Loyola University Chicago

Department of English

Spring 2017 Courses

Interpreting Literature (UCLR 100)

Section: 01L #4083
Instructor:  P. Randolph
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC

This is a core course that will teach the fundamentals about critical thinking, reading, and writing. This year in UCLR we will be reading poetry, prose, and plays from an Anthology. In addition, we will read some short stories from contemporary authors along with classics, such as William Faulkner’s Barn Burning. We will discuss the six essential elements of fiction: Plot, Narration and Point of View, Character, Setting, Symbolism, and Themes. Some of the authors we will read include: Sherman Alexie, William Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others. When you leave this class you will have mastered key literary terms and be equipped with multiple critical lenses.

Section: 02L #4085
Instructor:  P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC

Over the course of the semester, we will be exploring the three principal literary genres: fiction, poetry, and drama. We will emphasize the historical contexts in which these stories, poems, and plays were written, and we will examine a variety of critical postures with which to interpret these texts. Students will also be asked to establish their own claims by way of shorter responses and longer formal essays. As we read, we will always ask why literature matters: Why do we choose to read? What can stories or lyrics teach us? How does literature participate in the building of our cultural and individual points of view? Finally, the course’s theme is “Horror in the Family.” We will explore a variety of families and family-like relationships and the ways in which these structures can foster or repel the horrible, with particular emphasis on the monstrous and the uncanny.

Section: 03L #4086
Instructor:  P. Randolph
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

This is a core course that will teach the fundamentals about critical thinking, reading, and writing. This year in UCLR we will be reading poetry, prose, and plays from an Anthology. In addition, we will read some short stories from contemporary authors along with classics, such as William Faulkner’s Barn Burning. We will discuss the six essential elements of fiction: Plot, Narration and Point of View, Character, Setting, Symbolism, and Themes. Some of the authors we will read include: Sherman Alexie, William Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others. When you leave this class you will have mastered key literary terms and be equipped with multiple critical lenses.

Visiting Fictional Worlds

Section: 04L #4087
Instructor:  R. Gilbert
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM LSC

Writers are world-builders: they create new worlds, and their stories are an invitation to play in their worlds.  In this course we will read plays, poems, and short fiction and we will examine the ways in which writers construct fictional worlds and tell stories within them.  The course will introduce some of the most useful ways of analyzing literature and some of the essential vocabulary of literary study, which will help us become comfortable discussing the works we are reading. 

You will be required to write several very short response papers, and a short final research paper.  Authors we will read will include Lee Blessing, Martin McDonagh, Suzan Lori-Parks, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ursula LeGuin, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Section: 05L #4088
Instructor:  E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 LSC

In this course we will use a number of different Ecocritical approaches to explore and interpret different pieces of poetry, prose, and drama, particularly those that might fit under the genre of Nature Writing. Literature provides a vast account of how the natural world is represented, treated, understood, and further, misused or abused. In response to this there can be a direct correlation as to how people and animals are also written about and represented. The correlation between these ideas will be looked at in this class. Assignments during the semester will include papers, quizzes, classroom participation, and projects.

Section: 06L #4089
Instructor:  J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC

This course is a survey of American literature from the colonial period through the Civil War.  It begins with narratives of discovery and settlement and concludes with the fiction and poetry of the United States.  We will consider a wide range of American writings, from the journals of Pilgrim settlers to the autobiographies of freed slaves.  Our texts will also represent numerous genres, including lyric poetry, novels, and drama.

Literature at Work

Section: 07L #4090
Instructor:  J . Fiorelli
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

Restricted to members of the Multicultural Learning Community.

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, to help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.

To do this, we will be examining literature about work.  Work is an essential part of human existence, whether that work is paid or not.  While people often take pleasure in and find satisfaction in their work, most work by most people has historically been compulsory and exploitative.  Thus, literature about work often addresses matters such as the nature and effects of oppressive work conditions, the larger forces at play, and how workers respond to oppression.  Literature about labor therefore engages deeply in a range of factors affecting people’s lives; in addition to class and gender, this course will focus heavily on issues of race, ethnicity, and immigration and migration, as well as various connections among these issues. Finally, literature about work raises questions about its own function in all of this: How can literature represent the conditions and experiences of work?  What are literature’s ethical responsibilities?  How can it engage the audience in the interests of economic and social justice?  How can we consider the future of work through cultural productions?  We will address such questions as we examine a variety of works of poetry, drama, fiction, and film.  Texts will be drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from twentieth-century American literature, including authors such as Ann Petry, Milton Murayama, Clifford Odets, Sherman Alexie, and Gloria Anzaldúa.  Course requirements will include active reading, written homework and quizzes, and class participation; two close reading analysis essays; and a midterm exam and final exam.

Section: 08L #4091
Instructor:  L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 PM LSC

In this course, we will read, discuss and write about a variety of literary genres. You will be introduced to multiple ways of approaching and interpreting texts ranging from ancient authors to contemporary ones, including traditional and experimental forms in the three major genres and a few in between. Materials include: Antigone, Othello and Venus (Plays), Kindred (Novel), and Citizen (Poetry/Mixed Genre). There is a strong focus on Race and Gender in this course. Writing assignments will include one short response, a midterm essay, and a final exam.

Section: 09L #4092
Instructor: P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 - 1:25 PM

Over the course of the semester, we will be exploring the three principal literary genres: fiction, poetry, and drama. We will emphasize the historical contexts in which these stories, poems, and plays were written, and we will examine a variety of critical postures with which to interpret these texts. Students will also be asked to establish their own claims by way of shorter responses and longer formal essays. As we read, we will always ask why literature matters: Why do we choose to read? What can stories or lyrics teach us? How does literature participate in the building of our cultural and individual points of view? Finally, the course’s theme is “Horror in the Family.” We will explore a variety of families and family-like relationships and the ways in which these structures can foster or repel the horrible, with particular emphasis on the monstrous and the uncanny.

