Loyola University Chicago

Department of English

Fall 2023 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 282   African-American Literature
ENGL 283    Women in Literature
ENGL 284    Asian American Literature
ENGL 287    Religion and Literature
ENGL 288    Nature in Literature
ENGL 290    Human Values in Literature
ENGL 293    Advanced Writing
ENGL 294   Advanced Composition
ENGL 299    Topics in Advanced Writing
ENGL 306A    Women Writers Pre-1700
ENGL 312C    World Literature in England Post-1900
ENGL 317    The Writing of Poetry
ENGL 318    The Writing of Fiction
ENGL 319    Writing Creative Nonfiction
ENGL 326   Plays of Shakespeare
ENGL 340    British Literature: Victorian Period
ENGL 354    Contemporary Critical Theory
ENGL 371    The Modern Novel
ENGL 372B    Studies in Fiction 1700-1900
ENGL 383    Theology & Literature
ENGL 390   Advanced Seminar
ENGL 393   Teaching English to Adults
ENGL 394   Internship
ENGL 397   Advanced Writing Workshop: Fiction
ENGL 399   Special Studies in Literature
 

Class information on LOCUS takes precedence over information posted here.

 

UCRL 100E  Interpreting Literature 

Section: 001#2984
Instructor: D. Kelly
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC 

Section: 002 #3852
Instructor: O. Brici
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC

Section: 003 #3853
Instructor: O. Brici
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC 

Section: 004 #3854
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 reading quizzes; (2) active class participation; (3) multiple short writing assignments; and (4) several unit tests.

Section: 005 #3855
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC 

This is a foundational 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 vulnerability in the midst of illness or a pandemic. We will discuss how these concepts are depicted in a number of different poems, plays and short stories. These topics are often difficult topics to discuss and yet, they are inevitable realities in each of our lives. Thus, we will use texts, by a number of different American authors, such as Amanda Gorman, Mary Oliver, Annie Proulx, Moises Kaufman, Essex Hemphill and more. The method of assessment will include pop quizzes, classroom participation, an in-class writing on poetry, a midterm and a final.

Section: 006 #3856
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

The foundational course of literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical term, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. The readings will cover various historical periods, ranging from the Ancient Greece to the 21st century. Course requirements will include in-class quizzes, short in-class essays, and exams.

Section: 007 #3857
Instructor: J. Stayer
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM LSC

This is a foundational course of literary studies: an introduction to college-level thinking about various literary genres, including fiction, poetry, drama, essay, and creative non-fiction. This section of the course covers the American experience from 1850 to the present, including minority experience: women, African American, Asian American, Latinx and LGBTQ. Since literary interpretation is an art rather than an exact science, the bulk of the course is devoted to close readings of the text that lead to reasonable interpretations.

Literature is an art form that addresses all aspects of the human experience—the emotions, the body, the spirit, love, ambition and despair, suffering and joy, bravery and self-deception, cultural roles and inner longings. So no matter what your major or your interests, the material in this course will be relevant to all who seek meaning and purpose in their lives.

Section: 008 #3858
Instructor: J. Hinkson
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM LSC

Section: 009 #3859
Instructor: J. Hovey
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM LSC

Section: 010 #3860
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

Utopias and Dystopias

In this course, we will read, discuss and write about how texts and films that create utopias and dystopias form an astute social commentary on the present state of the world. The units in the course have a special focus on social ecologies based on racial and gendered hierarchies. We will be reading short stories, 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, the film Pumzi by African filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, a novel by Richard Brautigan, and the poetry of Harryette Mullen, Khadijah Queen, Douglas Kearney, and Hala Alyan Timothy Yu.

Section: 011 #3861
Instructor: A. Schmitz
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

Section: 012 #3862
Instructor: E. Weeks Stogner
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 12:25 – 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 reading quizzes; (2) active class participation; (3) multiple short writing assignments; and (4) several unit tests.

Section: 014 #3864
Instructor: N. Karatas
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

Section: 015 #3865
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

The foundational course of literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical term, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. The readings will cover various historical periods, ranging from the Ancient Greece to the 21st century. Course requirements will include in-class quizzes, short in-class essays, and exams.

Section: 016 #3866
Instructor: J. Hansen
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

Frozen Gothic: Environment and Power in Horror Literature, 1798-2021

This foundational course in literary studies will examine instances of “horror” literature across the genres of prose, poetry, and drama from the publication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere to our present decade. For the purposes of this course, “horror” literature refers to both traditional Gothic forms and literature whose subject matter is intended to be horrifying to its audience. Specifically, the readings selected will deal with horror derived from the natural (and often icy) environment, horror derived from the enactment of the Euro-American colonial project, and horror derived from the confluence of the two. We will read works from British, Euro-American, Euro-Canadia, and indigenous Canadian (Inuit) authors that, one way or another, feature different (or similar) incarnations of ice, snow, and cold temperatures.

