What is the difference between suspense and surprise?
Students will write three original short stories, and will learn how to critique each other’s stories in class as part of a supportive workshop environment. Class participation is emphasized. Fulfills a Core Expressive Arts Requirement.
Section: 600 #5808
Instructor: C. Macon Fleischer
3.0 credit hours Seminar
T 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
This class is half a book club, half a creative writing workshop. For book club, we’ll focus on contemporary award-winning books and short stories, recent titles from The New York Times bestsellers list as well as the latest winners and nominees of prestigious awards. By engaging deeply and critically with modern fiction, we’ll learn to be inspired by living writers’ techniques in our own writing. In-class writing prompts and peer workshops will lead you to finish the semester with two polished short stories and one flash fiction piece.
ENGL 319 Writing Creative Nonfiction
Section: 001 #5810
Instructor: M. Hawkins
3.0 credit hours Seminar
W 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
This writing workshop will focus on the personal essay. Students will draw from their own lives and their observations of the world around them to craft short, thoughtful, carefully composed works that tell true stories or raise questions and possibly (but not necessarily) draw conclusions. One meaning of essay is to try; the purpose of a personal essay is not merely to report facts or to so say what happened but to try to understand it. How does your personal experience link to larger themes? Ideally, you will discover what you think about your chosen topics as you write. You may surprise yourself.
In addition to writing polished, finished essays, students will read each other’s work and discuss it in class. Weekly assigned readings of both classic and experimental essays will provide wide-ranging examples of this literary form at its highest level.
Section: 002 #5811
Instructor: H. Axelrod
3.0 credit hours Seminar
R 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
This is a workshop course in creative nonfiction, the fastest growing genre in publishing. It’s thriving in personal essay columns in magazines and newspapers, in memoirs, and in new hybrid forms. We’ll focus on personal essay and memoir, learning how to write about moments, activities, and relationships in your lives that have given you pause, stayed with you, and left you with questions. Among other craft elements, you’ll learn the distinction between I-narrator and I-character, exposition and scene, and how to move from the situation—the facts of what happened—to finding insight and meaning through story.
In class, we’ll read, analyze, and discuss the works of creative nonfiction writers as models for your own writing. This is a workshop, so you’ll hear from each other what’s working on the page in your own writing and what isn’t—which will help develop your ear as you read and your instincts as you write. You’ll also learn to offer thoughtful commentary on the work of your classmates. The goal is for you to become a better reader and writer of creative nonfiction.
Section: 600 #5812
Instructor: C. Macon Fleischer
3.0 credit hours Seminar
W 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
One of the biggest questions surrounding creative nonfiction is: What is true? This writing course explores truth within the context of the personal essay, essay from the French “to try.” In class, we’ll have fun trying to tell the truth, our truth, examining what that might mean. The curriculum is divided into three main sections—book club, craft lectures, and peer writing workshops. We’ll examine the personal essay’s fascinating evolution, from The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon in 900 B.C. all the way to the “Cat Person” scandal in 2021. Designed to let students pursue their own interests, the class juggles literature with experimentation, self-exploration, and pop culture.
ENGL 325 British Literature – The Renaissance
Section: 001 #5993
Instructor: J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
The Ideal and the Real
Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, British authors sought to invent a national identity that could be traced to antiquity and early Christianity by adapting and appropriating ideal forms associated with a time before the corruption of both church and state. The ideal state, courtier, and religion found expression in the works of authors ranging from Sir Thomas More to Margaret Cavendish. In this course we will explore the tension between the historical realities of early modern British life and the ideal forms out of which British national identity was constructed in the literature of the period. Authors will include, More, Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Amelia Lanyer, Hester Pulter, and Cavendish. There will be reading responses, student led discussions, short papers, and exams.