Section: 10L #4093
Instructor:  M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

In this section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies we will focus on literature written in and about Chicago, from the 19th century to the present.  

This course will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to conceptual questions about literature and its study. What is literature? Why does it matter? How has it been conceived in different times and places?  Where does meaning come from in literature? What is literary interpretation and what role does it have in the production of literary meaning? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect—and reflect on—questions of value and the diversity of human experience? 

This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge.”

Section: 11L #4094
Instructor:  D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

This course will develop students’ ability to analyze literature at the college level. The texts we discuss will vary across genres (fiction, poetry, and drama) and historical time periods. Authors likely to appear on the syllabus include Jane Austen, LeRoi Jones, James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard Shaw, and Tennessee Williams, among others. The close-reading skills we practice will cultivate students’ critical thinking, understanding of literary texts, and appreciation of the craft of writing.

Minority Narratives of Want

Section: 12L #4095
Instructor:  N. Kenney Johnstone
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 - 2:30 PM LSC

This foundational course in literary studies will familiarize students with a range of genres including novel and memoir excerpts, short stories, essays, poetry, drama and screenplays. Some of the questions we will consider are: What is literature? Why does it matter? Where does meaning come from in literature? 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? To explore these questions, this course will focus on literature about motivation: what do characters want and how do they try to get it? In addition, you will be introduced to different forms of writing which are common in the discipline of literary studies.

You’ll read minority authors from the 20th century (like James Baldwin and Ann Petry) and the 21st century (like Jhumpa Lahiri and Justin Torres). We will study minority authors (in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, socio economic status, etc.) There will be short writing assignments and presentations, and a reflective essay for this course.

Greenhouse Learning Community

Section: 13L #4096
Instructor:  E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:30 – 3:35 PM LSC

In this course we will use a number of different Ecocritical approaches to explore and interpret different pieces of poetry, prose, and drama, particularly those that might fit under the genre of Nature Writing. Literature provides a vast account of how the natural world is represented, treated, understood, and further, misused or abused. In response to this there can be a direct correlation as to how people and animals are also written about and represented. The correlation between these ideas will be looked at in this class. This class fulfills the GreenHouse Learning Community requirement and requires a one-time, 4-hour off campus excursion, with the class, during the semester. Other assignments during the semester will include writing papers, quizzes, classroom participation, and projects.

Section: 14L #5146
Instructor: M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC

In this section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies we will focus on literature written in and about Chicago, from the 19th century to the present.  

This course will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to conceptual questions about literature and its study. What is literature? Why does it matter? How has it been conceived in different times and places?  Where does meaning come from in literature? What is literary interpretation and what role does it have in the production of literary meaning? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect—and reflect on—questions of value and the diversity of human experience? 

This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge.”

Section: 15L #4097
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30AM – 9:45 AM LSC

We have all read and interpreted literature before. For this course, however, we will strive to do so in a more complex, informed, and autonomous ways. We will work toward this goal by reading a lot of poetry, drama, and fiction, and then analyzing it in detail. Another of our goals will be to develop a better critical vocabulary and analytical approach to these types of literature. Writing assignments (both formal and informal) will emphasize individual engagement and literary analysis of the works we read but will also seek to improve general writing skills. There will be regular “low-stakes” writing exercises as well as some “creative” writing exercises intended to help us understand literature better by practicing literary writing. More broadly, however, I hope we will all learn to approach literature in a more attentive, engaged, and ultimately pleasurable manner. Ideally, we will not only learn about literature and literary techniques but will also try to relish the pleasure of literary reading. Readings will likely include a broad sampling of poets and poetry, an ancient Greek drama or two, a modern drama, short stories that are both realistic and experimental in form, and one short novel. 

Section: 16L #4098
Instructor: T. Koppang
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 - 9:45 AM LSC

It’s easy to find your comfort zone. It’s difficult to understand someone else’s. Engaging with literature can help to shape our sense of self-identity, but it can also provide a means to step outside of ourselves. It can present other people, other worlds, and other ways of understanding what makes us... well, us. 

This course will expose you to a variety of (mostly American) literature from the late 19th to early 21st centuries. Students will learn to read, analyze, discuss, and write about literature across a variety of genres, but especially prose and poetry. The focus will be on exploring the different ways in which literature can (and perhaps should) challenge your sense of comfort and self-identity. Finally, as this is a foundational course, you will learn the skills necessary to appreciate and write about literature at a college level.

Section: 17L #4099
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

This foundational course is intended to improve students’ ability to understand and appreciate poetry, drama, and prose. Readings will mostly be of works in these three basic kinds of literature, and will, with a few exceptions, mostly be by post-1900 authors from English-speaking countries. There will be some in-class writing; a journal; a midterm and final exam; one very short paper; and two short papers.​

Section: 18L #4100
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 - 11:15 AM LSC

Section: 19L #4101
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

Section: 20L #4102
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Why should we care about literature?

We’ll start historically: who before us has cared about literature, and why? We’ll study the pressure texts 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. We’ll read some authors who were white, male, and rich (and some who weren’t): 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 these same authors, blown apart all the stereotypes and orthodoxies we’d expect to find?  We’ll watch the invention not only of English (and then British) culture, 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 the greatest vehicle of social and aesthetic contest. 