Our anchor will be, quite literally, frozen as we consider how each author’s historical, geopolitical, racial, and gendered position informs the way they write about the environment and untimely death. Texts will most likely include but not be limited to Mary W. Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, Colleen Murphy’s The Breathing Hole, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, and Joan Naviyuk Kane’s Dark Traffic.

Section: 017 #3867
Instructor: A. Schmitz
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

Section: 018 #3868
Instructor: B. Molby
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

This foundational class will give students a set of tools for reading and interpreting literature.  Literature can be understood as a unique mode of transmitting knowledge and human experience through creative linguistic expression.  This class will explore modes of interpreting and understanding that knowledge and will empower students to demystify, analyze, and enjoy literature in English from the medieval period to contemporary texts.  Over the course of the semester, we will read a diverse range of styles, forms, and voices in poetry, prose, and drama.

Section: 019 #3869
Instructor: D. Olszewska
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

Section: 020 #3870
Instructor: C. Garvey
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 8:30 – 9:45 AM LSC

Section: 021 #3871
Instructor: E. Hopwood
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

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.

Section: 022 #3873
Instructor: M. Hawkins
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC
 

This foundational literature course explores a variety of critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature while focusing on the concept of home. What and where is it; is it a physical place or an ideal? We will read and discuss novels, poems, essays, and a play, using texts by Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lorraine Hansberry, Sandra Cisneros, Derek Walcott, Emily Dickinson, Julian Barnes, Amy Tan, Shirley Jackson, William Shakespeare, Billy Collins, and more. The method of assessment will include two exams, in-class pop free-writing, and classroom participation.

Section: 023 #3875
Instructor: C. Garvey
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC 

Section: 024 #4700
Instructor: W. Palomo
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

Section: 025 #4895
Instructor: F. Staidum
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

Banned Blackness

Since the publication of the 1619 Project in 2019, a critical mass of politicians and activists have increasingly dismissed, attacked, or outright banned the unadulterated study of Black history and culture—that is to say, a more precise account of American history and culture. For example, bowing to political pressure, the College Board recently omitted important literary figures—most of whom are women or queer, such as Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor, from its AP African American Studies curriculum, while 40% of all books banned in public libraries and schools in 2021- 2022 are by authors of color with celebrated African American Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison being the 3rd most banned. Justifications have ranged from alleging “a lack of educational value” to accusations of “reverse racism,” un-American propaganda, or pornography. However, these attacks are not new. Prohibitions on Black creativity and independent thought date back to the early 1800s, when slave states outlawed anti-slavery literature and Black people’s literacy despite American professions of “free speech.”

This section of UCLR will focus on reading, discussing, interpreting, and writing about various poetry, prose, drama, and at least one film by African Americans who have often been deemed too transgressive or too offensive for public consumption. Our course assumes an interdependent relationship between literature and broader society, and we will examine the politics of currently and historically banned Black literature across three centuries—1800s to now. We will especially attend to themes of systemic racism, feminism, class consciousness, and queerness as grappled within these works and interrogate what is it about Black literature and culture that has provoked and continues to provoke fear, objection, and suppression. As a foundational course in literary studies, we will survey compositional differences among prose, poetry, drama, and film; apply basic literary and critical vocabulary; and practice introductory analytical methods, specifically close reading. In addition, we will use historical context to better comprehend why these works have been and are regarded as objectionable or impermissible.

Some of the banned authors we may read include Frederick Douglass, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, Kacen Callender, or George M. Johnson.

Section: 026 #5788
Instructor: S. Bost
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

What does reading do?

This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and to interpret carefully a variety of literary genres, including poetry, short story, drama, novel, and nonfiction. As we explore important questions about how literature works, this section of UCLR will focus on how and what literature teaches us. What do we learn from reading literature? Why should we spend our time reading when the world is falling apart around us? What are the different ways in which we can read literary texts? Thinking about questions like these will help students to develop analytical skills for approaching literature in a complex and empathetic manner. I have chosen, for this semester, three novels from different historical and cultural contexts: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847, British), Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958, Nigerian)and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2005, South Korean).  Short stories, poems, and plays by Latinx and African American writers will focus on race, gender, and colonialism from different perspectives. All texts will be considered in their larger social and cultural contexts. Assignments will include creative exercises, two exams, and required class participation (in person and on Sakai).

Section: 027 #5789
Instructor: M. Reddon
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 2:20 – 3:45 PM LSC

Dreams, Visions, 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 will include experimental poetry, plays, and prose from a range authors and historical periods. 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: 028 #5790
Instructor: N. Pach
3.0 credit hours lecture
W 4:15 – 6:45 PM WTC

This foundational literary studies course will introduce students to the art of close reading. Over a series of readings that will include poetry, fiction, and drama, we will build up analytical stamina, putting pressure on texts from the level of the individual word on up to overarching thematic continuities in works across time and space. The course will feature literature that engages with the nonhuman – literature where animals, plants, machines, supernatural beings, or other radical others play a central role. How, from antiquity to the present day, have we told stories about these entities, and why? How do we understand them in relation to ourselves, or use them in order to delineate what it is to be human? Can we ever truly write about the nonhuman in a nonhuman-centered way, or will we always just be writing about ourselves? We will also consider experiments with and attempts at nonhuman composition, from Spiritualist-era interest in automatic writing to ChatGPT.