ENGL 326 The Plays of Shakespeare
Section: 001 #5813
Instructor: V. Strain
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 AM LSC
Examine Shakespeare’s plays in the democratic classroom. Education theorists have long connected classroom discussion with the goals of democracy: by learning the techniques of open-ended and transformative discussion in the classroom, students develop a greater capacity to shape social and political conditions in which all individuals can thrive. This course will be conducted almost entirely as discussions of Shakespeare’s plays, implicitly and explicitly comparing the language culture of the sixteenth century—including its understanding of the personal, social, and political potential of speech—with our own. Guidance on discussion preparation, participation, and reflection will be provided along with a thorough introduction to some of Shakespeare’s best-known plays.
ENGL 355 Studies in Literary Criticism
Section: 001 #6824
Instructor: L. Le-Khac
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
Theories of Race, Literatures of Race
Let’s face it. As a nation, we are terrible at talking about race. We urgently need vocabularies to think more carefully about race, inequality, and justice. We need ways to comprehend our multi-racial world, grasp how groups are linked in it, and envision multi-racial coalitions to transform it. In this course, we’ll equip ourselves with groundbreaking theories of race and methods of relational race studies from history, sociology, law, political science, and ethnic studies. At the same time, we will insist that literature and the arts possess formidable theorizing powers. Literature is also a form of theory, a mode of thinking, knowing, and imagining that is embedded in the racial struggles of the world. We will learn from novelists, poets, filmmakers, and playwrights of color whose artistic works scaffold our thinking to analyze the racialized workings of our world, to feel related experiences and entangled struggles, and to envision the different, more just world that we could build.
ENGL 355-001 is a multicultural class.
ENGL 362 Studies in Poetry
Section: 001 #5816
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Seminar
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
The Beast, the Whore, and the Year 1798: A Poetical History
“To defend the Bible in this year 1798,” snarled William Blake, “would cost a man his life—the Beast & the Whore rule without controls.” We’ll attempt a history-in-poetry of this year 1798, when Blake thought the promises of Revolution—American, French, Irish, English—had given way to Antichrist. As we’ll read, this single year saw Australia transformed into a prison; England and France in the throes of cataclysmic war; universal starvation forecast as the inevitable Principle of Population by the Reverend Malthus; Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of feminism, dead and seemingly remembered as whore by her own husband’s Memoirs; prophecies on the imminent End of Days seriously debated in Parliament; the “Rights of Man” ruined, its proponents jailed, gagged, and disappeared. Yet in the shadow of this year, the greatest English poets since John Milton began to speak. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced the astounding and disturbing Lyrical Ballads, a radically democratic experiment in poetry as “the language really used by men.” Wordsworth also began his epic The Prelude, one of the most important autobiographies in English, while Coleridge veered from opium fevers in “Kubla Khan” to vampire pornography in Christabel—all haunted by the specter of his Fears in Solitude. Blake had pronounced a host of “Prophetic Books,” all spectacularly engraved by his own hand, all mysteriously silenced by 1798. We’ll study this uneasy quiet—as much as Blake’s apocalyptic fury—because in silence, there was song, what Wordsworth would arrange as “the still, sad music of humanity.” The astonishing complex of this astonishing poetry—its formings of isolation, despair, and luminous hope—will be our subject. Satisfies the English major’s 1700-1900 or pre 1900 requirements; also satisfies your yearnings for ferocious endurance in times of turmoil and collapse.
ENGL 379C Studies in American Literature Post-1900
Section: 001 #5817
Instructor: L. Le-Khac
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
The Many Voices of American Fiction from WWII to Today
This course embraces the explosion of voices and styles that is American fiction since World War II. This literature pours out of a period when the borders of the nation became unfixed and new voices entered American letters. The glorious mess that resulted cannot be contained within any single literary history. Our goal: to map the divergent stories of American fiction over the last 80 years. We’ll examine how historical forces—the Cold War, global capitalism, Civil Rights movements, feminist struggles, and media transformations—shaped this literature. We’ll explore how fiction stretched to describe new vistas—the highway, the suburb, the linked globe—and gave voice to minority groups struggling for inclusion. But we’ll also attend to how fiction followed its own aesthetic, human, and even posthuman concerns. What happens to the individual in a postmodern world? What are the limits of fiction? Does literature have a role in the world or is it a world of its own? But it’s not all weighty questions. We’ll also delight in the play of genres from metafiction to zombie horror that characterize this period. Authors may include Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Vladimir Nabokov, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, David Foster Wallace, and Junot Díaz.