We’ll read novels and poems, plays and pornography, ranging from 1600 to around 1900. We (well, you) will also write papers, take exams, and be flogged—the entire range of academic abjection, in one convenient course.  

Section: 21L #4103
Instructor: T. Kaminski
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

This course is intended to provide a foundation for further literary study. We will read and analyze a variety of works in the three major genres—fiction, poetry, and drama. Along the way you will be expected to master key critical terms and to explore important conceptual questions about literature. For instance, what is the difference between reading a literary work in its historical context and in the light of our own contemporary time? 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? This semester we will read fiction by Emily Bronte, Dashiell Hammet, and Jorge Luis Borges, plays by Oscar Wilde and Anton Chekhov, and poems by John Keats, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, and Gwendolyn Brooks, among others.

Children’s Literature (ENGL 206)

Section: 001 #1585
Instructor: Staff
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Section: 002 #5409
Instructor: Staff
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Advanced Writing: Business (ENGL 210)

Section: 20W #1720
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM WTC

This course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on particular types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including: memos, proposals, letters, and resumes. There will be individual and collaborative projects; you will also give a group presentation. This course is writing intensive. We will use a process approach to writing, emphasizing problem-solving, prewriting strategies, and editing and revision skills.

Section: 60W #1721
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM WTC

This course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on particular types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including: memos, proposals, letters, and resumes. There will be individual and collaborative projects; you will also give a group presentation. This course is writing intensive. We will use a process approach to writing, emphasizing problem-solving, prewriting strategies, and editing and revision skills.

Section: 61W #2457
Instructor:  M. Meinhardt
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM WTC

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.

Section: 62W #2749
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM WTC

This course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on particular types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including: memos, proposals, letters, and resumes. There will be individual and collaborative projects; you will also give a group presentation. This course is writing intensive. We will use a process approach to writing, emphasizing problem-solving, prewriting strategies, and editing and revision skills.

Advanced Writing: Legal (ENGL 211)

Section: 63W #1722
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 facts 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. 

Section: 64W #3775
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC

Theory/Practice Tutoring (ENGL 220)

Section: 1WE #2750
Instructor:  A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 - 2:15 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 vibrant 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 journal writing, three response papers, and a group research paper. 

ENGL 220-1WE is a writing intensive class. ​

Exploring Poetry (ENGL 271)

Section: 01W #4137
Instructor:  J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 - 12:20 PM LSC

This class will provide an introduction to the understanding and analysis of poetry through the study of a wide range of poems in English.  We will consider various motives for writing and reading poetry, and various methods of reading it.    Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class.  Requirements will include participation in class discussions, several papers, and a final.

Section: 02W #4138
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC

This class will provide an introduction to the understanding and analysis of poetry through the study of a wide range of poems in English.  We will consider various motives for writing and reading poetry, and various methods of reading it.    Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class.  Requirements will include participation in class discussions, several papers, and a final.

Section: 03W #4139
Instructor: N. Hoks
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC

Exploring Poetry introduces students to fundamental approaches to analyzing and appreciating poetry. The course’s emphasis will be on lyric poems, their engagement of mind and body, their rhythmic performance of formal beginnings and endings, their explorations of love and death, and their constructions of self and identity. Readings will include canonical English and American poetry ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries, as well as contemporary and international poetry in translation. Readings will be at times fun, sad, strange, challenging, joyful, and exhilarating.

Exploring Drama (ENGL 272)

Section: 04W #4142
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

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

Intro. to Drama covers literature from 20th Century and 21st Century.

Section: 05W #4143
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC

(See above.)

Exploring Fiction (ENGL 273)

Section: 043 #4146
Instructor: R. Macey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 - 10:10 AM LSC

This course examines modern forms of fiction, from flash pieces, to short stories, to novellas, to novels. We’ll read stories that read like traditional narratives, stories that read like poems, and stories that read like essays. We’ll also think about the difference between short and longform fiction. The course will emphasize close reading, including careful attention to form and theme. Assignments will include forum posts, short response papers, a midterm, and quizzes.

Section: 06W #4145
Instructor:  E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

Literature can often times serve to question identity. It asks who we are as readers, and it asks us to question certain aspects of culture, society, individuality, etc. As such, it has the ability to provoke us to anger, to action, and to empathy. We form our identity through our interactions with the world, and reading literature can be one of those interactions and further, can assist us in understanding the multiple interactions around us. For the purposes of this course, personal identity and the way fiction questions the construction of our identities will be the core theme we explore together. We will do so by looking at a number of theoretical approaches to interpreting literature, such as those found in the spiritual, psychological, theoretical, and philosophical readings of shorter literary texts. The texts we will be looking at will include mostly shorter works by American authors, such as Sherman Alexie, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Alice Walker, and ZZ Packer, just to name a few. By the end of the course students will have gained a better understanding of how to read and analyze fiction through being able to form questions concerning identity and the formation of identity, both within texts and for the reader. The method of assessment will include (but is not limited to) three papers that will be due throughout the course, two peer reviews, pop-quizzes, and classroom participation.

Section: 07W #5148
Instructor:  J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 LSC

This course examines works by important U.S. novelists from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Class discussions will address formal and thematic features of these writings. Based on these discussions, students will write papers that draw upon the readings to support original and consequential interpretations.

Section: 08W #5149
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 LSC

This course examines works by important U.S. novelists from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Class discussions will address formal and thematic features of these writings. Based on these discussions, students will write papers that draw upon the readings to support original and consequential interpretations.