Section: 029 #5791
Instructor: E. Datskou
3.0 credit hours lecture
Th 4:15 – 6:45 PM WTC

Monsters and Us

We have always been attracted to monsters. They represent society’s deepest fears and desires and often appear in pop culture during times of social unrest and crisis. Monsters are also used as symbols of empowerment and as figures to critique society and social norms. In this foundational course in literary studies, we will debate what monsters are, think about why we are so drawn to them, explore the difference between being a monster and being monstruous, and examine how monsters have been represented in key literary forms—fiction, drama, poetry. Our examination of monsters will not only explore form but also time period as we begin in the nineteenth century and end with our contemporary society. Through our analysis, we’ll interrogate what particular monsters reveal about society and about us. Monsters that we’ll explore may include vampires, zombies, humankind, AI, witches, ghosts, and the madwoman. Texts may include works by Bram Stoker, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christina Rossetti, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Edward Albee, Jordan Peele, and Karyn Kusama.

 

ENGL 210   Business Writing 

Section: 01W #4859
Instructor: J. Chamberlin
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 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 course.

Section: 02W #4860
Instructor: M. Meinhardt
3.0 credit hours lecture
Tu 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 210-02W is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 03W #4861
Instructor: J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours lecture
Th 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC

Our course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on specific types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including press releases, customer reviews, and resumes.

Our course is writing intensive. We will use a process approach to writing, emphasizing problem-solving, prewriting strategies, and editing and revision skills. You will plan and share some of your writing with me in draft conferences. That gives you a chance to raise ideas, ask questions, get assistance, and receive feedback on your work.

ENGL 210-03W is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 04W #5865
Instructor: E. Sharrett
3.0 credit hours lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC

Business Writing allows students to exercise and hone their ability to persuade others using stories and numbers. The course acknowledges that professionals create change by formulating and describing data, relationships, and solutions clearly in documents ranging from emails and cover letters to white papers and press releases. The seminar prepares students to address all genres of professional documents in two steps: (1) analyzing the rhetorical situation—audience, author, purpose, medium, context, and content—of the document before (2) developing the document through an iterative revision process that demands collegial collaboration. As such, students will engage in individual and group projects to refine their skills. Successful participants will leave the course with documents to use while applying for or holding jobs and an understanding of how to lead with storytelling in the workplace.

ENGL 210-04W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 211  Writing for Pre-Law Students 

Section: 01W #4703
Instructor: D. Gorski
3.0 credit hours  lecture
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 211-01W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 220   Theory/Practice Tutoring 

Section: 1WE #1816
Instructor: A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 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 who can speak to the student’s writing ability and interpersonal skills. Recommendations should be emailed 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 writing-intensive course. Please see instructor akessel@luc.edu or (773) 508- 2682 for permission to take this class.

Section: 2WE #6064
Instructor: B. Molby 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM 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 who can speak to the student’s writing ability and interpersonal skills. Recommendations should be emailed to Brandiann Molby (bmolby@luc.edu). Those who excel in the course will be eligible to work as paid writing tutors.

ENGL 220-2WE is a writing-intensive course. Please see instructor bmolby@luc.edu or (773) 508- 8466 for permission to take this class. Exploring Poetry (ENGL 271

 

ENGL 271   Exploring Poetry 

Section: 001 #4704
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours lecture 
TuTh 10:00 – 11:15 AM 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 #4707
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours lecture 
TuTh 11:30 AM – 12:45 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 271-01W is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 02W #4709
Instructor: K. Lecky
3.0 credit hours lecture 
TuTh 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

This course frames itself around a simple question: what is poetry? This question has generated a wealth of surprisingly complicated answers, and throughout the semester we will survey the responses given by past and present poets while creatively formulating our own. In the process, we will practice discussing, analyzing, and even writing poetry individually and in groups. Ultimately, this course is designed to foster confidence in students who perhaps do not feel comfortable engaging with difficult (and at times intimidating) texts by offering a broadly applicable set of hermeneutic tools foundational to humanistic ways of thinking and reading.

We will explore poetry from classical antiquity through contemporary American culture. We’ll inform our survey of these poems (and music lyrics) with aesthetic and political theories as well as deep historical contextualization. This course will cultivate a broadly humanistic form of critical thinking.