ENGL 375C-001 is a multicultural class.
ENGL 381 Comparative American Literature
Section: 001 #5818
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
Indigenous Modernism: Expression of Sovereignty in 20th Century Indigenous Literature
Read as a speculative literature, modernism traces the production of the racial subject through the discursive capture of the body as authors respond to and theorize their political conditions through aesthetic figuration. This course offers students a survey in Indigenous modernist literature from the northern part of “Turtle Island,” what is now known as North America. Beginning with Anishinaabeg origin stories and Neshanbek treaty stories and moving through political speeches and essays, memoirs and auto-ethnographies, novels, poetry, and theoretical works, this course provides students with a historic and literary overview of Indigenous expressions of sovereignty from 1890 to 1990. Our readings will stress the radicalism and resurgent quality of these texts by foregrounding their political, cultural, and spiritual contexts. Central questions we will consider include what is “Indigenous sovereignty” and how has it been expressed differently across historical periods and geographies? What are the political and cultural stakes of writing for Indigenous writers, activists, and theorists within colonial modernity? How do these authors think through their relationships to land, community, identity, and the law? And how do our accounts of Indigenous literature shift when we understand these authors as participants in the speculative project of modernism instead of “borrowers,” “hybrids,” or “victims” of its terms? Newcomers to Indigenous literature and history are welcome. Students will be introduced to Indigenous epistemologies, traditional stories, and languages to help them build culturally specific frameworks for reading the material as well as important political histories, such as treaty rights, dispossession, residential schooling, and resource extraction, that give more context for these literary works.
ENGL 384B Studies in African-American Literature 1700–1900
Section: 001 #5819
Instructor: F. Staidum
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
On Repeat: Racial Progress and White Backlash, 1865-1917
In recent years, activists and scholars have used terms like “the New Jim Crow” and “Third Reconstruction” to characterize twenty-fist-century struggles against systemic racism. However, the original “Reconstruction” (1865-1877) was a period of progressive politics immediately following the US Civil War, during which newly freed Blacks, in collaboration with white allies and a protective federal government, attempted to build a more democratic society. Violent white resistance in the South and shrinking support in the North undermined this project and ushered in “Jim Crow” (1877-1968), the system of laws and customs that maintained segregation and discrimination in all aspects of public and private life. By attaching “New” and “Third” to these historical terms (as in “the New Jim Crow”), contemporary activists make legible the repetitive persistence of anti-Black racism and the sporadic rhythm of Black freedom—a freedom that is repeatedly interrupted, reversed, and delayed.
In this course, we will examine selected works of African American literature written during the “first” Reconstruction and the rise of the “old” Jim Crow, roughly 1865 to 1917, in order to decipher how African Americans comprehended this disjointed movement from enslaved chattel to free citizen to segregated and discriminated half-subject. By closely analyzing the formal and aesthetic elements of the literature (e.g., plot, setting, figurative language, etc.) alongside academic theories of race, citizenship, freedom, and time, we will interpret how each text (1) envisions the meaning of post-slavery Black freedom—its possibilities and limitations; (2) diagnoses the causes and conditions of white backlash; and (3) imagines alternative and speculative futures out of this conundrum. We will, for example, probe the complexities of “performing” citizenship in Pauline Hopkins’s musical comedy Peculiar Sam, or, The Underground Railroad (1879); the inherently antidemocratic constitution of whiteness in Charles W. Chesnutt’s historical novel The Marrow of Tradition (1901); and the vision of Black self-determination beyond the confines of racial capitalism in W. E. B. Du Bois’s Bildungsroman novel The Quest for the Silver Fleece (1911), amongst other works. In the end, students will develop the critical thinking skills necessary for identifying and interpreting the tension between progress and backlash, then and now.
ENGL 384B-001 is a multicultural class.