Section: 09W #5150
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 - 2:15 AM LSC

This course is designed to enhance your ability to read narrative fiction closely and carefully, develop a deeper understanding of the devices writers use in constructing stories, and to enhance your own analytical and interpretive capacities. We will be interested in studying how fiction explores human experience, but we will also want to ask ourselves what kind of experience fiction creates for readers. This course will enhance your understanding of the creative process, but it will also help you to become a more creative reader by expanding your critical vocabulary and stressing the multiplicity of ways works of fiction can be read. We will be reading a combination of short fiction and novels by authors writing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Assignments will include two short critical essays, some in-class quizzes, and a final paper. This is a writing intensive course.

African-American Literature (ENGL 282)

Section: 045 #5151
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 - 12:45 PM LSC

While the activist movement, Black Lives Matter, has garnered national attention since its inception in 2013, African-American literature has been concerned with asserting the value of black lives since the late 18th century. We will focus, in particular, on the ways that black writers (in the past and in the “now”) have attempted to assert their humanity, citizenship, and freedom in the U.S. for over two centuries. To complement our readings we will incorporate films, music, and visual art to demonstrate the multiple and diverse ways that black artistic culture has served as a means of political resistance, reflection and inspiration. Requirements for the course include weekly quizzes, a mid-term, short responses (1-2 pages), and a final exam. This course fulfills the multicultural requirement. 

Women in Literature (ENGL 283)

“The Feminist Avant-Garde”
Section: 046 #5152
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 - 12:45 PM LSC

This course will focus on the feminist avant-garde, women writers and artists of the early to mid twentieth-century who produced experimental works and challenged conventional notions of gender. Our purpose will be (1) to learn to read texts (verbal and visual) in relation to their social and historical context, especially contemporaneous notions of gender, and (2) to analyze literature in terms of its narrative techniques. How do we read literature that doesn’t provide a linear plot, stable characters, or positive images of women? What effect do these artworks have on our notions of ourselves as gendered subjects? What are the political implications of such radical texts? We will read Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Djuna Barnes from the first half of the century, and Kathy Acker, Angela Carter, Harryette Mullen, and Jeanette Winterson from the second half. We will also read Nella Larsen, a more conventional novelist whose writing was indebted to Stein and has radical implications for our understanding of gender, race and class, and we will discuss contemporary visual artists. This course makes a case for why aesthetically difficult and intellectually challenging writers like those considered “avant-garde” still matter

Section: 10W #5153
Instructor:  J. B. Bouson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:11 – 11:15 AM LSC

“If women have learned many of the ways they interpret their lives from the narrative schemata of novels and stories,” writes Joanne Fry, “they can also gain from fiction new insights into the narrative processes of constructing meaning.”  Crosslisted with Women’s Studies, English 283 is designed to meet the “literary knowledge and experience” requirements of the Loyola Core.  Focusing on literature written by 20th- and  21st-century women authors, this course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women’s lives and writings; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; to train them in the analysis of literature; and to teach them how to describe, analyze, and formulate arguments about literary texts. Analyzing representative works of fiction written by women authors, this course will investigate the important cultural and gender scripts and psychological dramas encoded in the works read, paying special attention to the various ways the authors represent coming of age, the female body, romantic love, mother-child relationships,  female friendships, and female aging in their works.  The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, and May Sarton.  There will be quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.

Section: 11W #5154
Instructor:  J. B. Bouson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 LSC

“If women have learned many of the ways they interpret their lives from the narrative schemata of novels and stories,” writes Joanne Fry, “they can also gain from fiction new insights into the narrative processes of constructing meaning.”  Crosslisted with Women’s Studies, English 283 is designed to meet the “literary knowledge and experience” requirements of the Loyola Core.  Focusing on literature written by 20th- and  21st-century women authors, this course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women’s lives and writings; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; to train them in the analysis of literature; and to teach them how to describe, analyze, and formulate arguments about literary texts. Analyzing representative works of fiction written by women authors, this course will investigate the important cultural and gender scripts and psychological dramas encoded in the works read, paying special attention to the various ways the authors represent coming of age, the female body, romantic love, mother-child relationships,  female friendships, and female aging in their works.  The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, and May Sarton.  There will be quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.

“Secrets, Silence and Sex in Contemporary Memoir”

Section: 12W #5155
Instructor:  S. Weller
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Memoir, as a literary genre, has garnered much critical attention in the last decade (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 more specifically consider how societal attitudes towards gender roles and expectations relate to the taboo nature and cultural silencing of women’s sexuality and reproductive issues. Some authors included will be: Maxine Hong-Kingston, bell hooks, Jeanette Winterson, Kathryn Harrison, Margaret Atwood, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Anne Fessler, and Alice Sebold.

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.

Religion and Literature (ENGL 287)

Section: 047 #5156
Instructor:  M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

This course will introduce students to important works from various historical periods and cultures that speak to us through time of essential questions and that offer insights into the human spirit and the idea of the holy. Assignments will consist of a mid-term, term paper, and final examination, as well as multiple short writing assignments designed to give practice in the essential elements of good writing and literary analysis.

Text: Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, ed. Tippens, et al., 3rd edition.

Nature in Literature (ENGL 288)

Human at the Limit
Section: 048 #4154
Instructor:  A. Christie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 - 9:45 AM LSC

“‘But, what is nature?’ R. Max asks. ‘Am I not part of nature, too?’” -Mark Z. Danielewski

“…what counts as nature, for whom, and at what cost”? -Donna Haraway (104, @OnCoMouse)

At the intersection of discussions about intensified global warming, diminishing populations of endangered species, and increasingly perceptive artificial intelligence stands the human, or, at least, the question of the human. In mapping these territories, we necessarily come up against the human and its connection to animals, nature, culture, and technology. While this course focuses on the relationship of human beings and the environment in which they function, as represented in a variety of literary works (the university course description), we will also attend to questions about how we understand and constitute both “human beings” and “environment”: How “natural” is nature and how is it similar or different from “culture”? What is our relationship to animals, plants, and ecology, and what kind of responsibility does it entail? Ultimately, we’ll rethink and reconfigure the human by interrogating its boundaries, limits, and thresholds. In an effort to explore these concepts and ideas, we’ll examine literary and theoretical texts that foreground these questions, possibly including Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Garland’s Ex Machina, and Whedon’s Dollhouse among others. Assignments will include two papers, short blog posts, and a final project.