ENGL 271-02W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 272   Exploring Drama

Section: 01W #4711
Instructor: R. Peters
3.0 credit hours lecture 
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

ENGL 272-01W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 273   Exploring Fiction 

Section: 001 #4712
Instructor: N. Mun
3.0 credit hours lecture 
TuTh 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of prose fiction. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of fiction as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding fiction. Class Topic: Conflict (polemos) has been written about by philosophers since the pre-Socratic era—from war to ethical struggles. We, in the 21st century, have continued with this obsession, but our tastes have broadened a bit to include not only external conflict, such as war or the cosmos, but psychological dilemmas, as well. To put it succinctly: Conflict is an integral part of human nature. It surrounds us, whether we want it or not, which is why we do our best to avoid it. Literature can take advantage of this avoidance. Novels and stories can provide a "safe space" of sorts for readers to look at conflict, directly and unflinchingly. Conflict pulls us into the text and allows us to witness, experience, and perhaps process what we might not be able to in our own (very real, sometimes absurdly real) lives. We’ll start by diving into how writers mechanize and think about conflict, and try to understand concepts such as, chronic and acute conflicts. From there we’ll discover numerous creative writing elements writers use to make readers feel, think, react, and even take action, long after they’ve turned the final pages of the book. We’ll also consider all the different “types” of conflict a reader might engage with while reading: interpersonal conflict, person vs. society, person vs. self, etc. By the end of the course, students will have a solid understanding and appreciation for not only how fiction works, but also how conflict—when combined with “eros”— can behave as a motor force that propels the reader toward the final pages of stories and novels. Students will also be able to articulate their understanding and evidence-based opinions in thoughtful writing projects.

Section: 002 #4713
Instructor: E. Horst
3.0 credit hours lecture 
Tu 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

Exploring Sensation: Secrecy & Scandal in 19th -Century Fiction

This course explores British and American fiction from the nineteenth century that was considered sensational, shocking, and even scandalous for its time. The texts we will study over the course of the semester feature thrilling plots about hidden and ambiguous identities, love affairs, secret crimes, erotic desire, and elements of gothic horror. Reading primarily through the lenses of reader response, genre studies, and theories of race, sex, & gender, we will discuss the literary conventions of sensational works, which encompass genres of sensation fiction, sentimentalism, realism, Aestheticism, & gothic horror, and analyze concepts like True Womanhood, the dandy, sensationalized beauty, & racialized gender ideologies. Course texts will likely include Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), and one modern example of sensation fiction: Gillian Flynn’s psychological thriller, Gone Girl (2012).

Section: 01W #4715
Instructor: A. Aftab
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

Identity, Power and Resistance in Fiction

What is the function of literature in challenging or reinforcing dominant ideologies about race, class, nation, gender, sexuality and religion? How do writers use fiction to reveal the intricacies of interpersonal and systemic oppression? How do different modes and forms of fiction – such as the bildungsroman or the speculative short story – represent structures of power and strategies 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 Tsitsi Dangarembga, Chimamanda Adichie, Ocean Vuong, Shyam Selvadurai and Nnedi Okorafor. Towards the end of the semester, students will be able to examine how different systems of oppression –such as racism, sexism, and classism – interact and intersect to create unique experiences for marginalized communities. In addition to sharpening their literary analysis, students will learn about current debates in the studies of race and gender, consider the burden of representation for minoritized writers, and examine the relationship between literary aesthetics and politics.

ENGL 273-01W meets the multicultural requirement and is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 02W #4716
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

Humans are the only animals on the planet who try to understand the world by telling made-up stories about it. This writing-intensive course, entitled “Unreal Fictions,” will consider genres of fiction that turn away from the real world to explore made-up universes that reflect our own in uncanny ways. Our readings will span widely as we explore the roots of genres such as fantasy, science fiction, horror, and counterfactual history. 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 here-and-now.

ENGL 273-02W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 274    Exploring Shakespeare 

Section: 01W #4718
Instructor: J. Chamberlin
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 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 course.

 

ENGL 282   African-American Literature 

Section: 001 #6079
Instructor: C. Walton
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

This course will examine works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from key literary movements in African American literature. Beginning from the era of U.S. slavery through the contemporary moment, this course will introduce students to critical snapshots by and about African Americans. We will possibly read the work of enslaved people like Frederick Douglass; postbellum writers like Charles Chesnutt; Harlem Renaissance poets like Langston Hughes; mid-20th century thinkers like Richard Wright; late-20th century writers like Paule Marshall; and contemporary authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates. In short, this course emphasizes the trends, patterns, and historical incidents that have influenced recurrent themes in African American literature. Students will read, analyze, and respond critically to texts in class discussions, examinations, and projects.

ENGL 282-001 meets the multicultural requirement.

Section: 01W #4719
Instructor: A. Mitchell
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

Alain Locke states, “So for generations, in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being- a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be ‘kept down,’ or ‘in his place’ or ‘helped up,’ to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden. Little true social or self-understanding has or could come from such situation (The New Negro). African American literature emerged in and out of the depths of enslavement with much of the experiences of the enslaved captured in narratives and other forms of literature. To that end, much of the African American experience has been shared in literature.

