Spring 2023 Graduate Course Description
ENGL 402 Teaching College Composition
ENGL 415 Media and Culture
ENGL 455 Topics in Early Modern Literature and Culture
ENGL 478 Victorian Novel
ENGL 490 Topics in American Literature
ENGL 402 Teaching College Composition
ENGL 001#1286
Instructor: E. Stogner
3.0 credit hours seminar
M 7-9:30 PM LSC
English 402 examines the practices of teaching college composition and the theories that inform these practices, familiarizing students with the professional work of composition and rhetoric. As we explore composition pedagogy, students will begin designing their own writing courses and defining their teaching philosophies. Course requirements include the design of a first-year composition course (syllabus, schedule, assignments, etc.), a composition class observation and reflection, and a series of reading response papers. This course is required for all doctoral students who will be teaching UCWR 110 and is strongly recommended for all graduate students who want to use their degree to teach composition courses.
This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Kanpp at jknapp3@luc.edu or (773) 508-2255 for permission.
ENGL 415 Media and Culture
Section: 001 #TBD
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours seminar
Tu 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
This course is a study of the history of books and print in North America, with a special focus on the rise and evolution of the genre of true crime. We will begin with a study of early printed sermons, which often focused on the consequences of crimes as a warning to the evangelical faithful. Our next unit will consider the rise of mass-market newsprint, and in particular the way journalists used crime reporting to satisfy the demand of an exponentially growing middle-class readership. We will then chart the transformation of journalism into a prestige art, and the rise of literary true crime writing. Our course will conclude with a theorization of the concept of streaming (a concept that encompasses radio broadcasts, cable television, podcasts, and subscription video services) and the dominance of true crime content in the new media landscape.
This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Kanpp at jknapp3@luc.edu or (773) 508-2255 for permission.
ENGL 455 Topics in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Shakespeare
Section: 001 #4146
Instructor: V. Strain
3.0 credit hours seminar
MW 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
This course examines Shakespeare’s chronical history plays about the British Isles and his tragedies based on Roman history. We will look at classical and medieval texts and rhetorical pedagogy as sources of insight into Shakespeare’s composition practices, and we will compare the stage representations of history and their implications for existential and political questions.
This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Kanpp at jknapp3@luc.edu or (773) 508-2255 for permission.
ENGL 478 Victorian Novel
Section: 001 #4026
Instructor: P. Jacob
3.0 credit hours seminar
TuTh 2:30-3:45 PM LSC
Victorian Novel: The Paper Trails of Victorian Literature
Before we went “paperless,” paper was the substance of our letters, our laws, and our literature. The nineteenth century saw an outpouring of paper (and paper litter), as innovations in paper production coincided with the expansion of print media, advertising, and a nationalized postal service. These bits of paper make their way into the novel as well—from the torn clue to the well-timed love note. In this seminar on Victorian literature, we will examine the literary function of paper objects: the letters that ricochet through the long narrative poem; the crucial piece of paperwork that drives plots of blackmail, detection, and inheritance; and the eerily multiplying documents of late-Victorian Gothic fiction. We will explore paper as a material, a medium, and a metaphor. Paper will also serve as an entry point for considering questions of law, media, authorship, and the archive—as well as the ways that social networks and affective ties are constituted through the circulation of calling cards and, eventually, telegrams. We will pay special attention to developments in information technology over the course of the Victorian period, and we will directly encounter the serial installments of some Victorian texts in the Special Collections. Toward the close of the semester, we will also consider the lingering place of paper in the digital world. Readings will include: Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, and, briefly crossing the pond, Henry James’s “In the Cage” and Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.
This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Kanpp at jknapp3@luc.edu or (773) 508-2255 for permission.
ENGL 490 Topics in American Literature
Section: 001 #4147
Instructor: S. Bost
3.0 credit hours seminar
W 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
Decolonial Epistemologies in Contemporary American Literature
Decoloniality is an emerging framework that highlights the different ways in which we (humans, animals, toxins, etc.) inhabit this continent. One of the more exciting aspects of this framework is encountering different ways of seeing the world and different forms of knowledge production, but these epistemologies are inevitably molded through (or warped by) the structures of colonialism (power + enforced belief, behavior, economy, and language). I am viewing this course as a collective project and an extended encounter. Rather than transmitting knowledge in one direction (as colonizers do), we will work from the ground up with the texts we read, witnessing different modes of encounter. Our interlocutors will include Maxine Hong Kingston, Octavia Butler, Gloria Anzaldúa, Salvador Plascencia, Aurora Levins Morales, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Joshua Bennett, and Monica Huerta. Students will work with partners or small groups to mine the cultural contexts and methodological possibilities of the texts we read and will share these tools in class with their peers. The “seminar paper” for this course will be a world-making machine, and the final exam will involve reimagining the power structures of the academy.
This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Kanpp at jknapp3@luc.edu or (773) 508-2255 for permission.