Human Values in Literature (ENGL 290)

Non-Western Voices
Section: 049 #2751
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 - 11:15 AM LSC

Adopting an international and cross-disciplinary perspective, this section of English 290 will examine the portrayal of human values in modern and contemporary works by selected non-western writers from Africa, the West Indies, South Asia, and USA. 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 nationalism, tradition, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, 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 world literature.  

This course satisfies 3 credits of the Core Curriculum Tier-II requirement in Literary Knowledge & Experience; counts as a 200-level elective for both the English major and minor; and meets the 3-credit multicultural requirement of the English major.

American Communities
Section: 050 #5157
Instructor: C. Jergenson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 - 9:45 AM LSC

This course focuses on American novels that explore the “human value” of community. Community is conceptualized in different ways in different times and places, and the way that people imagine community will always have some relationship to the organization of the social world around them. Rather than treating community as an abstract concept, we will focus on literary representations of how specific communities imagine themselves, define their boundaries, and relate to others. What does it mean to value community? How do individuals relate to the various communities to which they, by willed identification or social compulsion, belong? What is the role of literature in documenting the troubled relationships within and between American communities throughout history? And, perhaps most importantly, how can literature help us to navigate the inexhaustible complexities of the word “American”? We will explore these questions through novels by Nella Larsen, Cormac McCarthy, Louise Erdrich, and others. Assignments will include essays, reading quizzes, short response papers, and exams. 

Section: 202 #5158
Instructor: S. Kucsera
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Heroes represent the most cherished values of a particular society: in the face of danger, these exemplary figures combat adversity through impressive feats of ingenuity, bravery, or strength, and often sacrifice personal concerns for some greater good. By examining heroes revered by a variety of societies, a greater awareness of values both specific to individual cultures and across cultures over time can be reached. To that end, we’ll explore readings that fall into three related groups: the classical heritage, the biblical tradition, and the early modern inheritance of both of those earlier models. Featured texts include The Odyssey, selections from the New Testament Gospels and the Book of Acts, Gawain and the Green Knight, the autobiography of Ignatius Loyola, Hamlet, and Pericles. To guide our examination of these texts, we'll ask questions such as: What is a hero? How is the hero related to society? What can we learn about another society by studying its heroes and what can we learn about ourselves? How do conceptions of heroism change over time? What happens when the heroism of a previous age no longer works for a new cultural moment? The objectives of this course include expanding your awareness of the value systems of different cultures, examining the consequences of value systems as explored in literature, and increasing your skills of critical analysis on a body of literature designed to encourage you to accept, reject, or question specific ideas of good and evil, proper behavior, and appropriate action within cultural contexts.  

English Grammar (ENGL 303)

Section: 051 #2142
Instructor: E. Weeks-Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC

Humans are language-producing animals, so in a sense our language is something we already “know.” But do we understand how it really works? The goal of this course is to analyze the structure of that language, to unlock the secrets behind the meaning we produce innately. We will explore English grammar not only as a list of rules and regulations that govern linguistic behavior, but also as a means of clearly conveying ideas in speech and writing. This course will examine all elements of English grammar from parts of speech and how they function in a sentence to punctuation and how it enhances clear and precise prose. We will also gain an appreciation for the English language and investigate techniques for using language effectively in speech and writing. This course is required for students planning to teach high school English, but it is also open to others.

Advanced Writing (ENGL 310)

Technology, Text and Textuality
Section: 18W #5853
Instructor: E. Hopwood
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 PM LSC

Can you name a technological device that has drawn criticism for its tendency to captivate users? One that is used excessively and obsessively, to the extent that users, so entranced with their devices, walk into walls and ignore their companions? Today we might all knowingly shout, “the iPhone!” But in the nineteenth century, well before the invention of smart phones and tablets, another tool garnered similar negative response: the kaleidoscope. For Victorians, the kaleidoscope was both a technological innovation and cultural artifact that, much like the iPhone, was both admired and admonished in its historical moment. What’s the relationship between these, and other, tools of communication? What do they reveal about cultural formations, social interactions, and power relations? How has writing and communication been shaped through past and present technological innovations? This course situates students to critical understandings of how texts are made and mediated through technology, editing, and interface. Students will study the material and historical conditions of text—from manuscript and print to the digitized to born-digital—in order to understand the many “lives” that texts have lived. Students will practice modes of writing across new media and “old” mediums in order to draw connections between historical moments of print culture with those 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).

This class will be structured with both discussion and hands-on activities where students can apply their scholarly interests to the tinkering, making, building, or experiencing of texts. Classes will be supplemented with experiential learning “labs” such as visits to archives or hands-on coding work. Assignments will include reading responses, “lab” write-ups of our fieldwork, and a final “Unessay” assignment. Students will gain an understanding of the principles involved in writing clear and effective prose in an emerging digital environment, across both scholarly and popular genres.