The intention of this class is to examine the literature born out of a dark place in world history. Enslavement became to leading theme of literature authored by and about African American people. Much of the literature about African Americans fit within the construct established in Alain Locke’s above quote, and much of the literature authored by African Americans, was focused on liberation from all forms of bondage. This course will examine African American literature from the antebellum period through the Black Arts Movement. We will apply literary critique to better understand the ways race and class shaped this art. To fully understand this literature, one must understand the Black experience in America and in the Diaspora. Our journey will help us take a deep dive into Black life in America. Our main mode of discussion will be Socratic in nature as we seek a deeper understanding of the experiences in the texts instead of a single meaning or interpretation.

ENGL 282-01W meets the multicultural requirement and is a writing-intensive course.

 

 

ENGL 283    Women in Literature

Section: 001 #5920
Instructor: A. Warren
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC 

Unlikeable Female Protagonists

“Likeability” influences so much, from political votes to earning potential to the likelihood one will be convicted of a crime. That influence grows even stronger and more complex in its outcomes when the “un/likable” figure in question is identified as female. But is “likeability” – specifically in terms of female protagonists - a good thing or not? Does the sword cut both ways, damning the “likeable” and “unlikable” alike? Why, then, do we so often love the dislikeable, or like to dislike them so much? Together, we will explore five texts in various modes/modalities – Messud’s The Woman Upstairs, Rivera’s Juliet Takes A Breath, Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer and Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, along with additional articles, etc. - and their various female protagonists. We will question not just if these women are likable or unlikable, but why we feel that way, and why that matters.

Cross-listed 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 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.

Section: 01W #4721
Instructor: S. Weller
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

Memoir, as a literary genre, has garnered much critical attention in the last few decades (both positive and negative). But what exactly is memoir? What characteristics does it have that are different than fiction? Do these genres ever intersect? If an author is writing from memory, and oftentimes memory is hazy, or at least subjective, what is the “truth” in memoir? These are some of the general questions we will address during the semester while reading a selection of creative non-fiction memoirs by a wide range of contemporary female writers. In terms of content, we will specifically consider how societal attitudes towards gender roles and expectations relate to the taboo nature and cultural silencing of women’s voices in regard to sexuality and reproductive issues. Authors will include Maxine Hong Kingston, bell hooks, Allison Bechdel, Jeanette Winterson,  Kathryn Harrison, Anne Fessler, Chanel Miller, Carmen Maria Machado, among others,

Cross-listed 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 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. This course counts towards the post-1900 and multicultural requirement for the English major.

ENGL 283-01W is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 02W #4722
Instructor: C. English
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

Building off the famous trope of the madwoman 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 written by male authors depicting women. 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” 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 we will read include: Toni Morrison, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jean Rhys, Sylvia Plath, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Carmen Maria Machado.

ENGL 283-02W is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 03W #6553
Instructor: S. Sleevi
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

This course will focus on the representation of women in literature as explored through a variety of literary texts. We will read texts that range from the nineteenth century to the present, looking closely at how their thematic content and formal features work to construct, perpetuate, and challenge certain representations of women across various historical periods and cultures. In order to achieve the Writing Intensive aspect of the course, we will also dedicate time and attention to the writing process itself and write regularly as a means of thinking through course material. Authors likely to appear on the syllabus are Charlotte Brontë, Helen Oyeyemi, and Alison Bechdel, and assignments for the course will include reading quizzes, regular short writing assignments (such as discussion forums), three response papers, and a final paper.

ENGL 283-03W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 284    Asian American Literature

Section: 01W #5921
Instructor: J. Fiorelli
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC 

This course introduces the range of Asian American literature from its earliest works around the turn of the twentieth century to its proliferation in contemporary literature.

The recent resurgence of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. revives a long-standing question in Asian American experience: where do Asian Americans belong? Their myriad histories include movement and continued connection across oceans and continents; subjection to laws and regulations that have restricted their movement into and within the U.S.; and, in the case of many Pacific Islanders, changes to their homes driven by colonialism. Their social positioning has also been various, whether labeled as the “model minority” or rejected as racial others, unassimilable foreigners, and potential threats. Thus, their literary productions often grapple with notions of place. Our examination of Asian American literature will explore various spatial scales – for instance, local community, island, nation, and globe – that have been sites of belonging, constraint, political investment, and conflict. We will examine a range of literary forms and styles, including poetry, drama, and prose fiction, to consider how Asian American authors have used aesthetic means to illuminate and critique conditions in America and in the world.

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 284-01W writing-intensive course and it fulfills the multicultural requirement.

 

ENGL 287    Religion and Literature

Section: 01W #4723
Instructor: M. Murphy
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:25 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 “sites” for religious inquiry, transcendent phenomena, and theological 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), solid 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 course.

 

ENGL 288    Nature in Literature

Section: 01W #4724
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM LSC 

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. This course is cross-listed with WSGS and is writing intensive. 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? Therefore, this course will focus heavily on the connections between the treatment and abuse of humans and nature. Assignments in the semester will include writing papers, reading reflections, and classroom participation.

