Spring 2019

GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSES

Teaching College Comp (ENGL 402)

Section: 800 #1415
Instructor: M. Bradshaw 
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

English 402 examines the practices of teaching college composition and the theories that support those practices. We begin by looking at how writing programs are positioned within English departments and within universities and then move to an exploration of major pedagogical movements in the discipline. As we explore different pedagogical approaches to teaching composition, students will work to develop their own teaching philosophies. Assignments include response papers, a sample assignment, a syllabus, a formal teaching statement, and a teaching demonstration. This course is required of doctoral students who will be teaching UCWR 110, and is strongly recommended for MA students who want to use their degree to teach composition courses.

History of the Book to 1800 (ENGL 412)

Section: 801 #5954
Instructor: E. Wheatley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 4:15 – 5:30 PM LSC

This course will examine the history of written and printed texts from their beginnings to 1800, including such topics as book production and distribution, early ideas about textual editing, literacy, copyright, and censorship. Students will make use of the rich collections of primary source materials in the Newberry Library as the basis for much of their research. (Students based near the Lakeshore Campus can reach the Newberry easily by taking the free shuttle bus to the Water Tower campus and walking about 10 minutes to the library at 60 W. Walton St.) Assignments are: a project based on one of the Newberry’s medieval manuscripts with a presentation to the class which will be written up as an essay of 10-12 pages, an oral report on a historical topic relating to book history that will be written up as a paper of at least 10 pages; and a final project on a topic of the student’s choice that will be presented to the class and written up as an essay of 15-20 pages. 

Milton (ENGL 458)

Section: 802 #5955
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

We will read about all of Milton’s poetry in English, giving at least eight weeks to discussion of the major works (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes); and, from his prose works, we will read the pamphlets against (pre-publication) censorship, in favor of divorce at (considered) will, and against a national church (Areopagitica, the first Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, A Treatise of Civil Power).  We will generally be discussing critical essays along with the works, some of them “classic”, more of them fairly recent and reflective of current critical trends.  The main requirements will be a short paper, a seminar presentation, and a term paper.   (I will order the Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. Kerrigan, Rumrich, and Fallon [Modern Library, 2007]) .​

Victorian Novel (ENGL 478)

Section: 803 #3886
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

In this seminar we will read six major novels of the Victorian period. Our reading will be informed by study of a representative selection of 19^th, 20^th and 21^st century criticism. Readings will include political, historicist, formal, and other theoretical approaches, with equal emphasis given to close reading and class discussion. Since this is a seminar, students will lead classes by giving reports on critical and theoretical materials and leading discussions of the primary texts. In addition, each student will write two seven-page papers.  Because the course relies on discussion, every student should come to class well prepared.  The novels we will read are: William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair 1847-48; Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, 1848; Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1852-53; Charlotte Brontë, Villette, 1853; Wilkie Collins, Moonstone, 1868; George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871-72.

Literature of Jazz Age (ENGL 484)

Section: 804 #5840
Instructor: D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

A decade of rapid and profound social change, the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s was extraordinarily conscious of its own modernity. In this course we will examine the changes in culture, both high and low, that marked this period. Our focus will be interdisciplinary: we will cross over into music, film, and other genres in order to study the period more comprehensively, and to examine the cross-fertilization and mutual influences among the arts as the age of literary modernism reached its peak. We will read works by such authors as Eugene O’Neill, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Nella Larsen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald as we consider such topics as, for example, the cult of the primitive, the reinvention of the “New Woman,” the Harlem Renaissance, the rise of modern popular culture, and the relationship of jazz to all these phenomena. Work by Jazz-Age and contemporary critics will supplement our primary readings.

[1] Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011), 1.