The Writing of Poetry (ENGL 317)

Section: 052 #1390
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

This course approaches the writing of poetry as both a study and craft that requires reading, exploration, practice, and sharing. We read a unique work of contemporary poetry each week as a framework for discussion, but the core of the course is student writing. The workshop element of the course includes in-class collective and collaborative writing experiments, prompts for writing in between sessions, and presentations of student poetry for review by the group. Students produce a final collection of poetry in a self-published chapbook and give a reading of their work for the final.

Section: 053 #1391
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC

This course offers practice and instruction in the techniques and analysis of poetry through reading, writing, discussing, and revising poems. We will give particular attention to the unique challenges and opportunities  facing  beginning poets as we first seek to channel our ideas and life experiences into poetry, to find and then develop our own voices in relation to not only our own impulses but to "the tradition" and the aesthetically diverse and fascinating world of contemporary poetry. The poems you write will be carefully read and critiqued by both your classmates and the instructor. The culmination of the course will be to compile a portfolio of the work you have written over the term.

Section: 602 #2753
Instructor: J. Sitar
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

This course aims to give you some footing as you begin to explore the writing of poetry. We will read widely with the goal of becoming proficient in the genre as readers, critics, and of course as poets. Our class will often involve group discussion, from broad conversation about forms and styles, to line-by-line examination of individual poems. Your responsibilities are to read carefully, complete each assignment earnestly, participate often in class, try to guide and improve each other’s work, and write and revise your writing a lot. In return, I will expose you to a wide variety of poetry, guide class discussions, ask questions to challenge you, and create assignments that will help your development as a poet.

The Writing of Fiction (ENGL 318)

Section: 054 #1392
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading master writers such as Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Haruki Murakami, Donald Barthelme, and others, to analyze their craft; (b) writing three original short stories; and (c ) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow students in a supportive workshop environment. Class participation is emphasized. Fulfills a Core Expressive Arts Requirement.

Section: 055 #2754
Instructor: Staff
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 2:45 PM – 5:15 PM LSC

Section: 603 #2755
Instructor: Staff
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC

Writing Creative Nonfiction (ENGL 319)

Section: 056 #2143
Instructor: H. Axelrod
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 – 5:00 PM LSC

This is a workshop class 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.  Indeed, perhaps the only way to define creative nonfiction is to identify its constitutive elements: facts and subjectivity.  Nonfiction means the given facts of the work are true—not courtroom testimony-level true, but fairly reliably-accurate true—and subjectivity means that the writer is using those facts to get at more than the facts, to take a personally distinctive look at a topic, or issue, or period of her life, and often, whether explicitly or not, at some larger underlying question. 

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 learn about narrative distance, scene and exposition, and various elements of craft, with a focus on voice and diction.  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.   

Chaucer (ENGL 322)

Section: 057 #2600
Instructor: I. Cornelius
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 - 3:35 PM LSC

Geoffrey Chaucer was the greatest English poet prior to Shakespeare and remains one of the great literary innovators in this language. Writing at a time when English commanded little respect as a language of literature, Chaucer crafted a unique and compelling poetic voice, an inclusive vision for literary fiction, and richly imagined characters. In this class we study his most important poems. We begin with the early dream visions, in which Chaucer created surrealistic fictional worlds, montaged together from his readings and populated by capricious pagan gods, talking birds, and a disconsolate man in black. Here we see Chaucer as a young poet getting oriented, and productively disoriented, within literary history. After the dream poems, we spend the balance of the semester with The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s unfinished masterpiece and celebration of story-telling. For The Canterbury Tales,Chaucer created a diverse cast of characters—women and men, poor and rich, profane and devout—who regale one another with boundary-pushing explorations of social class, gender, sexuality, faith, and fiction.

Our study of Chaucer’s poetry is supplemented by his source texts and by critical writings. We read Chaucer’s poetry in its original language, called “Middle English”; learning to read this antiquated form of English takes work, but the reward is an unusually fine-grained and intimate experience of literature. Students will memorize and recite a short passage from Chaucer’s poetry, contribute to an online forum, and write two formal essays. There will be a midterm translation exam and a final exam.

Plays of Shakespeare (ENGL 326)

Section: 058 #1396
Instructor: J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

This course will focus on a selection of Shakespeare’s plays in all the major genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance).  We will read the plays through a variety of critical approaches, taking into account the historical context in which they were produced.  Throughout the course of the semester we will focus on the development of drama in England, the material history of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and the political and cultural place of the theater in Shakespeare’s England.  Plays may include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, All’s Well that End’s Well, Richard II, Henry V, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. The primary text will be David Bevington’s edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.  There will be papers, a midterm and a final.

Studies in Renaissance (ENGL 328)

Section: 059 #1845
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 - 1:25 PM

This course will focus on the earlier seventeenth century (1600-1660) and examine texts in various genres, with an emphasis on texts and authors not covered in English 325. Among the topics we will consider are: the functions of literature in the culture of late Renaissance England; the relationship between the authors' aspirations as poets and as participants in political events; the relationship between the authors' gender and their literary products; and the literary, intellectual, and political contexts in which their work was produced. Requirements will include two papers, a midterm, and a final.  This course counts toward the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.