ENGL 288-01W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 290    Human Values in Literature 

Section: 001 #5924
Instructor: D. Olszewska
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC 

Section: 002 #5925
Instructor: J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours lecture
Tu 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC 

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.

Section: 01W #5926
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 8:30 – 9:45 AM LSC 

Adopting a global and cross-disciplinary perspective, this section of English 290 will examine the portrayal of human values in modern and contemporary works by selected writers from Africa, the West Indies, South Asia, and North America. Our main aim will be to examine the extent to which the societies under study (and the individuals who constitute them) share universal values and the extent to which these societies and their values are predicated upon culture specific norms and expectations. To this end, we will consider the role of nation(alism), tradition, religion, race, ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and class/caste in the conception and practice of such values. In addition, we will analyze the cultural bases of contributing literary techniques, including structure, language, narrative focus, and characterization among others, to arrive at comparative assessments of the portrayal of human values in modern and contemporary global literatures in English.  

ENGL 290-01W fulfills the multicultural requirement and is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 02W #5927
Instructor: P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC 

In Hugh Lloyd-Jones’s translation of Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus asks, “Where shall the track of an ancient guilt, hard to make out, be found?” In this course, we will be exploring Oedipus’s question. In other words, we will be exploring guilt. Who’s to blame? How do we assign that blame, and what does it mean to be found guilty? Can an individual really be held responsible for any crime? Or, are the social conditions themselves at fault? We will be exploring vengeance, mob violence, collective guilt, misplaced blame, and corruption. We will also consider forgiveness, apology, and restoration. In the end, this course raises questions of causation: What are the final causes of any effect? To aid us in answering that question, you will be tasked with reading fiction, poetry, and drama. Moreover, and as a feature of this section’s “writing intensive” designation, we will discuss the expectations for strong academic writing, and you will be required regularly to compose low-stakes in-class journal responses and some higher-stakes single-page responses. You will also write two high-stakes three-page responses and one final five-page essay near the semester’s end.

ENGL 290-02W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 293    Advanced Writing

Section: 01W #6703
Instructor: E. Weeks Stogner
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM  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 are (1) reading and annotating all assigned materials; (2) actively participating in class; (3) completing extensive writing processes, including final drafts, for three formal essays; and (4) writing a semester-long reflective blog.

ENGL 293-01W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 294    Advanced Composition

Section: 01W #6702
Instructor: E. Hopwood
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:00 – 2:15 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 digital genres (websites, podcasts, games), digital storytelling, multimodal discourse, and visual rhetoric. Students will research and write about new media, create podcasts, and design both digital and analog content.

ENGL 294-01W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 299    Topics in Advanced Writing

Section: 1WE #4729
Instructor: M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

Introduction to Scholarly Editing

This Undergraduate Research Course (Engaged Learning) will introduce students to the theories and practices of scholarly editing as students assist in producing the Amy Lowell Letters Project (ALLP), a digital scholarly edition of the letters of American poet, critic, and editor (1874-1925). Our focus this semester will be on her correspondences with magazine editors and book publishers. In order to contextualize Lowell’s career, and the editorial work and collaborative project building at the heart of this class, we will study the New Poetry movement and early 20th century magazine culture, as well as historic debates in scholarly editing, editing correspondences, and literary digital humanities. Students will be trained to encode Lowell’s letters in XML (Extensible Markup Language) following the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative.

ENGL 299-1WE fulfills the engaged learning requirement and a writing-intensive requirement.

 

ENGL 306A    Women Writers Pre-1700

Section 001 #5860
Instructor: K. Lecky
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

Saints, Sinners, Scientists, and Social Activists: Women Writers in Early Modern England

In the seventeenth century, authors often imagined their national body politic as grossly corporeal, and often feminized. Women became the microcosmic ground on which both male and female writers defined the ideals of a united body politic while exposing the dangers inhering in its dissolution. Male writers consistently aligned the nation’s political, religious, and economic divisions with feminine problems. Meanwhile, women authors appropriated this fleshly metaphor of nationhood to variously submit to, resist, and restage conceptions of the matter of Englishness.

We will read texts in their original format; as a result, you will acquire knowledge of early print fonts. We will juxtapose text and image to understand how the physical object of the book circulated in a national economy fueled by high, middling, and lowly consumers alike. The authors on whom we will focus include Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary, Anna Trapnel, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and others.

 

ENGL 312C    World Literature in English Post-1900

Section: 001 #6550
Instructor: A. Aftab
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 1:00 – 2:15 PM  LSC 

Trans Movements in Diaspora Literature

This course will examine the connections between literary representations of transnational and transgender movements. Since the words “trans” and “diaspora” are rooted in the idea of spatial movement, this course will center on the intersections between different movements across geographical and gendered borders. By engaging with the theories of displacement, belonging, deracination, hybridity, and fragmentation, we will discuss how postcolonial literature represents the lives of trans people of color. As we explore how migrations and movements in diaspora literatures challenge cultural and gendered fixity, we will pay close attention to how coloniality and racialization intersect with gender and sexuality. We will read recent theoretical interventions in the fields of diaspora studies and trans studies along with creative work by writers like Patricia Powell, Jackie Kay, Zeyn Joukhadar, and Jia Qing Wilson-Yang. This course will also encourage students to creatively and radically re-imagine the category "world literature" by examining concepts of colonial worlding and trans worldmaking.