ENGL 390 Advanced Seminar
Section: 01W #5820
Instructor: I. Cornelius
3.0 credit hours Seminar
T 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
English Poetry from Manuscript to Print
The unfolding climate catastrophe suggests a division of human history into two periods, separated by the industrial revolution that began in Europe in the late eighteenth century. In this advanced seminar, we examine some pre-industrial technologies of communication, entertainment, and learning, with a focus on English poetry written in the centuries before and after the introduction of print technology into Europe. What was the printed book like in the early days, when presses were not yet powered by coal, and how were works of literature published, circulated, and read before print? We study poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and their contemporaries and we inquire how these poems circulated in their own time and afterwards and why medium matters. Students will learn to read one of the styles of handwriting used by medieval scribes and they will learn to read “Middle English,” the form of the English language used by Chaucer. Themes include the production of manuscript books, the origins and development of print technology, diversity and standardization in the English language, the transmission of texts, and the emergence of an English monolingual literary culture (replacing the multilingual literary cultures of premodern Europe). Assessment is by midterm and final essays (the latter an independent research project), short written assignments, and class presentation.
ENGL 390-01W is a writing intensive class. This class requires department consent. Please contact your English advisor for permission.
Section: 02W #5821
Instructor: J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Seminar
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
Time
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.
ENGL 390-02W is a writing intensive class. This class requires department consent. Please contact your English advisor for permission.
ENGL 393 Teaching English to Adults
Section: 01E #1543
Instructor: J. Heckman
1.0-3.0 credit hours Field Studies
TBA
Engage with Jesuit values and meet our adult neighbors who come from many cultures. This course offers an excellent opportunity for service learning and practical experience in tutoring adults in written and spoken English at the Loyola Community Literacy Center. We hope that in Fall 2022 we can return to our home in Loyola Hall, 1110 W. Loyola Avenue, as well as continue tutoring online as we have been doing since the pandemic year of 2020.
While the Literacy Center offers community adults an opportunity to improve their skills, it also gives student-tutors the chance to serve their community and to engage with their Jesuit education.
No previous tutoring experience is necessary. When taken for 3 credit hours, this course satisfies the Core Engaged Learning-Service Learning Internship requirement. It is open to second-semester freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Incoming freshmen are always welcome to tutor as volunteers and take the course at a later date.
The Center is open for tutoring M-Th evenings during the fall and spring semesters from 7-9:30 pm when the university is in session. 1 credit hour students tutor one evening per week; 2 and 3 credit hour students tutor two evenings a week. In addition, there are 5 class meetings scheduled at 5:45 pm, just before tutoring hours; 3 credit/Core students meet for a 6th session.
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 and Honors 290.
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 and Honors 290.
For permission to take this class, please contact Mrs. Jacqueline Heckman at jheckma@luc.edu or at (773) 508-2330.
ENGL 394 Internship
Section: 01E #1544
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
English 394 provides practical, on-the-job experience for English majors in adapting their writing and analytical skills to the needs of such fields as publishing, editing, and public relations. Students must have completed six courses in English and must have a GPA of 3.0 or higher before applying for an internship. Qualified second semester juniors and seniors may apply to the program. Interested students must arrange to meet with the Internship Director during the pre-registration period and must bring with them a copy of their Loyola transcripts, a detailed resume (which includes the names and phone numbers of at least two references), and at least three writing samples. Students may be required to conduct part of their job search on-line and to go out on job interviews before the semester begins. Course requirements include: completion of a minimum of 120 hours of work; periodic meetings with the Internship Director; a written evaluation of job performance by the site supervisor; a term paper, including samples of writing produced on the job.
This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Cragwall at jcragwall@luc.edu or (773) 508-2259 for permission.
ENGL 397 Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry
Section: 01W #5828
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Seminar
T 4:15–6:45 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 397-01W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 399 Special Studies in Literature
Section: 001 #1545
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Supervision
TBA
Students arrange for this course on an individual basis by consulting a faculty member who agrees to supervise the independent study. When the student and the faculty member have agreed on the work to be done, the student submits the plan to the director of undergraduate programs for approval and registration. Usually students will work independently and produce a research paper, under the direction of the faculty member.
This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Cragwall at jcragwall@luc.edu or (773) 508-2259 for permission.