Studies in Romantic Period (ENGL 338)

Section: 060 #3436
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

This course will be an intensive study of what’s sometimes called “second-generation Romanticism”: the women and men writing in England from roughly 1810 to 1830, including Jane Austen, John Keats, Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, and Sir Walter Scott. Many of them were born too late to know the initial enthusiasms of the French Revolution—this generation comes of age amidst decades of global war, social collapse, and seemingly inevitable tyranny at home and abroad. Yet it was just these despondencies that Percy Shelley figured as “graves from which a glorious Phantom may / Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.” Our subject will be both graves and phantoms. We’ll study the collapse of political possibility on the battlefields of the Napoleonic wars and in the massacre of peaceful demonstrators at “Peterloo”; we’ll also study the spiritual transfigurations of this collapse in some of the most electrifying literature ever produced in the English-speaking world. We’ll roam from Austen’s parlors to Byron’s Alps, from Scott’s Scotland to Keats’s Rome, meeting along the way the expected opium addicts, freedom fighters, and women pregnant with the Second Coming of Christ. You’ll also write papers, take exams, do light housework. Fulfills the 1700-1900 and/or pre-1900 requirement for the English major.

Studies in British Literature Since 1900 (ENGL 348)

Section: 061 #5159
Instructor: J. Wexler
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

Twentieth-century literature is often interpreted as a turning away from public events, but this course focuses on writers’ struggles to register the impact of the political violence of the period. The new forms of the early twentieth century were a solution to the rhetorical dilemma of writing about the “nightmare” of history. This metaphor conveys the conviction that events were unimaginable and indescribable. Writers  confronted this rhetorical dilemma in extraordinary ways. We will read examples including Heart of Darkness, Women in Love, The Waste Land, Mrs. Dalloway, and A Bend in the River.

Contemporary Critical Theory (ENGL 354)

Section: 062 #2144
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

This course introduces students to a range of contemporary theories about literature, literary criticism, and cultural studies. We will explore recent innovations in how we think about texts, authorship, narration, writing, and reading, review a variety of approaches to critical analysis and interpretation, and consider the social, cultural, and political dimensions of critical theory and literary analysis. The course is a mix of lecture and discussion. Required texts will include a range of introductory and advanced readings in critical and literary theory (including The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory (2nd edition), and a selection of poetry and fiction. Requirements include weekly quizzes, two 5-6 page critical essays, and a final longer paper drawing on some of the theories we study to analyze a contemporary novel.

Lit: Writer’s Perspective (ENGL 357)

Section: 063 #1399
Instructor: H. Axelrod
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

Vladimir Nabokov taught his students that reading well means visualizing more than the author has written on the page. When Tolstoy describes a train station, for instance, you should see the porters and the frosty air (all of which Tolstoy mentions), but perhaps also the varied paces of the travelers hurrying for their trains, the benches along the station wall, a clock overhead ... in short, a full scene. How can you see more when you read?  And how can you write in such a way that invites your readers to see?  In this class, we’ll try to answer those questions by reading fiction (by writers ranging from Marilynne Robinson to Dennis Johnson), poetry (by writers ranging from Basho to Czeslaw Milosz), and nonfiction (by writers ranging from Virginia Woolf to James Baldwin).  Written work will consist of short responses to the reading and of student-written fiction and creative nonfiction; therefore, the prior taking of English 319, Writing Creative Nonfiction, or English 318, Introduction to Fiction Writing, is recommended.

Modernist Poetry (ENGL 361)

Section: 064 #5160
Instructor: D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 PM LSC

In this course we will read and discuss the work of such major modern poets as William Butler Yeats, Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and Ezra Pound. These poets illustrate several different ways of being “modern,” and we will consider both what distinguishes them individually and the ways in which their artistic projects overlap. We will focus on their writing techniques as well as on the historical-cultural contexts that shaped their ideas and aesthetics. Assignments will include two essays, a midterm and a final exam.

American Lit. to 1865 (ENGL 375)

Section: 065 #5161
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

This course surveys the emergence of an English-language American culture from the period of the English colonization of America to the Revolution, with a special emphasis on how print interacted and overlapped with other forms of communication.  The course will consider a broad range of American writing from this period, from the jeremiads of English Puritan reformers to the literatures of republicanism and revolution.  Our literary readings will range from sermons and captivity narratives to canonical classics like Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, yet along the way, we will also consider a wide range of media, from epitaphs and broadsides to more ephemeral forms of communication like rumors, songs, and natural soundscapes.   By looking at print in the context of other ways of sharing and controlling information, we will attempt to recover the cultural production of groups often excluded from literary histories organized around acts of print publication.  When we turn our attention to other forms of media, religious dissenters, women, slaves, and Native Americans appear anew as active agents in the public world of the colonial Americas.   

Fulfills the 1700-1900 and/or pre-1900 requirement for the English major.

Studies in American Literature 1700 – 1900 (ENGL 379B)

Section: 066 #5162
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM LSC
 

This course examines how racial identity serves as a marker of elevated class status by enabling “conspicuous consumption,” or the social display of wealth and leisure.  Commencing with recent accounts of this phenomenon, the course then turns to the American 1890s, the period when the drive for conspicuous consumption first began to make identity a luxury item.  The first identities to be consumed as luxuries were the regional identities marketed to the leisure class through regionalist fiction.  In the work of later African-American writers, this course will suggest, the conventions of literary regionalism were adapted to display the identity not just of place but also of race, thereby making racial identity available as an object of conspicuous consumption.  

Advanced Seminar: (ENGL 390)

Global Nationalisms and the Politics of Terror
Section: 13W #2464
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 LSC

This course will examine the portrayal of modern global nationalist politics and the concurrent rise and proliferation of terrorism. We will read texts written not by mainstream western authors, but by non-Western/diasporic writers and commentators so as to foreground the perspective of the Western Other(s). The course will investigate the following topics in the main:  

  1. how the historical experiences of mid-twentieth century post-colonialisms, diasporas, and globalization intersect with the contemporary geopolitics of terror
  2. how postcolonial writers have created new narrative forms and alternate realisms that respond to and embody the multiple meanings of contemporary South Asianness, Britishness, and Americanness, as well as globalization and terror, and
  3. how non-western diasporic writings both narrativize/theorize and function as alternative spaces of belonging

In doing so, we will examine the links between the centuries-old history of colonialism and imperialism and twenty-first century terror; the parallels between Self and Other, between the perpetrators and targets of terror; and the connections between global migration and global capitalism on the one hand, and nationalism and fundamentalism on the other hand.   