ENGL 312C fulfills the multicultural requirement.

 

ENGL 317    The Writing of Poetry

Section: 002 #4730
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours lecture
Th 4:15 – 6:45 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 by 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 their own final collections of poetry for a self-published chapbook, and give a reading of their work.

Section: 003 #4731
Instructor: P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours lecture
W 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 #4734
Instructor: V. Popa
3.0 credit hours lecture
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 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).

 

ENGL 319    Writing Creative Nonfiction  

Section: 001 #4739
Instructor: H. Axelrod
3.0 credit hours lecture
Th 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

 

ENGL 326    Plays of Shakespeare

Section: 001 #4742
Instructor: V. Strain
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

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—and 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 340   British Literature: Victorian Period

Section: 001 #5931
Instructor: P. Jacob
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

By the end of the nineteenth century, the British empire had expanded its presence across the globe, through economic, military, political, and also cultural means. Even as British culture swallowed up objects and practices from around the world, it also shored up the boundaries around Britishness ever more firmly, selling Britishness as a major global export, popular even today. In this examination of literature from, roughly, the period of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901), we will examine how Victorian culture represented itself and the empire. We will discuss how literary works produced and contested ideas around class, race, gender, sexuality, and labor that continue to shape our world today. We will also identify the literary trends of the period, from the crystallization of the realist mode to the development of new genres like detective and science fiction. Texts will include: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and others. Coursework includes written exams and research projects into esoteric aspects of Victorian culture like spirit photography and the Great Exhibition, as well as an experiential research option to “live like a Victorian.”

 

ENGL 354    Contemporary Critical Theory

Section: 001 #5933
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

This course is a survey of readings in critical theory. Over the course of the semester, we will trace the emergence of critical theory from its Marxist nineteenth-century origins to its contemporary manifestations. Along the way, we will encounter many of the major statements of contemporary critical theory, but will pay particular attention to theory’s global spread and transformation and its relation to geopolitical upheaval.

 

ENGL 371    The Modern Novel

Section: 001 #6551
Instructor: A. Sen
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

The Fall of the House in Modern Anglophone Literature

With the transition from aristocracy to capitalism, the foundations of the great house or manor in literature grows unsteady. The novel, which rises in popularity around this same time, becomes a fascinating vehicle for illustrating the breakdown of these once-sturdy houses. This course explores the house as a wobbly, crumbling, and ghostly entity in Anglophone literature extending from the late nineteenth-century to the end of the twentieth. We will study our texts (including Wuthering Heights, The Return of the Soldier, The Professor’s House, Minty Alley, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Beloved), in alternating units based around the themes of “Hauntings” and “New Economies.” “Hauntings” will investigate the supernatural as a literary device for conveying the decline of prosperous houses, while “New Economies” will look at more naturalistic but also experimental ways of representing socioeconomic change through houses.

Throughout our course, we will discuss the ecology of these houses in multiple senses: the material infrastructure (classed, gendered, racialized) of these buildings, the way they bridge and cross lines between the human and nonhuman worlds, and how houses become a way of embodying the passage of time. Assignments will involve regular responses to the week’s readings, a short research-based project on an actual house with literary influence, and a final paper. Most of your texts will be accessible online, but you are welcome and encouraged to order copies online or through the university bookstore. Details of units, assignments, and recommended book editions will be made available in the syllabus.

 

ENGL 372B    Studies in Fiction 1700-1900

Section: 001 #5856
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 4:15 – 5:30 PM LSC

Jane Austen’s Ivory

After Edward Austen-Leigh lost a few chapters of his unfinished novel, his aunt consoled him—and disowned the theft. “What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow,” wrote the finest prose stylist in English, when her own works were just a “little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?” In this course, we’ll read the novels of Jane Austen, and think through the terms of this self-depreciation: her mastery is often miniature, luminous in a stolen glance, an arched brow, the turn of a subordinate clause. But we’ll also think through the ways she carves the volcanic fissures of early nineteenth-century Britain onto her ivory—war, revolution, economic collapse and chattel slavery shade the wit of her parlors. We’ll read Austen’s works in and against their historical moment; along with the major novels, we’ll read Catherine Morland’s beloved Gothic stories, so full of murder, blasphemy, and ghostly terror. Most of all, we’ll read some of the most pleasurable fiction the world has ever known. Exams, papers, and copious portions of Mr. Darcy. Satisfies the department’s pre-1900 and/or 1700-1900 requirement.

 

ENGL 383   Theology & Literature

Section: 001 #5934
Instructor: J. Stayer
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

The course will introduce students to the rich imaginative tradition of Catholic thought. Rather than approaching the doctrines, teachings, rituals of Catholicism from a position of abstraction, we will read literary texts in which the culture and faith of Catholicism is embodied in fictional lives and poetic meditations. We will focus on English-language fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, written by diverse authors and identities: American, African American, Irish, English, Welsh, LGBTQ+. Within this frame, we will explore various topics and problems: personal belief, orthodoxy, suffering, sacramentality, incarnational theology, liturgy, community, prayer, discernment, and any particular Catholic tenet which a text brings up, grapples with, or denies. We will also consider how some lapsed Catholic authors retain, reject, or struggle against Catholic faith and culture.

This course can count towards a Catholic Studies minor.

 

ENGL 390    Advanced Seminar

Section: 01W #4745
Instructor: F. Staidum
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Liberalism in the Black Imagination

How do we make sense of the simultaneous expansion and exacerbation of US chattel slavery alongside (or within) the formation of a liberal democracy in the US following the American Revolution? Liberalism and its key tenets of human freedom, equality, dignity, individual sovereignty, and opposition to tyranny seem at odds with enslavement; however, early Black writers wrestled with and comprehended how these contradictions were resolved.

In this Advanced Seminar, we will engage a body of work that juxtaposes the human and the inhuman, the normal and the aberrant in order to wrestle with how early African-descendent authors articulated the precarity of Blackness within liberalism and, more broadly, Western modernity. We will read key works of critical theory alongside important specimens of Black counter-discourse, such as David Walker’s Appeal (1829); Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845); Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig (1859); Martin Delany’s Blake; or, The Huts of America (1859-1862); and Julia C. Collins’s The Curse of Caste, or, The Slave Bride (1865). In so doing, we will interrogate how the authors represented and subsequently theorized the coexistence of racial subjugation (i.e., commodification, objectification, enslavement, and second-class citizenship) beside Enlightenment-cum-American ideals of liberalism, progress, democracy, freedom, and nationalism, which are ideals believed to transcend the very practices of race and racialization. Early Black authors have something critically important to say about this seeming paradox. We will ask how these works depicted slavery, anti-Black racism, and white supremacy as phenomena not distinct from modernity (i.e., something “backwards”) but rather central to the creation and function of progress.

ENGL 390-01W fulfills the multicultural requirement and is a writing-intensive course.

Section: 02W #4746
Instructor: M. Werner
3.0 credit hours lecture
TuTh 4:15 – 5:30 PM LSC

Emily Dickinson & the Poems of our Climate

This seminar focuses on the poems of Emily Dickinson, re-reading them as poems of our climate. After getting our theoretical bearings by exploring some possible coordinates of an Anthropocene poetics, we’ll engage, through close readings and mappings, the following lines of poetic thinking in Dickinson’s lyric oeuvre: Dickinson’s Planetary Poetics; Dickinson’s Poetics of Geological (Deep) Time; Dickinson’s Poetics of Earthly Paradise; Dickinson’s Poetics of Airs and Atmospheres; Dickinson’s Poetics of Nature and Supernature; Dickinson’s Landscape— Mountain-Sea-Desert—Poetics; Dickinson’s Bird Poetics; Dickinson’s Bloom Poetics; Dickinson’s Beetle Poetics; and Dickinson’s Glacial/Extinction Poetics. Our readings and mappings will wonder how notions of scale, time, distance, and intimacy are refigured in the shadow of the Anthropocene. And, as we follow—as best we can–the fleeting figures of the “Creature” and the “Strange Stranger” across Dickinson’s poetry, we’ll also consider what new forms of entanglement with alterity her work proposes. In addition to our readings in Dickinson, we’ll explore a number of contemporary artistic engagements with the Anthropocene, e.g., Krista Caballero’s Portable Field Desk (2016) and, with Frank Ekberg, Birding the Future (2013); Peter Cusack’s Sounds from Dangerous Places (2012); Jana Winderen’s Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone (2017) and Silencing of the Reefs (2013), Amanda Marchand & Leah Sobsey’s This Earthen Door (ongoing), etc. Students in this Advanced Seminar will also have the opportunity to work with me on designing exhibits/fieldnotes for the digital installation Dickinson’s Birds: A Listening Machine (dicksinsonsbirds.org). For further information, please feel free to write me @ mwerner7@luc.edu.

ENGL 390-01W is a writing-intensive course.

 

ENGL 393  Teaching English to Adults 

Section: 01E #1492
Instructor: J. Heckman
1.0-3.0 credit hours  Seminar

TuTh 5:30 - 7:30 PM

MW 5:30 - 7:30 PM

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 with the Loyola Community Literacy Center. We hope that in Fall 2023 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. English 393 can be taken for 1, 2, or 3 credit hours. 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 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 times convenient for all students; 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, combined courses.

 

ENGL 394   Internship

Section: 01E #1493
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 399   Special Studies in Literature 

Section: 001 #1494
Instructor:  TBA 
3.0 credit hours  Supervision 

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.

 

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