The texts for the course are as follows:

1. Salman Rushdie, Shame (1983)
2. Amitav Ghosh, Shadow Lines (1988)   
3. Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (2000)
4. Kiran Desai, The Loss of Inheritance (2006)
5. Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)
6. Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows (2009)
7. Arundhati Roy, The End of Imagination (2016)

Section: 14W #5163
Instructor: V. Strain
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 – 5:00 PM LSC

This course provides a grounding in the most influential texts and critical methods in the field of law and literature. While literature’s close ties with the law are evident in ancient texts, the modern interdisciplinary movement took shape in the later twentieth century and has continued to benefit from emergent literary trends and schools of critical thought (not to mention developments in cultural, social, and legal history). We will concentrate on literary borrowings from the law (in the form of language, content, ordering principles, and ethical questions), as well as literature’s ability to critique the premises and practices of the law. We will approach the law as a source of language, metaphors, narratives, and interpretative strategies; as a mode of categorizing, analyzing, and representing human experience. Through literary works such as Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Melville’s Billy Budd, and Kafka’s The Trial, we will examine the signature tensions that connect, and the signature perspectives that divide, these two fields. Law and literature both struggle to make meaning by constructing relationships between principles and particulars, texts and contexts, tradition and innovation. Assignments, lectures, and class discussions will help students use law and literature to put pressure on the definitions and practices that shape our lives.

Teaching English to Adults (ENGL 393)

Section: 01E #1429
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM LSC

Engaging with Jesuit values.  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, located in Loyola Hall, 1110 W. Loyola Avenue, 2nd floor conference room, across the street from Mertz.

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.  As one student-tutor wrote, "The Literacy Center is a program that enables students to truly embrace the Jesuit tradition.  It is a place that allows students to encounter something outside of themselves, . . . . . connecting the heart with the head."

No previous tutoring experience is necessary.  When taken for 3 credit hours, this course satisfies the Core Engaged Learning-Service Learning Internship requirement.  The course is open to second-semester freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, although incoming freshmen are always welcome to tutor as volunteers and take the course at a later date.

Students tutor adult learners, some of whom are native English speakers preparing for the GED or improving their literacy skills.  Other learners are international visitors, or immigrants or refugees whose skills in their native language range from their being highly educated professionals to being perhaps illiterate, even in their own language, and who may know some English or no English. 

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. 

If students have never tutored at the Center, they must attend one evening of orientation.  All students attend bi-weekly class meetings (5 meetings per semester for 1-2 credit hour students, 6 class meetings per semester for 3 credit hour/Core students).  Students keep a weekly journal of their experiences; examine a textbook and journal articles concerned with literacy, language, and adult education; submit ten of their journals and five short papers throughout the semester; prepare a final paper or project; and, for 3 credit hour students, read and report on one additional text of their choice related to the work of the Center, to adult literacy, to the culture of their learners, or to any topic suggested by their tutoring experience. 

One student who was enrolled in one of our Literacy Center courses said, “I can’t say I’ve been in a nicer environment on Loyola’s campus.  Everyone is welcoming and treats everyone else with respect. And the time flies by because I love what I’m doing.”  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/Honors 290.

Internship (ENGL 394)

Section: 02E #1431
Instructor: J. Cragwall

Honors Tutorial: (ENGL 395)

Section: 15W #4157
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 – 5:00 PM LSC

Contemporary African-American literature is largely defined by the relationship it bears to the historical past. The Civil War era, in particular, figures largely in late 20th and 21st c. literary texts and provides the basis for multiple and diverse “remembrances” of this past. This course explores how artists and writers re-envision and rewrite the antebellum era to address the interconnections of contemporary, everyday “life” with histories of displacement and disenfranchisement. Using Marianne Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory” as a starting point, we will examine novels, films, and visual works by recent African-American artists whose “connection to the past is mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation.” This course will engage critically with the concepts of race, freedom, gender, and citizenship to consider what these concepts meant for an American public in the19th c. and how we understand ourselves in relation to these ideas in the present moment. Given that this course is an advanced Honors seminar, there will be a strong emphasis on individual participation and group interaction. This course fulfills the multicultural requirement.

Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry (ENGL 397)

Section: 16W #1627
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
F 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

In this advanced poetry workshop, we will seek to deepen our engagement with poetry as an art form—both as readers and writers. Through reading, writing, and workshopping, we will grow more familiar with the anatomy and texture of poetry: image, word, voice, syntactical configurations, rhetorical devices— stanza, line, punctuation, and page. Your work will be given a great deal of individual attention in our workshops, and you will be offered the opportunity to work very closely with the instructor as you write and revise your final project for the course—a portfolio of your best work.

Advanced Writing: Fiction (ENGL 398)

Section: 17W #1433
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC

A fiction writing workshop for those who have already taken English 318 (a prerequisite), which builds upon concepts of fictional art and craft studied there. Students will write original stories which will be discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by one's fellow writers in a supportive workshop environment. Students will also read and discuss the craft of master fiction writers, such as Steven Milhauser, Haruki Murakami, Joy Williams, Richard Ford, Aimee Bender, and others. Class participation is emphasized.

Special Studies in Literature (ENGL 399)

Section: 067 #1434
Instructor: J. Cragwall